Tape based Text Adventures

[The Last Man Standing]

Hey guys

I was wondering, one, does anyone know how I can turn data files into sound so I can use cassette tapes, the take the sound and turn it into data. Two, if I found this retro software, will anyone want to play my text adventures? I will only charge the USD of media mail, by you supplying the tape, I will make a J-Card for no charge... I am using PC Adventure Writer, by Graeme Yeandle... The game is something I been writing since I was a kid... called The Realms of Dur...

Laters
Last Man Standing

[pinback]

The Realms of Dur...

Already there.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Hey guys

I was wondering, one, does anyone know how I can turn data files into sound so I can use cassette tapes, the take the sound and turn it into data. Two, if I found this retro software, will anyone want to play my text adventures? I will only charge the USD of media mail, by you supplying the tape, I will make a J-Card for no charge... I am using PC Adventure Writer, by Graeme Yeandle... The game is something I been writing since I was a kid... called The Realms of Dur...

I do not have that expertise. Cassettes as a medium for data is something everyone abandoned as soon as it was possible, and nobody looks back at them with any sort of nostalgia.

For instance! We have had some comments in the Orc's Head Tavern that people enjoyed playing text games with floppy drives, because the drive would go all, "WHIRR! WHIRRRR!" when twenty iterations of "manipulate the scepter" finally paid off with something. Tapes, though - man, one of the neighbor kids had a tape drive for his Commodore when we were growing up. (Matt Scheffer, if he is out there. Hi, Matt!) I think it generally got a lot of hate. It was like, "Hey, I got a new game." "Oh." "No, I got it on a cartridge for the C64." And only then were we psyched.

So I dunno, LMS. I don't think anyone has the ability to play games on tape these days.

[Round and Round cassingle]

I do not have that expertise. Cassettes as a medium for data is something everyone abandoned as soon as it was possible, and nobody looks back at them with any sort of nostalgia.

:(

[Twenty minute loadtime]

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[300 baud modem]

So what's the problem here?

[NO CARRIER]

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[hygraed]

I seem to remember reading somewhere about some obscure old home computer someone had that had the ability to use a standard stereo tape deck as a tape drive, but the volume had to be dialed in just right or it wouldn't read it properly.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Yeah, I don't know about the entire 8-bit era, but the Commodore 64 (and therefore I presume the VIC-20 and PET) were big up in that cassette thing piece. One of the Bruces can probably fill us in on the Apple side of things. I never personally saw an Apple II with a tape drive attached.

[Roody_Yogurt]

I was reading this Dick Francis novel last fall where these dudes were killing people to get their hands on a horse racing gambling program written in some BASIC-like language stored on cassette tape. The coolest part was when one guy "copied" the program to someone else by playing it over a telephone line (to which the latter had hooked up a tape recorder)).

This spring, a friend sent me a link to an article about some Thompson Twins text adventure in the 80s that was distributed on vinyl.

I don't really have a point with all of this.

[bruce]

Yeah, I don't know about the entire 8-bit era, but the Commodore 64 (and therefore I presume the VIC-20 and PET) were big up in that cassette thing piece. One of the Bruces can probably fill us in on the Apple side of things. I never personally saw an Apple II with a tape drive attached.

It existed.

I saw one a few times.

But when I got my Apple, I got a floppy drive with it.

Bruce

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

You did what you had to.

You did what was RIGHT.