Slashdot Mirror

Nwe submitter arrow3D writes "A new startup in Norway is focused on design and fabrication at the level and quality of nature. Using pure mathematical volumes, rather than surfaces or voxels, they are developing a new generation of 3D modelling tools specifically aimed at high resolution 3D printing, to 'support the future of design and manufacturing.' Their software was recently used to create the multi-material Minotaur Helmet by Neri Oxman from MIT, as featured in Wired UK last month. An interesting thought (as recently illustrated in Dilbert) is the idea of a Physical Turing Test for synthetic objects and that both Turing Tests may require each other — i.e. only by designing and building at the resolution of nature can we achieve the intelligence of natural objects. Their software platform is still very much under development but they've started trying to 'save the world from polygons' with a KickStarter campaign that's live now."

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC report that David Braben has launched a Kickstarter for a remake of Elite, the classic space trading game that he co-wrote in the 1980s. It has already received £122,000 in less than a day."

Mr. Jaggers writes "Chris Roberts, game designer of Wing Commander fame, has had great success with his new crowd-funded Star Citizen project — so much that the $2m base goal has been smashed with weeks to go on the Kickstarter portion of the campaign. Now Chris is floating a list of stretch goals for fans to vote on, with Linux and Mac support both listed as stretch goal candidates. Since Star Citizen is based on the popular CryENGINE 3 game engine, these stretch goals are equivalent to funding Linux and Mac ports of CryENGINE. Chris couldn't make any absolute promises yet, since he doesn't own the engine, but CryENGINE 3 already supports Android, so at least there is existing OpenGL ES support to be leveraged towards adding Linux and Mac OpenGL support. If there is enough outpouring of cross-platform support from fans in this poll, Star Citizen could turn out to be the high-profile game that brings a AAA game engine to the growing Mac and Linux gaming communities — analogous to the role played by Wasteland 2 in bringing official Linux support to the Unity 4 engine popular among so many Indie developers."

An anonymous reader sends this quote from Wired: "Affordable 3-D printers and CNC mills are popping up everywhere, opening up new worlds of production to wide ranges of designers. However, one major tool still hasn’t received a DIY overhaul: the laser cutter. Maybe people are sensitive because Goldfinger tried to cut James Bond in half with one, but all that changes now with Patrick Hood-Daniel’s new Kickstarter, 'Build Your Own Laser Cutter.' ... A 40-watt laser tube and power supply means it can cut a variety of materials: wood, plastic, fabric, and paper. ... There is one major red flag, however. The machine’s frame is built from of Medium Density Overlay (MDO) — a type of plywood. Hood-Daniels says this is a feature, making the blackTooth less sensitive to thermal distortion and inaccuracy than a metal frame, but it also creates a serious, fire-breathing concern. ... When asked for comment, Hood-Daniel says 'Initially, I had the same thoughts as to the precarious use of wood for the structure, but even with long burns to the structure which were made on accident when starting a run, there was no ignition.'"

First time accepted submitter thrae writes "Adapteva has just released the architecture and software reference manuals for their many-core Epiphany processors. Adapteva's goal is to bring massively parallel programming to the masses with a sub-$100 16-core system and a sub-$200 64-core system. The architecture has advantages over GPUs in terms of future scaling and ease of use. Adapteva is planning to make the products open source. Ars Technica has a nice overview of the project."

New submitter mybluevan writes "The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science is putting together an open hardware spectrometer kit on Kickstarter. The kits are built using an HD webcam, discarded DVD, and a couple other odd bits. They've also put together a kit for your smart phone and open-source software for desktop, Android, and iOS. Need to analyze the contents of your coffee, the output of your new grow lights, or a distant star on a budget? Just build your own spectrometer, or pick up the limited edition steampunk version." Besides making cool hardware, they'd like to "build a Wikipedia-style library of open source spectra, and to refine and improve sample collection and analysis techniques. We imagine a kind of 'SHAZAM for materials' which can help to investigate chemical spills, diagnose crop diseases, identify contaminants in household products, and even analyze olive oil, coffee, and homebrew beer."

OakDragon writes "Kickstarter has introduced some more stringent guidelines and requirements specifically for the Hardware and Product Design categories. These new requirements are laid out in a blog post called 'Kickstarter Is Not a Store.' Simulations will now be prohibited. Video cannot show a proposed product, action, etc. — only a real product and what it does at the time. Product renderings and other simulated illustrations also will not be sufficient — the project creator will have to have photographs of a real prototype."

Daniel Knight, besides being an actor, D&D fanatic, and collector of He-Man figurines, is the director of a film version of Terry Pratchett's Discworld story Troll Bridge that's been enabled by a massive Kickstarter campaign. Filming has finished (you can see some of the raw and intermediate footage linked from that story) and now all the rest of the work that goes into the finishing and releasing the movie is underway. Why this film? Knight says he "ended up acting a small role in a short film called Star Wars: Broken Allegiance. My performance was terrible. But that introduced me to the world of fan films, and I started wondering if it would be possible to do a Discworld one." The project is clearly a labor of love — it's a massive undertaking on a shoestring budget, with a tough goal: "Troll Bridge aims to be the largest scale short film in history. Using resources garnered over eight solid years of dedication, love, sweat, and tears – Troll Bridge has already begun exceeding expectations as to what should be anticipated from a short form production." The cast and crew (even the caterers) are all volunteers, but it still takes money to construct sets, create costumes, and buy time with needed equipment. Daniel has graciously agreed to answer your questions about the process; as with other Slashdot interviews, you're invited to ask as many questions as you'd like, but please ask them in separate posts.

An anonymous reader writes "After clocking in at $82,000 on their Kickstarter campaign, two Troll Bridge trailers have been released online showing helicopter shots in New Zealand (video) and a large scale bridge set that was built and shot on (video). A Behind the Scenes (video) has also been released demonstrating what fans are now actually capable of, given decent crowd-funding. The film has finished shooting and is expected to be released next year. Sir Terry Pratchett has been apparently thrilled with the progress." But can it beat Star Wreck for best production award?

linjaaho writes "Senja Larsen, who runs popular Facebook study group Senja teaches you Swedish, collected $14,161 via Kickstarter's crowd funding service. The project caught much media attention in Finland (TV and all major newspapers), since it is the first crowdfunded book project in this country, and among the first Finnish crowdfunded projects. (Previous ones include the movie Iron Sky, the role-playing game Myrskyn Sankarit, and the Wishbone headphone wire manager). Now, after successfully collecting the funds for the book (and after the book has been edited and printed), the National Police Board of Finland has asked Senja to submit a statement [PDF; Finnish] concerning using crowdfunding to finance a project [PDF; Finnish] and the terminology used. It is possible that all the funding collected must be returned. The main problem is that direct translations of terminology at Kickstarter, such as 'bounty' and 'support,' are interpreted to mean collecting money without giving anything back, and this kind of operation requires a permit which can be only given to associations, not to private persons, and it takes long to apply for such permit."

linjaaho writes "Senja Larsen, who runs popular Facebook study group Senja teaches you Swedish, collected $14,161 via Kickstarter's crowd funding service. The project caught much media attention in Finland (TV and all major newspapers), since it is the first crowdfunded book project in this country, and among the first Finnish crowdfunded projects. (Previous ones include the movie Iron Sky, the role-playing game Myrskyn Sankarit, and the Wishbone headphone wire manager). Now, after successfully collecting the funds for the book (and after the book has been edited and printed), the National Police Board of Finland has asked Senja to submit a statement [PDF; Finnish] concerning using crowdfunding to finance a project [PDF; Finnish] and the terminology used. It is possible that all the funding collected must be returned. The main problem is that direct translations of terminology at Kickstarter, such as 'bounty' and 'support,' are interpreted to mean collecting money without giving anything back, and this kind of operation requires a permit which can be only given to associations, not to private persons, and it takes long to apply for such permit."

An anonymous reader writes "After a successful funding run at Kickstarter, the final chapter of the Star Wars fan film Pink Five is committed to a release date of January 1, 2013. Great news for the followers of this great webseries."

An anonymous reader writes "After a successful funding run at Kickstarter, the final chapter of the Star Wars fan film Pink Five is committed to a release date of January 1, 2013. Great news for the followers of this great webseries."

New submitter junkrig writes "After a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, Jordan Weisman, creator of Shadowrun, has returned to bring the series back to the screen as Shadowrun Returns; an old-school, turn-based tactical RPG. Their successful initial fundraising (over $1.8 million) allowed them to commit to developing a native Linux version of the game. A second team, working closely with Weisman, now hopes to bring a similar, turn-based Shadowrun game to life: Shadowrun Online. To be built with the Unity 4 engine, Shadowrun Online will be massively multiplayer and have native Linux support from the start — assuming, of course, they manage to fund their project. Both games are expected for release in 2013."

New submitter junkrig writes "After a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, Jordan Weisman, creator of Shadowrun, has returned to bring the series back to the screen as Shadowrun Returns; an old-school, turn-based tactical RPG. Their successful initial fundraising (over $1.8 million) allowed them to commit to developing a native Linux version of the game. A second team, working closely with Weisman, now hopes to bring a similar, turn-based Shadowrun game to life: Shadowrun Online. To be built with the Unity 4 engine, Shadowrun Online will be massively multiplayer and have native Linux support from the start — assuming, of course, they manage to fund their project. Both games are expected for release in 2013."

Virtual reality headsets have historically been very disappointing. While the concept has been fun and interesting, the technological realities never quite lived up to expectations, and hardware developers largely gave up on research into this kind of device. However, it's been long enough that display technology has caught up to our ambitions. So, where are our VR headsets? Well, hobbyist Palmer Luckey asked that same question, and when he couldn't find a good answer, he decided to build one himself. He and his team have built a prototype, and they just launched a Kickstarter campaign to distribute developer kits. The campaign blew past its $250,000 goal in hours. What's interesting about this particular campaign is that Palmer took the Oculus Rift to various development studios and managed to get enthusiastic endorsements from some big names, including Cliff Bleszinski, Gabe Newell, and John Carmack.

Earlier this month, we discussed a Kickstarter project for Ouya, and Android-based gaming console in development by a company of the same name. Their fundraising campaign was wildly successful, and now they've partnered with cloud gaming provider OnLive for the console's launch. (Which is somewhat unexpected, because OnLive already sells its own pseudo-console.) In the same post, the Ouya creators showed their most recent design for the console's controllers.

First time accepted submitter thecrazyivan writes "As companies like Reddit and Foursquare have shown, Internet users enjoy earning points in arbitrary social games. So why not apply that competitive motivation to something useful, like cleaning up the world's PCs? A startup called Jumpshot is raising funds to launch a new, friendlier form of computer security. Jumpshot is still in its infancy, but it seems to have excited plenty of users with its potential: The company launched a Kickstarter project and almost immediately raised nearly three times its funding goal."

rodrigoandrade writes "Ouya is a new Android-based home console that aims to bring to the living room the $0.99 games business model that has worked so well for Apple. The device 'will allow developers to easily create and sell their games and be fully “hackable” — anyone will be able to pull the machine apart and tinker with it to their heart’s content.' They're planning on shipping by March 2013. Admittedly, it's vaporware so far, but it could turn the industry on its head, effectively putting an end to the things we all hate about modern console gaming ($60 games, DLC, DRM, endless sequels, movie tie-ins, etc.)"

First time accepted submitter Udigs writes "You might have heard of the Google LunarX Prize. It's a competition where private, often non-profit organizations race to build a vehicle capable of completing a short mission on the moon. But one of the problems facing these private teams is the issue of raising money to make the trip. However, one Florida team is taking an interesting approach: they are offering to send your DNA to the moon for a price. For the inclined, they've started a kickstarter page."

Last week you got a chance to ask the team behind Space Command about their project and all things sci-fi. Marc Zicree, Doug Drexler, David Raiklen, and Neil Johnson were nice enough to put down the blasters and answer a handful of your best questions. David even answered one of his own! Read below to see what they had to say. Opinion on the State of Sci-Fi in Film?
by eldavojohn

To each of you, what is your opinion on the current state of science fiction in today's films? Obviously, there's been an increase in all film categories with more movies coming out but what do you like and dislike about films in this era? Care to comment the remake of Total Recall? Or 3D in blockbusters like Avatar?

Marc: I think there are some very strong directors working in science fiction films, such as Ridley Scott and James Cameron, and although you can fault some of their recent films they’re pushing the technological envelope in ways that make it easier and easier for considerably lower budgeted filmmakers to provide amazing special effects and production values. I’m very pleased science fiction is consistently popular as a genre and happy to learn from my brother writers, producers, directors and actors.

Neil: I am very happy that Sci-Fi is currently becoming cool again It all goes in waves and it seems Sci-Fi is back in for the moment That being said, for me personally, this is all I ever think about day and night. My head is always in the stars. Remake movies to me is cowardice on behalf of people who finance films (and who can blame them- I myself am guilty also). To be original seems to be a hard thing to ask for.

David: I love that there are science fiction elements in popular films. Science Fiction and Fantasy always have an overlap, and have led the box office for years. The mix usually favors fantasy for story, sci-fi for design. In fact, you can add superhero films into the mix, they also have sci-fi and fantasy elements. I like a bit more science in my science fiction than most film/tv today. 3D is here to stay, and can become a story telling technique, like in Hugo.

Doug: I think the best science fiction isn't for everyone. Growing up, I remember that I took a certain pride that the mass market did not appreciate it. It was a private club. If you enjoyed it, you were weird. The fact that you enjoyed it said something about you. You were unusual, and did not follow the crowd. A story that Gene Roddenberry told was how his father apologized to the neighbors the night Star Trek premiered. That's cool.

The era of the science fiction blockbuster began with Star Wars. I think that SW hurt as much as helped. When something is that big, people who have a disdain for the genre become interested for the wrong reasons, which brings with it it's own problems. It also results in the genre being squeezed into a narrow mold.

I think that 3D is as inevitable as sound was, and then color. To see a top flight film maker like Martin Scorcese employing 3D , you realize that this time it's here to stay, and has become a legitimate film making tool.

Ultimately a lot of good science fiction films have gotten made in spite of mass market acceptance, so I wouldn't say that I am complaining, I'm simply observing.



Question.
by Anonymous Coward

Of all the things that have to be done to make a good movie (Script, acting, cinematography...), when it comes to Science Fiction, probably the most important is creating a consistent universe. How did you go about trying to do that - did you consciously set down an write a "Bible" or did you just wing it?

Marc: Having written for many science fiction shows, including Star Trek – The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, Sliders and so on, I feel it’s vital to have a sense of the universe you’re writing in and where you’re going. With Magic Time – which started as a two-hour pilot and grew into three novels (with a fourth down the road) – I had to really know what I was up to. In terms of Space Command, before we ever announced the project I had already written a series bible with background on the history and major characters, outlined the first three films, planned the fourth and had written most of the first two-hour script. Space Command is an epic story that spans many years, and it’s imperative I treat that responsibility with respect. As you write, inspiration can definitely come and you can find marvelous surprises, but many shows suffer because the writers have no idea where they’re going.

Neil: It is all about creating a bible. We must be solid about what has come before and where things are going, otherwise it can end up in a fuddle after a few films (or TV show episodes). Recent TV shows that have been great, but suffered from terrible conclusions probably didn't have a strong enough story bible. That being said, a bible should evolve and change once you have a few films or episodes under your belt even Star Wars "evolved" into what we have now

David: Marc is a genius at writing Bibles, it really makes all the difference to have a coherent story arc that spans episodes. The most important thing is characters that we actually care about. But the Universe they live in gives us room to expand and explore without contradicting the early stories. And provides room for novels, games, even fan films to join in. Bible and transmedia go hand in hand. So the story grows, but stays true to a vision.

Doug: Marc has written a bible based on our discussions, our likes and dislikes. There is always a certain amount of "winging it", and that is part of the fun. Just like life, your universe evolves and grows on it's own. At least you hope so. I think that in order to be great, that's a prime ingredient. That's what one means when they say something has taken on a life of it's own. That's really exciting.



How do you sustain it?
by mattr

What is your sustainable funding and distribution model, and do you see any potential interaction with commercial spaceflight endeavors?

Neil: Distribution methods have changed dramatically in the last 6 years. Blu ray was unheard of a while ago, and Video On Demand was not anything to worry about. My last film, Alien Armageddon was the number 1 Independent film on Video On Demand in it's first month or release. My first film, back in the 90's went to number 7 in the Blockbuster Top Ten in the UK(on VHS). These days, that film would probably not even get released. As far as spaceflight endeavors? We have a responsibility as film makers to inspire a future generation of spacefarers. Most people at NASA were inspired by Star Trek now. who is left. We hope to take up the torch and inspire a new generation of astronauts and scientists

David: I'm no expert on intellectual property business models. Neil is great at this. But I do see that creators have to adapt to changing technology, without getting hurt by unforeseen or unintended consequences. For example, downloads made it tricky to earn a living, though it does offer freedom to those who can mount a successful marketing campaign and create a large fan following. Commercial spaceflight may fit in the picture. Science Fiction helped make spaceflight possible, and can inspire people to go into Space for exploration and fun. Maybe science fiction is a place to show spaceflight ads. The rise of private space ventures is great. But public programs are important too. It's benefits mankind.

Doug: This new age of Internet funding and distribution is largely unexplored. I think the studios have no idea how to use it yet. Their power has always been based on having control of the technology, and the distribution of films, and that model is being shattered. Today, anyone on the street has the potential to reach a massive audience.

Being able to instantly interact with the audience is also changing the way films are funded. We've seen a version of that happening for many years in public television. It can result in more sophisticated fare, because you can appeal to a niche audience. We saw that in television of the 1950s when TV was only available to the well to do, who had more sophisticated tastes. Beacause of this, New York was a hotbed of sophisticated live drama, which gave birth to writers like Paddy Cheyevsky, and Rod Serling.

Is it sustainable? That is yet to be discovered. We've had a modest success raising money for Space Command. Actually better than we expected. I suppose that if enough people like what we do, and we are unique enough to keep folks coming back to fund us, we'll be able to continue creating.



Will it follow recent trends?
by hort_wort

I've noticed that scifi shows these days tends to come in two categories: those that make fun of themselves to be funny and those that try to be realistic by being dark and miserable. Will Space Command conform to these recent trends? Or will we finally see a return to a plot that doesn't toy with the viewers emotions?

Neil: We don't want to be bland emotionally, however, being dark and miserable is now a trend of the mid 2000's, and this time has passed. There is enough to be miserable about, and we want to bring back, hope, adventure, and excitement. It's all about real people striving to do heroic things

David: Dystopian stories have been around forever. It's easier to make a dark, miserable future, you just think "what if things go wrong". People striving to be their best, and succeeding, can be very dramatic and entertaining. But it won't be easy to get there. We respect the audience, you guys are smart, we'll give you smart, fun adventures that you can believe in.

Doug: We love funny, but we aren't planning to do outright comedy. "Dark and edgy"... not really our thing. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "toying" with viewers emotions. Naturally you always want to engage peoples emotions. As far as toyed with... I feel toyed with when plotlines are left unresolved, a promising show is cancelled before it's given a chance to find it's audience, and wrestling and ghosthunters displace science fiction on a science fiction network.



Could fans support their favourite shows?
by AmiMoJo

In your case you put together a proposal for a film and found the funding for it, but do you think this sort of technique could be used to fund existing franchises that are in danger of being cancelled? Personally I would love to have been able to fund another series or movie of Stargate Universe. Would it be best for the fans to start such an effort, or should it come from the producers of the show? It might be a hard sell if the fans were just asking for another series without any hint of what it might contain, which could only come from the producers.

Neil: having an great fan community worked back in the days of Star Trek to helps more seasons, but recently with Serenity, it was very disappointing that the network people just don't get it. Also with Stargate Universe what a fascinating show! I think it all has to do with the advertising dollar and the cost per minute. Reality TV does well initially and is cheap to produce, but who feels like sitting through a reality show from the mid 90's on DVD these days? But Star Trek, Next Generation is getting a whole new HD remaster for Blu ray, and the Twilight Zone still as cool as the day it aired. Most people think of the initial dollar and don't go past this, but in 20 years time, we will still all be watching reruns of Star Trek and Galactica, while other, cheaper shows will be forgotten. I think the producers are often just puppets to the people who hold the real dollar value that is why we are into kickstarter cutting out the middle men and bringing it all to the people.

David: There just aren't many science fiction fans among executives at the companies that control the rights to science fiction shows like Stargate, or Firefly. Even if there were, they have to show a big audience. If there's a big enough fan following to get the attention of the studio, or one of the very top creators insists, there could be a new movie or series. It took decades to get Star Trek back on air. We made a great classic Star Trek episode "World Enough and Time", check it out. Maybe Stargate could do the same. The future is with creator owned series, that can find alternative ways to get made and seen. Isaac Asimov said that he wouldn't trade his fans for those of a bigger selling author. His fans were smart and loyal! Kickstarter is the new way for people to support shows.

Doug: That may be difficult to do that within the studio system, where they spend as much on lunch as we do to make an entire episode. A single hour episode from the studio can cost as much as three million dollars. We're hoping we can raise 200k by the time the Kickstarter project is done. On the other hand, we're certain that we can make it look like a million.



What themes will be dealt with?
by briester

What is the premise of your story? What universal human themes will you deal with? What questions are you asking about life, the universe, and everything? And how is the setting 'in spaaaace!' going to help you ask these questions? I've read that some notable sci-fi writers are providing inspiration for the show, so I'd love to hear what sort of message your show will ultimately turn that inspiration into.

Doug: Marc is in the midst of writing the first episode, and I haven't gotten in his way. I don't want to disturb that flow.

Once I read the script, Marc may become uncomfortable when my guys and I begin to suggest different ways to approach things, but I've always found Marc to be open. Our department is on a slightly different wavelength, and we will almost certainly suggest avenues that Marc will not have thought of. I think that Galactica benefited by including the VFX department in story. We eat, drink and sleep science fiction from another region, and our accent can be pretty sexy.

Why "spaaaace!"? Human beings are at their most interesting, and discover more about themselves when they hang their asses on the line. Life is more delicious when we are frightened, but go on in spite of it. The thrilling uncertainty that comes with the frontier is wasabi, and you know what that's about.



What Science Fiction or Fantasy are you reading?
by Cragen

Is reading SFF is a factor in the SFF Movie Industry producers such as yourselves? If so, what Science Fiction or Fantasy are you reading right now? Or What has been, so far, your favorite SFF book? And (Or) who is your favorite SFF author? Thanks for the great memories of watching your stuff the first time.

Neil: I am a big Star Wars fan, but this will NOT be Star Wars flavored. HG Wells is my all time favorite, as well as Arthur C. Clark, Asimov, Ray Bradbury (I daily mourn their loss) and more recently I am into Stephen Baxter. His novel The Time Ships is an official sequel to The Time Machine, and I truly love it. have read it six times.

David: Wells, Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, Silverberg, Niven, Kress, King(he counts in SF), Baxter, and Zicree. There's so many great stories, brilliant bits. Here's an example: “It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief” - Alfred Bester

Doug: Reading science fiction, IMO, is very important. I have to admit that I don't get to do as much recreational reading as I used to, because I am so consistently employed in a business that is way beyond 9 to 5, and that is all consuming. I have no free time. My favorite authors are Bradbury, Ellison, Asimov, Burroughs, Heinlein, Serling, Feldstein\Gaines and Wells. I would have turned out a different person without them.



Hard sci fi or Soft sci fi?
by vlm

Hard sci fi or Soft sci fi? There are no hard sci fi movies, at least from the past 20 years, or at least soft sci fi outnumbers hard sci fi by about 200 to 1. In books I'd dare say the ratios approach 50:50 or at least not as intensely skewed.

Your kickstarter page lists Asimov and Clarke as partial inspiration implies hard sci fi, yet also has PR stuff about how people "like the look" which implies ultra-soft sci fi.

Neil: Personally I like hard Sci-Fi, and also stuff like Dune which is strong in character and history. For the people to enjoy your show, there must be some character, life and humanity, but hard Sci-Fi is where it's at!!!

David: When I started reading science fiction, I first understood hard scifi. Then soft sci fi. Now I like both styles blended. In the 50s it was mostly hard sci fi, and that's the look you see in Space Command. We consult NASA and JPL people to get it right!

Doug: Hard sci fi doesn't fly well in the age of blockbusters and mass market. That's part of the reason for our striking out on our own. People enjoy both blends, and we will certainly be pouring both. We aren't mass market, so we will have greater freedom to explore. Hopefully we will be given the opportunity to do so by you folks out there.



Submitting ideas
by LongearedBat

Will there be a way to volunteer new ideas? For example... new alien species, planets, technologies, etc.

There might be some great new concepts "out there" by people who are not involved with the movie industry.

Neil: In my opinion, this will come to pass. YOU are our audience, and we want to listen. in the same way that Star Trek used to take material from unsolicited sources (fans, etc), we want to be open to these ideas. How this will happen is yet to be determined, because this production method is an evolving model. That being said, we have some amazing writers onboard who REALLY care, and they can write!

David: We're open to ideas, and you can actually get a planet named for you as a reward. Fan art is already appearing, and fan films will happen too. This is an interactive process, and we really do read all the mail.

Doug: Absolutely, in fact this process has already begun on our Facebook page.



Will there be auditions?
by WSOGMM

If one were interested in acting on the show, how could he or she get involved?

Neil: We have a talent search for 2 roles in the film series starting right now checkout the webpage.

David: What Neil said!

Doug: Yes. Check our Kickstarter and Facebook page for details about our talent search.



Hollywood accounting
by vlm

Comment on how "Hollywood accounting" and "kickstarter accounting" interact with each other, if at all.

Neil: As someone who has been screwed by Hollywood accounting, I think that is a problem in all large organizations. We endeavor to put as much money onto the screen as possible. PLUS, what may not be known, but we ourselves are investing a great deal of our own money into this. We are putting our money where our mouths are. We don't want to waste anything. We are risking all we have for Space Command.

David: The idea here is to forgo the Hollywood model and be transparent as possible.



How are you scoring this?

David: I'm glad you asked a music question! (or was that me?) We're going to blend live orchestra and state of the art electronics. We believe in having the greatest musicians in the world performing together to create a unique sound and emotion for this series. And there will be melody. A theme that you can hum to liven your day. There will be tips of the hat to classic scores like Day The Earth Stood Still and Twilight Zone, and lots of fun bits for soundtrack fans. We're inventing a new instrument to be part of our universe.

New submitter toxygen01 writes "Neal Stephenson, sci-fi writer mostly known for his books Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon, takes on revolutionizing virtual sword fighting with help of crowdfunding. Inspired by the little-known fictional universe of 'Mongoliad,' an interactive book he is collaborating on, his company is trying to develop hardware (low-latency motion controller) and software for realistic medieval sword fighting. From what is promised, it will try to be open for other developers by having API and SDK available for further modding." Very few Kickstarter drives have a steel longsword as one of the rewards for investing.

An anonymous reader writes "Stainless Games has been fundraising for Carmageddon: Reincarnation, a modern day remake of the classic Carmageddon racing games, on Kickstarter for weeks. Stainless said that if they hit $600,000 in pledges before time runs out, they would commit themselves to creating a Linux port of the game, as well as a MacOS port. Today they made it official: the fundraising has come so close to netting $600K overall, with a few more hours left to go, that they are officially committing themselves to creating a Linux port of the new game. PC gamers will get to play Carmageddon 4 first, with a February 2013 release date. The MacOS & Linux versions will follow the PC version later in 2013."

Marc Zicree, Doug Drexler, David Raiklen, and Neil Johnson are the guys behind the fastest funded film project ever on Kickstarter, Space Command. The project will feature a number of Star Trek vets behind the camera and a number of Trek actors are also involved, including Armin Shimerman, George Takei, Ethan Phillips and Robert Picardo. The team has graciously agreed to take some time from trying to make a crowd-funded movie, building spaceships, and exploring alien worlds to answer your questions. Ask as many as you like but please confine your questions to one per post.

VVrath writes "Following Tuesday's story about MuseScore releasing its open source recording of the Goldberg Variations, the Musopen project has released ProTools files from its open source recording project. The final edited recordings are still being worked on but it seems we're living in very interesting times regarding open source classical music."

rDouglass writes "MuseScore, the open source music notation editor, and pianist Kimiko Ishizaka have released a new recording and digital edition of Bach's Goldberg Variations. The works are released under the Creative Commons Zero license to promote the broadest possible free use of the works. The score underwent two rounds of public peer review, drawing on processes normally applied to open source software. Furthermore, the demands of Bach's notational style drove significant advancements in the MuseScore open source project. The recording was made on a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial piano in the Teldex Studio of Berlin. Anne-Marie Sylvestre, a Canadian record producer, was inspired by the project and volunteered her time to edit and produce the recording. The project was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign that was featured on Slashdot in March 2011."

An anonymous reader writes "Legendary sci-fi writer Marc Zicree (Star Trek, Babylon 5, Sliders) and special effects wizard Doug Drexler (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica) are behind the fastest funded film project on Kickstarter. They're using crowd-funding website kickstarter to directly communicate with and enlist the support of fans for their latest project Space Command. Maybe with direct communication, sci-fi fans can rest easy and not have to worry about their favorite shows being cancelled like FireFly."

An anonymous reader writes "Emacsy is 'a Guile library that provides Emacs-like facilities — keymaps, minibuffer, tab completion, recordable macros, and major/minor modes — for applications natively.' However, to my eyes, it looks more like an attempt to revive the development style done on Symbolics Lisp Machines that survives to some extent in Emacs. Might be a boon to Emacs users, but where's a comparable VIM alternative?" The skeptic in me asks what benefit this would have over just using libguile directly, and how it fits in with efforts to port Emacs itself to Guile and things like Englightenment's pluggable event loop. The example code seems to imply Emacs-like APIs will be used (despite not intending to replace parts of Emacs), even when better alternatives exist. Some of the proposed components seem orthogonal to existing interface toolkits; others seem to compete with components provided by various Free desktop environments.

New submitter The God of Code writes "EA has announced that they will be waiving all Origin distribution fees for crowd-funded games — like those from Kickstarter — for the first 90 days. 'The public support for crowd-funding creative game ideas coming from small developers today is nothing short of phenomenal,' Origin VP David DeMartini commented. 'It's also incredibly healthy for the gaming industry. Gamers around the world deserve a chance to play every great new game, and by waiving distribution fees on Origin we can help make that a reality for successfully crowd-funded developers.' The recently funded Wasteland 2 developer Brian Fargo applauds EA's move, saying, 'Having Origin waive their distribution fees for 90 days for fan funded games is a major economic bonus for small developers. We look forward to bringing Wasteland 2 to the Origin audience.'"

New submitter MathIsTasty writes "Recently, it was announced on the Octave-maintainers list that a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to bring Matlab style numerical computations and graphing to Android via a 'more than' port of Octave and gnuplot. While I doubt it will be as successful as some recent games on Kickstarter, is this a reasonable way to fund free software development? Now, we just have to worry about people working on simulating solar irradiation while driving. Here is a good blog post about the project."

New submitter MathIsTasty writes "Recently, it was announced on the Octave-maintainers list that a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to bring Matlab style numerical computations and graphing to Android via a 'more than' port of Octave and gnuplot. While I doubt it will be as successful as some recent games on Kickstarter, is this a reasonable way to fund free software development? Now, we just have to worry about people working on simulating solar irradiation while driving. Here is a good blog post about the project."

New submitter MathIsTasty writes "Recently, it was announced on the Octave-maintainers list that a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to bring Matlab style numerical computations and graphing to Android via a 'more than' port of Octave and gnuplot. While I doubt it will be as successful as some recent games on Kickstarter, is this a reasonable way to fund free software development? Now, we just have to worry about people working on simulating solar irradiation while driving. Here is a good blog post about the project."

New submitter MathIsTasty writes "Recently, it was announced on the Octave-maintainers list that a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to bring Matlab style numerical computations and graphing to Android via a 'more than' port of Octave and gnuplot. While I doubt it will be as successful as some recent games on Kickstarter, is this a reasonable way to fund free software development? Now, we just have to worry about people working on simulating solar irradiation while driving. Here is a good blog post about the project."

netbuzz writes "Crowd-funding startup Kickstarter is taking a public-relations hit today after it was reported that some 70,000 not-yet-public project ideas were left exposed on the company's Web site for more than two weeks. Kickstarter insists that no financial information was compromised and that only a few dozen of the projects were actually accessed. 'Obviously our users' data is incredibly important to us, the company said in a blog post. 'Even though limited information was made accessible through this bug, it is completely unacceptable.'"

TheSilentNumber writes "Bassam Kurdali's free culture 3D animation, Tube, is nearing the final stages of production. Tube is a collaborative effort between 56 artists from 22 countries — some of which are at war. After directing the first of the Blender Institute's 'Open Movie Projects,' Elephants Dream, Bassam wanted to prove the viability of free cultural works and usability of free software like Blender and PiTiVi for independent filmmakers. Just a few days after launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the project, the goal has been met, which means we should see the final release in seven months!"

In this exclusive video interview, Slashdot chats with Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe, who is working with Replay Games and Kickstarter to bring Larry Laffer to a whole new generation of computers. They'll maintain the original Larry style of being naughty without crossing the line into porn, which is appropriate for an 80s game about a 70s dork who wears a (shudder) leisure suit. You can donate to this effort through Kickstarter if you like. (We aren't getting paid to say this, and it's a labor of love for Al, too, who is more recently famous for running the hokey daily comedy email newsletter, CyberJoke 3000.)

skywiseguy writes "I have only used Kickstarter to back a single project so far, but one of the backers of that project pointed us to a project promising video capable glasses which was once one of the top 10 highest funded projects in Kickstarter history. After reading through the comments, it is obvious that the project has not met its expected deadline of 'Winter 2011,' but the project team rarely gives any updates with concrete information. All emails sent to them by backers get a form letter in reply, they routinely delete negative comments from their Facebook page, and apparently very soon after the project was funded, they posted pictures of themselves on a tropical beach with the tagline, 'We are not on a beach in Thailand.' Their early promotions were featured on Engadget and other tech sites but since the project was funded they've rarely, if ever, communicated in more than a form letter. So at what point can a project like this be considered to have failed? And if you had backed a project with this kind of lack of communication from the project team, what would you consider to be the best course of action? Disclaimer: I have not backed this project, but I am very interested in funding Kickstarter projects and I do not want to get caught sending money to a less than reputable project. According to the above project's backers, Kickstarter claims to have no mechanism for refunding money to backers of failed projects and no way to hold the project team accountable to their backers. This does not seem like a healthy environment for someone who is averse to giving their money to scam artists."

skywiseguy writes "I have only used Kickstarter to back a single project so far, but one of the backers of that project pointed us to a project promising video capable glasses which was once one of the top 10 highest funded projects in Kickstarter history. After reading through the comments, it is obvious that the project has not met its expected deadline of 'Winter 2011,' but the project team rarely gives any updates with concrete information. All emails sent to them by backers get a form letter in reply, they routinely delete negative comments from their Facebook page, and apparently very soon after the project was funded, they posted pictures of themselves on a tropical beach with the tagline, 'We are not on a beach in Thailand.' Their early promotions were featured on Engadget and other tech sites but since the project was funded they've rarely, if ever, communicated in more than a form letter. So at what point can a project like this be considered to have failed? And if you had backed a project with this kind of lack of communication from the project team, what would you consider to be the best course of action? Disclaimer: I have not backed this project, but I am very interested in funding Kickstarter projects and I do not want to get caught sending money to a less than reputable project. According to the above project's backers, Kickstarter claims to have no mechanism for refunding money to backers of failed projects and no way to hold the project team accountable to their backers. This does not seem like a healthy environment for someone who is averse to giving their money to scam artists."

jfruh writes "Most gamers probably know that legendary game designer Tim Schafer turned to Kickstarter to help raise money a new adventure game; aiming for $400,000, he managed to raise more than $3 million. But you might not know that a host of other game projects are doing well on the crowdfunding site, with creators ranging from industry famous to unknown. By bypassing corporate funding and appealing directly to their audience, these developers are sparking a renaissance in quirky, personal games that probably wouldn't be backed by a big label looking for a sure-fire hit."

MrSeb writes "Ken Schweller, a computer scientist and psychologist, and also the chairman of the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, has a vision: He wants to put wireless Android tablets in the hands of bonobo apes. The Great Ape Trust Sanctuary is home to seven bonobos, including the world-famous Kanzi, and two orangutans. So far the Sanctuary has focused almost exclusively on language, with the bonobos and their keepers communicating through lexigrams on a touch-screen TV. Now Schweller wants to go one step further and outfit the bonobos with wireless tablets running custom Bonobo Chat software, allowing the apes to communicate with their keepers (and other bonobos!) from anywhere in the Sanctuary, and to remotely control devices such as vending machines, doors, and the RoboBonobo. If all this wasn't weird (cool?) enough, the RoboBonobo is even outfitted with a water cannon (so the telepresent apes can play "chase games" with humans) and Schweller is trying to fund the whole thing with Kickstarter. If you're a big fan of apes (or Darwinism), be sure to donate."

New submitter 0111 1110 writes "Attempting to emulate Double Fine's success to fund another currently dead genre of computer game, Brian Fargo of Interplay fame has started a kickstarter project for a sequel to Wasteland, his1988 post-apocalyptic RPG which inspired Fallout. It will be turn-based and party-based, with a top-down perspective and 2D graphics. Fargo has managed to attract many of the original developers, such as Alan Pavlish and Mike Stackpole, as well as Jason Anderson, who was a designer for Fallout, and Mark Morgan, who did the music for Planescape: Torment and both of the original Fallout games. Fargo's goal has been set at $900,000. Anything above that will be used for additional game content. At $1.5 million he will offer an OS X version. An interview with Fargo by Rock, Paper, Shotgun provides some additional insight into what he and his group are planning, as does a video interview with Matt Barton."

An anonymous reader writes "Double Fine Adventure, the crowd-funded adventure game from Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert (of Monkey Island fame), just crossed the $2.5 million mark in funding on Kickstarter. So far, about 73,000 enthusiastic backers have contributed an average of $35 dollars each, with 3 extravagant backers going as far as to contribute $10,000 (earning them a lunch with Schafer and Gilbert, among other goodies). The total sum is over 6 times the amount Schafer and Gilbert were initially hoping to raise ($400,000). Schafer released a few pictures showing what he's doing with all the money. The project has received attention in mainstream media (sort of), with NPR's Morning Edition covering the story."

New submitter Garth Smith writes "Tim Schafer has a video update for his crowdsourced project, Double Fine Adventure. Because of the nearly $2 million in funding, the budget is now large enough for language translations, voice acting, music, and more platforms. The XBox and PS3 are absent. I wonder what would the chances of a DRM-free release have been if funding had come from a traditional publisher?"

TechCrunch features an article (the first of three, actually) outlining the development of a clever hardware keyboard for the iPad. It's hard to write about Kickstarter projects, because there are so many cool ideas that seem to deserve funding it's simply overwhelming. The TouchFire keyboard is one of those cool ideas, too, but it's far surpassed the founders' original funding goals and is nearing production. The TouchFire isn't wired, but it isn't wireless, either, in the conventional sense, because it provides no signal of its own: it's a transparent overlay that provides a tactile interface to the iPad's on-screen keyboard, and — the tricky part — is thin enough to actually swipe through when you're not using it for text-entry. The keyboard takes advantage of the iPad 2's built-in magnets for stability, though it works with the original iPad, too. (Hopefully an Android version will come soon, but the variety of screen resolutions and on-screen keyboard shapes makes that harder.) I talked with co-creator Steve Isaac (it's his account at TechCrunch, too) a few weeks back, and he said that the hardest part of the development work has been producing the complex mold shapes that form each collapsible key. The resulting tablet-with-keyboard reminds me superficially, and pleasantly, of the TRS-80 Model 100. (The Tandy actually had much better battery life than an iPad, but could do far less. It also weighed 3.1 pounds and cost more than a thousand dollars in 1983, which means nearly $2400 today; such is progress.) Prototypes are tight (and I don't have an iPad), but I hope to give an in-person report on the TouchFire soon.

Greg Leyh is an electrical engineer who has spent most of his career working around particle accelerators and high-voltage machinery. Recently Leyh has been working on The Lightning Foundry, a project to see if humans can replicate the voltage economy effect of lightning. With the help of a Kickstarter campaign and a pair of 10-story Tesla Coil towers he hopes to generate man-made lightning. Greg has agreed to take some time away from his lightning machines and answer your questions. Ask as many as you like but please confine your questions to one per post.

New submitter PerlJedi writes "There is a very cool write up on the Make blog about an effort to build the world's largest tesla coils. Quoting: '"Somehow lightning can generate huge discharges with only about a fifth of the voltage per foot that lab discharges require," Leyh explains. "The part that especially fascinates me is that this mysterious ability kicks in around 200' in length, which is right at the edge of what we can produce with a practical machine." Leyh wants to see if humans can replicate this voltage economy effect, and has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the building of two 10-story Tesla Coil towers (obviously superseding his current coil-size world record).'"

ArrowBay writes "Dice Age, a independent game project that raised nearly $35K through Kickstarter, is apparently facing some scrutiny from a certain movie studio that has produced movies with a similar name. From the latest project update: 'As if the Ice Age was exclusively the name of a movie, or if Dice Age was a movie itself, the 20th century fox has just asked for an extent of time (till 10-26-2011) to oppose to the registering of our beloved Dice Age game name. My point of view, as a scientist, is the Ice age is a geological era before it is a movie.""

ArrowBay writes "Dice Age, a independent game project that raised nearly $35K through Kickstarter, is apparently facing some scrutiny from a certain movie studio that has produced movies with a similar name. From the latest project update: 'As if the Ice Age was exclusively the name of a movie, or if Dice Age was a movie itself, the 20th century fox has just asked for an extent of time (till 10-26-2011) to oppose to the registering of our beloved Dice Age game name. My point of view, as a scientist, is the Ice age is a geological era before it is a movie.""

DeviceGuru writes "Not content with revealing the source code to his mom's banana bread, two-time BattleBots champion Christian Carlberg has developed an open source flashlight. Carlberg first achieved notoriety shredding competitors' robots with Minion's 14-inch saw blade on BattleBots. Now he's all fired up to begin shipping what they say could be the 'world's first open source flashlight.' But why in the world would you want a reprogrammable flashlight?"

rDouglass writes "MuseScore, the open source music notation project, has created a new edition of Bach's Goldberg Variations, and a set of online tools that facilitates the public scholarly review of the work. The review period is intended to help the MuseScore team identify any problems with the score. The score can be viewed and played in the browser. Annotations and discussions for each part of the score enable review and corrections. Downloadable versions include MuseScore, MusicXML, MIDI, mp3, or PDF. Video scores (YouTube videos that are synchronized to play with the score) let the score be viewed in the context of individual performances. MuseScore is a partner in the Open Goldberg Variations Project, a crowd-funded effort to place a definitive score and recording of the work into the public domain in such a way as to make them widely and freely available, without usage restrictions (Creative Commons Zero). German pianist Kimiko Ishizka will produce the studio recording of the work later this year. Funding continues on Kickstarter until June 3, 2011."