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

[Tom Holub <doosh@best.com>]

On Thu, May 11, 2000 at 09:56:17AM +1000, James Cameron wrote:
> On Wed, May 10, 2000 at 10:16:50AM -0700, Tom Holub wrote:
> > 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.  
> 
> Karthik just picked up three 40Gb disks at $USD180 each, and that seems
> like quite a reasonable price.  That's about $USD2.43 worth of disk for
> each 90 minute game.  I think we can afford that.

As an academic exercise, compute the cost of converting 54000 megapixel
images into GIF format.  Also compute the likelihood of such GIF files
being 10k in size.

> But sure, if there was a reliable alternative format, we could do it.
> 
> Perhaps the client would run as a per-frame CGI?

I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish.  What would you
DO with your 54000 GIF files after the game?
 -Tom