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Massive Two Towers Battle
ShadowLight writes ""In December vast hordes of eager filmgoers will mob cineplexes across the land and witness, at the climax of The Two Towers, one of the most anticipated scenes in recent movie history: the great Battle of Helm's Deep." This article talks about the software, named Massive, used to create this 50,000 creature battle."
The way I heard that the AI for the battle scene was programmed was such that every one of the creatures had a slightly different set of paramaters, with the same goal of maximizing damage, while minimizing casualties.
On the first run, every single one of the thousands of little AIs decided that the best way to minimize casualties was to turn and run away.
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
Nasty cough there. Do you need cough syrup? Rubbed chest?
And the coolest thing about it is that I did it 3 years ago when I actually read the book.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
This is sure to be a big box office draw, but 50,000 scantily-clad beach bimbo babes might do even better at the box office!
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
In Return of the King, the final film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the climactic battle--yes, the Battle of Helm's Deep is just a run-up--is rumored to employ more than 100,000 characters.
Oh Hell Yes.
I can't be the only geek with a hard-on here can I?
The "Two Towers." Now a software program called "Massive." No trend here.
My Vorpal Sword is bigger than yours.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Dan Koeppel, a film-school dropout, has written for Wired and The New York Times Magazine. Although a longtime Tolkien reader, he draws the line at The Silmarillion.
Wuss.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
The dead orc still looks up when steped on.
Who says he's dead? He's just disabled and bleeding to death.
The arrow counts are still way off.
If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, even the book says that Legolas picked up orc and goblin arrows along the way. Besides, if you sat through the movie counting the arrows, I think it's possible that you might have missed the point.
The size of the hobbits still keeps changing.
Yeah, and in episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a (heh heh) magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
Of course it seems I'm a troll for even thinking that there could be anything wrong with these movies.
Hee hee. I get it! Lord of the Rings! Troll! Brilliant!
(-1, Hobbit)
I write in my journal
Ok, to get it out of the way before someone else does; ;-p
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these
but besides that point, on the second page, about half way down, they talk about how nobody really knew what was going to happen when "orc met elf" par say, so they just let it randomly play out. Friggin neat IMHO. So in theory, they could throw extra renders on of different battles for special edition dvds and such.... Imagine the posibilities (while you imagine a beowulf cluster of these).
Saitoh
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
In a momentous surge of self-denial, Timothy was able to restrain himself for a full 20 days before posting a repeat story about The Two Towers. Slashdot readers, rejoice!
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
How about a new category? "Movie SPOILERS". That way, I can filter out articles on it, so I don't have to accidentally read about "the most anticipated scene" in a movie that's not out yet, just in case I've been working very hard to NOT see anything about the movie, so that I can fully enjoy it when it finally DOES come out?
Damnit.
Oh by the way:
It's a sled.
They drive off the cliff.
It's a guy.
Rose lives, Jack dies.
He's dead.
Education is the silver bullet.
I tried downloading something advertised as "Die Another Day" from Kazaa, but I got a file called "Lilo and Stitch DVD Rip", which was when played, a movie called "Nosferatu".
You've got a copy of Nosferatu! AWESOME! That movie ROCKS!
Yeah, and in episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a (heh heh) magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
I'll field that one. Let me ask you a question. Why would a man whose shirt says "Genius at Work" spend all of his time watching a children's cartoon show?
and up you one with...
Now I'm not necessarily an-an aficionado necessarily of 'Lord of the Rings' but the elvish that was spoken at Imladris between Aragorn and Arwen Undomiel, the Evenstar of her people...?
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
This kind of reminds me of the middle-school "proms" we would have at graduation.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
RUNAWAY!!
<HUMOR>
We still need to get Jackson to rename the movie, because he's obviously trying to cash in on 9/11!
</HUMOR>
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
A 50,000 character particle system would run slower than Doom III!!!
This Massive stuff will be slow on the fastest next-generation movie theater accelerators even with tons of memory.
When the credits are rolling, the frame rates might be okay, but in the battle scene I bet they drop to around 24fps.
Who needs Star Wars, real geeks know what they love! And it's not Luca, let me tell you!
My name is Lucas.. I created Episode 4. I live upstairs from you. I think you worshipped me before.
Forget your piddly 100K of Orcs. I can't wait to see the CGI scene showing that horde charging the theatres!!
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
At only $50 it is a steal.
Available for Mac OS X, Win32 and Linux.
AA Batteries and Beowulf Cluster not provided.
I found it rather amusing that one of the quotes from this story says, "...keep an eye out for a background character in The Two Towers who, in the middle of the battle, seems to take a call on his cellphone."
The real question is, Where's Waldo?
Girlfriend's a surgical resident. She brings home snapshots of her operations on the digital camera.
Sounds cozy. Do you watch them in front of an open fire drinking wine?
Daysa gotta precious and messa wants it!
my friends,
This is my last post of slashdot. After seeing this, I have decided that life is not worth living. I loved Star Trek and Tolkien and then this happened.
Doing the real ctrl-alt-del,
nbfn
This is a real site...
not goat stuff
Oh my GOD. I am going to die. I cannot breathe. I am laughing so hard, tears are rolling down my face.
/. at work.
Thank you for posting this.
I really need to stop reading
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
Don't people ever learn? How many more people have to die before we stop using our cell phones during battle?
Yeah, but by the time my turn comes around on the XDCC list and I finish receiving it at 1.05 kilobytes per second, the DVD will be out, ordered, delivered, and playing on my television.
Wouldn't that only be -1/2? :)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Maybe in a few years when the Sims Online has run it's course, they can integrate the "Massive" program and have a huge battle at the end.
I would pay to see that.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
(Nicked from http://www.brunching.com/fuzzylogic.html)
whatever
whatever LISTThis function returns one of the nine neo-boolean values used in fuzzy logic: true, false, maybe, sure, what, whoa, depends, look-let's-talk-about-this-later-when-we're-not-in -public, and elbows.
The value returned is determined by standard anti-random vacillation
routines.
reconsider
reconsider EXPRThis causes the program to evaluate an expression until such time as it feels reasonably sure of its conclusion. Depending on the system and expression, this may take a fraction of a second or an entire freshman semester.
while holdon
while (EXPR) BLOCK holdon (EXPR) BLOCKThis works like a standard while loop at first, but at some point the function realizes it's been bringing personal issues into the evaluation in an inappropriate manner and begins to evaluate the expression named by holdon instead in an attempt to appear reasonable.
goaway
goaway LABELThis causes the program to execute starting at LABEL, while making it clear to the program that you could care less whether it ever returned to the present execution point or not. Calling the apology function later may cause the program to return to the statement directly after the goaway, but it may also cause the program to exit entirely, depending on how much you've been taking it for granted. Use of this function has been generally deprecated since the publication of the landmark essay "'GOAWAY' Considered Thoughtless."
pile
pile LISTThis function takes a LIST and sorts it until the function realizes there are too many items in the "miscellaneous" category and tries to figure out a better sorting scheme, then gets bored and leaves a big pile of unsorted items at the end. Returns a semi-sorted list with a big pile of unsorted items at the end.
grudge
grudge VARIABLEThe grudge function causes a program to develop an immediate dislike of the named variable, causing many operations involving that variable to return false for no apparent reason.
pedestal
pedestal VARIABLEThis causes the program to attach unhealthy significance to VARIABLE. The program will consider the named variable to be a microcosm of its own existence and will fall into a deep depression if the variable is undefined, ignored, or treated poorly. Both grudge and pedestal can be used on the same variable, causing the program to develop a love-hate relationship with the variable in question. This can be fun.
skim
skim FILEHANDLEThis function quickly looks over the data contained in FILEHANDLE, trying to get the gist of it and looking for any dirty bits or clever quotations it can use at parties to impress people.
oblique
oblique PLAINTEXT, WITThe oblique function uses a form of lossy encryption to convert PLAINTEXT into a witty-but-obscure cultural or social reference which will only make sense to people or processes that share a similar background with the calling program. WIT is a number between 0 and 7 which determines the cleverness and obscurity of the reference, where 0 will return a catchphrase from a recent television advertisement and 7 will return a reference to The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. With careful application, this function can be used to create entire online humor magazines.
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.
-
To avoid surprises, Massive programmers weeded out ineffective agents and duplicated ones that worked. About a dozen initial master characters formed the basic genetic blueprint for more than 50,000 digital creations, which were then individualized by adding random variables such as aggression or happiness. (A few update Tolkien; keep an eye out for a background character in The Two Towers who, in the middle of the battle, seems to take a call on his cellphone.)
At least they're not calling in an air strike, like Granada."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I saw an entire tech company destroyed by that video. Someone mailed it around the office and reduced all the programmers to gibbering drooling idiots, incapable of ever writing another line of code.
The only one I knew who was wounded by enemy, rather than friendly, action was shot in the ass by an irate farmer, armed with a shotgun, who thought it 'them damn kids' after his livestock again.
Best Slashdot Co
I want to see an Ent beat the living crap out of Julia Butterfly Hill.
"Get those nasty feet off me, pathetic human!"
-FF
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
I want to see MASSIVE orgy
When Yoda was babbling on about fear, *this* is what he was talking about.
Do you watch them in front of an open fire drinking wine?
A nice chianti would seem appropriate...
Actually, it's a pretty catchy tune.
I might actually see Twin Towers now, just to hear that theme song again.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
"...said in an interview that Wellington is the arsehole of the world..."
Then I guess he was just passing through.