Re: [Audyssey] history of Jim Kitchen's games?

2015-05-21 Thread Jim Kitchen

Hi Josh,

I started teaching myself the Basic programming language in 1980 on a Texas Instruments 99 4A- home computer.  Next on an Atari 800 XL home computer, then an IBM PC Junior.  I mostly wrote games with some simple graphics.  By December of 1989 I no longer had any sight.  I bought an N E C 286 running Jaws for dos version 1 with an Accent SA synthesizer.  In January 1990 I was at the Cleveland Sight Center learning braille etc.  So I wrote my braille reference guide program at that time.  I was now programming in Quick Basic 4.5 which wrote directly to the screen, so the games were only accessible via Jaws for dos script files.  Those games were on the Henter Joyce BBS in like 1991.  Then I was told how to make Quick Basic 4.5 write to the bios and that made the games accessible for all dos screen readers, so I up loaded the games to the BBS PC Ohio, which was part of the planet connect system.  So the games got distributed to BBSs all over the world.  That was probably in 1992 or 3.  
Then Phil Vlasak showed me how to shell out and use an external program to play sound files.  So now we added sounds to the dos games.  Well they had the little beeps etc from the little PC speaker before that, but now we were playing actual sound files in the games.  In 2000 David Greenwood got me started with Visual Basic.  Trucker was the first game that I converted from dos to Windows.  It put temporarily highlighted text on the screen.  Really only worked with Jaws.  Also used something simple to play a sound file.  I next wrote games such as Mach 1, golf and casino using recorded synthesized speech and TegoSoft to play the sound files.  In 2003 I started the winkit.zip thing with the game menu system using the sapi5 text to speech engine instead of recorded speech.  About that time Allen Maynard shared some DirectX code with me which gave me even more features when playing sound files.  Dan Zingaro shared code with me that told where at in the sound file you pressed a key.  Th

at was for the golf and baseball games.  When the BBSs were replaced by the 
Internet David Poehlman put my games on his web site.  Later I learned how to 
write my own web site from OSCAR SOSA's home page program.  And of course 
Joshua Griffith has helped with VB6 code and maintaining my web site.  Sorry if 
I forgot to mention others that have helped.  I know that there were.  There 
used to be a blind programmers list with lots of people who programmed in 
Visual Basic 6.  And thinking back, can't forget Willie Wilson and his Blink 
Link BBS.  That was the place to go for accessible games and other programs.  
There was also all of the FidoNet echoes for Email such as Blink Talk, Blind 
Talk and NFB Talk.  Then the Blind X mailing list.  They were general chat 
echoes, but accessible games were discussed allot on them.

As far as I know, people are playing my games on M E, XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1.  
You know as long as you install the Visual Basic 6 run time libraries.

BFN

Jim

Check my web site for my 36 free games.

j...@kitchensinc.net
http://www.kitchensinc.net
(440) 286-6920
Chardon Ohio USA

- Original Message -
Hi Jim or others who may know?
Does anyone know what year and maybe the date Jim Kitchen came out with 
his first game probably for dos? The first game Jason introduced me to 
was pcs-games monopoly, followed by any night football and then the pcs 
games world series baseball game. and then the island of mystery 
adventure game. But right after that, we got immediately into Jim's 
games for dos. Every time I play Jim's games it brings back memories of 
growing up as a kid playing them. I hope someday they will all be 
recompiled for a later version of microsoft basic so future generations 
will be able to enjoy them after Jim is gone. Well I think I'll go to 
Jim's casino and play the craps or blackjack games right now.


Josh

--
follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982

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[Audyssey] history of Jim Kitchen's games?

2015-05-21 Thread Josh K

Hi Jim or others who may know?
Does anyone know what year and maybe the date Jim Kitchen came out with 
his first game probably for dos? The first game Jason introduced me to 
was pcs-games monopoly, followed by any night football and then the pcs 
games world series baseball game. and then the island of mystery 
adventure game. But right after that, we got immediately into Jim's 
games for dos. Every time I play Jim's games it brings back memories of 
growing up as a kid playing them. I hope someday they will all be 
recompiled for a later version of microsoft basic so future generations 
will be able to enjoy them after Jim is gone. Well I think I'll go to 
Jim's casino and play the craps or blackjack games right now.


Josh

--
follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982


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[Audyssey] Alter Aeon May 2015 Updates

2015-05-21 Thread Dennis Towne
Alter Aeon is a well established MUD with a long history.  It is set
in a world of magic and dragons, with regular updates and system-wide
events.  The game is blind friendly for the visually impaired.

Here's a list of changes since our February posting:

New and updated areas:

- A new level 21 area, the tainted forest north of Smuggler's Cove,
has been added on the island of Archais.

- A new level 26 area, the Village of Iron Bay, has been added on the
island of Archais north of DragonTooth.

- A level 30 topiary garden has been added southeast of Ralnoth on the mainland.

- The City of Hartmur, in the Ash mountains west of Ralnoth, has been
updated and releveled to level 33.

- The city of Kora'tur west of Elborat has been releveled and updated.
It is now a level 38 group 10 area.

Major server code updates:

- Our quest system has been reworked, splitting quests into a number
of different categories - feats, deeds, and legacies.  New
leaderboards have been added for these categories, and we've added new
commands for reviewing previously completed quests.

- Experience caps have changed in the mid level range, making it a lot
easier to level for level 20-30 players.

- Massive updates to how area levels are calculated, how monsters are
built, and how exp is handled for high level players.  This should
help improve the solo player situation at high levels, as well as make
area difficulty more consistent.

- Group areas now have a recommended group size.  We'll be updating
areas to have the correct group size and level over time.

In addition, there were dozens of minor updates, including better
blind client support, skill and spell tweaks, druid class fixes, and
more.  For the full server changelog, please see:

http://alteraeon.com:8080/changelog/1977-2030

We hope to see you there!

Alter Aeon MUD
http://www.alteraeon.com

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