Mar 12 2013
The 25th edition of the Open Apple Podcast is now up and available for immediate enjoyment. This month’s issue of the podcast features Egan Ford talking about the Apple Game Server Online and the state of Abandonware.
http://www.open-apple.net/2013/03/12/show-025-ford-8088-voyager-abandonware/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+openapple+%28Open+Apple%29
Mar 9 2013
Lord British, A.K.A. Richard Garriott, has returned to the gaming scene with a new RPG entry. Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is a combination online / offline game which looks to change the way that RPG games are looked at and played.
Lord British is known in the realms of the Ultima world among others. Starting with his first game on the Apple ][ computer, Akalabeth, he soon became an overnight sensation with more than 30,000 copies of the game sold. Ultima I and beyond also became bestsellers within the gaming world. Between Garriott and the team working with him on this new game, they have more than 50 commercial success titles between them.
Shoud will not be your typical RPG game according to Garriott. While many games want you to complete certain tasks or get enough points within a level to move on to the next one, this game according to will use an ever changing world as well as story lines to move the player through the world. Playable both as a massive multi-player online game as well as offline, this will mark the first game that Garriott has personally attached his name to since 1993.
For more on the production and the kickstarter project which at the time of press was already nearly halfway to it’s 1,000,000 USD goal, go to the Lord British Presents website at:
http://www.lordbritishpresents.com/
Mar 9 2013
Have an old Parallel interfaced Connectix Quickcam sitting around collecting dust? David Schmenk may well have just found a purpose for it. Using a standard Apple //e and Low Resolution graphics on the //e for display, David has managed to get real time data into the machine and displaying fairly respectably.
While this setup does require a massive wired connector as was so stated by David in his video, it is a setup which works and proved that there is still a good amount of life in these old 8-bit machines.
Check out the video here:
Mar 9 2013
Darren Crawford has managed to do what no one ever considered possible: Post a Facebook posting from an Apple //e computer. In what is a first ever event, Darren posted his message using a combination of Lynx and the mobile version of the Facebook website.
It wasn’t just an instant success, but instead was a work of some trial and error. In discussions in the A2C.Chat channel of A2Central’s IRC, much of the discussion was about issues with character loss and echoing characters. However, after correcting an initially incorrect jumper setting, the posting was on.
You can check out the Facebook posting in the Apple II Enthusiasts group at:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/5251478676/
Mar 7 2013
The Original Angry Birds has been marked to Free by Rovio Entertainment Ltd. Normally, Angry Birds is a $0.99 cent download. The company has also updated the app with 15 new levels, marking the first update in the app in a long while. Upon updating it, they also released the game to the public for free download, although no timeframe has been specified for this giveaway.
You can download the original Angry Birds game from the Apple iTunes store at:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds/id343200656?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D6
Mar 4 2013
Java once again is at the firestorm of vulnerabilities with Apple. The latest release of Java 6 has been exploited again and Apple is pushing out an update, Java for Mac OS X 2013-002.
According to the information provided in the update panel,
“Java for OS X 2013-002 delivers improved security, reliability, and compatibility by updating Java SE 6 to 1.6.0_43.
On systems that have not already installed Java for OS X 2012-006, this update disables the Java SE 6 applet plug-in. To use applets on a web page, click on the region labeled “Missing plug-in” to download the latest version of the Java applet plug-in from Oracle.
Please quit any web browsers and Java applications before installing this update.
See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5675 for more details about this update.
See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222 for information about the security content of this update.”
You can download the latest update through the Software Update function of the Apple Menu.
Mar 4 2013
Paris, March 3rd, 2013 – Brutal Deluxe Software is proud to announce Mr Sprite, a command-line tool to manage sprites and to simplify the integration of sprites into Apple IIgs games.
Programmers spend a lot of time to prepare Sprites sheets :
Of course, if you want to add a new Sprites or modify an existing ones, you may have to re-do everything 
As a programmer perspective, the only thing we would like to do is to call a function namedDrawSprite(sprite_id, screen_address), with only 2 parameters : the sprite identification number and the address of the screen where to display it. MrSprite is here to simplify programmers life by providing a full set of fonctionnality including automtatic Sprite detection / Sprite alignment / Reverse & Flip effect / Sprite compiler / Direct 65c816 code object output… and more !
Mr Sprite is part of the Brutal Deluxe’s Cross Developpement Tools Project, a full set of utilities available on Windows (and other) platforms to enable the creation of new Apple IIgs software : 65c816 Assembler, 65c816 Desassembler, 65c816 Simulator, Graphic File Converter, Resource Catcher…
The Source code is freely available for anyone asking for it. The program currently only runs on Windows. Macintosh and Linux releases are planned.
Mar 4 2013
WITA2GS has added a bevy of home brew courses for the Apple IIgs Golf Game from Accolade, Mean 18. According to the posting on the website,
“Sorting through many miscelleous archives forwarded on from Antoine as he comes into contact with random collections and images each disk from them, I came across 8 disks worth of golf courses for Mean 18, the excellent golfing sim from Accolade.”
For more information check out the WITA2GS website posting at:
http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/homebrew-helpings-lots-of-courses-for-mean-1/
Mar 4 2013
The Apple ][ specific Cassette Tape collection maintained by Brutal Deluxe has reached 589 tapes and is continuing to grow nearly daily. Antoine Vignau, curator of the site has added a number of items in the past few days including items from the following vendors:
More tapes are coming soon according to posts from Antoine. To download items from the collection go to the Brutal Deluxe Apple ][ Cassette Page at:
http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/projects/cassettes/index.html
Mar 4 2013
Gerard Puter, the developer of the Virtual ][ Emulator has released an update to the emulator. Virtual ][ Version 7.1 is primarily a bug fix release witht he following items changed:
Virtual ][ is a full fledged GUI interfaced Apple ][ emulator for Mac OS X. You must have at least Mac OS X 10.4 to use the latest version of this emulator. The shareware version of the Virtual II Emulator can be downloaded from the Virtual ][ website at: