Re: [VANILLA-LIST:3160] Developers Must Play

[Tom Holub <doosh@best.com>]

On Wed, May 10, 2000 at 03:24:43PM +1000, James Cameron wrote:
> On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 10:03:29PM -0400, Dave Ahn wrote:
> > On Wed, May 10, 2000 at 09:04:20AM +1000, James Cameron wrote:
> > > Another suggestion ... code in a system() call on a per-frame basis on
> > > COW playback that will run an external program ... then on a server we
> > > could run a virtual X server, capture the window, encoded it as GIF, and
> > > make a series of frames for delivery by HTTP on demand.
> > Um, you're kidding, right James?  :)
> 
> No!
> 
> Which bit do you consider difficult?  We have the tools.  We have the
> CPU and disk resources.
> 
> Checklist;
> 	- COW .xtrekrc with minimal information displayed,
> 	- modifications to COW to lock on to a specified player,
> 	  according to command line,
> 	- modifications to COW to signal an external window capturer,
> 	  (with signal(), or a per-frame fork()/exec())

I think a per-frame fork() is insane.  What do you plan to do with it,
write a gif for every frame?  In a 90 minute game that's 54000 files, not
to mention 54000 fork()'s, and assuming 10k files, 540 megabytes of disk
space.  (If you're using xwd, it's more like 150 gigabytes).

It would make a lot more sense to build the movie in the client using
an actual movie format.
 -Tom