Remote

Jeff Halter

@halcyon@bitbang.social

Drunk on 90's computing nostalgia, hacking on After Dark, HyperCard, and Hotline.

129 Followers

44 Following

29 Posts

Joined November 27, 2022

Github:

https://github.com/jhalter

morphing.cloud:

https://morphing.cloud

Posts

Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Jul 16, 2026

I've released Stacks v1.0a17 with many compatibility fixes, with a focus on working through problems in the fascinating "HyperCard 10th Anniversary" stack from the Internet Archive. What an amazing time capsule of Apple's history this thing is. Card 2 says that among others, the stack was presented to "Steve Jobs, Acting CEO" in late 1997. I can only imagine his enthusiasm! It's also an absolute flex: animations, music, colors, speech, drag and drop. Not 100% working yet, but progress.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Jul 08, 2026

Replying to @gparker@discuss.systems

@gparker@discuss.systems @csilverman@mastodon.social @root42@chaos.social Ah, I'm super slow to recognize that you are Greg of Sealie Software. I sent you an email a couple weeks back re: Fringe Player, but maybe it was relegated to your spam folder. Your comment regarding the pain of the dynamic shared library was prescient, but after months of head+wall banging I've made big progress in getting most modules through 4.0 running! I'm really close to sharing this project.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Jul 07, 2026

If you like HyperCard, or are HyperCard-curious, I'd like to share an early build of my HyperCard player for modern macOS, "Stacks". It runs stacks natively: no emulator, sound (with MacinTalk speech synthesis!), period-accurate typography. There's an in-app browser for the Internet Archive's HyperCard collection, so you can explore thousands of stacks and run them with one click. Still early days with rough edges, but I'm having fun with it. Please report bugs! https://morphing.cloud/hypercard

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Mar 15, 2026

Satori by Ben Haller has aged well. Still gorgeous after 36 (!!) years.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 26, 2026

Replying to @arroz@mastodon.social

@arroz@mastodon.social I haven't explored that in depth yet, but I'd love to make that happen if it's possible.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 23, 2026

After Dark Player progress: Ripple is looking good, with the Water Color control mapped to the macOS native color picker. Feels great to get a color picker for free! 🎨

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 22, 2026

Replying to @MacBalance@mstdn.games

@MacBalance I think that was the case without third party software, yeah.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 18, 2026

Replying to @gparker@discuss.systems

@gparker @csilverman @root42 Wow, you went down this road long before me! I’m also at the point of trying to decipher the 3.0 library behavior. Not a lot of progress yet. I agree, the 2.0 and MAD modules have had the best effort/reward ratio. Still, hoping I can somehow get over the 3.0 module blocker. So many great modules would be unlocked.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 18, 2026

Replying to @Eric_Neue@indieweb.social

Hey @Eric_Neue I plan to make the GitHub repo public with release builds when I’m a bit further along. I’ll be sure to post here when that happens!

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 18, 2026

Replying to @computernut43@nexto.my

@computernut43 Can you share any details on how you’re doing that?

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 18, 2026

Replying to @gparker@discuss.systems

@gparker @csilverman @root42 Thanks for the reference. I'll check it out. I've definitely bumped into an order of magnitude more complexity as I try to run AD 3.0+ modules, which depend on a shared resource library. Hopefully this is surmountable.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 18, 2026

Replying to @metaning@mastodon.social

@metaning Is your thought to function similar to demo mode in the original software? I currently have a full screen toggle and was considering having a floating palette there (maybe with toggle-able visibility?). Sometimes I want to fiddle with sliders, sometime enjoy the full screen scene without UI.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 18, 2026

Replying to @jsnell@zeppelin.flights

@jsnell Wow, hey Jason! I didn't know there was such a thing as a Screen Saver beat editor. I'd love to see a contemporaneous take on After Dark software as it was released -- will need to dig up some MacUser PDFs from archive.org!

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 18, 2026

Replying to @deviantintegral@drupal.community

@deviantintegral I was curious about that, but my cursory investigation into the current state of macOS screensavers is that it's a world of pain and breaking changes with every macOS release. Also raises questions about how one would distribute modules without running afoul of the copyright holder -- maybe a just a packaging tool? Too much to take on for now, but I might revisit after I get more modules working.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 18, 2026

Replying to @zerodogg@hachyderm.io

@zerodogg The Musashi processor emulation engine is portable, so I think the same approach could work, but it's unlikely my project would be easily adapted to Linux. If you're up for running a full classic Mac OS VM, check out Basilisk II, Mini vMac, or SheepShaver in meantime! They will all run happily on Linux.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 18, 2026

Replying to @FormerlyStC@mas.to

@FormerlyStC That's an endgame goal, for sure! That was a favorite of mine.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 17, 2026

@csilverman@mastodon.social Also yes, I will absolutely release this and make the Github repo public as soon as I work through some more pre-release tasks.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 17, 2026

Replying to @halcyon@bitbang.social

Hi there @csilverman @root42 👋

In brief, the approach is:

Load the code and resources from the original module
Execute the original 68k module code using https://github.com/kstenerud/Musashi (Thank you kstenerud!)
Add handling for unhandled traps to draw to a Metal view, reimplementing the behaviors of QuickDraw one at a time (setting pixels, drawing rects, sprites, etc)

Huge thanks to the M.A.C.E project for demonstrating this approach might be viable.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 17, 2026

Boosted by

Greg Bell @ferrix@mastodon.online

I've gone down a deep rabbit hole working on a strange new project: a standalone After Dark module player for modern macOS. No OS emulation or ROM required -- just the original classic Mac OS AD module files! I can't believe this is working!

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 16, 2026

Holy cow. My dream of someday owning a BeBox is shattered.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Dec 13, 2025

Revisiting my first roguelike. ☠️

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Dec 01, 2025

Replying to @halcyon@bitbang.social

I need to revisit his last game, The Fool and His Money. It landed at the awkward time between PPC to Intel transition and didn't leave me with much time to finish it before it was incompatible with my daily driver Mac.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Dec 01, 2025

So sad to see that domains of legendary game developer Cliff Johnson (Fools Errand, 3 in Three) are taken over as web spam sites now. I hope he's still out there somewhere, scheming up puzzles...

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Nov 16, 2024

Wake me up when I can play Rez on Vision Pro…. 😴

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Feb 15, 2024

Browsing Hotline servers and reading old MacWorlds from the MOON, as one does.

@dustin@pdx.social it works, kind of!

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Jan 16, 2024

@dustin@pdx.social That would be great too. The original server software was so accessible and easy to get started with. I'm sure some people would appreciate that same level of ease on a modern OS.

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Jan 16, 2024

@dustin@pdx.social Huge difference. Those sounds have etched deep grooves into my memory over the years. And having the ability to idle on multiple servers from modern macOS with sound notifications on chat messages is going to be a huge win for keeping the Hotline community active. 🏆

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Jan 16, 2024

@dustin@pdx.social Awesome. Thanks for adding the sounds! 👏👏👏

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Jeff Halter @halcyon@bitbang.social · Jan 01, 2024

@dustin@pdx.social Hi Dustin, Mobius Strip admin and fellow Hotline developer here.👋. Super cool to see what you’re working on! I’ve been wishing for a proper MacOS and iOS client for a while. Thanks for your work on this!

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Remote instance

bitbang.social

Open on original server

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