[be]

I hadn't thought about this game for a while, and then it popped into my head and I had to find it and check on the development status.  At first I didn't know what it was called so I had to search tig backwards until I hit it.  Man, I think the trailer for this had me more excited about a game than I have been forever, for perhaps the exact reason why you (cactus) said it failed.  Too many features; too much rich interaction.  It seemed like a summer-camp experience gone whacko like a 70s movie. And somehow all those features made me crave the experience.  I wasn't exactly sure that I needed to have a repeated reward like an RPG with constant mini-foes to fight or whatever.  But I knew that I wanted to be at a summer camp, or Island or whatever, inside the mind of the game's creator, and then have all these experiences.  I hope you guys continue to work on it at some point when you can get to it.  With proper balance and polish I think you could hit a happy medium.

basically, I just want to play it     Best, G

quick book recommendation quick list

Larry Niven

- Ringworld series, Integral Trees

I also thought his comet-apocalypse story, "Lucifer's Hammer," was pretty good.

I still need to read that.

[Stalker]

quick book recommendation quick list

Isaac Asimov	- Foundation series
Alfred Bester	- The Stars My Destination
Orson Scott Card	- Ender's Game
Cory Doctorow	- Little Brother, various short stories, ephemera.. (all free on his website)
William Gibson	- Neuromancer, Count Zero (soo amazing)
Verner Vinge	- A Fire Upon the Deep. and A Deepness in the Sky (huge)
Iain M Banks	- The Algebraist [2004]
Greg Bear	- Eon
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky	- Roadside Picnic.  The book that Tarkovsky's Stalker was based on. (which, incidentally is the movie that the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game is based on).
Bruce Sterling	- anything he writes, particularly journalism & appearances as much as fiction
Philip K. Dick	- Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Galactic Pot Healer, They remember for you Wholesale, Ubik, Martian Time-Slip
Robert Heinlein	- The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Time Enough For Love
Larry Niven	- Ringworld series, Integral Trees

French doesn't suck. Language education sucks.

I know you probably don't want recommendations for movies that are only available at screenings and film festivals for the time being, but I'm looking forward to Dimensions and Radio Free Albemuth.

Those both look amazing. Radio Free Albemuth might possibly be the best adaptation of a PKD story yet.

Recommendation: anything and everything Philip K. Dick., Mainly read the stories. They're too much infused with their own thing to be properly adapted into films, but I'm always enthralled when they try.

[Dark Star]

the ghost in the shell tv series was terrible.

but the original movie owned

true true.

I think I've watched the entire genre, so I'll only suggest the weirdest stuff that comes to mind.

Dark Star, John Carpenter's first movie he made as a student is fantastic.  He co-wrote it with Dan O'Bannon who went on to write Alien & Total Recall among others.

also, did anyone see Gantz, movie or anime? 

Saturn 5.  (explains why dudes who grew up in the 70s all had posters of Farrah Fawcett) also, very good sci-fi premise w/ Harvey Keitel

A couple weeks ago, I generated a heightmap (random number for each point on a grid) and then rendered tessellated triangles from it, just to see if I could do it. (took an afternoon).  

You should try the Diamond-Square algorithm. It's pretty simple and gives a smoother terrain with peaks and valleys instead of just a flat, bumpy surface.

Edit:
http://gameprogrammer.com/fractal.html This site discusses midpoint displacement (probably what you're looking for, OP) as well as Diamond-Square for heightmaps.

Beautiful link.  That's definitely of interest to me.  Thank you.

I really enjoyed talking to people and found that they said some rather insightful things, like "I wonder if he sees me blushing?" That stuff is great.  Like, what are people really thinking and not saying?  Love it.  The world needs more of this in movies, tv, books, games, whatever.  and oh yeah, Shellac, Fuck Yeah!

A couple weeks ago, I generated a heightmap (random number for each point on a grid) and then rendered tessellated triangles from it, just to see if I could do it. (took an afternoon). 

RichMakeGames, I respectfully disagree with you.

This is excellent so far. I love the art (A+) and the little bits of music at each checkpoint. Great, original style. If there were a vote on player death from falling, I would be all for it. Hey, jumping 15ft off the ground in RL is dangerous too :D

It seems to me that once you're through with the first duck, you should just make him go away. Even if I drop the bread he tries to follow me. But that is minor. I couldn't figure out the box climb either.  but I guess overall, I would prefer that it err on the side of too challenging rather than not challenging enough. I was just listening to a long podcast about people talking about testing their games, and adjusting gameplay according to metrics and whatnot, and it made me sick; totally the wrong way to do it.  *this game* is the right way.

I haven't reproduced the glitch on a Mac.  I don't have the same samples with me. (I'm at work, different computer.) Though the loops that I do have here, haven't glitched at all.  I would expect that it's mostly OK. and if there's any real problems, I'll report back.

The last (and only) mixer I wrote used the Quake3 mixer code (which accesses the sound buffer via directly DirectSound), and I stubbed in support for stb_vorbis.c and it totally worked.  I remember there was some buffer management and making sure that the pointers were at the right place at the right time.  But I am 100% certain that it worked, so it can't be that hard, right?...

I just ran a test, looping 2 tracks: 1 .ogg, and another .wav.  I used the calls: Mix_LoadMUS() and Mix_PlayMusic().  The Ogg created an audible glitch each time the track started the loop again, whereas the wav did not. 

At this point it might be more efficient for me to figure out why this is and submit a patch to the SDL_mixer maintainer than it would to write a mixer from scratch.  We'll see........

Anyone know Ryan Gordon?