AltME groups: search

BTW. Pekr we have some graphical tools that let you construct this 
type of instructions very easily. My objective has been that anyone 
should be able to manage a unit. But I am getting ahead the game 
here this is coming in our next releases. I think is going to blow 
the eyes of some of our competitors.

Are you kidding....what you guys all don't realize is that AltME-Rebol3 
"is" a a top selling game in Korea.  They try and guess what everyone 
is going to complain about next.  Someone won big money on the whole 
Troll email issue, and every time I rant I know this one guy loses 
his rent money (one would think he would learn by  now).

Shadwolf: <fine 1024 script burried one on top of another :) nice 
!!!>

They are all tagged in various ways to help catalog and find relevant 
scripts, eg:
   http://www.rebol.org/st-topic-details.r?tag=type//game

The tagging could do with an overhaui, so if you want to contribute 
to the quality of the Library without contributing scripts, then 
being a retagger is one way to achieve that.

I was once working on a game, and to make the character move, I used 
the basic code

of the "raw key press" button on http://www.rebol.net/plugin/tests/test.html

It worked quite well, the character kept moving as long as the key 
was held.

It would be good to have a page which detailed all the issues relating 
to various flavours of Linux - particularly for those new to the 
game.

Nice to know about if you really really need to figure something 
out admin wise ... for home use, su's crontab and utilities like 
monit can make life a little easier on the brain, but perhaps less 
secure.  Just don't let the scripts break during boot in superuser 
mode if you don't play the rc game.  :)

What I am going to attempt is a dialect that will respond to single 
key-strokes to tell the story of a match and at the same time capture 
the statics for the live game.  Hopefully the end result  will lead 
to many different tools based on this data such as statistics visualizations 
in the form of data summaries/reports and charts.

I took a bit of a Rebol break for the new year.  But last night I 
had an idea that just wouldn't get out of my head.  It happened after 
I read about "code golf" on StackOverflow.  The premise is to use 
the fewest characters possible to solve a problem using a general 
purpose language (albeit perhaps one optimized for such a game, like 
"GolfScript")

The punch line being the one Sunanda alludes to: Rebol can play this 
game as well as languages designed to play *only* this game, but 
that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Never knew it as a kid's game, but the Two Ronnies spun it into a 
TV sketch:
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/cello/swedish.htm

Consoles dont need that much drivers. Could be a nice target for 
an own os. But i guess coding at the game-level will cost lots of 
money.

I've spent quite a bit of time looking at Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) 
and it seems to be the only / best SVG game in town (their command-line 
driven SVG to PNG conversion seems to be particularly well regarded). 
Looking forward to their 0.42 release as it supports OS/X as well.


The Clip Art site that they link to (http://www.openclipart.org/) 
is also a treasure trove of Public Domain files (which solves the 
GPL concerns I had with many of the dedicated KDE / Gnome icon sets). 
I'm also looking forward to their release 15 which seems to be just 
around the corner.


Lots of good news in the SVG world, I wonder how long before mainstream 
browsers start supporting it? (without plugins).

I've been telling people foy years to get a machine for work and 
a machine to trash for games etc.

Because if they call me (as they often do) and say "I've broken my 
only computer by downloading a game and now I can't get it to work 
and I've got to do something important" they get zero sympathy and 
I'm pretty dis-inclined to lend a hand in fixing their crisis.

http://www.easy2remember.name/media/51/Spore-game-video.html<--- 
for gamers, this looks mightily impressive. An evolution game with 
a 100% dynamic world.

For inspiration, Wright looked to the 

demo scene," a group of (mostly European) coders who specialized 
in doing a whole lot with a little bit of code. Their procedural 
programming methods were able to, for example, fit an entire 3D game 
in 64K, using mathematics to generate textures and music, etc. "I 
just found this incredibly exciting," Wright confesses, describing 
the kinds of work that he saw come out of the demo scene."


So here's what he did: he recruited an elite strike team of coders 
(who, if you were to believe his slideshow, dressed like ninjas) 
and put them in a 

hidden facility" to experiment with new ways of giving the user powerful 
tools and generating tons of dynamic content without armies of content 
creators. Best of all, he fired up a demo and showed his audience 
the results... "

this is almost a REBOL like way to create games :-)

Opera plans to put their widgets on mobile devices, TVs, game consoles 
.... http://www.apcstart.com/site/dwarne/2006/07/799/opera-to-put-widgets-on-mobile-phones

if sillicon gfx had just kept their R&D and *licenced* their technology 
or simply made nvidia themselves as a spin off, they would still 
be "in the game"  right now, just about the only thing worth buying 
is their linux server stuff with very high-end add ons and HW tech.

if i point people to http://polly.rebol.it/test/test/game/use/game/game-plugin.html
currently, they allow everyone to send every script, by installing 
it.

My old remake of even older dockimbel's remake - R-box game is online 
again... http://box.lebeda.web/~hmm/rbox2/

hey, this little game works for me here ...

the latest game graphics are simply amazing.  I've seen a real time 
strategy game with hundreds of characters which have reflecting armor... 
I mean the armor is inter-reflecting amongst characters!  this is 
starting to be pretty amazing.

gabriele, so a fast arcade game would be made up of gobs (player, 
enemies, score) put inside other gobs (background, starfield)?

name=game

I find that hard to..........er understand............WOW (the game) 
rarely gets 400 people in public events let alone a tech conference 
in France...

New game, first card is ' steal up to 10 energy'.. we both now have 
10 ?

RebTower 0.0.9 - bugfix for infinite loop when ending game on an 
extra turn card.
http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebtower-0.0.9.zip(for full - 657kb)

or http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebtower.r(for update from versions 
0.0.7 and higher - 24kb)

Good to understand your logic.

OK, then may I suggest then:


-	Left click - plays card (you should put this to a vote)

-	Right click examines card (since this is how every OS is designed).

But also:

Leave about 20 pixels below the cards.

When you move your mouse over a card, that space shows the word "Details" 
or "more"

You can discard from the details view of the card.


Unless the game is a trigger game, or speed is required, sticking 
to just simple left button to do most things is the best way to go.


Of course, until I learn the actual point of this game (the rules) 
and "feel" the cadence of the game, it is hard to tell.

hmm  109 rounder  ... nice game James

nice game...

though..in one of the game ...it hanged. (not sure why)
- last card to win and it just hanged.

yes, it is version 0.1.2


I suspect that I was clicking too many times as I deal my last card...and 
the system (or game) may be trying to pop up the 'Victorious' screen

Btw, your games reminds me a lot this other online card game : http://www.maganicwars.com
(very good and addictive!)

RebTower 0.1.7 released.

- small fix for stacks not visually clearing after completing a game.

Full version: http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebtower.zip(661kb)

Update version (from 0.0.7 upwards): http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebtower.r
(38kb)

i download this game but don't understand how to win

Fun little single-multi-player game, where you play multi-player 
with yourself: http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html

It shouldn't be too hard to make a REBOL version, and it's a good 
idea, I think. My hi-score is 186.

Yes, very cute game.

Where do I find REBTOWER.  I got what I think is an older version 
and I'm getting hooked on this game and want to see if it is updated.

Grrr...  :)  I have no desire for millions, but ... I wrote and published 
a fantasy card game back in the early 80s; an entire decade before 
Magic the Gathering.  They made enough money to buy TSR.   Rassafrassa. 
 :)  Not to say my Monster Romp (tm) game competes with Magic;  I 
paid an artist a whole $3 for each picture, but had I flogged it 
I could be independently wealthy now instead of umm, not.  I have 
about 800 decks of the original 1000 run.  Sold 60 decks the one 
day I set up a booth to sell it, then gave away the rest.  From those 
days forward I promised myself to never pursue an idea.  Best to 
let them die on the operating table and skip the what if crap.  That 
is until I bump into a greedy partner.  Success requires greed imho, 
or at least a state of mind somewhere above "communist".  :)


Paul;  I'm not sure, but I posted this to the calendat back in July. 
 http://rebol/mustard.co.nz/rebtower-0.0.4.zip

after looking at Allen 's  penguin card game, I downloaded the card 
game engine cge.bin file. I do not know how to extract .bin files. 
Has someone used the engine before or could point me in the right 
direction?

I'm thinking of adapting Rebtris for a very basic network-based competitive 
play.  The idea is several people log in (to a minimal CGI server), 
everyone starts at the same time and scores and game-over times of 
all players are constantly refreshed and displayed.  Ultimately determining 
who a) had the highest score and b) lasted the longest.  The game 
would be capped so that no one could realistically survive past 15-20mins 
(I have my reasons).

Maybe you know, that I'm using my Rebol/Flash dialect to create this 
Flash game http://machinarium.com/We are still far to complete the 
Flash version, but there is already a demand to create also non Flash 
based versions. It would be nice to have a Rebol version, but it's 
not too realistic in near future so any idea what one could use? 
Is there someone who knows for example SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) 
http://www.libsdl.org/?

Are you creator of that fantastic game ? :)

Oldes, one solution that is easy though a bit ugly, is to make the 
standalone version Windows only (ie. DirectX etc) but make sure it 
works perfectly in Wine. Then you automatically get a version that 
runs on Windows, Linux and Mac (intel). Anyone else can use the flash 
version. (Mac users would need crossover, or manually installing 
wine; but if you think you'll have enough users, you could license 
the transgaming engine and bundle it with the game so that it "looks" 
like a mac game to users - eg. just like Spore is doing)

Why not use OpenGL?  It seems your game primitives are just that...primitive. 
 A little physics, collision, sound, etc.   Nothing difficult.  IF 
you make it OpenGL, it can work on Mac, and even many Cell phones.


You might be able to write an abstraction layer so you can keep a 
lot of your Flash code in place.

this guy has a game for windows, mac, linux and wii: http://2dboy.com/games.php

GOO is nice game.. he is using Python to design the levels http://sourceforge.net/projects/wogedit/

But it's just a simple Flash game (without any effects) which you 
probably can play in Opera on Wii... I don't know, I never seen Wii 
in real life.

The Wii version has Wiiremote controls (as I read, I don't have that 
game) so it's probably not Flash version.

Reminds me of the old Wolfenstien game that had that maze-like movement.

Richard (Cypher) should be back from holiday soon, if you post to 
him privately he will respond.  

I don't know of any "better" system than ray casting for making that 
type of game.

However, in general, everything is a sub-set of raytraciing.  The 
game is to do the most with the least CPU.
You should look at some of the Quake engine stuff.

There is also other side of this equation that is also very good 
to have IMHO. Easy binding to c libraries, and the reverse, possibility 
to embed REBOL vm/interpreter into c++. Lua (and nekoVM) for example 
allows both these things very nicely, python seems to be much worse 
at embedding and it's generally discouraged for example. To give 
just 2 quick examples, when I was making BKSJOS game (still in the 
making) I could very simply embed lua into the otherwise BlitzMax 
game and I used just lua instead of something like XML to "define" 
the individual levels, so they could also include "dynamic" logic 
(via events) and special behaviours with no complex coding in the 
blitzmax side.  If I could use REBOL for something like this it would 
be great.

Second example is direct game engines. I was making some games in 
PTK (it's a c++ library for mac and win) in the past. I wanted to 
use PTK with a higher level language and making a binding to it feels 
like a major pain to me, so after the BlitzMax+Lua experience I simply 
made a simple "engine" with it and embeded enkovm/haxe in it . I 
exposed some functions from c++ side like loadSprite, drawSprite 
and make some call-ins into the nekovm like "draw" and I could already 
code a simple game with it.  So embedding if possible at all of course 
would mean a great strength for rebol in my eyes! I think I once 
noticed that this will be possible in R3 but I couldn't find it later 
and I remember it only vaguely.

links to what I mentioned: BlitzMax + Lua game:

Anyone got experience with Stackless Python? http://www.stackless.com/
It seems to be suited for game programming.

This framework could be a good choice for your port of the flash 
game. You can publish on WIndows/Mac/Wii/iPhone.

I have been playing with their IDE on Mac..it was not so great but 
not much worse than Flash IDE  I know they are now building IDE for 
Windows.

You can script the game using JIT compiled JavaScript or C#(Mono)..what 
a pity there is no Rebol support :)

can anyone recommend a good MMO game to try... I long had some ideas 
for more lightweight MMO and would like to see how a good mmo works/plays 
but whatever I try it's pretty boring and bland, but I am not very 
knowledgable in gameplaying :)

http://www.anarchy-online.com
A big part of the game is free of charge.

yep  cool  I like the music.  really good quality for a flash game... 
people usually use cheesy (bad) soundtracks.

finally found a flash game to explain liquid   :-D  

http://www.y8.com/games/Liquid_Measure

good game.

took me some time to figure out lvl 10 as well

very nice game using physics engine http://windosill.com

That Eyeballing game (done in Flash) is a quite simple mathematical 
game. My score was modal.

Machinarium on the first page of Reddit! http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ahfbk/this_game_looks_gorgeous/

It has been a difficult decision for us because we are big fans of 
Machinarium but we have decided that we will not be moving forward 
with the XBLA version of the game.  One of the main objectives for 
our team as a 1st party publisher is to publish great games that 
are exclusive to Microsoft platforms (Xbox, Games for Windows).  
Currently, there is a significant emphasis on investing our resources 
in games that will be exclusive to Microsoft platforms.  Since Machinarium 
has already is out on other distribution sites it falls out scope 
for what we are trying to do.   
 

I think there is a great potential for us to work together on a future 
title that is exclusive to Microsoft (Xbox Live Arcade and Games 
for Windows).  If you are working on a new concept, please let me 
know and let's see if there is something that we can do together.

The game was GooBall:
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/gooball/

I plan to do something in my free time in a 3d engine .. I need that 
it works in a browser so unity seems the most obvious choice, adobe 
director is expensive and probably outdated, stonetrip / shiva seems 
even more IDE/GUI heavy than unity giving me even less controll (although 
I am not 100% sure bcause I haven't digged really deep in any of 
those.) Then there is Java (which has Ardor3d which is very early 
in the making , and jme which is somewhat "out") but starting with 
it would be at a lot more low level than unity and similar game engines, 
with no real docs and tools as far as I can see.

I helped some friends about the same time, that were starting a game 
developing company. I had a little experience there first with Torque 
before they changed to Reality Engine, which used C# and C++. I left 
after a few months, because I saw, it wouldn't happen. 2 years later, 
they stopped the development.


Unity had a development tool with lists of content and parameters 
to set. At first it looked good, but in practical work, it fast became 
a huge mess. It was difficult to find and set parameters, so a lot 
of time was wasted in the process of creating a game. The porting, 
I was doing, ended up being a totally recreate in some areas, like 
the animations. The data couldn't be kept and converted from the 
old version to the new, but had to be recreated. I even tried to 
figure out the binary files using REBOL, but was very hard, as much 
of it wasn't documented. That a bad sign for me, when we talk going 
from one version to a newer one with the same engine.


But it could have changed in the last years, I don't know. Haven't 
looked.

I'm waiting for Maxim to design us all a nice game engine via openGL 
extensions. :-)

Somebody on the ML is looking for the "Rebol theBeast" game which 
was based on Cyphre's Arcadia. Cyphre (or anybody else) is it still 
available?

Was it ever a game or just a scrolling parallax demo ?

Davide: I am :) Very cool game. Inspired me to create a virtual computer 
game that teaches programming. Haven't finished the game yet but 
I played it for a couple of hours until I got stuck.

...virtual computer game that teaches programming...
 
Interesting, written in Rebol?

Mostly Ruby and a bit Java => http://rubility.heroku.com; It's in 
very early stages though. At the moment I am creating the underlying 
technologies for the game and the virtual computer it runs on. Well, 
let's call it a virtual virtual computer since I use a very easy 
trick to simulate a virtual computer :p (the game is an MDI app, 
and "apps" in the game are just MDI windows)

I did start writing a Rogue like game with Rebol today though :) 
I did try to make a jump and run game half a year ago when I first 
started to learn Rebol, but the keyboard events made that impossible 
(at least for me because I don't know if you can improve the event 
system). It takes a few seconds until the keyboard event is sent 
continually when you press and hold a key, like for walking left 
or right. For the rogue like game this isn't a problem since you 
always move one step at a time which also acts as a turn in the game.

Me too on the hope.  I took a crack at a game in REBOL once. But 
I could not get my head round some of the event handling.  Drawing 
was easy (umm, for a stick figure artist type ala moi that is, if 
not 'good').    ;)

Has anyone done some Corewar simulator in Rebol? I just remembered 
this cool game.

This could become a great game for web designers 
http://yizzle.com/whatthehex/

No, Starcraft II was just released by Blizzard.  Sequel to Starcraft, 
a Windows game from 1998

I agree that is addictive as hell, and also much more challenging 
than previous versions.


I've never been annihilated so often playing this kind of game before.

only down side is that its a resource hog.  but that's to be expected 
with the level of detail in the game engine.  putting settings to 
low will allow the game to play on older machines without a glitch 
though...  it seems to be much more demanding on OSX.

a big step in GFx occured at about the same time, you could actually 
call it a leap.   Hardware shaders, better illuminations and gfx 
ram jumped to be 256MB at minimum on most cards.


but most games of today allow very low settings which allow you to 
work on older machines... I've got a 4 year old 1.5Ghz core duo with 
an old 8600M nvidia card.


and SC2 is quite responsive on it.  though I would like to play with 
a bit more graphics quality... its not the game's fault.  4-5 years 
ago 3D game graphics quality was still pretty deficient.  but with 
any average 100$ card today,  you'll get pretty amazing graphics.

finished the game today... no zerg missions.  :-(


actually , I was disapointed by the last mission.  I hoping for a 
huge slugfest, but in fact the last protoss mission is much more 
"end of campaign" like.

Finished it today too, some time this morning. Played the whole damn 
night yesterday, I was shocked when the sun rose :) Yeah the end 
left a lot to be desired but Starcraft 2 is a trilogy, so that was 
to be expected. I only hope Blizzard will really manage to get the 
second game out in just one year. I can't really see that happening. 
It'll probably be 3 or 4 years. Did you get to play all missions? 
My mission counter says 25 of 26 missions completed. Where's the 
26th mission and why wasn't I able to play it? ^^ And if I do count 
by myself I get to 28 completed missions in the mission archive anyhow 
so maybe their mission counter is just one big bug. The missions 
are very short but I'd say it took me between 30 and 50 minutes for 
each mission and with 28 missions + 4 bonus protoss missions, this 
is a whole lot of content. Most games only give you 7 to 12 hours 
of gameplay (some a lot less, some a lot more). Starcraft 2 took 
me over 20 hours to play through. And then you still got challenge 
missions, multiplayer, custom maps Vs A.I, user contributed missions 
thanks to the level editor, etc.

Maxim: But there were two situations like that. You also have to 
decide if you want to help the doctor or help the protoss. Aren't 
these two different missions too? I haven't replayed the game yet 
so I don't know.

Graham: If you ask direct questions like that we have to tell you 
a direct lie ;) Of course it was written in REBOL! How else would 
you make a game like that? I think Carl was personally involved with 
the development of the game. He has mentioned it on his blog somewhere... 
I'm pretty sure about that. And I think he tweeted that he is afraid 
of chicken now because of the similarities to Zerg. He said something 
about "They are watching me, waiting for the right moment to charge." 
He's probably right now making little Overlords out of mashed potatoes. 
Call me a liar and I'll lie again!

Yes, but now I'm in amnesty ! 
(great game btw)

ok, I just stumbled onto an article there and several commenters 
noted they hadn't heard of the game. thought it could be a marketing 
opportunity.

minecraft, still in alpha, probably the best indie game of 2010 (and 
before)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogA9Bhh4luA
It's stealing all my free time (and some work time too)

This may be of interest to those of you who need to [quickly] create 
hexagonal game maps ... but don't want to master a complex CAD program. 
My QAD attempt at a declarative solution yields results like this:

	http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8269768/ACW.png

The prototype code can be found here:

	http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8269768/MapMaker.zip


No documentation, but the sample map file (ACW.r) shows how the PNG 
above was generated. Note you can drag the map around by click-moving 
it. Map, game and software still WIP.

Machinarium's PlayBook version mentioned on GDC:

http://unplugged.rcrwireless.com/index.php/20110302/devices/7239/we-play-with-the-playbook-at-gdc-video/


Unfortunately it requires to be in AVM2 bytecode (usingActionScript3) 
so I must rewrite the game :/  But I use REBOL to help me with the 
task and a nasty REBOL script to scale the game to the correct resolution 
1024x600.

Oldes: I just mentioned Machinarium on twitter and my designer wrote 
me out of nothing how he really likes this game and has played it 
over 3 times even though he knows it by heart

that's not a demo, it's just a small free (if you want) game. And 
we are Amanita.. we eat muchrooms;-)

I finished it also .. great interactive music/game thing! I love 
it..

anyone here play GT5.... I'm so pissed off by this game.


everytime I play I get aggravated.  If anyone here is a game designer 
this is the game to study about how *not* to build a game.

actually, the GT5 preview game is more fun, hands down, in *every* 
aspect, except it doesn't have online play.

Reichart: I'm playing "IGoWin" from David Fotland which has good 
AI (or my "AI" is not good :) ).

It is not an online game but you can test yourself with computer. 
As I heard it plays dan level. 
http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.exe

Endo, that was perfect.! Thank you, it is good enough to "play with" 
to teach a person the basic play.


I was hoping for online version of EXACTLY this.   The two online 
versions appear to be free of A.I. unless I'm missing something. 
 They are lobbies where you can jump into a game with someone.

good A.I.

 is not important to me, just good enough to confirm basic rules, 
 attempt to win, etc.  You know, something that could replace any 
 president of any country, that type of thing ~

Kaj, nothing like a big cup full of hot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
in the morning, eh?  You might cut Endo a little slack (and the rest 
of us) since "free software" can mean several things.  No?


Endo, So I can beat the game in a few seoncds now, so I assume I'm 
doing something wrong LOL.

As it stands, when you start the game is gives black 5, and white 
1.  And it is not a 19x19 board.
Perhaps this is part of being the "free" version (as in $ LOL)?


To win al lone needs to do is draw a single line across the board 
with the most territory on your side.  Done, you won.

Look towards people in the video game business....they did lots of 
this in the 80-90s

I don't think I mentioned what I wanted the colours for - a progress 
bar. After consideration, I've pretty much decided that a large range 
of colours such as cooling metal might go through might actually 
be bad for the user interface (unless extreme measures are taken 
to make it really look like molten metal, like a computer game programmer 
might do), because all those colours might be confusing, and some 
of them (eg. red) may signal warning, etc. (especially if the user 
hasn't seen the progress bar before - I don't want to present the 
user with a circus of colours). Fading from white to solid blue is 
what I'm using at the moment, and I'm thinking white might be too 
bright.

May I suggest that:


- Starting with just cold metal - metal is not a single colour.  
You are seeing many colours at all times, and different patches of 
colour everywhere.  You are seeing colours reflected and you need 
a coefficient table to calculate the reflection index.  Copper for 
example would lean heavily towards red.


- Next, heated metals are the same, meaning, not a single colour 
either, but now for a different reason.  But to produce the illusion 
of something burning hotter and hotter will require something that 
is multi-pass, and changing constantly.


In video games to produce the afterburner on a jet we did a few tricks:


- The jet flame itself was made of a cone-like shape (maybe a dozen 
polygons).

- The cone was set with an alpha channel so that the source was close 
to opaque, and the tip was close to translucent.

- A second cone was placed around the first cone, but just slightly 
larger.

- They both undulated at all times.  In other words, the length was 
always changing for both cones independently just slight.  And when 
the jet went faster and slower, they changed from long to flat (with 
the plane itself).

- The textures on the polygons were already a rainbox of colours, 
but as the jet changed what it was doing, the colour pallet was changed. 
 Again, both cones were not always changed at the exact same time.

- Just behind the jet (but depending on your angle of view), several 
filters (polygons that read the bg info and render again) would be 
used to create a small waiver and a refocusing.  The more GPU you 
had, the more of this you could do, and the better the final effect 
would look.

- Lastly, and this is what makes the whole thing amazing in a 3D 
game.  We are always checking the location of bright things, such 
as the sun, or things like the after burner filling your screen. 
 If so, we change the contrast of the whole world, and flare out 
your iris.  In the case of the sun we throw up a lens flare, and 
darken all the ships in the sky.

Even as a 2D problem, you should attach this the same way.

This video I think drives this all home for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHL94qQgl_8&feature=related

Wow - you guys. This is very interesting, but, going too far for 
my purpose at the moment. I *really* like the idea of having the 
simplest, most robust code possible. Adding so many visual effects 
and detail is something for a computer game.