While my ID for these pages is Mythrandir9999, that is just a name of convenience
for this site host. I've been going by the name Mythrandir since the days before the
internet; the long lost days when dinosaurs were top of the line and the 8088 processor
ruled supreme. The days when Packet was a preferred mode of file-sharing and BBSs
grew like wildflowers in the cyber desert.
I have been Mythrandir since about 1986.
In those golden days of youth I was a co-sysop for the Dee's Dungeon BBS, charged
with keeping the files areas up to date and free of corruption and primitive viruses.
Also I had the opportunity to create entrance and exit art for the Dee's Dungeon and
several other local systems. We also ran art contests for the best seasonal work
and who could get the best score in a particular "door" game. As a promotional
for Dee's Dungeon I wrote a few small games in the professional quality
(for the time) Visual Basic 3 for Windows 3.1.
Those first games were slot machines.
Time went on, as time does. After highschool and into college, the BBSs persisted.
Through the beginning of the internet age and the broadening of my personal
knowledge came a deeper understanding. The answer to the great question: Why?
Why not?
In that long search for knowledge, I gained a strong grasp of problem solving and
logic as they apply to programming. Also I found a deep sense of the aesthetic.
The skills forged in the creation of primitive ANSI graphics for the BBS systems
and the fine arts classes in highschool began to pay off when I began to create my
own graphics for the games I was writing.
Those games were: Tic-Tac-Toe, rubic state machine, 15 slider, connect 4,
concentration, vr tour, jong, and a slot machine.
These games, while not fancy, do have an appeal to anyone for a while because of the
beauty of the playing pieces. Many of the graphics were rendered in TrueSpace 2
from Calgari. The rest were created in windows Paint. All of the graphics in my
gallery are rendered in TrueSpace 2.
I did manage to sell a set of small games to the pizza restaurant I was working for
with customized graphics as an ad gimmick. While the restaurant liked the idea, they
did not come back for a second set of games from me.
Eventually, I graduated college with an associates of engineering in software and I
rewrote my games in VB6. They still have not sold so I'm giving them away as samples
of what I can do. (see the downloads page for more details)
The BBS services I had known and loved were all gone. None of the privately owned
BBS systems had truly survived the ISP invasion. Even the BBS where I had met my
wife was lost to the void. The friends I had made online with those systems posted a
tribute to the memory of Dee's Dungeon.
Dee's Dungeon_Telnet BBS (Dead link now)
Before the link died, some of the files section and the menus still worked, but the
message boards were a complete loss.
While all the BBS services I knew are but shadows now, the art remains.