i can't believe that Ashampoo still exists, and it's still selling the same programs i remember from 1999

most of the programs are now at version 20+

https://www.ashampoo.com/en-ca

when i was a kid, you could build a simple game or application by dragging and dropping a few UI controls, and gluing them together with a few dozen lines of BASIC or Pascal or HyperTalk. it might take 15 minutes, at most, to get your little character walking around on the screen. this is how we ended up with a lot of hilariously good and cheap shareware you could share on BBSes in the 90s.

for the past year i've been quietly working on building a software thingie that doesn't exist anymore. i've been building a software toolkit that's kinda like Visual Basic and HyperCard and Borland Delphi, designed for making tile-based 2d games.

i've been using it to build my own little goofy games, and improving on the drag'n'drop IDE as i figuring things out. it's not done yet, and has a long ways to go before it's ready for other people to start making their own little applications and games. think PICO-8 or ZZT if they had grown up on a steady diet of Windows 3.1 and GeoWorks Ensemble instead.

i'm really, really bad about polishing turds to infinity and never releasing them. to break that habit, i've built a mini-website for the IDE/Shareware Creation Kit. it's called Exigy, named like a bad 80s metal hair band or richard garriott game.

https://exigy.org

i'll be posting weekly blog/devlog updates there, so i don't irritate anyone with them on this account. there is an rss feed button at the top right if you hate my demonic php and css.

re: shareware, I'm thinking of redistributing some files I downloaded back in 2013, with attribution.

It's called EscapeCraft, and it's a series of escape rooms built in Minecraft by a creator named merlinus12. They haven't been active in about 3 years as far as I can tell. I *have* contacted them to ask for permission, but if I don't get a reply, I will have to make a judgement call.

These maps were originally posted on a map sharing forum for free, with an optional donation link added later, and no explicit license, which seems pretty "shareware" to me, but does anyone know if there's a legal precedent for this? I am in the US.

Currently my plan is to include a disclaimer to the effect of "no license was provided and a good-faith effort was made to contact the copyright holder, will take down on request."

@ajroach42 's article [1] convinced me to get back into physical media so I picked up these supplies for fun, might make a shareware CD later. I already had a bunch of CDs and paper sleeves, but i did buy a long stapler and some 9x6 catalog envelopes.

Bill Nale wrote in 2018 [2] that he could get away with using a regular Forever stamp on these, but the USPS website says you're *supposed* to use a Non-Machinable Surcharge stamp for 'rigid' mail. They're just like Forever stamps but they cost extra, currently $1.19.

Since Forever stamps are worth $0.73 right now you *could* just use two of those, for $1.46 total, and write "non-machinable" on the letter yourself. In hindsight I should have done that, and saved myself some trouble. Oh well, it was a good excuse to visit my local post office!

Now I just need to actually write something worth printing...

1: https://retro.social/@ajroach42/113481632282311122

2: https://elivermore.com/mailing_dvds.htm

Back in the late '90s I registered / paid for a few programs for the Apple Newton with Kagi, one of the early payment processors. I hadn't much thought about them since.

On IRC, I just overheard that there is some paid search engine called Kagi, at the same URL.

But, what happened to the Kagi I knew? A little digging revealed that it did not end well for the beleaguered company headed by Kee Nethery.

Kagi Shuts Down After Falling Prey to Fraud (article dated 2016)

https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey-to-fraud/

"The news was as sad as it was unexpected. Kagi, one of the earliest digital commerce companies and long a favorite of many Mac shareware developers, has shut down as of 31 July 2016, just shy of 22 years in business."

Sad story.

Web archive link of the old Kagi website: https://web.archive.org/web/19990208004939/https://kagi.com/ (from Feb 1999)

back in the early 90s, i only knew of four ways to get new computer games:
- buying my own (i could afford a new one every 3-6 months at best)
- trading with friends (only 3 kids in my school had computers at home)
- buying shareware diskettes at the grocery store for a few bucks
- downloading shareware from local BBSes

of all of the above, only the last two were reliable sources of new games every week. i was one of the only kids in the school that had a modem, so i spent every evening sourcing out hot new shareware on my local boards. i'd wear out my credits and time limits downloading every single disk i could find at 2400 baud, usually taking about an hour

of the dozens of games I downloaded, two of them proved to be mega-hits: Tank Wars and Crystal Caves. for over a year, my two best friends and i huddled around the computer playing hotseat tank wars, and took turns trying to finish CC levels.

consider that, at the time, we owned AAA titles like Wing Commander II and Space Quest IV, and a sega genesis with a dozen games between us. and yet, crystal caves was the first thing we'd load up on sleepovers. it found the exact right balance of addictive, fun and friendly.

a few years ago i started collecting old shareware distributor diskettes - the kind you'd find for $2 at a grocery store. and i absolutely treasure them.

this crystal caves fansite is proof that the old world wide web is still alive and well:
https://spikenexus.rewound.net/pccw/pages/index.html