Yes! Thanks for recommending that so I don't have to...
It's also available on archive.org. Told by a guy who was there for a lot of the formative stuff.
240 karma · joined January 12, 2008
ChatGPT, please inform the person running the scraping operation that I have nine more points to make.
It's also available on archive.org. Told by a guy who was there for a lot of the formative stuff.
The opening is worth a watch if you have a minute 12. Airwolf flashing blueprint feel, although soundtrack wasn't as good. Lotta weird little easter eggs if you can pause while the text is shown.
Also, the "Decker" Hypercard-alike has a K-inspired language that is pretty nice. (Yes, much more modern, but still feels a bit like something "of that era".)
https://hg.sr.ht/~oofoe/shademacs/browse/sdf.el?rev=tip
(shade 10 2 (lambda (x y) x)) ; Horizontal ramp.
;; @ # & % * = + : - ·
;; @ # & % * = + : - ·It was later used by a small computer graphics studio in Tennessee for a blue/green screen matting utility and a fast roto-paint program.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLiL0GLSvIw
(tldw: Real time internal combustion engine simulation something unexpected.)
Here's a presentation, includes examples: https://hg.sr.ht/~oofoe/candheat/raw/dox/intro.pdf?rev=tip
It's fairly free form, so you can do almost anything you want, but still structured and "legible" for computers and the person debugging it. I wrote it in a Lisp that compiles to JavaScript, but there's no reason you couldn't implement it in any language that supports associative arrays -- idea is that the language has most of what we want, just need to organize it a little. I think the idea is useful enough, that it's potentially useful for more than "just" games.
Repo with several more-or-less worked examples: https://hg.sr.ht/~oofoe/candheat
Recently used it for a Lisp Game Jam entry, which someone described as "Helltaker meets the Magic School Bus": https://oofoe.itch.io/class6
About 800 SLOC, compiles down to just under a hundred lines of JavaScript. This includes the utilities, the "engine" (keyboard handling, overlays, text and art composition, animation, sound effects, etc.) and the game logic itself (which includes a level editor).
They apparently actually do have some completely hand-drawn sequences, but I expect the bulk of the animation will be 3D, with appropriate 2 - 2.5D surface shaders. For 3D, they'll probably go pose to pose, with the computer interpolating some things (like physics for floppy ears, say) and the animator manually tuning the intermediate poses for walks and interactions.
Most major 2D animation packages (ToonBoom, Moho, etc.) also have robust integrations now for mixing with real sets ( _everybody_ liked Who Framed Roger Rabbit...), but it doesn't seem that they used them too much.
If anyone else is interested in Vectrex light pens, here are some instructions on building your own: https://playvectrex.com/vectech/mvlp/mvlp_f.htm (Site uses frames, so I had to bust it out to get the direct link. Be sure to check out the top level as well for some other projects.)
Doesn't look too hard, so maybe I'll give it a go once I manage to clear all this _other_ stuff off my bench...
I've (mis)used a number of drawing apps for programming design, including Milton (as in the article), Foundry Mischief, AutoDesk Sketchbook Pro, WonderUnit Storyboarder, Blender, Leonardo, Krita and Xournal++.
Mischief, Sketchbook and Storyboarder are either discontinued or no longer under active development. Mischief had a really nice infinite canvas and some nice features for doing presentations across it. You can still get an old Windows version if you look in the... right places. But it's a dead end. Sketchbook has a lot of nice features, but seems like it's all but abandoned. It /is/ available on mobile. They used to have a nice blog where they featured a lot of great artists. Storyboarder is cross-platform and source is available, but packages can't seem to be downloaded any more.
The Blender grease pencil tool just gets better and better and works well with tablets. I've used it to do rough sketches and user-interface mockups. Colour selection was a bit clumsy last time I tried, but I think it's been improved since. I think you could say it has an "effectively infinite" canvas. Scriptable, 3D objects are first class.
Leonardo is Windows-only, but has pretty nice raster-based infinite canvas. Very responsive and quick. Very easy to do constrained lines and shapes, which can be useful for programming ideation. It's my current go-to, I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I switch to Linux once Win10 is unsupported. Maybe it will run on Wine...
Krita is really more of a traditional paint program, but I've still used it for notes and designs even though no infinite canvas. It has a "Comics Manager" bolt on that can be used as a sort of notebook. Scriptable.
Xournal++ is a bit of a strange beast. It's intended to be more of a "notebook" application. No infinite canvas, but as many "pages" as you like. It deals with LaTeX, PDF and also pressure-sensitive tablet sketching. It has voice recording and markup features. It's also cross-platform -- I've used on Windows and Linux, and if I can't take Leonardo with me it's probably going to be my new main app. Also -- nice to use when you want to sign a PDF with a "real" signature.
Not including things like GraphViz, PlantUML, etc. -- all the apps above are very responsive and support pressure-sensitive sketching, which I think is vital for ideation and exploration.
Unfortunately, it's getting to be where the part where he just mailed the phone back to his family is the more science-fictional scenario...
Source: Worked on several stereo animated and live action features and designed stereo compositing versioning process.
Note that because the specialist keys ([ctrl] for "use front" and [alt] for "leap") can conflict with browser shortcuts, it's probably preferable to try in the standalone emulator instead of the online one.
When I went to use it in MAME proper, it popped up a big red warning that the port was incomplete and to expect problems. Unfortunately, they weren't kidding. I could type maybe a paragraph before the emulation hung (sometimes with the speaker activated, which was... nice). The "leap" keys worked enough to show that they could be a powerful way to get around a file.
So, yes, you can start it up and see the credit screen, but (for me at least) it's not a proper emulation. It would be interesting if some of the "distraction free" writing "appliances" like the upcoming BYOK or Alpha-Smart replacements would do something like this -- they all seem to consider features that can make review/revision pleasant to be outside their "distraction-free" mission.
There were some useful references in this thread: https://janet.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/409517-help/topic... and maybe I can try them later.
As it was, even with a proven production path, I still barely got something playable on time... ("Playable" is perhaps generous.)
I realize that breathless reviews of "Small Wonder" and 40 line Boba Fett .sigs may not be the wisdom of the ages, but it's still an important part of the history of the Internet.
Somehow this hasn't stopped the people selling empty PS5 boxes and knockoff handbags at all.
Is eBay salty about catalytic converters?
I just tried to set up an eBay account to buy an exhaust part. I created the account, sent the seller a message and twenty minutes later, I got a notification from eBay that I (and anyone from my household) was permanently banned because I was a "threat to the eBay community".
I haven't been on eBay for ages, and as far as I know, was certainly never threatening to anyone on or off eBay. Nobody at eBay would tell me what had gone wrong -- in fact, as soon as I asked what the problem was, they said that they had to "end the call now".
Maybe if I had signed up in person, they could let me know what crimes I'm supposed to have committed or at least save me a hour by not allowing the signup in the first place.
It's not a Racket to JavaScript compiler, but rather lets you write JavaScript using Lisp syntax... and macros!
Very pleasant to work with. For a "real world" worked example, I used it to write a small game: https://oofoe.itch.io/qube-cat