Howdy! - Macintosh Garden

This page is a wiki. Please login or create an account to begin editing.

36 posts / 0 new

Last post

2020, May 24 - 8:24pm

unclebear

Offline

Joined: 2020 May 24

Howdy!

Hi.

I am pretty new to the world of the classic macintosh having just restored an old SE/30.
With that out of the way I am hoping to pick your brains Doing some searching of the site I see that there are a few adventure games that were made with TADS. Is there a similar language or system the is native to system 7 or do I need to crack open my old C books? I remember that there was an IF language on the Amiga from round about the same era but for the life of me I can't remember its name.
For now I will be trawling the forums for ideas for a dead SE and a raspberry pi.

Thanks
Ray

Comments

2020, May 24 - 8:43pm

cbone

Offline

Joined: 2011 Sep 17

Welcome, Ray!

There's tons of folks here well-versed in Mac programming among other fine skill sets, nothing I can help with much myself, but all of us always get excited when we get a budding 'Mac' programmer in the fold.

So did you program on Amigas back in the day, or is your background more on adventure game programming? If so, we'd love to hear what games you worked on, and as you've seen here already, games form a big part of our 'Old-Mac' archives!

2020, May 24 - 8:53pm

(Reply to #2) #3

unclebear

Offline

Joined: 2020 May 24

I did some programming on the Amiga but I cut my teeth on a ZX81 and then the BBC Micro. I feel old just typing that. The nerd in me always liked adventures though. I used them to write a few games that were used is schools to teach English. That was ever such a long time ago though.

2020, May 24 - 9:39pm

(Reply to #3) #4

cbone

Offline

Joined: 2011 Sep 17

Do you still have the games you wrote? That's so cool! (I'm always in awe of programmers) you are the ones who make our software dreams possible, computer users wouldn't have anything to play with w/out your 'input', lol!

Some of our members code, or like you, started coding in other languages as well. I guess 'once a coder, always a coder'! What language(s) did you use back then (I'm sure there was/were just a select set of languages back then, a stark contrast compared to the myriad of choices available now.

2020, May 24 - 10:16pm

(Reply to #4) #5

unclebear

Offline

Joined: 2020 May 24

I started out using BASIC which was pretty much the only language in the early days. Before that they tried to teach me FORTH but I think my brain rebelled.

2020, May 24 - 10:45pm

systemseven

Offline

Joined: 2016 May 19

i dont know if its the style of adventure game you had in mind, but have you seen the world builder engine? https://macintoshgarden.org/engine/world-builder

2020, May 26 - 12:04am

(Reply to #6) #7

unclebear

Offline

Joined: 2020 May 24

Thanks for the suggestion. It looks like world builder is a hypercard/html type system whereas i am looking for something more code like. I have found a (very) old version of Inform that is supposed to run on OS7 and may be what I am looking for. If not I will have a go with C or C++.

2020, May 26 - 9:56am

(Reply to #7) #8

systemseven

Offline

Joined: 2016 May 19

Inform does zork style infocom language? If you have an old version, please feel free to add it to the garden - sounds great!

2020, May 26 - 1:41pm

(Reply to #8) #9

unclebear

Offline

Joined: 2020 May 24

Done.

2020, May 26 - 10:11pm

#10

m68k

Offline

Joined: 2016 Dec 30

Welcome to the wonderfull world of Maciness.
I can only recommend Code Warrior and Real Basic for programming on classic Mac. And opposite to Amiga (or ZX80) the Apple operating system did experience huge changes under the hood between system releases. So keep that in mind when researching programming tricks - your mileage on those *will* vary between releases.

2020, May 28 - 10:42pm

(Reply to #10) #11

adespoton

Offline

Joined: 2015 Feb 15

Heh... I should dig out my old page of Mac compilers; archive.org has it somewhere. Back in the day, my favorite environments on 68k Macs were PowerLisp and MacPython. MacPerl was... meh.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040216191047/http://thunder.prohosting.com...

[edit] Hrm. Archive.org has the PowerLisp website, but not PowerLisp 2.01, the last version to support 68K Macs.

https://download.cnet.com/PowerLisp/3000-2247_4-2061.html has 2.02. Can't find 2.01, and we don't have it on here.

Guess I should fire off a request... and then go into my archives and see if I can find it!

2020, May 28 - 10:44pm

(Reply to #11) #12

m68k

Offline

Joined: 2016 Dec 30

Let me know when u stumble across it, plz.

2020, May 28 - 11:08pm

(Reply to #12) #13

adespoton

Offline

Joined: 2015 Feb 15

Argh... just checked, and at some point in my infinite wisdom I overwrote PowerLISP 2.01 with PowerLISP 2.02. I even have the source code for 2.02. I'll have to keep digging; I'm sure I kept an older backup with 2.01 around.

2020, May 28 - 11:35pm

(Reply to #13) #14

m68k

Offline

Joined: 2016 Dec 30

No worry, I found it already

http://web.archive.org/web/19990202060132/http://www.corman.net/PowerLis...

Aargh, so close but no cigar. None of those download links works.

2020, May 28 - 11:36pm

(Reply to #14) #15

adespoton

Offline

Joined: 2015 Feb 15

Yeah; but they didn't archive the binary. Or did you get that somehow?

I finally found the archive I stored it in in 1998. Unfortunately, the Stuffit archive is corrupted. Sigh. It contained every single compiler listed on that web link.

On the plus side, I did find MRJ_SDK_2.2_install.sit.hqx if anyone's interested.

2020, May 29 - 4:27am

(Reply to #14) #16

mrdav

Offline

Joined: 2011 Dec 3

I found v.2.01 in the AMUG DVD Collection here. I have copied it off and put it here.

2020, May 29 - 6:15am

(Reply to #16) #17

cbone

Offline

Joined: 2011 Sep 17

Excellent work, Mr. Dav!

2020, May 29 - 1:56pm

(Reply to #16) #18

m68k

Offline

Joined: 2016 Dec 30

Thank you! AI programming, here I come.

2020, May 29 - 7:23am

(Reply to #14) #19

mrdav

Offline

Joined: 2011 Dec 3

And v. 2.02 can be downloaded from this page

EDIT: I see now that adespoton has already noted that v2.02 is at the link immediately above

2020, May 29 - 8:20am

(Reply to #13) #20

Jatoba

Offline

Joined: 2018 Apr 16

Incidentally, would you also happen to know which version would be the latest PPC/Mac OS version? Is it 2.02?

I just noticed the only mention of PowerLisp (or Power Lisp, with space inbetween) is in this thread, within the Garden.

2020, May 29 - 8:41am

(Reply to #19) #21

mrdav

Offline

Joined: 2011 Dec 3

Certainly looks like v2.02 is the latest for PPC if you inspect the following page:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.corman.net/PowerLisp/*
The link to v. 2.02 does not lead to the file any more but it looks like it did once in 2019

2020, May 29 - 10:04am

(Reply to #20) #22

Jatoba

Offline

Joined: 2018 Apr 16

Thanks for looking into it, mrdav.

If no one makes a PowerLisp page with both versions anytime soon, I'll try putting it up after a week from now or so.

2020, May 31 - 6:19am

(Reply to #21) #23

adespoton

Offline

Joined: 2015 Feb 15

Thanks guys On a positive note, I found a copy of PowerLisp 2.01 complete with source code on another computer. But it sounds like Mrdav already took care of that one

PowerLisp saved my bacon a few times in the 90s when I was supposed to be using common lisp on a local mainframe but didn't have the clock time scheduled to do more than run it up once a day. PowerLisp let me iterate in seconds. My supervisor was flabbergasted the next day when I'd completed and submitted what he was expecting to take a week.

The PowerLisp IDE just makes working with lambdas and long nested recursive statements a pleasure instead of a headache.

2020, May 31 - 7:11am

(Reply to #24) #24

cbone

Offline

Joined: 2011 Sep 17

Adespoton, could you confirm that the 68k version I uploaded is not the app without its source code? I recall the one I installed to create the screenshots did not appear to have any source code and was almost half the size of the next version for PowerPCs. It didn't talk about source code either, IIRC.

Nothing wrong with throwing in another variant of the version if they were released differently.

2020, June 3 - 12:24am

(Reply to #26) #25

adespoton

Offline

Joined: 2015 Feb 15

I went and lost my copy again; but the garbled versions I've got seem to point to the 2.02 version coming with source code and the 2.01 version being without source code. Oh well.

2020, May 31 - 8:00am

(Reply to #24) #26

m68k

Offline

Joined: 2016 Dec 30

Oh those were the days when *results* mattered. Nowadays I get already fired if I just attach my own thumbdrive to the company's laptop - forget about running "their" code on one of "my" machines..

2020, May 31 - 5:34pm

(Reply to #27) #27

cbone

Offline

Joined: 2011 Sep 17

Unless you work for an open-source company

2020, May 31 - 10:32pm

(Reply to #29) #28

m68k

Offline

Joined: 2016 Dec 30

Its not about what I might take out, but what I might sneak in. The fear of maleware combines with a permanent mistrust of all employees to a work environment where *every* move on the filesystem is monitored, recorded and analyzed.

All too often I am not even allowed to chsnge the background picture of the company laptop for fear I might violate the corporate color code. The days of fun & play in IT are long gone by now.

2020, June 1 - 3:27pm

(Reply to #30) #29

cbone

Offline

Joined: 2011 Sep 17

Understood. We now live in a world where integrity and trust have been lost for some time now. I always assumed this type of policies were implemented because incidents where trust was given to dishonest people led to a serious security breach. I guess hacking is no longer just the realm of maliants sitting behind their screens using tools to perform their dastardly deeds. It's ordinary-looking people using social-engineering and inside jobs, making it a crime to even have the appearance of evil.

You change the screen and all of a sudden you're guilty of altering and defacing a company's property/american graffiti (oops, that's a different sort of joyride, lol)!

2020, June 2 - 2:47am

(Reply to #31) #30

m68k

Offline

Joined: 2016 Dec 30

Two years ago I worked at a Swiss bank who was at the heart of *the* biggest finance scandal in American history and who got found out because of a whistle blower wo had absconded with a bunch of loaded CDs. Now they are so paranoid that *every* command you issue on server level - even if its just a sandbox play system - is actively being monitored. And the workstations got neither working USB ports nor CD drives and *every* web page you visit goes through a filter.
Now you try to work like that as a system's admin. I had an angry security officer call me and demand my boss justify my actions, because I had dared to create a directory called "test" on a test system.

2020, June 2 - 9:35pm

(Reply to #33) #31

cbone

Offline

Joined: 2011 Sep 17

Whoa.. you're lucky they didn't send a Swat team to getcha!

2020, May 29 - 12:50pm

#32

Mu0n

Offline

Joined: 2009 Aug 15

It really depends on what you attempt to target as a running environment.

If you want to target all the way back to the very first 1984 128k Mac, you might be best served with Macintosh Development System. If you're like me, you prefer having your options opened up a bit more and target System 6 primarily, but not be shut out completely from System 4, 5 or even the early 7. That's where Symantec C++ (THINK C) comes in. There are several eras of mac traps you can link while you assemble your code, and it runs fine on any System 7 OS.

Some people swear by CodeWarrior and I guess it's fine as it was pretty popular back when the days of early to mid 90's early colored mac games where in full swing, but I haven't tested it extensively and I don't know if it has trouble helping me develop for a Mac Plus without any snag.

There's also the Pascal route, but you really get a feeling it was slowly abandoned by the late 80's and there's just so much more tutorials and help you can get with C.

2020, May 31 - 6:24am

(Reply to #22) #33

adespoton

Offline

Joined: 2015 Feb 15

Borland Turbo Pascal was what I learned to program the Macintosh with; it's not the simplest language to learn, but it does work really well for developing low level system components.

If you want to learn to code for it, modern Delphi and FreePascal are close relatives, and there's LOTS of resources for those. Brasil still used Delphi as the main teaching language until a few years ago, so there's lots of Portugese language tutorials for it.

Really, the biggest difference between Pascal and C is Pascal makes you declare your string length, whereas C just lets you null terminate. I prefer Pascal's := to C's = -- it's much more obvious you're setting a value instead of comparing.

2020, May 31 - 9:48am

(Reply to #25) #34

Jatoba

Offline

Joined: 2018 Apr 16

Brasil still used Delphi as the main teaching language until a few years ago, so there's lots of Portugese language tutorials for it.

That's interesting to hear, because when I did my bachelor's course in Brazil (2008~2014, course took long, because... long story ), there was no mention of Delphi. Quite possibly, it may vary depending on the education organizations behind each teaching institution. Mine was the main governmental education organization from the state of São Paulo, called "Centro Paula Souza". Maybe it's different for places under "MEC" instead, which is federal rather than state-based, but no one I knew from my time who studied elsewhere was taught Delphi, AFAIK.

Maybe it was a thing in Brazil until 2005 or so? Not sure.

What they did back in my college, after introducing people to the concept of algorithms and software "flow", was to present "VisuAlg" (imagine AppleScript, but with Portuguese words instead of English), then C, then especially Java. From that point on, various languages would make their appearance (SQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, VBA etc.), but never once Delphi.

However, I also saw no mention of Lua in college, even though it's a Brazilian invention, and somewhat popular worldwide even today. So... *shrugs*

Centro Paula Souza design and adapt their courses based on market demand, though. That may explain things.

2020, June 1 - 11:16pm

(Reply to #28) #35

adespoton

Offline

Joined: 2015 Feb 15

Interesting... I was definitely seeing Delphi coursework coming out of the state universities through around 2010. Most of it seemed to be in the 2005-2010 timeframe, after which a bunch of guys graduated and we started seeing Delphi software show up in the Brazilian banking sector, and then in Brazilian banking trojans. To this day I still have to sign off on new releases from Banco do Brasil and their affiliates. It's tricky when you have the same guys writing the software and then moving on to write the trojans pretending to be that software.

2020, June 2 - 1:42pm

(Reply to #32) #36

Jatoba

Offline

Joined: 2018 Apr 16

Wow... That's no small client there. I expected them to be rather stuck with COBOL and/or Java somehow.

If it helps, I once got interviewed in Brazil for a C# + Delphi position (early 2017), so Delphi is still active. Just not as much as most of the rest. (Heck, here at work, we still have a few leftover VB6 software even, so why not Delphi...)