smeezekitty wrote:

Chaniyth wrote:

AidanExamineer wrote:

On balance I think games are better now, but no single game has as much drive and passion behind it as games used to. Part of that was smaller development teams, working for a longer period of time, and working towards a more focused vision for a game.

That and companies didn't milk a franchise to death year after year with slightly different gameplay. *cough* EA Sports *cough* or release a FPS with the same gameplay every release and has a completely sociopathic community *cough* COD *cough*... just kill that damned franchise already!

*cough* Doom *cough* Quake *cough*

When i'm talking milking a franchise to death I literally mean it, im not talking about revisions. DOOM only had 2 releases back in the day, DOOM and DOOM II [revisions don't count] and DOOM III is too "new". Quake also only had 2 releases back in the 90's. Quake 3 Arena don't count because it was intended as a tournament style FPS, and Quake IV is too "new" IMHO.

COD has a ridiculous 12 releases. TWELVE. After they left the WWII based stuff the game got boring and the community has entirely too many damn lunatics in it and they seriously need to just end its franchise. EA releasing a new sports title every year gets boring too, besides that IMHO the 2K series of sports games surpasses the EA sports games in overall fun, simulation and quality.

However this is getting OT, so i'm done. 😎

*COUGH*Master Levels*cough*Final (cash-in of) Doom*cough*Scourge of (profit) Armagon/Dissolution of (financial) Eternity*cough*Reckoning/Ground Zero/Netpack 1: (wallet) Extremities*cough*

Don't let the nostalgia filter deny the cashcowing, and i'm only strictly speaking of the 'canoncially id' up there and not the WizardWorks/HeadGames shovelware market excrements

Another sentimental tech hoarder here 😁 I have collected hardware and software that I owned or lusted after in my youth.

It's my view that the period of home computing from the 70s/80s to about 2002 was the most interesting, with regular giant leaps in video and sound quality, and it's been mostly incremental development and commoditization since then. I wonder if the youth of today will fondly remember their current i3/5/7 rigs in 2030, or if current computers are as full of character as a fridge?

A few bits may be important like a 3dfx card, Floppy disk/drives. Things that demonstrate what was once common place but now extinct or massive leap forward. Also systems like the Apple 2 which made computers accessible to the masses. Just like certain cars, printing presses or similar technology you find in museums. But I would say 99% of the setups here are not really important to the wider world. but bring us enjoyment just like our 74 VW Beetle. Its not important in the grand scheme of things, not even if your studying VW's or beetles but its story (mum's had it since brand new and been round Oz)makes it more important within the VW community

JidaiGeki wrote:

I wonder if the youth of today will fondly remember their current i3/5/7 rigs in 2030, or if current computers are as full of character as a fridge?

My vote goes to "as full of character as a fridge" because there's not been any huge leaps forward in computing or innovation for the consumer market in many years and the consumer computing market has truly gotten stale, IMHO, that or we have all simply gotten numb to it because it's commonplace now. I feel the next innovation will only be when full immersion comes into mainstream existence.

I'm hoping Vulkan will 'repeat history' where the new video card cycle crops up artifacts for the older games, and then be back to OpenGL/Direct3D, and then there will be sentimentality for when Vulkan worked and looked good with the games they like. 😀

This is a tricky question. It's important to me because I personally derive some form of nerdy pleasure from it, from being able to work "closer to the metal" or so to speak, from dealing more or less directly with 0's and 1's, from having absolute control, as opposed to letting someone else do it all for me (and with the great penalty that would come along with it), like it is the case for very much everything today computer-wise. But as far as the rest of the world is concerned (minus these little special interest groups), not only is it not important, it's actually worthless and counterproductive.

Behold, the good stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIn5iMiD3rc

For me it's all about the industrial design of the computers and retro electronics I have. I just LOVE the way some of these computers look. Plus it's a much more raw experience than the sort of bland computing experience of today.

I guess it's also a sense that I am preserving history by collecting these old computers and getting them in working order again. It's amazing how much information about these old computers has been lost and it's only been 20 - 30 years (depending on the system).

My first retro system was my PCjr but recently (beginning of 2014) I wanted a Pentium 1 system to add a 5.25" diskette to communicate to and from the PCjr. However nothing prepared me for finding a Packard Bell computer exactly like the one I had thrown away stupidly years ago, that computer really started me collecting these systems now. Before I was just picking and choosing, most of the time not grabbing old systems when I saw them. Now I can't find them fast enough 🤣.

Alongside this I am also collecting old games I come across, I mean what's a computer without software right? 🤣

RacoonRider wrote:

....

A lot of time has passed since 2011, I now view retro hardware as LEGO for grown-ups, a both hardware and software being a challenging game to play.

LEGO *is* for grown-ups! 🤣 (hint: google "AFOL")

"Just" a hobby for me. But with a wishlist growing every day... many interesting things out there... but it's getting really expensive...

It's the preservation of computing history. Why do you think people collect 78rpm records, or restore vintage automobiles? It's all pretty much the same idea.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

It's the preservation of computing history. Why do you think people collect 78rpm records, or restore vintage automobiles? It's all pretty much the same idea.

Exactly. It's all pretty much the same idea. As in all being a "hobby"!..🤣

First off, let me say that for me, "retro" means mid-2003 and earlier.

Even though Win2K and XP were around at that time, I only focus on Win9x systems for my legacy builds. I don't consider WinXP to be "retro" or "legacy" yet. It is still very much a live OS despite Microsoft's attempts to strangle it.

I also consider the release of TRON 2.0 to be the moment when games stopped being "retro" or "legacy". When desktop PCs reached a point where they could render a game in realtime that looked as good as the movie it was based on, we reached a milestone. Put on some decent headphones and fire up TRON 2.0, and I'll be damned if I'm not inside the computer along with Jet/Alan2.

For me, there are two reasons why I do the retro computing thing:

1 - Nostalgia
I used to really enjoy this hobby. With modern stuff, not so much anymore. I can't put my finger on why the new stuff doesn't interest me. I think it's a combination of many negative things that just don't make it fun anymore (which I won't elaborate on here). Suffice to say, computing up until ~2003 was a very exciting time. New hardware was coming out all the time that really excited me. The games that came out were also new, clever, and exciting. It was a special time when I was learning a bunch of new things and having a blast while I did it. Messing around with my legacy PCs brings me back to that happy, exciting time.

2 - Unfinished Business
I've got a huge stockpile of games that I've never played. I want to eventually play them, even though they're 12+ years old now.

Also, games from the pre-2003 era were very replayable, unlike much of today's offerings. In particular, flight simulators such as EAW, EEAH/EECH, EF2000, TAW, LB2, etc etc. They just never get old, so ya gotta have the hardware to run them right.

Even though 2015 seems to be the year that space sims return to popularity, that genre has really been dead for about 12 years now. Classics like HardWar, I-War, FreeSpace, etc, need old hardware.

As far as the notion of "preserving old hardware" goes, I have no misconceptions about the value of my toys; they're worthless and nobody cares. If I die, my family has instructions to offer up my collection here on VOGONS. Otherwise, I'm sure it will all just get trashed. Aside from our miniscule community here (and a few other forums), nobody cares about this stuff. It's sad, but true.

Not really important in the broader sense. Maybe if somebody's interested in the origins of computer hardware, but for me it's mostly nostalgia and tinkering with hardware in general. One of the most enjoyable things I've ever done with my retro builds went kinda like this:

I had spent quite some time building an awesome little system and I had recently bought a pack of magazine CD-ROMs, from a magazine that my family used to be subscribed to. The CD-ROMs came packed in with software, mostly game demos. So I spent an entire afternoon going through those discs, installing random demos of games I had heard of but never seen in action. I had a huge smile on my face the entire time 😀.

Hmm, I continue to marvel at this nostalgia thing, for I never actually departed from the clunkers.

It's a shame that EA slaughtered Simcity 5 and The Sims 4. They had a great series going.

Scali wrote:

For me there are two reasons:
1) As others have mentioned, preservation of software, knowledge, information and such.
2) As a programmer, these old machines challenge me in ways that a modern machine can not. I like the limitations of these old systems, because they challenge and inspire me to find ways around these limitations, to do things that are seemingly impossible, things that have never been done on that machine before, things that the machine was never designed to do.

I agree. Back in the day programmers (especially your demo groups) had to figure out how to do certain things with the limited hardware of that time (being a 486 DX-33 to 486 DX2-66).

I just happen to watch Future Crew's Unreal & Second Reality demo's the other day. It's impressive what they managed to achieve back in the day on the hardware of that era. Bearing in mind, everything was done in a DOS environment.

jesolo wrote:

Scali wrote:

For me there are two reasons:
1) As others have mentioned, preservation of software, knowledge, information and such.
2) As a programmer, these old machines challenge me in ways that a modern machine can not. I like the limitations of these old systems, because they challenge and inspire me to find ways around these limitations, to do things that are seemingly impossible, things that have never been done on that machine before, things that the machine was never designed to do.

I agree. Back in the day programmers (especially your demo groups) had to figure out how to do certain things with the limited hardware of that time (being a 486 DX-33 to 486 DX2-66).

I just happen to watch Future Crew's Unreal & Second Reality demo's the other day. It's impressive what they managed to achieve back in the day on the hardware of that era. Bearing in mind, everything was done in a DOS environment.

Future Crew also made Second Reality demo for the Commodore 64 too. The C64 version of this demo is fantastic, with a wicked SID soundtrack! All around graphically and sound wise it really showed off what the little 8-bit wonder could do. The demo scene artists truly showed off and still show off the 1-bit turing machine computer science theorum with their amazing works. 😀

jesolo wrote:

I just happen to watch Future Crew's Unreal & Second Reality demo's the other day. It's impressive what they managed to achieve back in the day on the hardware of that era. Bearing in mind, everything was done in a DOS environment.

Keep a lookout for the oldskool releases at Revision early next month.

Chaniyth wrote:

Future Crew also made Second Reality demo for the Commodore 64 too.

That wasn't Future Crew, that was Smash Designs/The Obsessed Maniacs: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1216
There was also an Atari ST port, but imho nowhere near as good as the C64 one: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=62119

Another classic demo is Desert Dream by Kefrens on Amiga (which was actually a huge inspiration for Second Reality, and basically changed demos forever, by making them into one long show where video and audio were designed to work together): http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1483
Chrous/Resource did an amazing C64 version of that, which I think is even better than Second Reality on C64: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30213
Most effects run at about the same framerate on C64 as on the Amiga, which is just mindblowing if you think about the difference in technology and performance.