I actually had a day off today so I was able to work on Hack Mars for most of the day. I got a few important bugs fixed (texture reload disappearance) so I get to show you some beautiful screenshots I did today. All of these are for Demo 2. Demo 2 involves Mission 2 where the player runs from home to school. It may seem simple, but the idea is extremely ambitious. The idea is to use a simple portal rendering system to render N levels deep with a maximum of 10 characters each with 1000 triangles. Of course, it's impossible to render 10k triangles + 5k triangles (colony) + 5k triangles (terrain) at 30 fps on a GeForce2. The solution is Level of Detail (LOD). I wrote a very simple LOD that throws away the shortest N edges of a mesh. So I plan to do LOD depending on distance so I will have more detailed characters closer and less detailed characters further away. That reduces the triangles to ~10k and allows 30 fps on a GeForce2. Think of a scene where you walk through the tunnels shown above with 700 people. Walking from home to school, you will see ~100 of them, 10 at a time. It should be pretty cool.
Today I rest. I've worked the last 4 days not on HM or JF, but back-breaking labor (well, it's really not that bad). I have delayed writing a MoJF (aka MoHM) until today just because I've been totally rocked by work. I have tomorrow off so I am going to work hard on Hack Mars. I'll also be able to do a very good MoHM.
Greetings. If you check out today's Low quality version, you'll get an accessory to today's high quality version. It is an accessory because this Hack Mars character is all about anarchy. In fact, he has a seemingly unique set of anarchistic values. I will explain them:
No need for a well-thought out article on anarchy today. I was thinking more about capitalism yesterday during dinner. That's for good reason. You see, if a person chooses to work in a capitalist society (most people have), they have certain guidelines they must follow. These guidelines are imposed by businesses and customers. As an employee, a person has little power, but not much required and much flexibility. As an business owner, a person has power, but is required to make profit and is at the will of the customer and must find good employees. The customer has needs and only has the power to buy or not buy*. These are the guidelines by which capitalism works.
