I’m excited to announce the release of IGNITE, the first-ever all-IGS artpack, from the Mistigris art group and Break Into Chat. Download it now!

… Or, if you’re not into downloading packs, extracting ZIP files, etc, then you can see all the pack content in a nine-minute YouTube video:

Do you enjoy my retrocomputing tutorials on Break Into Chat? Please join my email list and stay in touch. 📬

IGNITE is a love letter to Instant Graphics and Sound, an obscure graphics protocol for BBSes on an often-overlooked computer platform from the late 80s and early 90s — and a tribute to Larry Mears, who created it.

I love telling unknown underdog computer stories, and IGS sucked me in. This fall, I published a six-part, 14,000-word history, introducing readers to a cast of characters that included Mears, the self-described “working man without a degree” who often downplayed his own coding ability; Kevin Moody and Anthony Rau, two Navy guys in Florida who bonded over their love of Atari and BBSing; Steve Turnbull, an artist and scenic designer working in Hollywood; and many others.

But IGS isn’t just a thing of the past. Two years ago, on New Years Eve 2022, Mears made a surprise announcement — he was releasing a new version of IGS, thirty years after he had stopped working on the project.

Because I (inadvertently) had spurred Larry to action, I felt an obligation to make some art using his new tools. I completed my first piece — a drawing of a ship from the sci-fi game FTL — in early 2023. Over the subsequent months, I kept at it, and ended up creating a number of fun animations. I’m particularly proud of the animated Guardian of Forever login sequence, and a brand-new Calvin and Hobbes-themed animation I created just for this pack.

I had long wanted to release an all-IGS artpack as a way to honor Mears, highlight IGS, and maybe stir other people’s interest in trying this format. Like ANSI and other textmode formats, creating art — especially animation — with IGS can be very challenging. To lower the barriers to entry, I created my own web-based drawing tool, JoshDraw, which supports a small subset of IGS’s features. To my surprise, I successfully recruited seven other people to submit nine images for the pack.

I hope Larry will be honored to see people today making art specifically in his IGS format.

Anyway, that’s enough back story for now. Please download the pack from mistigris.org and check it out! And while you’re at it, check out Mist’s 30th anniversary pack.. It’s a New Year’s textmode extravaganza!

IGNITE includes two .ST disk images that can be booted on an Atari ST to display slideshows of the static images or the animations. Don’t have an ST? No problem. There are also .MP4 versions of each file, and .PNG versions of the static images, for modern platforms.

And stay tuned for the seventh and final part of my IGS history, coming soon. This epilogue will be more personal, as I describe my own experiences trying to make new IGS art.