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Just a couple of things to add to what ever one else said.  Back in the day compiling C or ASM could take an hour or longer whereas a script could be immediately executed.

Also the games industry is not the only or the first to utilize a domain specific language and IDE.  PLC and DCS come to mind in the area of industrial control.

That's funny ...  two German guys who are experts on evil dictators and against U.S. intervention in such matters...

(edit)
Oh, they left out the part about how the Ottaman Empire was on the losing side of WWII and they gave all of their territory now referred to as the middle east to victors to do with as they pleased.

All the U.S. (and I suppose Briton and France also) wanted was stable and free countries there.  But that sort of thing seems to be incompatible with the dominate philosophy of the people who live there.  The problem is that nobody in the west wants to recognize that fact.

[racial slur]

In the US, very poor people are called "white trash" and some of them turn to tea parties and that sort of fanatism.

White trash is a derogatory American English racial slur referring to poor white people and you are a bigot for using the term to describe a political movement of which you appear to be entirely ignorant.   

But that's not true either! There are plenty of examples throughout history of terrorists and other violent groups that eventually laid down their arms without ever being "utterly defeated" by force (or achieving their ultimate goal). Take the IRA and their Unionist foes, for example. Or communist revolutionaries in many countries who eventually moderated their views and formed modern, democratic Labor parties.

I don't know much about the IRA, other than they have or had some 200 ytear old beef with the gov. According to a Scottish friend of mine the British authorities hand killed off quite a few of them in the early 1980s. 

I can be persuaded me to take back the "utterly defeated" qualifer but believe that sooner or later the use of force will be required.

I agree that the fanatical muslims may stop blowing shit up when they achieve their goal, which is what?  Oh yeah that's right conquer the world!

I agree with Snarky on this one.  Fanatics are rarely satisfied with anything.  Give them what they want and they will be emboldened and want even more.  People who believe they can get whatever they want through violence will not be persuaded otherwise until they are met with force and utterely defeated.  It's as true now as it has been throughout history. 

I buy a lot of stuff from Newegg; they usually have pretty good prices.
http://www.newegg.com/Laptops-Notebooks/Category/ID-223
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=4016&IsNodeId=1&name=Refurbished&PMSub=32%203365%203191%203073%203361&PMSubCP=0

I agree with Mods.  All the ads overthere start with [Help Wantged] which is not very informative since it is a "help Wanted" topic.  Perhaps we could come up with a number of "approved" tags that convey more meaning (i.e. [AGS GAME], [NON-AGS GAME], [WEB DESIGN], [GRAPHIC DESIGN], [PROGRAMMING].  If [Buger Flipper] is not on the list then it would be against the rlues.  It would be a way of giving broader scope without losing control and perhsps some more opportunities will come our way..

We don't normally do political activism here.  However, the issue of net neturality affects our AGS activities and so I thought I would share the following email I received today. Sign the petition by ckicking one of the links below if you desire to be herard.

https://savetheinternet.eu/

Hi thereâ€"

We've been working on a ton of things in tandem lately: defending the future of encryption, trying to stop the anti-privacy bill CISA from passing, and preparing our final effort to stop the TPP.

But there's one more extremely important thing happening this week, and it's in Europe.

The European Parliament is about to vote on net neutrality rules, and here's the thing: the current draft rules are terrible â€" much weaker than the rules we won in the US this February.

Can you help? We have a chance to fix it:

Yes, I live in Europe and I'll email the European parliament to defend net neutrality!

I don't live in Europe, but I'm happy to write them anyway!

Whether you live in the EU or not, your voice matters. Part of our strategy is to make Members of European Parliament feel sheer embarrassment at passing rules that are worse than the ones we passed in the US.

Plus, if European telcos can slow any website to crawl, or extort payments for special “zero rating” deals, that affects every one of us, wherever we live!

The good part about all of this is, if we're successful at passing all the amendments we're asking for, the EU rules will actually be pretty good. It's a long shot. Europe's ISPs have been working hard to corrupt this process, and it's really common for EU-level decisions to be ignored by Europe's press. But if we rally now, we can win decisively, and permanently, next week!

Take action now to protect Net Neutrality.

Thanks for helping keep the Internet open everywhere.

~Holmes

P.S. If you want to see us get more involved in Net Neutrality globally, chip in $5 to support our work. We're planning to get more involved in battles outside the US, and the more support we have the better we can protect Internet freedom everywhere.

[Multiple Games with Common Assets (RON)]

I think the confusion comes from looking at this from two different perspectives.  I wasn't thinking much about how sprite import currently works but I think ChamberOfFear was thinking in these terms.

If there is a Sprite Path property then one could specify a number of locations where sprites can be found which can be specified relative to the project folder or be an absolute specification. As selmiak says settle on a good set of defaults so that most people won't notice.

Sprites would be imported relative to the path which could include both absolute and relative specifications.  There are a couple of situations that must be handled properly though. 

1) Suppose the same file name is used in more than one folder.  The path property is essentially a search list, so to re-import the file one would search the folders specified by the path property until  a match is found.  Now if the original file was imported from a folder appearing latter in the list then the wrong file would be found.  This could be solved in a number of different ways.  For example, each folder in the path specification could be assigned a logical or symbolic name, and that name would be stored with the sprite. Alternatively one could ask the user to select from a myriad of options if such a situation occurs.

2. Navigation when the import dialog opens would need to be aware of the path specification and probably select the first folder in the list by default. The user would then be able to select sub-folders and eventually a file.  When the sprite is imported it is save with a path that is relative to selected path folder. No need to look everywhere for sprites when the path specification tells where they are.  However, there should be provision to import a sprite from an arbitrary location as well.

There are a couple of use scenarios where this would come in handy.

Multiple Games with Common Assets (RON)
In a situations such as "Reality on the Norm" the same game assets are used on multiple projects. So one could easily imagine a repository external to the game folder that contains these sprites.  Of course there are always game specific sprites such as room objecfts, inventory items, etc that are game specific.;  These sprites could be kept in a repository residing in the game folder where they are used. 

Multiple Artists
If a project had multiple artists creating sprites e then each one could have their own repository.  If re-import mechanism had an option to select folder from the path specification then it would be possible to re-import everything from this artist but not that other artist. There are of course other kinds of groupings possible.

Sprite Override
Suppose there is a template for a specific kind of GUI.  The Module author provides a default set of button, panel, and other sprites used in the GUI.  The default sprites could be kept in an absolute location (i.e. the AGS template repository or AGS install folder).  Anyone or all of these sprites could be replaced simply by making s copy and modifications in the project's sprite repository.

As is usually the case there are likely more detail to iron out but hopefully the above explains my thoughts more fully.

It should be a search list rather than be either or, as shown in the example below.

Code: ags

SpritePath=PATH=C:\Ags\Standard\Sprites;.MyGameSprites;

[edit]
I may have mis-rtead your comments ChamberOfFear.
[/edit]

I can see a need for both. Could we not have a "path" setting containing multiple paths, both absolute and relative?   

Joseph, I believe Allegro is used to do all the image stuff.  So you would probably want to find a Java binding for Allegro or alternatively find another graphics lib with java binding and write wrapper functions to emulate Allegro.

I have been a long time advocate of Qt for this purpose.  It has it's own built-in graphics library, it's open source LGPL and commercial, runs on Win, Linux, MAC, and more recently mobile platforms as well. 

Alberth, you make a pretty good argument against C#. 

Magpie,
I remember you.  I was worried when you disappeared from the forum so it's good to hear from you and know you are doing OK. 

I can recommend Treeline as an information organizer.  It's hierarchical and customizable.  Treeline is XML based and can be exported to an HTML document.  So links, bookmarks, etc can be embedded in the info and then accessed later.
http://treeline.bellz.org/scrnsht.html

For alarms, reminders, and todo list I use Google Keep. It sends notifications to my phone and the notes are accessible from anywhere.
https://keep.google.com/

Catpunter: Hehe!  I am so relieved to hear that.  We have 7 that we took in off the street and  they are beloved family members.  When I first saw your nick it made me think of Max the cat.  Anyway welcome to AGS.

CatPunter: I like cats better than people and so I find your nick a bit off-putting.

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned already, but I find it fascinating that people would rather believe in the existence of death rays than in terrorism.

This says it all doesn't it!

[NickyNyce]

NickyNyce
I think all three pictures are of the same car because of the number 2723 painted on the side and trunk. I suppose the crazy Asian dude could have also been vandalizing police cars with his lucky number.

Dustification
The lady in the building says it's smoke.  She did't have difficulty breathing and wasn't coughing so I'll take her word for it.

Hoffman

From the Hoffman article: "It is well documented that nearly all of the non-metallic constituents of the towers were pulverized into fine powder."

I don't know if it's true or not.  But if we take Hoffman's word for it then the missing debris is floating in the air.  He also notes that lightweight concrete was used in the floors which were designed to hold people and office furniture.   Lightweight concrete is less strong than standard and other mixes of concrete. 

Keep in mind that the more lightweight aggregate you use in your mix… the weaker the stone will be.

Collapse

In a normal collapse, building debris should not consist of predominantly dust size. Normal building debris should also contain recognisable office things.

There is no such thing as a normal collapse.  Buildings do not normally collapse and are not designed to do so.  If a building does collapse it is an abnormal event.

Now if you are using the term Normal in a mathematical sense then you would have to have a number of samples on which statistical operations are performed and indeed one could come up with a "normal collapse scenario".  However, for a valid analysis all the samples would have to have the same characteristics to begin with (i.e. you can't compare apples and bananas). 

Here are the characteristics of the WTC collapse.

1. WTC towers were of a unique design.  Significant % less steel used, lightweight concrete (i.e. air bubbles or other low density filler), etc.   
2. Structural failure was initiated  15 floors from the top
3. 90,000 gallons of jet fuel were dispersed and ignited at the initial point of failure

Now, how many other buildings of a similar design have collapsed under similar circumstances?  How many samples have you used to make your normalization?  I'll wager 0.

... For the people still reading this thread after 2.5 months,

Yeah, somebody has to start a new and equally entertaining thread about something else. 

[Energy Weapons]

Of the many identifiable energy sinks in the collapses, one of the only ones that has been subjected to quantitative analysis is the thorough pulverization of the concrete in the towers. It is well documented that nearly all of the non-metallic constituents of the towers were pulverized into fine powder. The largest of these constituents by weight was the concrete that constituted the floor slabs of the towers. Jerry Russell estimated that the amount of energy required to crush concrete to 60 micron powder is about 1.5 KWH/ton. (See http://www.911-strike.com/powder.htm.) That paper incorrectly assumes there were 600,000 tons of concrete in each tower, but Russell later provided a more accurate estimate of 90,000 tons of concrete per tower, based on FEMA's description of the towers' construction. That estimate implies the energy sink of concrete pulverization was on the order of 135,000 KWH per tower, which is already larger than the energy source of gravitational energy. However, the size of this sink is critically dependent on the fineness of the concrete powder, and on mechanical characteristics of the lightweight concrete thought to have been used in the towers. Available statistics about particle sizes of the dust, such as the study by Paul J. Lioy, et al., characterize particle sizes of aggregate dust samples, not of its constituents, such as concrete, fiberglass, hydrocarbon soot, etc. Based on diverse evidence, 60 microns would appear to be a high estimate for average concrete particle size, suggesting 135,000 KWH is a conservative estimate for the magnitude of the sink.

The demolition expert you mention, Brent Blanchard, focusses on the implausibility of a controlled demolition by conventional means (e.g. dynamite). This is fine, but he instead supports the progressive gravity-driven collapse model and does not question the implausibility of this. In reality, under the gravity-driven "pancake" model, there wouldn't be enough energy to pulverise floors and also keep the collapse going.

This is based on the false assumption that all the concrete in the floor needs to be pulverised before failure of the floor's vertical support fails.  The floor is supported by flimsy trusses which are bolted to the steel tubing on the outside and to the concrete core on the inside.  Obviouly the only energy required to cause the floor to collpse is that which is expended in shearing the bolts, which is relatively miniscule.

Further it doesn't matter if all the concrete is pulverized or not.  If the impact force, which is proportional to momentum divided by the stopping distance (i.e. how much deformation before failure of the bolts), is greater than the force required to sheer the bolts, they will fail and the floor will collapse.

Energy Weapons
Also according to Hoffman 135,000 KWH is needed to pulverize the concrete as observed.  An energy weapon would also have to deliver the same amount of energy (after all energy is energy).  So now you have to answer where was the energy weapon and from where did it get the power?  It certainly wasn'y on a plane or space craft.  In the interview NickyNyce posted Judy Wood disn't want to talk about this at all for obvious reasons.
   
Debris Pile
[quote

2. A larger debris pile should have resulted (not predominantly dust size)



This picture shows a lot of dust. If debris is present, it is obscured by dust. Look at images in the aftermath that show conditions unobscured by dust to see what the debris radius is. I just used the debris radius quoted by Greg Jenkins. You can use a larger radius if you like but ultimately I'd still expect to see that ambulance buried by rubble. Why not try doing come calculations? See what you get.

Again in the Hoffman article you cite he says "It is well documented that nearly all of the non-metallic constituents of the towers were pulverized into fine powder."  The picture shows the results of the pulverization of the concrete in the floors and core that Hoffman claims.  Take a look at the photo again, it's not smoke but rather dense and thick dust and it's distributed in a much larger radius that you are willing to consider.