Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

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Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

Mike Willegal will be concentrating on the Apple II this year so I will be doing the Apple-1/Mimeo exhibit at VCF East May 5th and 6th (http://www.vintage.org).

I know it seems early as it's January, but all the prep work will have to be "multiplexed" with all my other projects and Lacrosse season starting up soon for my kids.

So here is my question.

Some background: I will have two Mimeo's there. One a "stock" mimeo and another my "Museum Reproduction" I'm finishing up now. I will be using Mike's PS/2 adapter on one and Vince Briel's super encoder hooked up to a PS/2 keyboard on the other as I don't want to risk my vintage keyboards. On both machines I am going to have "games" running.

I need "quick" games that can have a "high-score" or best time. I would like to give out T-Shirts for the highest score for the day. What are good games to use, most Apple-1 games take some time to play, like Star Trek, Checkers, or Hammurabi. I was thinking about "Codebreaker" which is actually not a vintage game but a new game that can be set to a one minute challenge, but since it's not vintage I'm not 100% happy with it. Another option is Queens from 101 basic computer games. I want something that is not all text, but graphics made with text. Anyone have any ideas or any games to share? One more option is to have one Mimeo for "competition games" and another with Star Trek or Eliza or Checkers....

Thanks,
Corey

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

hello corey,
in the very early days there had been several lowres graphic games on various computers some with time limit and some without.. so i´ll just spit out some game-names (but I´m not sure that they were all able to be run at the MIMEO - so one of the most famous was "Lode Runner" at nearly every platform in some kind of variety - next "Lunar Lander" and highscore "to the fastest landing without beeing killed"... several few early pinball games....
I don´t know anything about your archive at home but my first hint would be to scan the magazines from 77 to something of 81 or 82 ( including the User Magazines from IAC and very early Nibble Issues - and some of them are availiable in the Internet for download... as well as the related monthly disks that are partialy availiable in Archives with the idea to load them from Disk or by ADT to an apple II and save them to cassette and thereafter get them in the MIMEO ???) there you will find in that timeframe very early Apple II games too that could run with the 16Kb Version of the early apple II with integer and there might be a chance that they might run at the MIMEO too....
this just little brainstorming myself and probably somebody might pick up and continue...

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

Good idea to check old magazines. The problem with the Apple-1/Mimeo is that you really need "terminal" games as it doesn't have real graphics and screen refresh is slow modem style terminal speed. . Lunar Lander is a great idea though. I need to track down a copy that prints out the "terrain". I remember one like that in the late 70's that used ASCII graphics.

Cheers,
Corey

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

i´ld still remain to the advice to check out the load-runner too, because that also had a version with ascii graphics.
In fact at the moment i´m cought up with some private duties but within the next week a might find time to examine my own archive to apple stuff ( it´s about some 55 GByte of stuff ! ) and i´ve got a large area there with scanned magazins from 76 ( starting with the stuff related to the sinclair ZX81 ) up to the first magazines related to the apple II and i have nearly the entire bulk of user Magazines from the german user groups from the very beginning of 78 up to somewhere around 89... - but that of cource will request some time for searches... in case that i find some stuff i will contact you again by pm and we might discuss how to transfer the stuff to you...
regards speedyG

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

I'm sure whatever you choose to exhibit will be terrific!

And for any Apple 1 fanatics who didn't see my announcement in the Apple II subforum -- the second day's keynote speaker at VCF East this year is Dan Kottke! How cool is that!?

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

Not a game but a non-interactive demo to run in the meantime:

http://www.applefritter.com/node/24600

Shows off the graphics capabilities of the Apple 1.

Dave...

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

please check out pm´s
regards speedyG

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

Oh I was planning on showing that one at some point. So far I have been searching but every version of Lunar Lander is pure text based. The best version appears to be the one Tom Owad uploaded here under games. I may have to "make" my own version by taking the text version and creating some sort of "dashboard" similar to what star trek has. I know I can't do a real arcade version with the Apple-1 due to screen refresh, but maybe I'll be able to make something cool looking and fun to play.

Still searching though....

Cheers,
Corey

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

a couple of thoughts - this will have to be fairly quick to play so star trek is out. the terminal is so slow on the Apple 1 that something with ascii graphics is probably going to be too slow, unless the image size is limited to a few lines. Some suggestions that take this into mind.

port nightmare #6 back to the Apple 1
mastermind
poker

if you want to stick with original Apple 1 games check out David Ahl's classic book, "Basic Computer Games" - you should be able to find something in there.

Regards,
Mike Willegal

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

file was too large ? upload is in repeating circle... check please pm´s
regard speedyG

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

Nightmare #6, now that is an idea!!!!

Maybe do an hour or two of each program. Nightmare #6, Lunar Lander, Poker, mastermind and maybe Queens...

I have a copy of David Ahl's book. That is what gave me the idea of queens. I know the refresh on the Apple-1 is slow and it will limit what I can do, that's actually the part I like about the Apple-1, except for the fact that to clear the screen requires printing a new screen's worth of line feeds. I may make one of the machines use my "Clear Screen" modification using a one-shot tied to a decoded address so that my "game" can clear the screen programatically to speed things up a little. I think it would be a pretty cool modification to show that Woz could have kept improved the Apple-1 with simple modifications, but decided to create a "video generator" experiment 3 months later that eventually became the Apple II.

BTW: Anyone have the Integer basic code for Nightmare #6, If you do I will convert it.

Thanks,
Corey

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

file is up - and ready to download !

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Re: Need opinion on my VCF East Apple-1 Exhibit....

I have a copy of David Ahl's book.

Dave usually attends our show. You could have him sign it.

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