[HN Gopher] Official SkiFree Home Page
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Official SkiFree Home Page
Author : generichuman
Score : 167 points
Date : 2023-01-17 10:06 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ski.ihoc.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (ski.ihoc.net)
| Narishma wrote:
| I remember playing a similar game to this around that time period
| (late 80s, early 90s), but it was for DOS and came with its C
| source code. I remember having more fun with the source code than
| the actual game.
| sshine wrote:
| From the older version of the Wikipedia article that Chris links
| to:
|
| > Mushrooms
|
| > One lesser known aspect of the game deals with the numerous
| tree stumps found around the slopes of SkiFree. Users have found
| that when skied over backwards they transform into a small spotty
| mushroom. It has been theorised that this points to a
| philosophical leaning in the nature of SkiFree's creator Chris
| Pirih. The mushrooms may illustrate an extrapolation of Plato's
| theory of ideas in which the physical form of something may not
| reveal its true identity and only its representation in our
| particular plane of existence.
|
| Gotta love Wikipedia's CITATION NEEDED culture!
| senda wrote:
| Damn I had completely forgotten about this game.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I swear when I was like 7 and playing this, I managed to beat the
| snow monster by skiing off a ramp right when the monster
| appeared, so that I was in the air when he tried to gobble me,
| which -- to my utter astonishment -- seemed to kill them.
|
| Maybe it was just a dream or something, because to my knowledge
| no one has ever claimed to be able to get past the skifree snow
| monster. I expected it to pop up over the years at least once.
| But after almost three decades, it seems increasingly likely that
| I just have this weird random childhood memory that did not
| happen, instead of being the one child in the whole world to
| actually slip by the snow monster (and mention how).
|
| I assume that if it was even possible to kill the snow monster,
| someone would've disassembled the code by now and figured it out.
| But I can't help but wonder.
| aatd86 wrote:
| Nah... When you managed to go past one monster... Not only
| would it still run after you but another one would appear and
| join him if I remember well.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| So there is a way to get past them?
|
| That's the thing though, I killed them, rather than getting
| past them. So they couldn't chase after me.
|
| Or it was just a skifree fever dream.
|
| But I'm curious how to get past that damned devil. Is there
| any info anywhere?
| aatd86 wrote:
| From memory, the only thing you can really do is taking the
| trampolines to flee.
|
| And also jump by using one of the mouse buttons especially
| using the little snow hills, that will propel you forward.
| Groxx wrote:
| Yep. Jumps are faster than skiing, and with big ones you
| can outrun them, at least until you screw up.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Hmm. So there's at least two ways to jump? Interesting.
|
| Maybe it's not so unlikely that no one ever tried jumping
| onto the snow monster via all available methods.
|
| I _think_ it was the ski ramp that was able to kill them.
|
| Does anyone have a Windows box handy? If so, does the
| .exe still run on modern Windows?
| (https://ski.ihoc.net/ski32.zip)
|
| Whoa, apparently the author recently recompiled the
| SkiFree exe with VS2019. So, they have access to the
| source code, and there's a modern version available...
|
| ... Welp. This sounds like the beginning of a new quest
| to unveil a childhood SkiFree mystery. I wonder if I can
| bribe them to quietly let me rifle through the source
| code looking for the snow monster logic.
|
| Doesn't it seem kind of out of place that there wasn't
| any way to kill the snow monsters? Betcha there's at
| least one. And jumping is the only available mechanic,
| other than tricking it into running into a tree,
| Tasmanian-devil style.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/667/
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Press 'F' to pay respects.
| imgabe wrote:
| Damn, 100 shares of MSFT from 1991 would be worth about $1.7
| million today. Not bad if they hung on to them!
|
| https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/investment-calculator?4b5195df...
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Most of the value gained was from all these stock splits. I
| wonder why MSFT hasn't had one in 20 years?
|
| https://getsplithistory.com/MSFT
| bandrade wrote:
| Splits don't change the value of the stock. If there's a 2:1
| split, the market cap stays the same so the share price
| halves. It's just a way lower the price of individual shares.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Why do it at all then? I've always wondered.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Before fractional shares were a thing, it made the stock
| more attainable for "regular" investors. It can also
| change up your ranking in indices like the Dow Jones that
| are price weighted
| toast0 wrote:
| It used to be difficult to transact in orders of less
| than 100 shares. There's still a bias against 'odd lots',
| at exchanges, but market makers love small orders because
| they tend to be retail orders and it's better to trade
| with retail than institutions generally.
|
| Trading under $10 is discouraged by the exchanges.
| Trading above $100 is discouraged because 100x $100 is
| $10,000, which is a lot of money. Targetting about $25
| was the norm.
|
| Single lot sales and now fractional sales makes a lot of
| that less necessary, and so more companies have avoided
| doing it.
|
| But there used to be 'low priced stock funds' which would
| buy stocks around $10 and sell them around $25 and do
| pretty well.
| saalweachter wrote:
| MSFT is off its peak from the beginning of the year; if you
| sold at 315.95, that's more like $2.3 million.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Always the benefit of hindsight.
|
| I make it 5x 2-4-1 splits since 1993, so 100 shares then
| would be worth 3200 shares today, and I think were about $80
| each at the time.
|
| 700 hours of average paid work ($11/hr) back in 1993 would
| have bought you 100 Microsoft Shares, which today would be
| worth $750k, or $1,000 an hour.
|
| On the other hand you could have bought 700 hours worth of
| Blockbuster shares.
| saalweachter wrote:
| According to the calculator above, it turns into 7200
| shares today, but otherwise, yes, you are right.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The ultimate tribute to skifree:
|
| Edge:surf
|
| (Only works on ms edge.)
| sabellito wrote:
| Opened edge for the second time since I setup this machine just
| to test it. Surprisingly good.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I love some of those early 16 bit windows games like ski free,
| solitaire, and all the boatloads of shareware games of the era.
| They played like the simplicity of Atari 2600 games, but had
| crisp clipart style graphics. Castle of the Winds was a rogue
| clone of the era that I remember sinking a ton of time into
| playing.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I remember castle of the winds. That was exactly a RPG with the
| Windows 3 vibe. Most gaming was still happening in DOS because
| you could do different graphic modes but I did enjoy those
| little windows games
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I know HN prefers to remove superlatives from headlines, but this
| isn't "The official skifree home page".
|
| It's the "The Most Officialest SkiFree Home Page"
| voytec wrote:
| I'm not familiar with SkiFree but I do remember spending A LOT of
| time with Deluxe Ski Jump 2[1].
|
| [1] https://www.mediamond.fi/dsj2/
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| in 7th grade technology class my lab partner and I found that if
| you situate yourself behind the ski lift and press up as to
| remain behind it, it increases your score by large amounts. I
| don't know how long it was until that middle school got new
| computers but I can guarantee that we held the high scores on
| every computer in that classroom until they did. I'd like to hope
| that somebody picked up one of those computers at a public
| auction, loaded up ski free out of boredom, and was absolutely
| blown away at the high score they would never ever come close to
| beating
| saboot wrote:
| I'm getting that mug!
| password4321 wrote:
| SkiFree in the Browser
|
| https://basicallydan.github.io/skifree.js/
|
| 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5247965
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| But where's the snow monster? :(
| tpmx wrote:
| Ironically (?) so much smoother in Chrome than the native Win32
| version running on the same beefy Win 10 PC.
| Narishma wrote:
| Not the case for me. Pretty stuttery on Firefox.
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(page generated 2023-01-21 23:01 UTC)