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I began to think that was how they started with wall textures - start with some photo image then photoshop it into unrecognisability.

I don't know if it's the same with EverQuest, but the artists for the Legacy of Kain games would stick photos in as temporary textures to reserve the space in video RAM (space was/is tight on Playstation-series consoles). There are a couple of examples here. Other parts of my site describe things more directly related to TFA, like the city 10/11 rooms in the first Soul Reaver, the room of all in-game artifacts and a deleted, unfinished, but playable room in Defiance, the debug menus for the various games, etc.

I began to think that was how they started with wall textures - start with some photo image then photoshop it into unrecognisability.

I don't know if it's the same with EverQuest, but the artists for the Legacy of Kain games would stick photos in as temporary textures to reserve the space in video RAM (space was/is tight on Playstation-series consoles). There are a couple of examples here. Other parts of my site describe things more directly related to TFA, like the city 10/11 rooms in the first Soul Reaver, the room of all in-game artifacts and a deleted, unfinished, but playable room in Defiance, the debug menus for the various games, etc.

I began to think that was how they started with wall textures - start with some photo image then photoshop it into unrecognisability.

I don't know if it's the same with EverQuest, but the artists for the Legacy of Kain games would stick photos in as temporary textures to reserve the space in video RAM (space was/is tight on Playstation-series consoles). There are a couple of examples here. Other parts of my site describe things more directly related to TFA, like the city 10/11 rooms in the first Soul Reaver, the room of all in-game artifacts and a deleted, unfinished, but playable room in Defiance, the debug menus for the various games, etc.

I began to think that was how they started with wall textures - start with some photo image then photoshop it into unrecognisability.

I don't know if it's the same with EverQuest, but the artists for the Legacy of Kain games would stick photos in as temporary textures to reserve the space in video RAM (space was/is tight on Playstation-series consoles). There are a couple of examples here. Other parts of my site describe things more directly related to TFA, like the city 10/11 rooms in the first Soul Reaver, the room of all in-game artifacts and a deleted, unfinished, but playable room in Defiance, the debug menus for the various games, etc.

I began to think that was how they started with wall textures - start with some photo image then photoshop it into unrecognisability.

I don't know if it's the same with EverQuest, but the artists for the Legacy of Kain games would stick photos in as temporary textures to reserve the space in video RAM (space was/is tight on Playstation-series consoles). There are a couple of examples here. Other parts of my site describe things more directly related to TFA, like the city 10/11 rooms in the first Soul Reaver, the room of all in-game artifacts and a deleted, unfinished, but playable room in Defiance, the debug menus for the various games, etc.

There should be plenty of OSS image-viewing programs available for you to use as a reference for the GIF spec. If I can find example code for something strange and proprietary like Hitachi/Sega's VQ texture format (and I have), GIF should be a cakewalk.

Funny, that's how I feel about people who don't use CSS. Seriously, if you are that concerned with the size of pages and bandwidth, like you say in your other comment, then why are you transmitting your style information on every single page load?

Agreed.

To the GP: I recently redesigned my main website after running it for five years with a design very much like the one you describe - all coded by hand, HTML 3.2, no CSS (although I had some equally old Javascript for highlighting the navigation buttons).

The new version uses CSS, and since I designed it using the "strict" mode of newfangled HTML, it renders more or less identically on different browsers. I also built a batch build content management system, so that I don't have to manually edit a bunch of HTML when I change the design or whatever. I made sure the output is basically what I would have done if I did it all by hand though.

I was very skeptical about it before I started, but it really is a much better way to build websites. It saves time, it makes redesigns and multi-platform stuff easier (like theoretically I could swap out CSS files to make a version formatted for PDAs if I were running a website that would be at all useful on them), and it's *much* easier to get relatively consistent rendering across platforms. The only visible difference I'm aware of between Firefox and IE6/7 is related to tables without a fixed width. Neither one looks superior, they're just different.

Don't worry, Teddy Roosevelt is on the job.

It appears that most anyone who created multimedia with Director and audio from Sound edit in the early 1990's has prior art for many of those "inventions"

I was thinking the same thing. I don't have the old Director files anymore, at least that I can find, but I did stash some screenshots away. I was 16 or 17 at the time, so the design is amateur, but functional:

InterlocK(tm) VF-2S(tm) Shockwave Streaming Audio (the copyright for the song being played says 1996, but I would have had the player up and running in 1995).

Futureshock, the unfinished successor with a GUI for configuration and playlist editing (the original read a text file in the program folder to get its playlist).

The best part was that at the time, I was absolutely convinced that I had made a valuable commercial product, despite it being more or less exactly what Director/Shockwave was intended to allow you to do. I even managed to sell two licenses. I guess what I *should* have done was patent it, then wait a decade and sue Apple.

It appears that most anyone who created multimedia with Director and audio from Sound edit in the early 1990's has prior art for many of those "inventions"

I was thinking the same thing. I don't have the old Director files anymore, at least that I can find, but I did stash some screenshots away. I was 16 or 17 at the time, so the design is amateur, but functional:

InterlocK(tm) VF-2S(tm) Shockwave Streaming Audio (the copyright for the song being played says 1996, but I would have had the player up and running in 1995).

Futureshock, the unfinished successor with a GUI for configuration and playlist editing (the original read a text file in the program folder to get its playlist).

The best part was that at the time, I was absolutely convinced that I had made a valuable commercial product, despite it being more or less exactly what Director/Shockwave was intended to allow you to do. I even managed to sell two licenses. I guess what I *should* have done was patent it, then wait a decade and sue Apple.

It has the perfect cross-marketing endorsement potential as well.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as a good few hackers spent a month testing everything years ago.

I ran into similar lameness when I hacked the debug menus for the PS2 versions of Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance (available on my site, for the curious). As soon as you post something like that, people start cutting and pasting it into forums and websites as if that's the hard part. Some of them even get upset if you challenge them on it, along the lines of "dude i get credit for posting it here first."

Amusingly enough, a friend of mine in the UK took my work and used it to make similar things for the PC versions of the games, and a lot of people assume that *I* had something to do with that other than showing him how it worked on the PS2.

My method now is to make sure that before I tell anyone about a new hack, I post it on my site (which is up permanently), then post it on a couple of forums with timestamps so there's a definite record that can be looked up later.

Nice work on the SSBM codes. I think I'll actually pick up a copy of that so I can try them out =).

Nyquist theorem
If input signal has _maximum frequency_ (bandwidth) f, sampling frequency must be at least 2f

I studied electroacoustic music and digital recording at university. I am very familiar with the Nyquist frequency.

Here, I'll illustrate with a sawtooth wave, sampling frequency 44KHz:

This is a 5512Hz sawtooth wave. As you can see, it is already far from perfect, because the number of samples per cycle means that much of the data has to be interpolated for it to not sound harsh and "digital."

This is a 11024Hz sawtooth wave. By doubling the frequency, I have halved the number of samples per cycle, futher distorting the original shape (and therefore timbre) of the wave. It's almost a rounded-off triangle wave now.

This is a 22048Hz sawtooth wave. By being so close to the Nyquist frequency, all I'm left with is a sine wave, because I'm only getting two samples per cycle. Not only that, but because of which data points were lost, the amplitude has decreased by about half.

The smoothness of these waves is (as I said) because of the interpolation my system is using. Without that, the closer I got to the Nyquist frequency, the more my wave would look like a triangle or square wave, depending on what data points were discarded and the shape of the original wave.

First, you are definitely wrong about 'for an example... ...four times a second',

Sorry, I was in a hurry. Obviously I meant four times per cycle of the waveform.

as when we are considering the nyquist frequency you should look at the frequency domain to see the highest harmonics

Yes, but as we have seen, even below the Nyquist frequency, waveforms are distorted as they approach that limit.

and a signal with highest frequency component of 11kHz is always faithfully sampled with 44kHz sampling

Yes, if the *absolute highest harmonic* is 11KHz, then it will be accurate. Now please show me some commercial music where that is the case.

and for your information, a violin actually has frequency ranging from the low end of some hundred Hz to around 8kHz

My speciality is electronics. It was a hypothetical example. You may replace "violin" with the higher-pitched instrument of your choice =).

Nyquist theorem
If input signal has _maximum frequency_ (bandwidth) f, sampling frequency must be at least 2f

I studied electroacoustic music and digital recording at university. I am very familiar with the Nyquist frequency.

Here, I'll illustrate with a sawtooth wave, sampling frequency 44KHz:

This is a 5512Hz sawtooth wave. As you can see, it is already far from perfect, because the number of samples per cycle means that much of the data has to be interpolated for it to not sound harsh and "digital."

This is a 11024Hz sawtooth wave. By doubling the frequency, I have halved the number of samples per cycle, futher distorting the original shape (and therefore timbre) of the wave. It's almost a rounded-off triangle wave now.

This is a 22048Hz sawtooth wave. By being so close to the Nyquist frequency, all I'm left with is a sine wave, because I'm only getting two samples per cycle. Not only that, but because of which data points were lost, the amplitude has decreased by about half.

The smoothness of these waves is (as I said) because of the interpolation my system is using. Without that, the closer I got to the Nyquist frequency, the more my wave would look like a triangle or square wave, depending on what data points were discarded and the shape of the original wave.

First, you are definitely wrong about 'for an example... ...four times a second',

Sorry, I was in a hurry. Obviously I meant four times per cycle of the waveform.

as when we are considering the nyquist frequency you should look at the frequency domain to see the highest harmonics

Yes, but as we have seen, even below the Nyquist frequency, waveforms are distorted as they approach that limit.

and a signal with highest frequency component of 11kHz is always faithfully sampled with 44kHz sampling

Yes, if the *absolute highest harmonic* is 11KHz, then it will be accurate. Now please show me some commercial music where that is the case.

and for your information, a violin actually has frequency ranging from the low end of some hundred Hz to around 8kHz

My speciality is electronics. It was a hypothetical example. You may replace "violin" with the higher-pitched instrument of your choice =).

Nyquist theorem
If input signal has _maximum frequency_ (bandwidth) f, sampling frequency must be at least 2f

I studied electroacoustic music and digital recording at university. I am very familiar with the Nyquist frequency.

Here, I'll illustrate with a sawtooth wave, sampling frequency 44KHz:

This is a 5512Hz sawtooth wave. As you can see, it is already far from perfect, because the number of samples per cycle means that much of the data has to be interpolated for it to not sound harsh and "digital."

This is a 11024Hz sawtooth wave. By doubling the frequency, I have halved the number of samples per cycle, futher distorting the original shape (and therefore timbre) of the wave. It's almost a rounded-off triangle wave now.

This is a 22048Hz sawtooth wave. By being so close to the Nyquist frequency, all I'm left with is a sine wave, because I'm only getting two samples per cycle. Not only that, but because of which data points were lost, the amplitude has decreased by about half.

The smoothness of these waves is (as I said) because of the interpolation my system is using. Without that, the closer I got to the Nyquist frequency, the more my wave would look like a triangle or square wave, depending on what data points were discarded and the shape of the original wave.

First, you are definitely wrong about 'for an example... ...four times a second',

Sorry, I was in a hurry. Obviously I meant four times per cycle of the waveform.

as when we are considering the nyquist frequency you should look at the frequency domain to see the highest harmonics

Yes, but as we have seen, even below the Nyquist frequency, waveforms are distorted as they approach that limit.

and a signal with highest frequency component of 11kHz is always faithfully sampled with 44kHz sampling

Yes, if the *absolute highest harmonic* is 11KHz, then it will be accurate. Now please show me some commercial music where that is the case.

and for your information, a violin actually has frequency ranging from the low end of some hundred Hz to around 8kHz

My speciality is electronics. It was a hypothetical example. You may replace "violin" with the higher-pitched instrument of your choice =).

Many games have been pushed out the door unfinished. The Legacy of Kain is a famous example, as somewhere in the middle of development they realized they weren't going to make it and cut out huge chunks of game, including the ending, several levels, powerups, etc.

Yes, you can read more about that on my website.

In that case it was painfully obvious that they didn't finish in time, as their game constantly referred to a different number of things to do than you actually had, there were quite a few bugs, empty areas, etc.

I think you are combinining the memory of Soul Reaver with some other game. It never refers to how many different things you need to do. There is only one bug in the entire game that I'm aware of, which is related to a puzzle in Dumah's fortress late in the game, and hardly anyone sees it. There are also no areas in the game that are "empty" unintentionally.

This was made all the worse by the fact that the game was really really good, and if they had convinced their publisher to give them 6 more months for content generation they could have had a staggeringly, legendarily good game.

My understanding is that it would have taken a lot longer than six months, and they'd already delayed the game by about a year. Two of the deleted areas were more or less finished, but their basic design had compatibility issues with the game engine. The last area of the game was not anywhere near completion, AFAIK.

There were about 30 people working on that game, in a very expensive part of the country. If we assume their average salary is $50k (way on the low side), that's another $1.5 million a year to keep the project going even before property and equipment costs. As much as I wish Eidos had the faith in their products to put up that kind of money, I can see why they didn't.

Try playing CS and see if you feel the same way.

I don't play online games. Part of the reason is the large amount of cheating that goes on in them.

What I mean when I talk about hacking games are things like what I did to Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2, and Defiance, and what my friend Andrew did to Defiance, and what groups like The GFCC do.

Try playing CS and see if you feel the same way.

I don't play online games. Part of the reason is the large amount of cheating that goes on in them.

What I mean when I talk about hacking games are things like what I did to Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2, and Defiance, and what my friend Andrew did to Defiance, and what groups like The GFCC do.

Try playing CS and see if you feel the same way.

I don't play online games. Part of the reason is the large amount of cheating that goes on in them.

What I mean when I talk about hacking games are things like what I did to Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2, and Defiance, and what my friend Andrew did to Defiance, and what groups like The GFCC do.

Try playing CS and see if you feel the same way.

I don't play online games. Part of the reason is the large amount of cheating that goes on in them.

What I mean when I talk about hacking games are things like what I did to Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2, and Defiance, and what my friend Andrew did to Defiance, and what groups like The GFCC do.

Try playing CS and see if you feel the same way.

I don't play online games. Part of the reason is the large amount of cheating that goes on in them.

What I mean when I talk about hacking games are things like what I did to Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2, and Defiance, and what my friend Andrew did to Defiance, and what groups like The GFCC do.

Grand theft horse-carriage, baby! Whoooo!

Last year as an April Fools joke I wrote an article which included "exclusive coverage" of a Legacy of Kain spinoff called Vehiculum Furtus Maximo (yes, I know, my Latin is terrible). Most fans were horrified, but I still get people asking every once in awhile about making it into a Flash game or something, and a few that didn't realize it was a joke and wonder what happened to it.

My friend Willow and I were both pleasantly shocked to find out that his design for the main character made it into the real new Legacy of Kain game. You can unlock him with a code on the controller =).