I don’t believe so. HTML image map duplicates the functionality nicely. I used it to make something Myst-like, which was originally done with hypercard.
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I don’t think so. Even back in the 90s, Apple had no interest in making it portable to other platforms: it was an Apple flagship product that was intended as an advertisement for the Apple ecosystem. The company wasn’t even interested in making it viable on the new architecture when they shifted the Mac product line from Motorola 68000-series chips to the PowerPC line. In any case, the “you can compile your own high-level code to machine language, then bake it into a HyperCard stack” benefit becomes a serious liability if you’re trying to make the format cross-platform: those Pascal routines you spent a lot of time writing and debugging before you compiled them to 68k machine language won’t run on (say) Windows unless HyperCard for Windows emulates the entire operating system and hardware environment.
In any case, there’s little to nothing that could be accomplished with HyperCard that couldn’t be done with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, WebAssembly, etc. etc. etc. in a contemporary web browser.
I don’t actually know that no one’s trying to make it a viable contemporary option – some archaic forms have survived in one way or another as technology has made strides beyond where these forms were cutting-edge, and there’s a real interest in retrograming and homebrewing software for retrogame systems these days. But I’m not aware that HyperCard is being touted anywhere as the hot new retrogaming development platform, even for classic Mac emulation fans.
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I’ve just been updated our entry on Almazar, on CASA, in response to a user submission. I presume you’re familiar with Arthur’s recent work on the game? Links are included in the entry. :: CASA :: Almazar I
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I spent the Christmas holidays playing Untitled Goose Game with my nephews. I can’t think when I’ve had more fun playing a non-IF video game! In particular, I loved the sheer unbridled fun of causing chaos (a motif it shares with several of my own IF games) and the specificity of the setting. It’s an idyllic English village, but it’s an idyllic English village circa 1980. The clues are in the BBC logo used on the TVs in the shop (and the presence of Ceefax), the Austin Maestro van, the K8 model telephone box, and the short shorts worn by several of the characters - all very evocative of my childhood. The boy with the toy plane would have been about the same age I was at the time when the game was set! If you haven’t played it, I highly recommend it as a non-violent game that is fairly easy and very, very funny.
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Yes! This is fabulous game. A brilliant, funny sandbox with tons to do.
Speaking as a player on the other side of the Atlantic: I enjoyed the English setting as well.
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I briefly played the first part of Untitled Goose Game last year but I lost access to it when I switched my email accounts. I’m hoping it goes on sale soon at a cheap enough price that I can justify rebuying it.
Now that I see it on an IF forum it makes me think of Lost Pig and Cave Underground stylistically, sort of carefree chaos.
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Thanks for that. I’ve bookmarked it for later reading. I was not aware that Almazar was a “port/copy” of Adventure and I’ve had it since the mag came out in 1983. At the time I was a bit daunted by the sheer size of it, so left it for another time. Now almost 40 years later that time has come, but it seems that others have already trod this path. I’ve yet to get the CP/M emulator working to play it in MBasic. I’m particually interested to see how some lines work where they have a GOTO statement within a FOR/NEXT loop. Every BASIC I’ve tried throws up an error over this and I’ve spent considerable time looking for a way around it. I’ll look over the info in your linlks and see what I will do.
It’s not, as far as I know, aside from the mention of the shack at the start. Arthur’s prior work should help you get it going in a modern emulator, I think. The CoCo version is easy to run in an online CoCo/Dragon emulator too; as I did that the other day in order to work out who’d ported it to that platform.
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