Gingerbeardman writes about classic Macintosh software, Japanese pixel art, emulation, his own apps, and game design.
HN links it for retro Mac projects, especially running classic Mac OS on an iPad Pro, and for its coverage of TRON and IntelligentPad.
I think a good comparison is how long it takes for people to make games on the PlayDate. The PlayDate has a weak processor by modern standards, but it also has a lot of modern little touches and a modern SDK.
Yoyozo[1] is a recently released PlayDate game. The first toot about working on it on Mastodon[2] is from Sept. 5 and it got into the PlayDate store on Nov. 21. Elsewhere the creator said he put about a month into it. So a lone dev working on a legacy-like platform can launch a game in a month. I think Yoyozo doesn't have quite as much depth as Donkey Kong (not as many screens, no enemies), but it was made by a lone dev, so it probably all balances out. I think people are basically still capable of the same level of output, maybe a little higher, if they're willing to work on a limited platform.
[1]: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/11/21/yoyozo-how-i-made-a-playdate-game-in-39kb/
[2]: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@gingerbeardman/111013661521052756
Cool people:
• https://tracydurnell.com
• https://www.benkuhn.net
• https://schmud.de
• https://brandur.org
• https://bytes.zone
• https://cassidoo.co
• https://www.chrbutler.com
• https://sive.rs
• https://fasterthanli.me
• https://akkartik.name
• https://www.todepond.com
• https://blog.gingerbeardman.com
• https://gwern.net
• https://interconnected.org
• https://jacobfilipp.com
• https://johnnywebber.com
• https://maggieappleton.com
• https://bernsteinbear.com
• https://pketh.org
• https://rachsmith.com
• https://sonnet.io
• https://stevenscrawls.com
• https://www.bookofjoe.com
• https://winnielim.org
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Cool directories:
• https://blogs.hn
• https://ooh.directory
• https://deadsimplesites.com
• https://peopleandblogs.com
• https://nownownow.com
• https://blogroll.org
• https://kagi.com/smallweb
Very cool. I got MinivMac running on the Raspberry Pi — with a 7" LCD display I made pretty convincing "classic Mac" running on modern hardware.
I may have to revisit it. I was able to get THINK C installed and was trying to figure out again how to open/compile one of the old apps that I had written back in the late 80's. The thought of writing Mac "Toolbox" code again, using ResEdit is hilarious to me.
EDIT: wow, guy has some great 1-bit art too [1]. MinivMac Raspberry Pi on the workbench [2].
[1] https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2021/03/22/asanegami-morning-hair/
[2] https://imgur.com/XgnGYH9
thanks! to my knowledge iSH is too limited for my use case (it's more of an emulated linux environment). I might give UTM another shot. I can see that there's a "proper" distro but for iPhone 7 though!
btw if you're into this kind of stuff, check out MacPaint on iPad via UTM. It looks lovely! I can't find the link now, but check out Matt Sephton's blog for that:
https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/10/21/list-of-vintage-japanese-pixel-dot-art-software/
(ps I write about this stuff occasionally too https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/til/weekly/58/#h-interesting-articles-and-videos)
Great to see these screenshots. Thanks for posting! Nintendo joy cons run a version of micro TRON. And the software IntelligentPad used a lot of TRON concepts. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/05/17/intelligentpad-component-based-drag-and-drop-software-creator/
Using an iPad as system 7 seems right up this alley, and insanely interesting
https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2021/04/17/turning-an-ipad-pro-into-the-ultimate-classic-macintosh/