As most Lovecraft fans know, translating his works to the screen has been difficult and with mixed results at best. Even when his work does get translated to the screen, such as in 1963′s “The Haunted Palace” starring Vincent Price and directed by Roger Corman, it often gets marketed as the much more recognizable E.A. Poe, even when the main source material was Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (written 1927, published 1941). Well the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society‘s feature-length adaptation of “Call of Cthulhu” (written 1926) is a great example that Lovecraft can be successfully adapted to film! Lovingly done in the style of a 20′s era silent film, this production is a treat, conjuring the uncanny cosmic horror of the classic tale of Cthulhu rising from the sunken city of R’lyeh.
Archive for January, 2007
Call Of A Good Film
Jan 31
All the treehouses are in place, with the Main Treehouse in the center, Harold’s Workshop to the left and Tamyah’s Home to the right. We’ve installed a central courtyard between the treehouses and will be adding some new lighting to the environment soon.
A basic teleporter system is in place, with a teleporter at the Jaguar Valley gate as well as the Courtyard and each of the treehouses.
Here’s a picture of Sentinel Hill at dawn with all the new improvements in place:
Been working lately on helping Mathue with his steam engine. I was using lots of server-side tricks to animate (actually rotating the object by changing it’s position on the server) but this wasn’t giving the effect I was looking for: a wheel smoothly turning on its axis.
Looking through Wiki’s and other web sites, I found what has to be one of the simplest and smoothest ways to rotate objects: llTargetOmega! Instead of using the server resources, llTargetOmega tells each client viewer to create a rotation. The upside: Rotations are very smooth, easily controllable at high speeds (above 10 rpm) and do not use server resources to create the motion. The one downside is that each client may see the object slightly differently for any given moment in time. For that contigency, llSetRot may be best or at least an llSetRot issued at the end of a movement cycle with llTargetOmega to ensure everyone has the same object rotation.
Here’s how simple llTargetOmega is to use:
default
{
state_entry()
{
llTargetOmega( <0, 1, 0>, PI, 1.0 );
}
}
This script will automatically start rotating an object around it’s local Y-axis upon rezzing at the rate of 180 degrees per second (30 RPM).
llTargetOmega takes three parameters: a rotation vector, a spinrate, and a physics gain. In my example, the vector is <0,1,0> which is around the y-axis (the “1″) and spinrate is PI (e.g 3.141…) radians/second which is 180 degrees. The gain of 1.0 is largely ignored for my application, since the objects I’m working with are not turned on for local physics. If they were, the gain represents the “strength” of the spin in the physics engine.
Good luck with your own spinning objects–llTargetOmega should speed you on your way!
First Buildings
Jan 24
Lovecraft Forest is coming along nicely. The first main structures are now up. Three lovely treehouses designed by Arwen Eusebio (AE Industries.) The main one at the top of the hill will be the central meeting place for Lovecraft Forest and the two smaller treehouses are homes to Harold, Mathue, Tamyah, Kerwin, and others of the Lovecraft Forest team. Stop by and enjoy! The main treehouse is open to all.
Meet Mathue . . .
Jan 20
Mathue, an illiop on loan from Rillonia, has been roaming the Forest lately, snapping some new pictures. One of Lovecraft Forest’s estate managers, Mathue will be developing some of the power infrastructure for the Forest.
Here he is on the balcony of the main tree house, with a lovely view to the south across Jaguar Valley and on to Serenity Woods.
To find out more about illiops, take a spin to: http://www.illiop.org/
