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ACiD Productions Releases Final Artpack
Jason Scott writes "Among the people I have interviewed for the forthcoming BBS Documentary are members of what was known, throughout the 90s, as the 'ANSI Scene'. They released artpacks of ANSI art on BBSes across the world, and then later on the Internet. Among these were members of the group known as ANSI Creators in Demand, or ACiD. Besides inventing the artpack, the group has continued to release them for the last 13 years... until now. The group's leader, RaDMan, has announced the arrival of the 100th and final artpack. Clocking in at a mind-boggling 400 megabytes plus, it contains high-rez, ASCII, and of course ANSI art, as well as a huge selection of music. It even has a rap featuring RaDMan himself claiming domination over the art scene. The download page lets you grab it in FTP, HTTP, and Bittorrent. If you ever spent an evening poring over the latest 'pack', now's the time to see ACiD's last hurrah."
ACID SUCKS!
It even has a rap featuring RaD Man himself claiming domination over the art scene.
:)
Radman is a washed up little kid. He doesn't dominate anything. He doesnt draw anymore.
The artists are the ones that make acid a respectable group.. not that obnoxious leader.
Overall, ACID100 was a sub-par pack, but it had a few good pieces.
Ah well, at least ice wont have anyone biting at their ankles anymore.
The generation of bbs people, ansi and ascii artists are now growing up and getting on with their lives which is sad but nothing more than a reality
Three cheers for the men (and women!) that made that experience that much more exciting and colourful!
Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray!
-- If I were a fish, I'd be wet
this is soooooooooooooooo aweeesoooooooooome..... its like VIRTUAL CRACK
repeat a few times........
*SNOOOOOOOOOOOOORT*
WOOO!
The art thing is good and fine.. but what about her. She's a chick. That's better than art!
Here before all but 8486 of you.
This site is only partially finished, but you can see an online ANSI art gallery (of all groups) at http://ansi.idledreams.net. Hopefully it won't crash too hard from /. :)
Cmon you torrent leaching bitches. Get your client open.
Farewell ACiD, its been a long crazy trip..
It's suprising to note that there are still a handful of groups still releasing ansi art packs.. I guess just as any other form of art, the medium just adds to the excitement and challenge in expressing your views.
Napalm Death [Former ACiD Productions] - nd@efnet
ICE SUCKS. their members can suck DEZ NUTS! no skill ...
:) :)
ACiD we will miss you. you guys were the best.
we love you nok and Icedevil.
No really... go download it. It's good. It has music by Pinion on it. And me. Even though I haven't used a tracker to write stuff in years.
It's odd though... all that tracker usage taught me quite a bit about music production. Little tricks and tips that I stole from folks like Purple Motion and Necros that've even impressed professional studio engineers I've met.
Rad Man's put a lot of effort into this puppy. Those of you raggin' on him for not producing "art" need to back off; he's the one who did all of the crap putting these packs together that no one else wants to do. That shit takes work.
OK, enough rambling, why are you still reading this and not downloading the pack? Go do it now!
yay for ACiD!
and yay for pHluid!
I'm glad to be a part of this wonderful group. pHluid itself was the group that started my interest in tracking, and now I'm a part of it.
Thanks everyone!
subliminal / pHluid
[)(]subliminal labs[)(]
I used to BBS a ton. Still did, though a lot less, well into 1999, visiting a few places until 2000 or 2001 very rarely, until the last Citadel 86 BBS I called went down. I never was much into the art scene, but did enjoy downloading the occasional pack to see what cool stuff people did in ANSI...
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
ACiD will be missed, but this will obviously not be the end of ASCII/ANSI art. As long as we are still using command lines and text interfaces there will be ASCII and ANSI art. This is really an art form, and art forms rarely die off...
ACiD is good, but they aren't the only ones...
Wow. I had no idea that ACiD was still around. They did some BBS ads for me back in 1988 or 1989 I think. May have been as late as 1990, but I don't think so. I had no idea that they were still around. Its a good to see that you guys lasted this long, and its a shame to see another era end.
This release also marks my last release with Phluid. It's been fun folks, this pack is monumental for many reasons, other than it's size. Please watch for the next Acid e'zine coming shortly with articles by myself, and many other members past and present. Troll - Phluid (see you around!)
This ANSI artist (and ex-member) will sorely miss you. Shatterstar
it never gets old: legends never die.
This scene died 5 years ago, the problem is, no one told radman...
ACiD still rocks it, rad man should've started rapping a long time ago, he could've been a white kid from detroit... We're all still doodleboys at heart.
ACiD-100. The 100th Acquisition Update. The Final Artpack.
At the start of this year, ACiD announced the release of their 100th and final artpack, ACiD-100. This may ring a small bell for some of you, and no bell at all for others; however, to refresh, from 1990 to 1997, ACiD was the household name for all your ANSI art / ascii art / high-resolution artwork needs, especially toward the promotion of private bulletin boards systems (BBSes).
Of course, with the advent of GUI operating environments and ubiquitous affordable Internet access (+ their contingent collapses of local dialup textmode culture) the text art that was once their bread and butter fell by the wayside, last released in 1997. However, as a commemorative gesture, a bevy of new material in the medium by original ANSI masters manifests in this ultimate release. Weighing in at a hefty 454MB, it also features a wide selection of music in the MP3 and Impulse Tracker module formats from their musical subsidiary, the pHluid Music Group. Also featured are last versions of their four most popular software titles for DOS and Windows, complete with never before seen full source code released under the GNU GPL.
Several highspeed servers are available for your pick of file transfer via BitTorrent, FTP or HTTP. If you wish to mirror please contact Anthem on EFNET IRC in #ACiD or simply leave your Torrent client open and continue to help seed.
Thanks to everyone who stayed up late with me on IRC while I got the servers running and a very special thanks to the one who made all of this possible from 1990 - 2004 and taken the art scene to the next level, RaD Man.
-- Anthem and Cthulu
Torrent Clients
BitTorrent is a P2P sharing method and is the preferred means of obtaining ACiD-100. You may download BitTorrent 3.3 here.
Broadband users should experience rates of about 300-450kb/s due to our highspeed seeds. After installing BT, simply click on the file below to begin downloading.
Download ACiD-100
acid-100.zip - Preferred method, requires a Torrent client
acid-100.zip - HTTP mirror (.us, 1gbit, high24[7/ hoa)
acid-100.zip - FTP mirror (.us, 100mbit, djquad/ acid)
acid-100.rar - FTP mirror (.nl, 1gbit, redhound/ scene)
acid-100.rar - FTP mirror (.de, 100mbit, ferrex/ sac)
Tracker Stats - BitTorrent Tracker download statistics
ACiD Radio - Streaming ACiD-100 and pHluid music!
...
In related news, ACiD is selling DVD-ROMs for $13 USD containing the entirety of the Artpacks Archive they maintained -- in short, redundancy-checked, corruption-checked mirrors of all remaining / existing ANSI and artscene release activity, from artpacks to loaders and cracktros to e-mags. All that, and I hear they include an interface permitting the effortless access of these archaic visual formats on contemporary platforms -- so if you ever again wanted to see a lost JED ANSImation display at 2400 baud, here's your chance. For more information, please consult www.darkdomain.org. A descriptive list of the 4.2GB worth of files included on their DVD is also available at http://www.darkdomain.org/allfiles.zip.
I will not respect ACiD again until they put Cats Cradle back up and I can call it on a phreaked 800 # to post on Agoranet.
Listening radman? catbones? acid phreaking team?
Yes. A 400mb slashdotting will put an end to just about anything.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I used to love checking out all the different ANSI screens on dialup BSSs back in the day. I tried playing with TheDraw but I sucked! I remember listening to really simple ANSI music tunes too...
ACiD put out some pretty neat stuff... I remember there being some RIP Script art too.. that stuff was neat cause it was VGA quality graphics... anyone still doing those? I never did get a chance to play a RIP based game on a BBS! RIP died before it even got off the ground where I'm from.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
You know, i've found it a little hard to find a telnet client that has good support for ANSI graphics... I still telnet into an emulated MajorBBS back in my home town.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
According to the site:
A monumentally final chapter in the ACiD artpack legacy is upon us as we rapidly approach the release our landmark 100th ACiD Acquisition Update. It's not for me to say what happens afterwards, but this will be *my* final release with ACiD.
(Emphasis mine)
It's not the end of ACiD at all.
NO CARRIER
Nuff respect to groups like ACiD and ICE for doing what they do with pride. While these two are arguably the biggest players in the ANSI and now "VGA" scene, they're certainly not the only ones still doing it and actively discussing it.
Be sure to check out telnet BBS's - same as the old POTS equivalent but with way more lines and generally better bandwidth (althogh displaying ANSI's is smoother via dialup). A list of active telnet BBS's can be found at The BBS Corner.
Before there was ANSI art there was ASCII. It's a little cheesy and rudamentary but it takes a lot of talent to represent visual art as typographic characters. IRC-ers will dig the ASCII block fonts. For some info on the history of PC art check out Textfiles.com Art.
Parallel to the art scene were the MOD (music module) and demo (megademo\intro\loader) scenes. These disciplines all began in the C64 days, most often seen accompanying cracked games with chippy SID tunes. Warez and demo began together as a sort of cyber-Pangea and though they have separated and flourished in their own way, they still occasionally accompany oneanother to this day. Thanks to products like Sk@le Tracker and ModPlug Tracker the MOD scene is still kicking.
While the popularity of ANSI has declined over the years, megademos are more popular than ever (particularly in Finland, Belgium, Germany, and thereabouts). Demo parties are bigger and badder than ever and are even covered on national television. For a very entertaining primer on the demo scene pick up a copy of the Mind Candy DVD Vol. 1. It's the best $16 you'll ever spend.
ANSI and demos seem to have shared a similar fate. ANSI, in all its blocky glory, is a testement to the speed and limitations of its time - the very definition of zeitgeist. As artists grew in number and in skill, more advanced techniques such as shading and emulating texture were implemented, but there's only so much that can be done with the medium. Demos, by definition, have much more freedom and were, in earlier times, a competition to code the newest, coolest, most efficient realtime effects. 3D video accelerators all but destroyed this pursuit and now the megademo has become more of a demonstration of design than coding. For all the demos you could ever hope to watch, check out The Hornet Archive.
And check out my MODs!