A Minor Impact on Productivity by Fulcrum (party version)
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on the net: fulcrum.antisoc.net
Requirements:
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Windows (only tested on XP), OpenGL 2.0 compatible Videocard, soundcard if you like your demos with music. A quick look at the taskmanager while running the demo shows exactly 512
MB memory in use. It runs completely at over 100 FPS on a NV 8600 GT mobile. I haven't tested it on ATI yet, sorry.
General info:
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The inspiration for this demo was the birth of Coplan's second child. Unfortunately I couldn't finish the demo at Evoke or even Assembly, but Coplan didn't gave much advance warning :) Even at Buenzli I wasn't quite sure I would be able to finish it satisfactorily, despite cutting out all the neat stuff I want to learn and experiment with, such as shaders and shadow mapping :( Since I'm already constantly lacking time, I can only imagine what having a newborn will do to your nerves. Hence the title, which is entirely my view on the matter and not Coplan's (as far as I know).
Technically, we have moved beyond the sprites and transparant textures, and dived head-first in solid 3D with lighting, which means we've finally reached eighties-level technical progress. One day, we might even do textured objects!
More seriously, since we still haven't found a 3D artist, 3D stuff was never a big priority. To break the chicken-and-egg situation, I've taken a look at Blender, and the result is in this release. I'm quite sure 3D isn't my calling, and if you're a 3D artist looking for a group, you're welcome to contact us on our website: http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/contact
Despite the lack of time and lack of effects, I'm quite happy with how the boids turned out. The swarming by the butterflies and the storks is quite nice to watch, although the effect is
probably very hardwarre-dependant. Swarm behaviour is chaotic, so small changes at the start
may lead the entire swarm in a different direction at the end. Couple this with the framerate-dependent way the movement work, and I can't guarantee that the butterflies will not try to smash into the ground or leave the confines of your screen halfway through.
There's also a bug at the start with the chain of 5-leaved flowers, but I can't reproduce it reliably, and never with a debug build :( I suspect a timing issue. If it looks as if someone's throwing confetti around: that's not supposed to happen. Let's hope I can fix it in the final, and add AA and other nice extras...
Disclaimer:
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This demo was coded in 5 demoparty-filled weekends with far, far too little sleep. Anything that happens when you run it is not my fault.
Libraries:
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This demo uses the following libraries:
SMPeg and SDL under the LGPL (see a copy in Data/COPYING), JpegLib under the modified BSD license, Xerces under the Apache Software License 2.0, and ZLib and LibPNG under the zlib/libpng license;
