HackFest 2012

HackFest is both a tradition at KansasFest and for me personally.  I find that as I attend more KansasFests, my HackFest projects get smaller simply because I’ve discovered all the fantastic off-schedule activities.  At my first KansasFest, I’d retire to my room between sessions and after meals.  But, some of the best discussions and discoveries …

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Macrosoft at KansasFest 2010

I presented a tutorial introduction at KansasFest 2010 on the Mindcraft Macrosoft programming language, a macro assembler package that allows the programmer to achieve machine language speed with a high-level Applesoft BASIC-like syntax.  Macrosoft and its companion Assembler run on you favorite 8-bit Apple II.  The presentation was well received, and several people left motivated …

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KansasFest 2010 HackFest

My KansasFest 2010 HackFest entry with source code is now available for your enjoyment.  This entry took second place behind Martin’s Wizardy crack.  I used Complete Pascal 2.0 with Pegasoft Draw Tools 3.1, both of which are freely available, to create my first 16-bit Apple II program.  The program displays pictures from KansasFest and asks related …

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Hackfest Day 2

There are just so many fabulous things to see and do at KansasFest that Hackfest has not gotten much attention!  Where else do you get to see the worst Apple product and a disk operating system almost twice as fast as ProDOS? I want to include full-screen bitmapped images in my entry, and I’m figuring out …

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Hackfest Day 1

The annual KansasFest HackFest is on!  I’ve heard rumors of Wizardy cracking and a Rockhurst text adventure.  I’m learning Complete Pascal, learning IIGS toolbox programming, and, just in case I run out of things to do, using those skills to write a graphical Apple II/KFest trivia adventure.  I have Complete Pascal running and am ready …

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Low-Res Life for the Apple II

Conway’s Game of Life is mathematical exploration into artificial life.  The game consists of a grid of cells, and each cell is either alive or dead.  A simple set of rules relate the cells alive or dead in the current generation to the previous generation.  The interesting thing about the Game of Life is that …

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