Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

/ tr. by Phil Newell)

Typesetting (Lu Jiu)

Note: some of the pictures in this article are better seen from a distance from the mobile phone.

There is an unwritten law in the real world. The scenarios in which many things are used today are actually very different from those at the beginning of the invention.

For example, gunpowder was one of the medicines for human beings to pursue immortality, but now it is often used for the physical destruction of human beings; Coca-Cola was also a medicine, but now it has become a source of happiness; and the keyboard, which was originally used as a productivity tool, is now a sharp weapon for people to attack each other.

And for example, ASCII.

It is normal for you not to know all the letters and spell strange words together, because the concept of this thing has nothing to do with everyday life. It was originally used to display the coding system of computer language, but then deviated and developed a sideline known by hundreds of millions of netizens-the Internet meme, or the embodiment of the stem.

It has become an art form that can not be ignored by creators, as well as meme culture. Finally, we have a reason to talk about it. And can think of this topic, but also because of a comparison of the next three news.

Some time ago, a well-known foreign anchor encountered a live "accident" in an online event held by himself. In the heated discussion of the list of text-only on-screen comments, there is a huge ASCII version of Ding Ri, and it seems to be growing on an among us character. Although the real-time chat was constantly refreshed, it stayed in the picture for at least five seconds and soon caused a burst of on-screen cheers. How much the specific picture is, limited by the scale, please imagine for yourself.

Some foreign media related to the game reported the "accident", and foreign counterparts commented that the anchorman should be "the person in the world who most regretted watching on-screen comments at that time."

Millions of viewers watch birds online. It is hard to say whether everyone is embarrassed or not. The anchorman must have been confused at that moment. But this is the afterglow of the ASCII era, and it is also the best destination for most people-- pinched into a spoofed punk art form by pairs of netizens' hands and thrown into the boundless cyberspace.

If you often visit steam or forums, you will generally have an impression of this kind of creative form. Especially in the comment area where only text is allowed, the existence of ASCII is more dazzling. They are images made up of words, the product of outdated coding and re-employment, which is also the advantage brought by its nature.

As a computer coding standard, ASCII code was born in 1967, earlier than the birth of the Internet. To put it simply, it is 128 characters, which contains the case of 26 letters, as well as various symbols. They can still be recognized and output by today's computers, but they are out of date at the computer application level. Because 128 of these characters are included and replaced by the brand new Unicode character, the universal code, the former becomes a subset of the latter.

Ok, so much for the blunt popularization of technology. Next, let's talk about something practical.

Although ASCII is out of date, it has left an irreplaceable legacy. Works created visually by ASCII are collectively referred to as ASCII art. It replaces the pixels of the picture with characters and code to construct a retro and abstract visual experience, and its greatest value is to go beyond the limitations of the software and make the text more visual.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when computers were limited by the technology of image display, they often relied on ASCII art to write document announcements on websites to make up for the miserable text interface, at least a little lively, adding a touch of humanity to the cold code. Even after entering the millennium, for domestic stand-alone players, if they are forced to come into contact with more learning games at that time, they should meet with ASCII Art in the txt documentation after downloading the compressed package.

(well-known BT download Pirate Bay) and the rise of online comics, ASCII cartoons are also known to people, its style is as extensive as a draft. Because the actual image of the cartoon is all composed of ASCII, and the dialogue text is placed below, the nature of the whole cartoon is pure text. This advantage enables it to spread in a variety of network environments that do not support picture display.

During this period, there are many ancient games presented in the ASCII interface, which took the first step in the epoch-making era of video games. There is a work that everyone must be familiar with. It is "Rogue" and "Meat Pigeon". The program randomly generates the originator of the game. Now, it must be hard to imagine how shocking and happy the "full-screen gameplay" works of the same era brought to people at that time.

Before the nineties of last century, ASCII art was a particularly dazzling star in the sky of computer art. People are both programmers and artists, science and technology, and art. It is extremely rare to combine organically here. After that, it has conceivably declined with the development of image technology. Bright, accurate and clear electronic pictures are wrapped up and stuffed into the innermost drawer of history.

It was not until the advent of the big era of facial expressions and sketches that ASCII won a new life at home.

"(* ω) ✄╰ cut ╯ to cut your jj

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