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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."
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.
Radman is a washed up little kid. He doesn't dominate anything. He doesnt draw anymore.
Oh, really?
You've got some splaining to do!!BitchX logo by radman
ACiD logo by radman
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 /. :)
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!
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.
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)
If you're on a Windows or (no joke) OS/2 box, try mTelnet [ozone.eesc.com]. It's got (near as I can tell) perfect ANSI support, and it's got genuine old-sk00l flava in the interface. It's an excellent BBS client.
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!