AAlib is a software library which allows applications to automatically convert still and moving images into ASCII art. It was released by Jan Hubicka as part of the BBdemo project in 1997.
AAlib has been used in a wide variety of programs, including a conversion of Quake II which allows the 3D game to be played on dumb terminals, [1] and to let media players output in text mode (Xine, MPlayer, VLC). [2]
AAlib is freely distributed under the terms of the LGPLv2. [3]
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters. The term is also loosely used to refer to text-based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font such as Courier for presentation.
Quake III Arena is a 1999 multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by id Software. The third installment of the Quake series, Arena differs from previous games by excluding a story-based single-player mode and focusing primarily on multiplayer gameplay. The single-player mode is played against computer-controlled bots. It features music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly founder Bill Leeb.
Quake II is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. It is the second installment of the Quake series, following Quake. The game's storyline is continued in its expansions, including one tying in Quake II and the first game, and Quake 4.
Quake is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. The first game in the Quake series, it was originally released for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux in 1996, followed by Mac OS and Sega Saturn in 1997 and Nintendo 64 in 1998. In the game, players must find their way through various maze-like, medieval environments while battling monsters using an array of weaponry. Quake takes inspiration from gothic fiction and the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding standard used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from Unicode Transformation Format – 8-bit.
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data connections between the client and the server. FTP users may authenticate themselves with a plain-text sign-in protocol, normally in the form of a username and password, but can connect anonymously if the server is configured to allow it. For secure transmission that protects the username and password, and encrypts the content, FTP is often secured with SSL/TLS (FTPS) or replaced with SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).
Michael Abrash is an American programmer and technical writer. He is best known for his magazine articles and books on code optimization and graphics for IBM PC compatibles and for working at id Software in the mid-1990s on the rendering technology for Quake. Since 2014, he has been the chief scientist of Oculus VR, a subsidiary of Meta Platforms.
The computer art scene, or simply artscene, is the community interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork.
The ImageWriter is a product line of dot matrix printers formerly manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc., and designed then to be compatible with their entire line of computers. There were three different models introduced over time, which were popular mostly among Apple II and Macintosh owners.
The backtick` is a typographical mark used mainly in computing. It is also known as backquote, grave, or grave accent.
ACiD Productions (ACiD) is a digital art group. Founded in 1990, the group originally specialized in ANSI artwork for bulletin board systems (BBS). More recently, they have extended their reach into other graphical media and computer software development. During the BBS-era, their biggest competitor was iCE Advertisements.
PabloDraw is a cross-platform text editor designed for creating ANSI and ASCII art, similar to that of its MS-DOS-based predecessors; ACiDDraw (1994) and TheDraw (1986).
Quake Army Knife, is a free and open-source program for developing 3D assets for a large variety of first-person shooters, such as video games using the Quake engine by id Software or the Torque engine.
id Tech 3, popularly known as the Quake III Arena engine, is a game engine developed by id Software for their video game Quake III Arena. It has been adopted by numerous games. During its time, it competed with the Unreal Engine; both engines were widely licensed.
The Quake II engine is a game engine developed by id Software for use in their 1997 first-person shooter Quake II. It is the successor to the Quake engine. Since its release, the Quake II engine has been licensed for use in several other games.
ASCII Express is a telecommunications program written for the Apple II series of computers. During the 1980s, when the use of bulletin board systems (BBS) and telecommunications in general were not as widespread as they are today, ASCII Express (AE) was the program of choice for many telecommunication users.
XaoS is an interactive fractal zoomer program. It allows the user to continuously zoom in or out of a fractal in real-time.
Microsoft Office shared tools are software components that are included in all Microsoft Office products.
libcaca is a software library that converts images into colored ASCII art. It includes the library itself, and several programs including cacaview, an image viewer that works inside a terminal emulator, and img2txt, which can convert an image to other text-based formats.
PlantUML is an open-source tool allowing users to create diagrams from a plain text language. Besides various UML diagrams, PlantUML has support for various other software development related formats, as well as visualisation of JSON and YAML files.
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