ASCII Space Invaders

It's just the same as the original but in ASCII.

ASCII Space Invaders

See also

• Space Invaders ASCII animation
• Another ASCII Invaders game
• A simple Javascript ASCII Invaders game.

Hmm. It seems there are a lot of these around the Internet, with no two versions being precisely the same.

ASCII Art - links

• Canonical smileys list. Interesting how a combination of a few ascii characters can express an opinion or an emotion. Even though there are multiple meanings for each (for example, :-) can mean 'smiling' or 'user is an orator' amongst other things), there is a certain amount of shared knowledge amongst Internet users.

• The Wikipedia Emoticons entry mentions that certain smileys have been copyrighted in Finland (!)
• Japanese two byte emoticons are usually vertical rather than horizontal. For example "(；_ :)" means "feeling sad".
• An article on the smiley's 25th birthday:"The critics of emoticons maintain that it has destroyed the fabric of proper writing, believing a functioning literary mind should be able to express emotion without the use of a direct symbol explaining to the reader exactly how he or she should feel. But to answer these critics, is it really that serious of a debate? A simple :-) here or a :-( there is a simple way to avoid an unintentional row, and that's something everyone can :-) about." -- ITPRO
• A Tour of ASCII and ANSI art from the 80s and 90s.
  

ASCII/glitched Super Mario

On my other weblog I'm exploring the possibilities of recreating classic video games in new ways. Mario might be a bit complicated for me yet but it's fun to experiment with this sort of stuff.

Here, someone has hacked the original Nintendo Super Mario game to be completely in ASCII.



I've had a go at hacking ROMs over Christmas but I can't seem to get my head round it. Oh well.



Something equally as interesting, however, is the idea of glitch art. I have explored this a bit previously in my post about Cory Arcangel but never really got onto expanding it. I like the idea of using existing commercial appliances such as video game consoles and exploring creation of glitches.

Various references

Whilst actually creating the text part of the dissertation I'm finding more specific and relevant information about the subjects I am researching.

• Bob Bemer was an IBM employee who was involved in the creation of the ASCII character set in 1970. He proposed the curly and square brackets ([],{}) and the backslash (\).
• Here he discusses his 'status' as 'Father of ASCII'.
• And here he talks of the ASCII characters.
  
• Scott Fahlman is the person first credited with specifying and using an emoticon.
• A bit about the Jodi blogs and the source of the aforementioned Otowa ASCII game.
• This is a screenshot from BBC Multiscreen, an interactive television service providing a number of news video streams.
• A bit of info on the analogue switch off. I've probably posted this here before....
• Here's a timeline of the evolution of British satellite television. Maybe an equivalent one for Teletext might be in order.
• At the TV Ark, there's lots of screenshots from the history of BBC News 24.

The Otowa ASCII game

I like this game, it's really cool how a game's whole graphical style can be created using ASCII.

A few web links

ITVT.COM

Some screenshots of different interactive TV interfaces and designs from around the world. Includes information on programs and quizzes.

The site itself is an information archive for interactive TV and has some up to date content despite the slightly dated layout design.

A bit more on the ASCII Microsoft quote

"ASCII Art is dead", according to Bill Gates.

"Microsoft isn't impressed with ASCII art's popularity. ASCII Art is the most universal of computer graphics, albeit the most simple, and uses the least amount of bandwidth - all one needs is a fixed-width font, and all computers have that capability... A very common post on USENET's alt.ascii-art newsgroup comes from people who are having difficulty changing [Microsoft's] Outlook Explorer default settings so that they can use ASCII art. Instead of addressing the issue with the software - or telling people how to readjust the default settings, Microsoft has suggested that people simply not use the ASCII art. After all, if everyone purchased a Microsoft product, all could receive graphics and HTML codes in their mail programs."

Joan Stark - ASCII Artist

This quote is from 1998. The page pins down the exact week Gates's quote was made.

EDIT: Since I wrote this I read somewhere that Gates denies ever making this quote. Perhaps it was misattributed or Gates now regrets his claim.

Joan Stark's web page

I also dispute the claim that ASCII is dead - even in 2007, smileys and text art still appear in forums, chatrooms and personal websites all over the Internet. Maybe the 'MySpace Generation' has something to do with this. Like it or not ASCII is alive and well.

That may be one reason 'older' sites like Stark's still exist - people have a sense of nostalgia about the earlier days of the Internet and newer web users have accepted the fact ASCII is a part of the web. It would seem, however, that Gates hasn't.

There's some brief explanation on the history of ASCII art here and a gallery of smilies here.

As a side note, I really like the old style early site design with simple formatting and no complications that would increase loading times. Something to look into further, maybe.

More ASCII art

Above: a couple of screenshots from ASCII Art Generator in action. Needs to be unlocked for full features such as copy and save as.

This site is more limited but provides an online auto logo generator.

Above image created with MacOSaiX, a piece of software that can be used to create mosaics.

An ASCII representation of Ferrari's prancing horse logo.

Misc. ASCII art sites

http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Marina/4942/ascii.htm

http://andy.w2s.co.uk/yahoo/YEmote2Plus/NewASCII.htm

http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib/

ASCII Art - history

Art Typing, Nathan Krevolin, 1962 - excerpts
http://www.textfiles.com/art/texthistory.txt
http://hem1.passagen.se/haakshem/asciians.html
http://www.doheth.co.uk/funny/google.php

The text file in the first link, created in 1999, briefly examines the history of imagery as text, citing the hieroglyphics used by Ancient Egyptians to communicate. It makes reference to a 1950's artwork by Korean Gwang Hyuk Lee made up of text from the "Book of John". An image of this is shown right.

In the early 20th Century, "calligrams", that is, utiilising shaped text in visual word poems, became popular. Most of the ASCII art is from Krevolin's book and there is mention of teletyping, a forerunner to the ASCII format. EBCDIC was another competitor for the standard encoding on computers, but in the end, ASCII, a code by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) won out. ANSI code is essentially ASCII.

Early ASCII art was spread via e-mail, bulletin boards and other online activities, such as in MUDs (Multi User Dungeons). This page from the earlier days of the Internet explains ASCII art briefly and a number of 'artpacks' to download. The site's design is also typical of the early days of the Internet, being rather primitive with jagged, brightly coloured graphics.

"Microsoft declared ASCII art "dead" in June of 1998. Why? I'm not sure. But I would guess that Microsoft is encouraging people to use GIF and JPG graphics -- of course, with their software."

Whilst there is no doubt ASCII and ANSI art is on the decline somewhat in comparison to the early Internet, I would tend to disagree with this - it seems to be sensationalism on Bill Gates' part. Maybe because of its synonymous links with the Internet as well as its existence as a creative and distinctive artform, the medium survives today.

ASCII Art - a brief introduction

Wikipedia Entry
History of ASCII art

Relying mainly on computers for presentation, ASCII art is an artistic medium making images from piecing together any of the 92 (of the available 128) characters in various combinations. Prominent in the early days of the Internet due to its low file size in comparison to images, people would map out pictoral representations using ASCII art as a more customisable, compatible alternative to images.

Today, the medium is used for more elaborate creations such as webs comics, as in this example, animations, as demonstrated here and even desktop art (example here). In the example above right, some block ASCII is shown in two different font sets, demonstrating the slight difference across formats. This makes it less compatible than photographs with regards to consistency. The block method, however, allows for more intricate and smoother-looking art whilst retaining the jagged edged pixellated look characteristic of the medium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_stereogram

ASCII stereograms, meanwhile, attempt to recreate 3D effects using ASCII. These can be compared to early computer games and their fascination with achieving a pseudo-3D effect using minimal polygons. Taking simple data from an ordinary stereogram, these are converted into the lower-res format for ease of transmission.