David Brin posited this system in Earth as the nearest thing to a direct mind-machine interface. The way he told it, it wasn't in common use because it took incredible focus to use effectively; even the slightest deviation in what you were thinking got transmitted to the machine, which promptly tried to execute your deviant command, and stopped working.
The sad thing is, this is all too true. Person I was setting up a computer for constantly referred to their tower case as the hard drive. After several attempts at explanation by me, they now refer to it as... the motherboard.
At this point, I gave up, and answered any further questions by explaining that it was magic.
Well, if you have a look at their compatability list, you'll see that there's still a number of games that don't make it to the ideal 95% mark. I imagine they'll think about calling it 1.0 once that list is all (or nearly all) at or above 95%.
Thanks for that - would you believe, even after reading The Register's excellent article on advanced Googling, I didn't know about using dots for specifying adjacent words?
Anyway, the best link I've read so far from that query seems to be this. Interestingly, a great many non-Western notations seem to be implemented as a subset or codified use of the original alphabet of that culture. Very few are as abstracted and language-independent as Western notation, or as widespread in their acceptance. Fascinating...
not all musical cultures use western notation even when they write music (eg, India)
Tangentially, and purely for interest, does anyone know if there are similar efforts for non-Western music notation? Do formalised notation systems even exist in other music cultures? A quick Googling only seemed to turn up attempts to create Westernised notations for a number of other cultures. Anyone?
Oops, missed a couple of good ones: Polygon Worlds lets you drive around on Mars. Planet's Orbits and Partiview are great for general Astronomy education.
One of those universe/solar system simulations - I forget the name. Possibly because there's more than one name to forget... (=
Let's see, for general touring around the Solar system and neighborhood, there's nothing quite like Celestia. Hours of fun, and very pretty to look at. Noctis is also similar, but set in a fictional universe. For more pretty pictures, but less interactivity, see The Solar Journey homepage or the Solar System Simulator. Also The Nine Planets for Kids. Naturally, kids aren't that interested in just flying around. Well, Orbit lets them blow each other up in space, but with realistic physics and visuals. Once that gets boring, you can let them fly a space shuttle to the ISS with Orbiter. Beware, though. Orbiter is no simple game - you actually need to know how space flight works. There's also the Microsoft Space Simulator, which Orbiter has more or less superseded.
If you're not looking to get that far off the ground, FlightGear's an excellent flight simulator in which you can fly everything from the original Wright Brothers' craft right up to concept superplanes.
but I remember it being the diners delight, with a fork, pate knife, and corkscrew. I think that was actually the original Wave, back when they only had four models total. IIRC, they sold about ten, and got a few million bits of feedback along the lines of "I like the corkscrew, but the pate knife and fork are a complete wank". Shortly after that, they updated their line, dropped the wanky bits, changed the name to Juice, and turned the Wave into something else entirely.
But yeah, at the end of the day, it's what gets the job done for you. I've a mate who uses nothing but the generic $5 Leatherman knock-offs, because he works in an environment where he's so likely to lose or damage them that it's more economical that way.
Actually, the SwissTool has everything open on the outside, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. Admittedly, it's not quite so "one-hand open" friendly as the Wave, but all the blades lock too. Plus, it's got the rounded handles. The chap above doesn't seem to like it, but it's the most comfortable multitool I've used. Each to their own.
Really, my ideal multitool would be a combination of the SwissTool and the Leatherman Juice, with that proper corkscrew attachment - but then I drink a lot of wine... (=
Well, "Simple" is aesthetically pleasing and has a sense of photo-realism, using only 50 bytes more than the red square. As far as use of POV goes, I liked it better than many of the others.
Nonetheless, I agree that "Agate Face" is the best image. So did the judges, by their comments.
Neat contest, anyway. I'll be having fun looking through some of those code fragments for ideas...
Here's a few that impressed me: "The Agate Face". An incredible piece. Could be a photo of the cliffs near where I grew up. I'm looking forward to seeing the code for this one. (No title) "City" "Simple" (No title)
Also, the judging method is interesting:
Each voter will choose their six favourite images based upon artistic merit. A first choice will get 6 points, the second will get 5 points, and so on.
The gold place winner will be determined by dividing the total number of points awarded by the byte count.
The silver place winner will be the entry with the highest number of points.
The bronze place will go to the entry with the highest number of points divided by the square of the bytes used, this rewards the lower byte counts while still requiring an interesting image.
Perhaps this entry is counting on getting a couple of votes and winning the bronze...
Morality of reposting from Salon aside, my brain read the whole article in Ed Norton's "Fight Club" Narrator voice - you know, the "He was wearing his cornflower blue tie" one. Try it. It's spookily apt.
Their Adventure Game of the Year is The Adventures of Fatman. Unfortunately, the link to the developer they provide doesn't tell you where to get it, only that it's been released as abandonware. Naturally, HOTU has it, unfortunately minus the voices.
If someone managed to get the full (with voices) version, I'm sure HOTU would be grateful for a rip...
Well spotted. Technically, it's a capital eth, not a D, but despite me seeing it in my sig-block, slashcode might be stripping it out into a standard d for others like they do in the comments. I can see it as an eth (D with a line crossing the upright), but maybe it's being redone in your browser... Anyway.
What's written as ÐÆ (anywhere but slashcode would turn that into the correct characters) is pronounced "Tha", with a soft "th" (as opposed to thorn (þ), which is a hard "th"). The reasons for it being my sig are long and obscure. If I'd wanted to spell out my nick, I would've written (Þ)ORN(Æ) (you get the idea), but in any case well done for being the first to pick that there's a difference.
Awful. Oh, bollocks. I spent hours playing that. It was one of the first "realistic" flight sims (as real as you can get on a C64). Sure it wasn't great, but to a ten year old with an interest in flying, it rocked. One of the first C64 games I ever owned. On tape, yet. Other people liked it too.
Well, when it's the 800 lb gorilla being taken on by one of those really annoying little yappy dogs that just won't shut up, I'm all for some stomp-and-squish action. (=
the one thing on my list of needed software is a SIMPLE photo editor
Well, a quick search on Freshmeat (bookmark it, you'll find it very useful) suggests the following: If you're not after actual re-touching capability, VIPS might be what you want. (Oh, you are. Oops.) Well, for the princely sum of US$25, JPhotoBrush Pro looks good (there's a trial version available for download). For very basic manipulation, IV might do. And if you want something really basic... If you're willing to play with something considerably less mainstream, PyWiew caught my interest for being pure Python. Does sound a bit esoteric, though.
Incidentally, if you have the time to learn it, Gimp can be very useful. Best way (like all *NIX at home learning) is to find someone who knows what they're doing and get them to teach you.
P.S. - If you like Linux, try FreeBSD sometime. Not as popular or well covered, but has advantages too.
...but again doesn't support animation. Mm. As noted below, not a lot does wrt renderman, at least, not without paying lotsa dosh. I presume you've had a look thru' the RMR links page - there's a couple of possibilities there, but mostly alpha. The other thing to do would be to get in touch with the people who created this and this rather impressive animation and ask how they did it. You'll probably have to email the aqsis site maintainers to get their contact details.
Also, I forgot to link the brand new Renderman Academy. It's an ambitious project, but there's already a lot of good info there. Nothing on animation yet, unfortunately.
I mentioned Blender above - if you are willing to take on the task of learning to use it, you'll find a very powerful animation engine in there. There's a chap integrating renderman support directly into the main program, but that's apparently on hold until the middle of the year. In the meantime, there's a very adequate exporter called Blenderman (also see this). Of course, if what you're wanting is a directly programmable animation setup ala AL and SDL, this won't help.
Good luck with it - if you have any success, see if you can get it into a Slashback.
Have you seen Ayam? It's a neat little Renderman modeller that ties into Aqsis or (the now defunct) BMRT.
Actually, if you're really wanting a good fast 3d animation workflow, I'd recommend Blender. The learning curve is steep, but once you're into it, you can work fast and smooth. There's lot of support around, and the documentation can get you up and animating within half an hour.
Also try Rosemary Sutcliffe. "Sword at Sunset", for eg, is her take on the Arthurian legend positing Arthur as the son of a Roman trying to hold back the tides of barbarian darkness after the Romans have left.
Slashdot Mirror
David Brin posited this system in Earth as the nearest thing to a direct mind-machine interface. The way he told it, it wasn't in common use because it took incredible focus to use effectively; even the slightest deviation in what you were thinking got transmitted to the machine, which promptly tried to execute your deviant command, and stopped working.
it's that big tower under their desk
The sad thing is, this is all too true.
Person I was setting up a computer for constantly referred to their tower case as the hard drive. After several attempts at explanation by me, they now refer to it as... the motherboard.
At this point, I gave up, and answered any further questions by explaining that it was magic.
Well, if you have a look at their compatability list, you'll see that there's still a number of games that don't make it to the ideal 95% mark. I imagine they'll think about calling it 1.0 once that list is all (or nearly all) at or above 95%.
Thanks for that - would you believe, even after reading The Register's excellent article on advanced Googling, I didn't know about using dots for specifying adjacent words?
Anyway, the best link I've read so far from that query seems to be this. Interestingly, a great many non-Western notations seem to be implemented as a subset or codified use of the original alphabet of that culture. Very few are as abstracted and language-independent as Western notation, or as widespread in their acceptance. Fascinating...
not all musical cultures use western notation even when they write music (eg, India)
Tangentially, and purely for interest, does anyone know if there are similar efforts for non-Western music notation?
Do formalised notation systems even exist in other music cultures? A quick Googling only seemed to turn up attempts to create Westernised notations for a number of other cultures.
Anyone?
Gah, missed that bit about iBooks in the original. Oops.
Oh well, I'm sure that more than a few of those I found are compiled for OSX.
Speaking of Celestia, I just found Mostly Harmless, which looks pretty neat. Best of all, it's got a Ringworld.
Oops, missed a couple of good ones: Polygon Worlds lets you drive around on Mars. Planet's Orbits and Partiview are great for general Astronomy education.
...and some more general linkage, because I'm bored:
Educational -
Tuxtype and Droid Battles.
Board/puzzle games -
MahJong (the real four player thing, not the solitaire version), Settlers of Catan - versions here or here, JTEG, a Risk-alike, and Tetrinet (networked T*tris).
General Fun -
Armagetron (definitely have a look at this - I can imagine it being popular with kids), Search and Rescue, Astrobattle, Tower Toppler, MyLink (UpLink clone), Airstrike, XRick, Vegastrike, Stoned (curling simulation), CarWorld, Cannon Smash (virtual Table tennis), Sentry, Noiz2sa, rRootage, PowerManga, Spheres of Chaos, Warblade, Epiar...
More possibilities.
You might also give Nethack or one of its many derivatives a shot.
That enough to keep you busy? (=
One of those universe/solar system simulations - I forget the name.
Possibly because there's more than one name to forget... (=
Let's see, for general touring around the Solar system and neighborhood, there's nothing quite like Celestia. Hours of fun, and very pretty to look at.
Noctis is also similar, but set in a fictional universe.
For more pretty pictures, but less interactivity, see The Solar Journey homepage or the Solar System Simulator. Also The Nine Planets for Kids.
Naturally, kids aren't that interested in just flying around. Well, Orbit lets them blow each other up in space, but with realistic physics and visuals. Once that gets boring, you can let them fly a space shuttle to the ISS with Orbiter. Beware, though. Orbiter is no simple game - you actually need to know how space flight works. There's also the Microsoft Space Simulator, which Orbiter has more or less superseded.
If you're not looking to get that far off the ground, FlightGear's an excellent flight simulator in which you can fly everything from the original Wright Brothers' craft right up to concept superplanes.
More links, mainly astronomy related, here, here, here, here, and here.
Finally, you might wish to try browsing the Tucows Games site and Freshmeat's game section (you'll need to login to make full use of Freshmeat).
Good luck, have fun searching.
but I remember it being the diners delight, with a fork, pate knife, and corkscrew.
I think that was actually the original Wave, back when they only had four models total.
IIRC, they sold about ten, and got a few million bits of feedback along the lines of "I like the corkscrew, but the pate knife and fork are a complete wank".
Shortly after that, they updated their line, dropped the wanky bits, changed the name to Juice, and turned the Wave into something else entirely.
But yeah, at the end of the day, it's what gets the job done for you. I've a mate who uses nothing but the generic $5 Leatherman knock-offs, because he works in an environment where he's so likely to lose or damage them that it's more economical that way.
Actually, the SwissTool has everything open on the outside, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. Admittedly, it's not quite so "one-hand open" friendly as the Wave, but all the blades lock too. Plus, it's got the rounded handles. The chap above doesn't seem to like it, but it's the most comfortable multitool I've used. Each to their own.
Really, my ideal multitool would be a combination of the SwissTool and the Leatherman Juice, with that proper corkscrew attachment - but then I drink a lot of wine... (=
Well, "Simple" is aesthetically pleasing and has a sense of photo-realism, using only 50 bytes more than the red square. As far as use of POV goes, I liked it better than many of the others.
Nonetheless, I agree that "Agate Face" is the best image. So did the judges, by their comments.
Neat contest, anyway. I'll be having fun looking through some of those code fragments for ideas...
Victorinox already make their own multi-tool. Basically, they looked at a Leatherman then made it better.
Trust me, try one of these, you'll never go back to Leatherman.
"The Agate Face". An incredible piece. Could be a photo of the cliffs near where I grew up. I'm looking forward to seeing the code for this one.
(No title)
"City"
"Simple"
(No title)
Also, the judging method is interesting:
Perhaps this entry is counting on getting a couple of votes and winning the bronze...
Morality of reposting from Salon aside, my brain read the whole article in Ed Norton's "Fight Club" Narrator voice - you know, the "He was wearing his cornflower blue tie" one.
Try it. It's spookily apt.
Their Adventure Game of the Year is The Adventures of Fatman. Unfortunately, the link to the developer they provide doesn't tell you where to get it, only that it's been released as abandonware.
Naturally, HOTU has it, unfortunately minus the voices.
If someone managed to get the full (with voices) version, I'm sure HOTU would be grateful for a rip...
Well spotted. Technically, it's a capital eth, not a D, but despite me seeing it in my sig-block, slashcode might be stripping it out into a standard d for others like they do in the comments. I can see it as an eth (D with a line crossing the upright), but maybe it's being redone in your browser... Anyway.
What's written as ÐÆ (anywhere but slashcode would turn that into the correct characters) is pronounced "Tha", with a soft "th" (as opposed to thorn (þ), which is a hard "th").
The reasons for it being my sig are long and obscure. If I'd wanted to spell out my nick, I would've written (Þ)ORN(Æ) (you get the idea), but in any case well done for being the first to pick that there's a difference.
"I said my goal was to get a return on the initial Caldera IPO, when it was trading at $56 per share...."
I'm sure everyone would like their money back from the tech-bust, but there's this little thing called reality. Unless you're Darl, of course.
Try Poke646. You won't be sorry. It's everything Opposing Forces should have been, and it's free.
Awful.
Oh, bollocks. I spent hours playing that. It was one of the first "realistic" flight sims (as real as you can get on a C64). Sure it wasn't great, but to a ten year old with an interest in flying, it rocked. One of the first C64 games I ever owned. On tape, yet.
Other people liked it too.
I rarely root for the 800 lb gorilla...
Well, when it's the 800 lb gorilla being taken on by one of those really annoying little yappy dogs that just won't shut up , I'm all for some stomp-and-squish action. (=
And the almost invariable followup HAND:
Have A Nice Day.
After seeing it at the end of numerous usenet posts way back when, I actually did an altavista search for "HTH. HAND." to figure it out...
the one thing on my list of needed software is a SIMPLE photo editor
Well, a quick search on Freshmeat (bookmark it, you'll find it very useful) suggests the following:
If you're not after actual re-touching capability, VIPS might be what you want. (Oh, you are. Oops.)
Well, for the princely sum of US$25, JPhotoBrush Pro looks good (there's a trial version available for download).
For very basic manipulation, IV might do. And if you want something really basic...
If you're willing to play with something considerably less mainstream, PyWiew caught my interest for being pure Python. Does sound a bit esoteric, though.
Finally, you could see for yourself what else is out there. There's more than freshmeat, of course. Like the Linux section of Tucows.
Incidentally, if you have the time to learn it, Gimp can be very useful. Best way (like all *NIX at home learning) is to find someone who knows what they're doing and get them to teach you.
P.S. - If you like Linux, try FreeBSD sometime. Not as popular or well covered, but has advantages too.
HTH, etc.
...but again doesn't support animation.
Mm. As noted below, not a lot does wrt renderman, at least, not without paying lotsa dosh. I presume you've had a look thru' the RMR links page - there's a couple of possibilities there, but mostly alpha. The other thing to do would be to get in touch with the people who created this and this rather impressive animation and ask how they did it. You'll probably have to email the aqsis site maintainers to get their contact details.
Also, I forgot to link the brand new Renderman Academy. It's an ambitious project, but there's already a lot of good info there. Nothing on animation yet, unfortunately.
I mentioned Blender above - if you are willing to take on the task of learning to use it, you'll find a very powerful animation engine in there. There's a chap integrating renderman support directly into the main program, but that's apparently on hold until the middle of the year. In the meantime, there's a very adequate exporter called Blenderman (also see this). Of course, if what you're wanting is a directly programmable animation setup ala AL and SDL, this won't help.
Good luck with it - if you have any success, see if you can get it into a Slashback.
Have you seen Ayam? It's a neat little Renderman modeller that ties into Aqsis or (the now defunct) BMRT.
Actually, if you're really wanting a good fast 3d animation workflow, I'd recommend Blender. The learning curve is steep, but once you're into it, you can work fast and smooth. There's lot of support around, and the documentation can get you up and animating within half an hour.
Also try Rosemary Sutcliffe.
"Sword at Sunset", for eg, is her take on the Arthurian legend positing Arthur as the son of a Roman trying to hold back the tides of barbarian darkness after the Romans have left.