You are LOST in the mist.
You see a gravestone.
Tip: Type NORTH, SOUTH, EAST or WEST to move.
Boo! Its just us, the merry crew of Mistigris, coming off of the high score
from last months epic video games-themed artpack, and back into our most
transformative milieu -- Halloween, celebrated during the month of our
establishment, back in 1994. After reviving we would release artpacks annually
in October in honour of our birthday, but bit by bit they kept being
infiltrated by scary stuff, undermining our birthday message. Fine, we give
up -- let October have the terror, we will have our party in November.
But this wasnt just the time of year when we were founded and, like
Frankensteins monster, revived, but its also the time of year when three
years ago, we assaulted our historical dream and took on a monthly artpack
release schedule -- which we have maintained uninterrupted ever since. I know,
I know, this isnt particularly scary stuff, except in the sense that heres a
guy who takes his hobby way too seriously.
But whatevs, the point of the infofile is to inform, not to frighten. So what
can I tell you about what makes this collection interesting and unique, and
what kinds of interesting things are going on in our wild and weird corner of
the computer art underground?
Weve got new contributors. I know, we almost always have new contributors --
perhaps more noteworthy is that most of last months new crop have returned
for more! Their momentum is gratifying, but you can read about them in the
infofile to last months artpack. The new participants this time around
include: Andy Herbert slumming with some computer art weirdos, finding new
markets for his new ANSI art editor, Moebius, among unanticipated cohorts of
new ANSI artists! Also theres Docpop, aka Doctor Popular, a peak
performance nerd of sorts who followed up his mastery of game design,
chiptune compostion and yo-yo tricks with a sideline in ASCII art. Well,
looks-like-ASCII Unicode art. abcodes logs a guest appearance, channeled
through Cthulu, who manually transcribed a bitmap of some ASCII art for your
enjoyment atop this months memberlist. We feature pieces from accomplished
glitchmeister 192.168.10.13s skully side project as The Pixelmancer and a
one-off textmode piece by ScartIssue. All that plus a guest appearance by
CoaXCable, who just had to sit in for a little incoherent strangeness. Ia,
ia, shub-niggurath! Ah, but I digress.
Our regular membership and extended community are always up to new and exciting
happenings and side projects. Horsenburger, who has recently relocated his
online storefront to Ko-fi, recently illustrated not just one but two text
adventure games made using the Adventuron programming language. One has a
vintage video arcade theme, while the other is a spooky Halloween story -- and
its starting location has been adapted from teletext to ANSI art by Cthulu and
mounted atop this very infofile. Go out and give it a try -- its screens are
exquisite compositions. Its called Spooky Adventure. Polyducks also recently
released a text adventure in Adventuron, entitled Mushroom Hunt. Not only
designed and implemented but also illustrated by him, it is well worth
investigating.
OK, thats the text adventure division report -- which might someday,
hopefully, become a regular part of our updates. Xennial has a formidable
spree underway at the moment, releasing a new seasonal song every day all month
long as part of their 31 Nights of Halloween marathon. You can hear a slice
of it in their Lone Wolf track included in this artpack. And for computer
music fans, Cranksy continues his Sample Central retrospective podcast apace on
ArakNet radio, recently releasing episode 11, an hour-long exploration of the
soundtrack to Future Crews Second Reality.
On one further musical note, our colleagues in the Vancouver Chipmusic Society
continue, serving up another Overflow concert -- their seventh -- at the Fox
Cabaret on October 22nd, featuring live performances by game composers Lena
Raine, Danny Baranowsky, Danimal Cannon, and Matt Creamer, with live visuals by
Partlyhuman and Freaky DNA.
We continue exploring new avenues of reaching our community, externally and
internally also. Wow, that could go a lot of places, but its just me trying
to find a way to segue into inviting you to join us at our new Mistfunk Discord
server at discord.gg/jY3jg4j
Thanks to everyone for responding to our call for submissions for this months
spooky artpack and last months video games one next month well be
celebrating our fabulous 25th anniversary, and were just hoping for cool
submissions from all kinds of unexpected places and forgotten faces, with a
focus on hunting down alumni from our Mist Classic period. But if weve never
crossed paths before, your involvement is still welcome! November is an
incredibly complicated month for us, including a different 20-year anniversary
project, the production of an accordion festival and he has the gall to joke
about yo-yos!, and yet another vintage video gaming party... so well be
releasing late in the month, with submissions due the weekend of Nov 23rd. Get
your submissions and guest pieces in to info@mistigris.org before then and help
us ring in our first quarter-century!
Thanks to Alpha King for the guest glow-in-dark vampire teeth FILEID.DIZ!
And now, for the customary Cthulu-coloured ldb ASCII art Halloween scene:
/v /v
/v
P ,
V / /
/b /
/ db/ /
--//-- v v v v v v
The Witch Inn -- --
/ / / ,-RIP-,
// / / oo o -- -- /
//ldb/
/ o