kjander79 · HackerTrans

vor 2 Monatendiscuss

I just wish many of the software projects the code in the book depends on had been maintained. Portable Aserve and the Shoutcast server are two examples that come to mind off the top of my head, and of course the Lisp in a Box environment is long gone, and the replacements, like Portacle, are also getting left behind.

kjander79

letztes Jahrdiscuss

It's just an event loop, watching for status changes in a memory location. Talking to the hardware just occurs when the keyboard changes the values in memory.

kjander79

letztes Jahrdiscuss

The iMuse system really is remarkable. Games like X-Wing took great advantage of the features, when a Star Destroyer jumps into the game the music would seamlessly transition to the imperial March and it felt just like being in the movies. I don't think any modern system even tries to do those seamless transitions from one music piece to another.

One thing I wonder about .. he mentions CD-audio (Redbook?) as being one capability of the system. But the CD-Audio games like X-Wing vs Tie Fighter were much more limited in that sense. You'd literally just hear the music switch to the new track. And the Force Unleashed, the last game that used iMuse, wasn't particularly remarkable if memory serves. I wonder if that was a limitation they just couldn't quite make as seamless?

I figure today you could do it, with a "virtual MIDI" system using MP3 audio of individual instrument sounds ..

Edited to add: that last sentence is essential what a DAW provides.

kjander79

letztes Jahrdiscuss

I really enjoyed having the kids introduce it

kjander79

letztes Jahrdiscuss

This is the Logic Theorist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Theorist

I love Simon's anecdote of using his wife and children as the stack as he developed IPS.

This eventually was replaced by GPS, which has a good description in Norvig's Paradigms of Artificial Programming, here: https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp

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