Ancestors

Toot

Written by Trammell Hudson on 2025-01-15 at 16:42

The original artist describes their Fortran code that rendered the Nostromo's vector landing display in "Alien": https://archive.org/details/creativecomputing-1981-06/page/n51/mode/2up?ui=embed&view=theater

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Descendants

Written by Trammell Hudson on 2025-01-16 at 11:35

Alan Sutcliffe also founded the Computer Arts Society and his 2014 obituary describes the many computer graphics, music, and poetry projects he was involved with: https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/remembering-alan-sutcliffe-1930-2014/

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Written by peachfiend - they/them on 2025-01-15 at 16:56

@th yo that Microsoft logo fuckin rips. why'd they ever change that?

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Written by Trammell Hudson on 2025-01-15 at 16:57

@peachfiend It's so metal! https://social.v.st/@th/113146952511055622

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Written by peachfiend - they/them on 2025-01-15 at 17:31

@th it's way too cool for them, tbh.

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Written by Jérémie Chassaing on 2025-01-15 at 17:25

@th I remember typing code like the one from pages 70-80 while my little brother was reading it. memories...

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Written by vmagnin on 2025-01-15 at 18:20

Thanks @th

Alan Sutcliffe, Landing the Nostromo, Creative Computing Magazine (June 1981) Volume 07 No 06, p. 48-54

"The hardware to be used was a Prime 300 connected to an FR 80 from III which can plot directly onto cine-film. Running on this system at the SRC laboratories in Oxfordshire was the software animation package, Frolic, developed by C.Emmett.

My program was written in Fortran with calls to Frolic subroutines."

The whole project was 14 pages of #Fortran code.

[#]Alien #nostromo

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Written by Jackie Officecouch on 2025-01-15 at 18:38

@th "I was not able to use color for different parts of the display. For reasons I never discovered that facility in Frolic would not work in the context of my program, though it did elsewhere. That's software for you."

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Written by David Schuetz on 2025-01-15 at 18:37

@th Cool! I was looking for that article not long ago (I have no idea what the context was at this point). I definitely remember reading it when it came out and found it fascinating, even though I'd not even seen the film yet.

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Written by Aaron Sawdey, Ph.D. on 2025-01-15 at 18:49

@th This I hadn't seen before. But just a few years later I remember typing in a basic program that generated a triangular section of fractal landscape and did hidden line rendering like this. The z100 I was using at the time could do 640x225 8-color graphics and their basic had line drawing commands. I don't remember if the program was from the heath/zenith community or if I had to port it from some other basic. But yeah his comment about not needing a $1/4M computer is right on.

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Written by MisterMoo on 2025-01-15 at 22:11

@th Also interesting: the ad for CompuServe. $5 per hour in 1981!

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Written by phooky on 2025-01-15 at 23:31

@th this is excellent. I love the 7-segment alphabet goofiness. Plus, "Of CompuServe's 22 large computer systems, 10 are housed here in our Dublin, Ohio Computer Center."

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Written by phooky on 2025-01-15 at 23:31

@th and an actual ad for the "Hayes Stack"! Amazing.

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Written by teddy on 2025-01-16 at 00:01

@th computers have progressed quite a bit. i implemented this same algorithm on the 2019 superconference badge, except with real-time animation of the surface

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