 Why is the SciFi channel still broadcasting in 4:3?  At least films look good now.... |
Okay, so they dropped to $999.99, plus three hundred bucks for the gremlinproofed warranty, plus a hundred bucks in sales tax; but...close enough, I guess.
So. Now I've got a bunch of fairly boring channels on cable, a DVDplayer which can read .wmv files [you have no idea how helpful that is], a PS2, N64, GameCube, and VCR all connected to this machine. And it's still not very interesting. Although it is somewhat entertaining to watch a show broadcast in 4:3 stretched out to 16:9; one day, the people on these shows are going to discover that they look 33% fatter on an HDTV and go on strike until something's done about it.
For that matter, in theory, I can output the laptop to this thing at 1920*1080, which would be somewhat better than the 1400*1050 I'm using now. I'll have to try that sometime.
In any case, television hasn't improved much with all the new channels. Half the new channels are various Fox incarnations. Fox, FoxKids, FoxSports, FoxNews, FoxCelebrityMooseFucking...the only thing I haven't seen yet is a FoxFoxGuide to tell me which waste of cathode is on which FoxChannel at the moment.
On the bright side, this serves as serious motivation to release Deadache. Not just as something better to watch than all this shit; I'm also getting roughly a plotline per minute by looking at these programmes. I guess that'll make more sense when you've seen what I'm talking about.
On the subject, I'm still playing with formats for Deadache. Not literal formats; I'm pretty sure it's going to end up being .mov at the site; although I'm thinking about keeping a better .mpeg version for discs--which is probably a little further into the future than the debut of the show. I'm working more on how the thing should look. I've been playing every available ResidentEvil game, factoring how things look in each. I've pretty well ruled out the stark PlayStation RE1 look; I can't guess whether that looks better or worse in colour. Now I'm trying to decide whether to go with the aliased-yet-dark look of RE3, the misty look of RECV, or the cinematic look of RE0. Then there's GTA3, ViceCity, and HalfLife to consider, too. The RE3 look is definitely the fastest render and the easiest animation; I'm just wondering whether people will get that it's a satire of the first generation of 3D games, or if they'll just assume that I'm not very good at doing this sort of thing.
Of course, that's all technically postproduction. Principal 'filming' is the audio, which is what we're kinda working on now. Voices and music and so on. And that's the really slow part, since there are still some parts open; I need to find people to do those before we can get any further on this.
Which isn't news. Most of the things we've never got round to doing evaporated because various essential people gave up on the projects when they discovered that effort was involved in getting things done.
In other news, I'm still playing with designs for V13 here. I've got one really neat idea; I'm just not sure how well it'll work--especially on computers running at less than 2GHz. I may have to postpone that one for a later version.
One thing I've pretty well ruled out is a full flashsite. It can absolutely be done; I've done it before. But the daily work involved in updating a flashsite with the sort of content already here [and a few things I'm planning for the next version] is way too much to undertake. There will be a number of flash elements, but they'll be safely anchored in hypertext.
I guess I've still got a week or two to figure it out. And write it. Hopefully the literal coding will be quick.
So what else is new....
There are a few newish things at wastedinc.com. This stuff is catching on surprisingly well suddenly. Might be a giftmas thing; I dunno. But, since the top of the FAQ list for Wasted is Have you got any black shirts, the answer is Yes, but. Where the but part is that I haven't got those linked at the moment. It's definitely a factor for V13; give it a couple of weeks.
Once I have a few more pressing things finished here, I'll release a few new things at Wasted. In fact, if a couple of potential things work out, there might well be a few things there which people have been waiting on for quite a while now. I'll leave it at that until I know for sure whether it's going to happen.
I think that's everything at the moment.
More later....
--Gremlin