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Man I got my start making games in HyperCard. I owed bill atkinson a lot for all the inspiration it provided me, even if it never ended with me finishing any of my pipe dream projects, I did learn to code And become an IT professional.
RIP Bill, you changed lives.
Rest in peace.
Hypermedia lead me down the rabbit hole. Did you know DARPA and MIT had a streetview like map of Aspen CO in 1978! There was an image taken in the cardinal directions every 10 feet down the middle of all the streets. You could click on houses and museums and see pictures of the inside or look at restaurant menus. They stored it all on laserdisc.
Atkinson's design was prescient. Hypercard kicked off end-users becoming app developers.
A modern version of it is still out there: https://livecode.com/
I remember opening HyperCard on our Mac a couple of times when I was a kid. I didn't know what I was doing and couldn't really figure out what it was for.
HyperCard was basically the viewer/player for HyperCard stacks/files. HyperStudio was the program used to make them.
It was sorta kind of akin to making basic 'web page' like card presentations, but before the actual internet was a public thing, with images, text, programmable buttons to jump between cards, special effects for card transitions, etc.
I'm nostalgic for stuff like that, but I've never been able to find a pirated copy of HyperStudio to install into my old System 7.5.5 virtual machine ☹️
I should admit that it's been years since I messed around with old Macintosh or looked into the old Mac retro sites, it's probably out there somewhere..
Myst and Riven were built on HyperCard, also!
HyperCard was basically the viewer/player for HyperCard stacks/files. HyperStudio was the program used to make them.
This is incorrect. The HyperCard application could both create and play back HyperCard stacks. It could also export them as stand-alone applications which people could use without needing to run HyperCard.
HyperStudio was something else, not shipped by Apple.
The author describes it here:
It was inspired by HyperCard and Ted Nelson’s ideas of hypertext and hypermedia. But whereas HyperCard was a database of alphanumeric data controlled by a scripting language, HyperStudio was founded on the idea of the primary layer being a paint program, and linking (“hyper-”) media (“studio”) together in an object-oriented, rather than lexical (program language), environment. The result was a program that is its own category of software. That is to say, HyperStudio has an extremely unique environment, and although it can create videos, presentations, animations and comic-style (graphic novel) digital stories, it is neither movie-making software, presentation software, and animation program, nor a comic-book maker. It is HyperStudio and no other program has ever duplicated or even successfully approximated its functionality.
see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperStudio
I should admit that it’s been years since I messed around with old Macintosh or looked into the old Mac retro sites, it’s probably out there somewhere…
You can use HyperCard on an emulated Mac in a web browser at https://system7.app/ - it's in the Multimedia folder there :)
Interesting. I only recall 2 programs when I took the HyperStudio class, where the HyperCard Player was free for all to use, but couldn't make projects.
HyperStudio was the paid program that the school had paid licensing fees to use, and as such we weren't allowed to copy that software.
Maybe I missed the original HyperCard itself, we were only allowed to copy and share HyperCard Player, which most definitely could not create projects, only play them.
Ah, this is jogging my memory:
HyperCard 1.x was given away as a standard item with the purchase of a new Mac Plus, SE, or II. This was the key to HyperCard’s early success. HyperCard 2.x had to be purchased separately. However, Apple made and gave out HyperCard Player, a freeware application that allowed one to run HyperCard stacks.
But yeah, HyperStudio was something else entirely (HyperCard-inspired but not compatible).