9 ms·

Show HN: Artpacks.org – Archive of the ANSI and ASCII art scene (1990 to present)

111 points by sjs382 12y ago

tdicola 12y ago
Nice work! There's a great presentation from BSides Las Vegas a few years ago about the ANSI art scene, definitely worth checking out if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNs1GChGDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNs1GChGDk
- andy_herbert 12y ago
  There are still a couple of ANSI and ASCII art groups with quite an active membership. Perhaps the most notable is Blocktronics: http://blocktronics.org http://blocktronics.org
  - sjs382 12y ago
    And don't forget Break (http://breakascii.org/ http://breakascii.org/) & Impure! :)
- haliphax 12y ago
  That presentation was done by Lord Scarlet, host of the Sixteen Colors ANSI art archive :)
  - fcambus 12y ago
    Sixteen Colors ANSI/ASCII Art Archive : http://sixteencolors.net http://sixteencolors.net
alricb 12y ago
Question: How do you scroll in the years and ansi pages?
jedahan 12y ago
ohh i wonder if theres any PETSCII in there :)
- haliphax 12y ago
  not likely, as PETSCII are actually executables, if I remember correctly.
sjs382 12y ago
FYI: There's some hidden navigation on this site. On desktop devices, use the arrow keys, esc and enter/return. On mobile, swipe to navigate between ascii and ansi files within a single .zip file.
pjbrunet 12y ago
I was in GRiM around ~1992 and an iCE trial artist ~1993 ;-) But I'm probably not in any of these packs. I didn't make it into iCE though, I heard there was some kind of Canadian merger and the management changed. I first discovered all these ansis on Sanctuary in 305. I never met Tempus Thales but I think we lived in the same neighborhood. I got enough positive feedback from my ansis that I went on to get a BFA in studio art.
- sjs382 12y ago
  What was your handle?
  - pjbrunet 12y ago
    -Z-Trasher I was not into the warez scene but I had some classmates who were. I did ansis for Dragonworld and Asylum, and maybe Sanctuary. The ansi scene was separate but associated with the warez scene (I think the cracking groups paid to have ansis made) if that makes any sense. I was the sysop of Zap! which was PD/Shareware files, message networks and door games. A BBS was a rudimentary CMS that was like a social network for your neighborhood. If you knew ansi you could customize the interface, especially if you had the source code. At one point I had the Telegard source code (Pascal) and made a lot of UI modifications to it.
    - sjs382 12y ago
      There's at least one on there, but it isn't rendering. :( I'll work on it tonight or tomorrow!
      - pjbrunet 12y ago
        OK I see what you mean, it's in the pack but not rendering. I don't even remember what that is.
- siegecraft 12y ago
  I almost made it into iCE when MiRAGE (formerly DREAM? I think.. Shihear Kallizard ran it) merged, but I think I was inactive at the time and I really wasn't an iCE-level artist). But I have no copies of my old art and I have never found any online so time to start digging through these.
booleanbetrayal 12y ago
<3 <3 <3
ctide 12y ago
My BBS: http://artpacks.org/1995/ice9507a.zip/MA-UNH1.ICE http://artpacks.org/1995/ice9507a.zip/MA-UNH1.ICE I was never especially good at making art, but this was my favorite of the things I did make: http://artpacks.org/1995/fsn-0895.zip/CT-ASY.ANS http://artpacks.org/1995/fsn-0895.zip/CT-ASY.ANS I feel bad for people who were born too late and missed out on the whole BBS scene. Those years were tons of fun, and nothing on the internet has ever been quite like that world.
heegemcgee 12y ago
Ah, very nice. For those interested, another site with similar goals that launched last year (i think) was http://sixteencolors.net/ http://sixteencolors.net/
- sjs382 12y ago
  Both have been around quite a while SixteenColors for a bit longer. Artpacks.org re-launched with a new design and client-side rendering this year.
- haliphax 12y ago
  and http://bbs.ninja http://bbs.ninja !!
haliphax 12y ago
haliphax // remorse / break / pen15 / vinyl / simple / the!click / ruckus / punc / etc. :)
pakled_engineer 12y ago
Mistigris ftw, Al's House of Meat BBS was the most eye searing board I remember from the early 90s.
driverdan 12y ago
This brings back memories. I was never an artist myself but I used some of the scene art for my BBS in the mid to late 90's. I wish there was a way to search based on keywords. Even the tech is interesting. It uses a JSON API at api.artpacks.org to get the data and renders the art into <canvas> elements.
- sjs382 12y ago
  Thanks for noticing the tech. Its held up under the load pretty well considering that the files are all only stored in their original .zip format (rather than unzipped and stored staticly). That, and its hosted on a $5/month DigitalOcean instance. :-) The rendering engine indeed renders to canvas and was created by Andy Herbert (https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove.js https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove.js). It was based on a popular PHP ANSI->PNG library called AnsiLove (written by Frederick Cambus: https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove) If anyone wants to build anything on the API, please let me know (email in profile), and I'll try harder to keep it stable. :-) Search is coming soon. If anyone wants to help, the most needed item is RIPscrip rendering. We use ripscrip.js (https://github.com/andyherbert/ripscript.js https://github.com/andyherbert/ripscript.js) at the moment, but the rendering is broken on a lot of files.
  - sjs382 12y ago
    Oh, and Andy is on here too! https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andy_herbert https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andy_herbert
bane 12y ago
Fantastic! Anybody know what's being used to render the art as PNGs? Anybody know of a Python library that does the same thing? I've just realized how much I'd love it if these were distributed as cbz files. Side note, if the demoscene represents the "high-art" movement in computer art (at least art that originates pre-internet), then the ANSI scene is like the underground graffiti movement. Their art literally "tagged" every page of every BBS I went to, and being both art scenes, there was some interesting overlaps sometimes between the two scenes (some ANSI groups made demos/intro, some demo groups made ANSI/ASCII art, both had deep roots in computer piracy), but a definite different identity that I'm glad to see has survived to this day. It's also thrilling to see both scenes alive and fairly vibrant today. I kind of wish there was a post-ANSI art scene, maybe using unicode, or encoded HTML <div> tags or something equally crazy and inventive.
- sjs382 12y ago
  No PNGs are created. The rendering engine indeed renders to canvas and was created by Andy Herbert (https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove.js https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove.js). It was based on a popular PHP ANSI->PNG library called AnsiLove (written by Frederick Cambus: https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove)
  - bane 12y ago
    Oh brilliant! Appreciate the information.
- pjbrunet 12y ago
  "I kind of wish there was a post-ANSI art scene, maybe using unicode, or encoded HTML <div> tags or something equally crazy and inventive." If you look at the early issues of WIRED magazine, I would say that's the post-ANSI aesthetic, but that's just my opinion. 1994 and the Internet really killed off the BBS thing fast, otherwise I think Ripterm (or something like it) would have replaced ANSI because modems were getting faster http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/PROGRAMS/GRAPHICS/RIPSCRIPT/ http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/PROGRAMS/GRAPHICS/RIPS... For me, 1994 was switching from primarily Pascal, TheDraw & DeluxePaint to HTML, Photoshop & Java. As far as the demo scene, I was not really part of that but I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that was based more on the C64/Amiga which had powerful graphics/music capabilities way before the PC. So I would guess the demo scene came first and the ANSI "BBS" art was more a product of the IBM PC-compatible world. I remember going to an Amiga club meeting and a few of these guys had big boxes of disks and they would just trade like that, they had limited Internet access through the local university but they didn't have a BBS. I offered to host their MODs (Amiga music modules) on my BBS. Because of that, I had the largest collection of MOD music in the area. It was like Napster before Napster ;-)
owenversteeg 12y ago
Funny that this appears now, because I recently decided that I'd like to get back into ASCII art by making ASCII art shrimp. Of course, they are less detailed and smaller in size than much of the artwork here, but that's part of the fun. I started by asking a few people on tilde.town if they'd like to add any and fairly quickly I had a decent collection. You can see them at http://tilde.town/~owenversteeg/ http://tilde.town/~owenversteeg/. If you have any to add, please let me know and I'll put them up!
empressplay 12y ago
Late last year MiST released our 20th anniversary pack, you can find it on artpacks.org -- it was interesting seeing everyone back together again (the power of Facebook I suppose). It looks like we might start releasing regularly again too!
- sjs382 12y ago
  Its been really surprising how much Facebook is responsible for the recent uptick in art scene production. Blocktronics has been a huge inspiration to everyone.
uptown 12y ago
Wow. Great stuff. Some friends and I started CiA. One of my masterpieces: http://artpacks.org/1996/cia40oz2.zip/TE-WETHR.JPG http://artpacks.org/1996/cia40oz2.zip/TE-WETHR.JPG
- pjbrunet 12y ago
  What did you use for that? POVRay?
  - uptown 12y ago
    Probably 3D Studio or 3D Studio MAX which had just come out that year.
raldi 12y ago
iCE reunion in this thread! Most of my work was loaders (i.e., code, like http://artpacks.org/1995/ice-9506.zip/BZ-COLRS.EXE http://artpacks.org/1995/ice-9506.zip/BZ-COLRS.EXE) and sadly, artpacks.org can't display those (yet) ... but with the recent major advances in emulating DOS in Javascript, I'm sure it's only a matter of time. The one mentioned above had bouncing squares that distorted the pixels underneath in a way that eventually yielded a psychedelic 320x200 pattern. Here's a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/VG5ziRP.png http://i.imgur.com/VG5ziRP.png
msmith 12y ago
The first code I ever shipped was an ANSI viewer that was included in several artpacks. It's so great that I can still find it after almost 20 years. I really wish that I'd kept a copy of the source.
laichzeit0 12y ago
Sadly, I think this along with the 90's BBS and demoscene era is something people born post-Windows 95 will never really "get" because they didn't live through it. It was an amazing lowtech creative era to be part of growing up.
- JungleGymSam 12y ago
  Absolutely. Such good memories from those days.
pimlottc 12y ago
Found a minor bug - files with "%" in the name don't work, e.g.: http://artpacks.org/1997/303pack1.zip/BYM%CMTS.ANS http://artpacks.org/1997/303pack1.zip/BYM%CMTS.ANS http://artpacks.org/1997/303pack1.zip/BYM%FRST.ANS http://artpacks.org/1997/303pack1.zip/BYM%FRST.ANS By sheer chance, these were the first two ones I tried, so I was rather confused at first...
- jzzskijj 12y ago
  Ah, the same with # if in the pack's name.
jzzskijj 12y ago
Don't forget http://asciiarena.com/ http://asciiarena.com/ It has the history of Amiga's Ascii scene. 3879 collys. If someone is not familiar with the term "ascii colly": It was (usually) a .txt file made by a single person. As they originated from Amiga scene, they were mostly in latin1 encoding. In many cases released under some group's name. A typical colly featured 20-60 requested or gifted ascii logos, foreword, index of logos, greetings, respects, some other messages. And of course guest art from other artists (for artist logo, group logo, file_id.diz or headers for "greetings", "respects" etc.). In these text files the file_id.diz was put between @BEGIN_FILE_ID.DIZ and @END_FILE_ID.DIZ tags. Too bad the site is going down, because the site, as it is today, is consuming too much of the server resources. Some handy web developer could save the site. Currently it seems that there isn't a person in "today's" Amiga scene who had the time or skills to save the site.
- lubujackson 12y ago
  Please have them contact the archive team, I guarantee they'd want to at least backup all of this: http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
f1nch3r 12y ago
Pretty amazing seeing stuff I did back in 1995! http://artpacks.org/1995/fire1095.zip/SL-TST.ANS http://artpacks.org/1995/fire1095.zip/SL-TST.ANS I wasn't good, but those were surely some fun days.
fln 12y ago
Can someone explain to me (or provide a link) how you make this type of ascii art? I've made this kind of ascii art before and it's boring: http://www.incredibleart.org/links/ascii.html http://www.incredibleart.org/links/ascii.html I want to make ascii art like this: http://artpacks.org/1990/acidnews.zip/INN.ANS http://artpacks.org/1990/acidnews.zip/INN.ANS See the difference?
- fln 12y ago
  I discovered that the characters used in that style are called "Block" or "High" ascii and are only found in DOS! That explains why I've never been able to make that style on linux.
  - jzzskijj 12y ago
    PabloDraw is available on Linux if you have Mono and gtk-sharp2.
    - fln 12y ago
      Thank you for your comments! I will try this out later today!
- jzzskijj 12y ago
  Install Pablodraw: http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw/ http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw/ Read these tutorials: http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zo-flyingeagletutorial/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zo-flyingeagletutorial/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zv-fonthow2/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zv-fonthow2/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zv-tutorial/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zv-tutorial/ Then just profit :)
evanwolf 12y ago
Where's the pre-1990 ASCII art? I first saw ASCII art in 1972. Snoopy surfing and shouting "Kowabunga!" printed on a line printer on the Santa Monica High School's UNIVAC in 1972. Let's capture the older works too.
- jzzskijj 12y ago
  You mean this stuff? http://artscene.textfiles.com/asciiart/snoopy.untab http://artscene.textfiles.com/asciiart/snoopy.untab At least some of it is preserved in textfiles.com.

111 points by sjs382 12y ago

Nice work! There's a great presentation from BSides Las Vegas a few years ago about the ANSI art scene, definitely worth checking out if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNs1GChGDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNs1GChGDk

andy_herbert 12y ago
There are still a couple of ANSI and ASCII art groups with quite an active membership. Perhaps the most notable is Blocktronics: http://blocktronics.org http://blocktronics.org
- sjs382 12y ago
  And don't forget Break (http://breakascii.org/ http://breakascii.org/) & Impure! :)
haliphax 12y ago
That presentation was done by Lord Scarlet, host of the Sixteen Colors ANSI art archive :)
- fcambus 12y ago
  Sixteen Colors ANSI/ASCII Art Archive : http://sixteencolors.net http://sixteencolors.net

alricb 12y ago

Question: How do you scroll in the years and ansi pages?

jedahan 12y ago

ohh i wonder if theres any PETSCII in there :)

haliphax 12y ago
not likely, as PETSCII are actually executables, if I remember correctly.

sjs382 12y ago

FYI: There's some hidden navigation on this site. On desktop devices, use the arrow keys, esc and enter/return. On mobile, swipe to navigate between ascii and ansi files within a single .zip file.

pjbrunet 12y ago

I was in GRiM around ~1992 and an iCE trial artist ~1993 ;-) But I'm probably not in any of these packs. I didn't make it into iCE though, I heard there was some kind of Canadian merger and the management changed. I first discovered all these ansis on Sanctuary in 305. I never met Tempus Thales but I think we lived in the same neighborhood. I got enough positive feedback from my ansis that I went on to get a BFA in studio art.

sjs382 12y ago
What was your handle?
- pjbrunet 12y ago
  -Z-Trasher I was not into the warez scene but I had some classmates who were. I did ansis for Dragonworld and Asylum, and maybe Sanctuary. The ansi scene was separate but associated with the warez scene (I think the cracking groups paid to have ansis made) if that makes any sense. I was the sysop of Zap! which was PD/Shareware files, message networks and door games. A BBS was a rudimentary CMS that was like a social network for your neighborhood. If you knew ansi you could customize the interface, especially if you had the source code. At one point I had the Telegard source code (Pascal) and made a lot of UI modifications to it.
  - sjs382 12y ago
    There's at least one on there, but it isn't rendering. :( I'll work on it tonight or tomorrow!
    - pjbrunet 12y ago
      OK I see what you mean, it's in the pack but not rendering. I don't even remember what that is.
siegecraft 12y ago
I almost made it into iCE when MiRAGE (formerly DREAM? I think.. Shihear Kallizard ran it) merged, but I think I was inactive at the time and I really wasn't an iCE-level artist). But I have no copies of my old art and I have never found any online so time to start digging through these.

booleanbetrayal 12y ago

<3 <3 <3

ctide 12y ago

My BBS: http://artpacks.org/1995/ice9507a.zip/MA-UNH1.ICE http://artpacks.org/1995/ice9507a.zip/MA-UNH1.ICE I was never especially good at making art, but this was my favorite of the things I did make: http://artpacks.org/1995/fsn-0895.zip/CT-ASY.ANS http://artpacks.org/1995/fsn-0895.zip/CT-ASY.ANS I feel bad for people who were born too late and missed out on the whole BBS scene. Those years were tons of fun, and nothing on the internet has ever been quite like that world.

heegemcgee 12y ago

Ah, very nice. For those interested, another site with similar goals that launched last year (i think) was http://sixteencolors.net/ http://sixteencolors.net/

sjs382 12y ago
Both have been around quite a while SixteenColors for a bit longer. Artpacks.org re-launched with a new design and client-side rendering this year.
haliphax 12y ago
and http://bbs.ninja http://bbs.ninja !!

haliphax 12y ago

haliphax // remorse / break / pen15 / vinyl / simple / the!click / ruckus / punc / etc. :)

pakled_engineer 12y ago

Mistigris ftw, Al's House of Meat BBS was the most eye searing board I remember from the early 90s.

driverdan 12y ago

This brings back memories. I was never an artist myself but I used some of the scene art for my BBS in the mid to late 90's. I wish there was a way to search based on keywords. Even the tech is interesting. It uses a JSON API at api.artpacks.org to get the data and renders the art into <canvas> elements.

sjs382 12y ago
Thanks for noticing the tech. Its held up under the load pretty well considering that the files are all only stored in their original .zip format (rather than unzipped and stored staticly). That, and its hosted on a $5/month DigitalOcean instance. :-) The rendering engine indeed renders to canvas and was created by Andy Herbert (https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove.js https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove.js). It was based on a popular PHP ANSI->PNG library called AnsiLove (written by Frederick Cambus: https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove) If anyone wants to build anything on the API, please let me know (email in profile), and I'll try harder to keep it stable. :-) Search is coming soon. If anyone wants to help, the most needed item is RIPscrip rendering. We use ripscrip.js (https://github.com/andyherbert/ripscript.js https://github.com/andyherbert/ripscript.js) at the moment, but the rendering is broken on a lot of files.
- sjs382 12y ago
  Oh, and Andy is on here too! https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andy_herbert https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andy_herbert

bane 12y ago

Fantastic! Anybody know what's being used to render the art as PNGs? Anybody know of a Python library that does the same thing? I've just realized how much I'd love it if these were distributed as cbz files. Side note, if the demoscene represents the "high-art" movement in computer art (at least art that originates pre-internet), then the ANSI scene is like the underground graffiti movement. Their art literally "tagged" every page of every BBS I went to, and being both art scenes, there was some interesting overlaps sometimes between the two scenes (some ANSI groups made demos/intro, some demo groups made ANSI/ASCII art, both had deep roots in computer piracy), but a definite different identity that I'm glad to see has survived to this day. It's also thrilling to see both scenes alive and fairly vibrant today. I kind of wish there was a post-ANSI art scene, maybe using unicode, or encoded HTML <div> tags or something equally crazy and inventive.

sjs382 12y ago
No PNGs are created. The rendering engine indeed renders to canvas and was created by Andy Herbert (https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove.js https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove.js). It was based on a popular PHP ANSI->PNG library called AnsiLove (written by Frederick Cambus: https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove)
- bane 12y ago
  Oh brilliant! Appreciate the information.
pjbrunet 12y ago
"I kind of wish there was a post-ANSI art scene, maybe using unicode, or encoded HTML <div> tags or something equally crazy and inventive." If you look at the early issues of WIRED magazine, I would say that's the post-ANSI aesthetic, but that's just my opinion. 1994 and the Internet really killed off the BBS thing fast, otherwise I think Ripterm (or something like it) would have replaced ANSI because modems were getting faster http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/PROGRAMS/GRAPHICS/RIPSCRIPT/ http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/PROGRAMS/GRAPHICS/RIPS... For me, 1994 was switching from primarily Pascal, TheDraw & DeluxePaint to HTML, Photoshop & Java. As far as the demo scene, I was not really part of that but I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that was based more on the C64/Amiga which had powerful graphics/music capabilities way before the PC. So I would guess the demo scene came first and the ANSI "BBS" art was more a product of the IBM PC-compatible world. I remember going to an Amiga club meeting and a few of these guys had big boxes of disks and they would just trade like that, they had limited Internet access through the local university but they didn't have a BBS. I offered to host their MODs (Amiga music modules) on my BBS. Because of that, I had the largest collection of MOD music in the area. It was like Napster before Napster ;-)

owenversteeg 12y ago

Funny that this appears now, because I recently decided that I'd like to get back into ASCII art by making ASCII art shrimp. Of course, they are less detailed and smaller in size than much of the artwork here, but that's part of the fun. I started by asking a few people on tilde.town if they'd like to add any and fairly quickly I had a decent collection. You can see them at http://tilde.town/~owenversteeg/ http://tilde.town/~owenversteeg/. If you have any to add, please let me know and I'll put them up!

empressplay 12y ago

Late last year MiST released our 20th anniversary pack, you can find it on artpacks.org -- it was interesting seeing everyone back together again (the power of Facebook I suppose). It looks like we might start releasing regularly again too!

sjs382 12y ago
Its been really surprising how much Facebook is responsible for the recent uptick in art scene production. Blocktronics has been a huge inspiration to everyone.

uptown 12y ago

Wow. Great stuff. Some friends and I started CiA. One of my masterpieces: http://artpacks.org/1996/cia40oz2.zip/TE-WETHR.JPG http://artpacks.org/1996/cia40oz2.zip/TE-WETHR.JPG

pjbrunet 12y ago
What did you use for that? POVRay?
- uptown 12y ago
  Probably 3D Studio or 3D Studio MAX which had just come out that year.

raldi 12y ago

iCE reunion in this thread! Most of my work was loaders (i.e., code, like http://artpacks.org/1995/ice-9506.zip/BZ-COLRS.EXE http://artpacks.org/1995/ice-9506.zip/BZ-COLRS.EXE) and sadly, artpacks.org can't display those (yet) ... but with the recent major advances in emulating DOS in Javascript, I'm sure it's only a matter of time. The one mentioned above had bouncing squares that distorted the pixels underneath in a way that eventually yielded a psychedelic 320x200 pattern. Here's a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/VG5ziRP.png http://i.imgur.com/VG5ziRP.png

msmith 12y ago

The first code I ever shipped was an ANSI viewer that was included in several artpacks. It's so great that I can still find it after almost 20 years. I really wish that I'd kept a copy of the source.

laichzeit0 12y ago

Sadly, I think this along with the 90's BBS and demoscene era is something people born post-Windows 95 will never really "get" because they didn't live through it. It was an amazing lowtech creative era to be part of growing up.

JungleGymSam 12y ago
Absolutely. Such good memories from those days.

pimlottc 12y ago

Found a minor bug - files with "%" in the name don't work, e.g.: http://artpacks.org/1997/303pack1.zip/BYM%CMTS.ANS http://artpacks.org/1997/303pack1.zip/BYM%CMTS.ANS http://artpacks.org/1997/303pack1.zip/BYM%FRST.ANS http://artpacks.org/1997/303pack1.zip/BYM%FRST.ANS By sheer chance, these were the first two ones I tried, so I was rather confused at first...

jzzskijj 12y ago
Ah, the same with # if in the pack's name.

jzzskijj 12y ago

Don't forget http://asciiarena.com/ http://asciiarena.com/ It has the history of Amiga's Ascii scene. 3879 collys. If someone is not familiar with the term "ascii colly": It was (usually) a .txt file made by a single person. As they originated from Amiga scene, they were mostly in latin1 encoding. In many cases released under some group's name. A typical colly featured 20-60 requested or gifted ascii logos, foreword, index of logos, greetings, respects, some other messages. And of course guest art from other artists (for artist logo, group logo, file_id.diz or headers for "greetings", "respects" etc.). In these text files the file_id.diz was put between @BEGIN_FILE_ID.DIZ and @END_FILE_ID.DIZ tags. Too bad the site is going down, because the site, as it is today, is consuming too much of the server resources. Some handy web developer could save the site. Currently it seems that there isn't a person in "today's" Amiga scene who had the time or skills to save the site.

lubujackson 12y ago
Please have them contact the archive team, I guarantee they'd want to at least backup all of this: http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

f1nch3r 12y ago

Pretty amazing seeing stuff I did back in 1995! http://artpacks.org/1995/fire1095.zip/SL-TST.ANS http://artpacks.org/1995/fire1095.zip/SL-TST.ANS I wasn't good, but those were surely some fun days.

fln 12y ago

Can someone explain to me (or provide a link) how you make this type of ascii art? I've made this kind of ascii art before and it's boring: http://www.incredibleart.org/links/ascii.html http://www.incredibleart.org/links/ascii.html I want to make ascii art like this: http://artpacks.org/1990/acidnews.zip/INN.ANS http://artpacks.org/1990/acidnews.zip/INN.ANS See the difference?

fln 12y ago
I discovered that the characters used in that style are called "Block" or "High" ascii and are only found in DOS! That explains why I've never been able to make that style on linux.
- jzzskijj 12y ago
  PabloDraw is available on Linux if you have Mono and gtk-sharp2.
  - fln 12y ago
    Thank you for your comments! I will try this out later today!
jzzskijj 12y ago
Install Pablodraw: http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw/ http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw/ Read these tutorials: http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zo-flyingeagletutorial/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zo-flyingeagletutorial/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zv-fonthow2/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zv-fonthow2/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zv-tutorial/ http://blocktronics.org/view-project/zv-tutorial/ Then just profit :)

evanwolf 12y ago

Where's the pre-1990 ASCII art? I first saw ASCII art in 1972. Snoopy surfing and shouting "Kowabunga!" printed on a line printer on the Santa Monica High School's UNIVAC in 1972. Let's capture the older works too.

jzzskijj 12y ago
You mean this stuff? http://artscene.textfiles.com/asciiart/snoopy.untab http://artscene.textfiles.com/asciiart/snoopy.untab At least some of it is preserved in textfiles.com.