[HN Gopher] Portal (2021)
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       Portal (2021)
        
       Author : Kye
       Score  : 112 points
       Date   : 2024-02-14 04:19 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (macintoshgarden.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (macintoshgarden.org)
        
       | Kye wrote:
       | Here's the post where I found this with bonus video of it in
       | action: https://dialup.cafe/@vga256/111926765062980053
        
       | cstuder wrote:
       | The Digital Antiquarian has written a long article on the game
       | and links to the C64 version if you want to play it for yourself:
       | https://www.filfre.net/2014/11/portal/
        
       | jhbadger wrote:
       | The author of this later published it as a novel, because while
       | the C64/Apple II/DOS/Amiga/Mac version was presented as a game,
       | there really wasn't much influence from the user -- it was more
       | akin to modern visual novels rather than adventure games.
       | 
       | https://openlibrary.org/books/OL10384355M/Portal
        
       | miroljub wrote:
       | > Your provider (Microsoft Corporation) does not have access to
       | this website. Contact the staff per electronic letter via support
       | at macintosh.garden if you believe this to be a mistake or
       | otherwise an error
       | 
       | What a dick move.
       | 
       | No, I don't work for MS corporation. I'm fucking using a cheap
       | Azure VM instance running OpenSSH as a socks proxy. Otherwise, I
       | would have to access it through my https-man-in-the-middle
       | corporate firewall.
        
         | Kye wrote:
         | I'm surprised you encounter few enough blocks for this to stand
         | out. Scrapers and nuisance bots are rampant on cloud hosts, so
         | lots of sites block their IPs.
        
           | miroljub wrote:
           | Honestly, not that many. I have been blocked so far only on
           | some video streaming platforms. Most of "normal" sites seem
           | not to care.
        
         | bogantech wrote:
         | > No, I don't work for MS corporation. I'm fucking using a
         | cheap Azure VM instance running OpenSSH as a socks proxy.
         | Otherwise, I would have to access it through my https-man-in-
         | the-middle corporate firewall.
         | 
         | Download it on your personal machine then
        
       | tempodox wrote:
       | I thought I might be able to run this with Mini vMac, but I have
       | no idea where to get a ROM image. Why can't it be legal to have
       | ROM images for these obsolete systems downloadable? It's not like
       | Apple could lose anything by it.
        
         | bogantech wrote:
         | Google "Mac Plus ROM" and it's one of the top results...
        
         | Kye wrote:
         | The game itself is a booter according to the person who put
         | this together, so you don't need the OS.
        
           | classichasclass wrote:
           | Yes, but you'll still need the Toolbox ROM.
        
       | wildrhythms wrote:
       | This site can't be reached.
        
       | digger495 wrote:
       | And please do play it. It's excellent. I have the PC port
       | somewhere.
        
       | spookybones wrote:
       | Unfortunately, the newest (beta) version of the MiniMac emulator
       | doesn't work for my silicon Macbook Air.
        
       | bobsmith432 wrote:
       | > Your provider (M247 Europe SRL) does not have access to this
       | website. Contact the staff per electronic letter via support at
       | macintosh.garden if you believe this to be a mistake or otherwise
       | an error
       | 
       | What? I'm just on ProtonVPN.
        
       | chongli wrote:
       | The Macintosh Garden is a jewel of the internet. I'm upset to
       | hear so many people have it blocked for them.
       | 
       | This game is also hosted on archive.org [1]. If the Garden link
       | is blocked then you may or may not have better luck downloading
       | from there. I would be interested to know if archive.org is
       | blocked for anyone.
       | 
       | [1] https://archive.org/details/portal-1986
        
       | classichasclass wrote:
       | I enjoyed Portal on the C64, so much so that I actually wrote Rob
       | Swigart when I was toying with making a recreation of the virtual
       | world it depicted. He thought it sounded like a fun project and
       | even sent me a copy of the book. Probably should dust that idea
       | off sometime.
        
       | amiga386 wrote:
       | Title should be Portal (1986)
       | 
       | The fact is was made available on a website in 2021 is neither
       | here nor there. The game itself is from 1986, and needs to be
       | distinguished from Portal, the incredibly well known 2007 video
       | game.
       | 
       | From the title alone, a casual reader is more likely to think the
       | 2007 game was remade in 2021
        
         | Kye wrote:
         | The convention is to put the date of publication of the
         | submitted thing. In this case, the archive entry. I like the
         | think people can work out pretty quick that an ancient
         | hypertext game isn't a modern 3D puzzle game.
        
           | amiga386 wrote:
           | That's because what is submitted is usually an _article_. The
           | thing being linked, the thing of value to the reader, is a
           | news report or opinion piece created in that year.
           | 
           | In this case, it's irrelevant that a game-wiki added this
           | 1986 game to their site in 2021. There are other websites
           | that catalogued the same game in a different year. What
           | matters to the reader - what they get when they click the
           | link - is an adventure game called Portal from 1986. Hence
           | why "Portal (1986)" would be a more honest title.
           | 
           | People can also work out quickly that they got conned by a
           | clickbait title, but they only find out _after_ clicking.
           | They 'd rather not be conned at all, the link title should be
           | honest.
        
             | Kye wrote:
             | "conned"
             | 
             | There's no deception here. Just a disagreement over
             | notation. I don't think someone comes in expecting a quirky
             | puzzle game and is aggrieved to find a different quirky
             | puzzle game.
             | 
             | If it bugs you that much, talk to whoever changed the
             | title. I submitted it without a year because I didn't know
             | it was from 2021.
        
               | amiga386 wrote:
               | I speak only for myself, but I clicked with expectations
               | of something relating to the famous 2007 game.
               | 
               | I have been conned, and I am aggrieved. Hence why I'm
               | wasting my time here trying to get it put right.
               | 
               | This is what clickbait is.
               | 
               | If I see a headline "Ronaldo signs for AC Milan", and I
               | click it and it's Ronaldo Munck (a sociologist unrelated
               | to the world-famous footballer), he signing for delivery
               | of an air conditioning unit at his home in Milan, not
               | entering into a contract with the world-famous Italian
               | football team... I was duped. Conned. Swindled. The title
               | made implications that weren't met, and my time was
               | wasted.
               | 
               | Be honest with prospective readers. Call it Portal
               | (1986). The 2021 has nothing to do with anything, and
               | just lays the groundwork for hoodwinking.
        
               | Kye wrote:
               | Okay. Tell it to whoever changed the title, or email the
               | mods to make your case (bottom of the page). That's a
               | pretty high level access! So someone with more clout than
               | either of us felt 2021 was right (and I tend to agree but
               | don't care either way). That's on top of it being added
               | to and voted out of the second chance queue on to the
               | front page without a year.
               | 
               | You're making your case in the wrong place to the wrong
               | person and going against what seems to be a strong multi-
               | tier consensus that it's fine.
        
               | phendrenad2 wrote:
               | There's no consensus, I also think this is ridiculous. At
               | the very least, remove the (2021) like all the other
               | software links on HN.
        
               | aidenn0 wrote:
               | > I speak only for myself, but I clicked with
               | expectations of something relating to the famous 2007
               | game.
               | 
               | Mismatched expectations, by themselves, do not make a
               | "con" or "hoodwink." Those require intent. Calling the
               | headline "confusing" or "misleading" is fine, but, given
               | that the norms here is to put the year of publication of
               | the linked page, assuming intent to mislead is a bridge
               | to far.
        
       | nox101 wrote:
       | I loved this game/novel. It really was more of a novel than a
       | game but it worked really well. I played alone in my quiet
       | apartment so I really did feel like the main character.
       | 
       | In the game (yes this is explained on the site), you're an
       | astronaut who arrives back on earth 100yrs after you left. You
       | find no one is on earth. You find a single active computer
       | terminal which you use to research what happened. You eventually
       | discover an AI which helps you and "generates" most of the
       | narrative. Since in real life, you are at a computer using this
       | terminal, you're the main character in that sense that you're the
       | astronaut.
       | 
       | It's also interesting because because it came out in 1986 so it's
       | idea of what a future computer terminal would look like, what
       | services it would offer, etc are all shaped by what was common in
       | 1986. There were no web browsers in 1986. There was Compuserve,
       | GEnie, BBSes, stuff like that.
       | 
       | Also, I'm not sure the Mac version is best. I'm pretty sure I
       | played on an Amiga which is at least color (Mac didn't have color
       | til 1987)
       | 
       | https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=856
       | 
       | Not that color is important for the game, but it is at least a
       | more "modern" terminal than monochrome and so fits the theme a
       | tiny bit better.
       | 
       | Randomly, I remember a minor character in the story had otter fur
       | on her head and down her back because genetic engineering had
       | gotten to a level that made that easily possible.
        
       | axiomdata316 wrote:
       | Would love to play this on an emulator hosted on something like
       | Archive.org.
        
         | Kye wrote:
         | It's an early example of hypertext, so naturally someone made a
         | Hypertext Markup Language version.
         | 
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20070208002752/http://portal.sto...
        
           | gs17 wrote:
           | Sadly, once you get far enough in (the end of Day 6 is
           | entirely missing), a lot of the links are broken. Kind of
           | fitting, but it does make it harder to read.
        
       | throwway120385 wrote:
       | This game seems to be a lot more like the game Duskers in concept
       | without the command-line control of drones that make that game
       | more like survival horror. Some unknown cataclysm has befallen
       | all of humanity and as the sole survivor you have to piece
       | together what happened by going from wreck to wreck collecting
       | logs.
        
       | CottonMcKnight wrote:
       | A big part of my childhood was playing black & white games on the
       | Mac: the MacVenture games (Deja Vu, Uninvited, Shadowgate); the
       | World Builder and action games from Silicon Beach (Enchanted
       | Scepters, Dark Castle, etc.); and the early Sierra adventure
       | games (Space Quest I-III, Kings Quest I-III).
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-15 23:02 UTC)