[-empyre-] Games, histories and preservation

[Jim Andrews]

open source is important to the longevity of projects, of course.

so is an interesting, featureful, rich dev tool. director is not 'open
source', but it has been around, as paul notes, for quite a long time. it
was started in 1987. it is quite featureful, by now. and extensible via
xtras. and available for pc and mac. and the dev community is extrordinarily
knowlegeable and open. director can generate either standalone executables
or shockwave output that'll run in browsers.

ideally, tools would be open source but developed by a dedicated team of
coordinated programmers with the resources of a philanthropist. ha. sure.

you mention timing in director, julian. http://vispo.com/nio and
http://vispo.com/jig are a couple of interactive audio projects for the web
i've done that synchronize interactively re-arrangeable sequences and layers
of audio files (and animations, in the case of nio). the source code of nio
is available for download. i wrote an essay on audio programming in director
as part of the nio project. this explains how to do that sort of
synchronization in director. the essay was published by macromedia, also, as
part of the director documentation. over the years, i've had various
inquiries from programmers wanting to do that sort of synchronization. the
nio code has not yet needed updating, however; it still runs ok.

i see your packetgarden project is done primarily (or exclusively?) with
python. i have heard good things about python but have not done any work
with it.

i note you say packetgarden is not net art because it isn't delivered
through the browser. it's pretty net-oriented, though. it's all about data
visualisation of personal net usage. dunno, i think i'd call it net art.
certainly it needs a net connection, doesn't it? isn't that the way some
people define net art: needs a connection and does something interesting
with it artistically?

ja
http://vispo.com