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I'd love to meet up, and that area makes sense for me if I combine it with a visit to my family. Like everyone, I have more life commitments now so it's hard to be sure but I will look into it and I do think that part of the year makes sense for me. I am in California and I haven't been back home in far too long.

I don't have a major objection to children being about if that makes it practical for more people to attend.

Just wanted to say this is nice work. As someone that's worked on a browser optimized implementation of AGS engine off and on over the years, it is really nice to see running so well transpiled and with WebGL rendering.
When I get some time I will look at where any web platform performance issues are â€" maybe I can hybridize the approaches and add some of the things I've implemented.

I'd love to see all the back catalog playable on the web archive some day.

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Had an amazing Mittens! Sad to be back. Great time exploring the rainforest, swimming at waterfalls, winning at Dune due to skill, killing Hitler, snorkelling on the reef, visiting an untouched aboriginal village. Mainly seeing people again. Great to meet Wiggy too, fascinating and storied guy, cheers for the VBs: the new Fosters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQhe4Tu9d9I

Current plan is I get to Cairns at 6:30am on the 5th on CX147. Stoked.

Looks good!

Dates, area, price range looks good to me. I'll commit to a spot.

Looking like it starts about 1k for US-AUS flights at the mo which is what I imagined.

Interested

Nice one AGA! I think it'll work great. Can't wait

Oh yeah, places book out like crazy towards fall. I have stuff booked for November already.

As for the stuff north of the city, I like this one:
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/6741599?location=Boston%2C%20MA&adults=15&check_in=2018-09-15&check_out=2018-09-22&s=ApQCnsvR

Streetview

It's vast, near the sea, and it's 30 minutes and $9 per person from Boston center on Uber, also close to Salem and also has a lot of bathrooms which is a plus.

I'm ok with wherever. I do think the Hull area ones seemed doable, good value, and the beach would have been cool. Ferry and rail are both options there. Central Boston sucks for driving and parking, so if people wanted to get in I would drive/uber them to the T/rail and go from there. I'd guess about 40-50 min for either option.

The Peabody one looks cool for size and obviously price! Salem nearby is kind of a fun day out. Probably pushing it for travel time though, since it's not near any good stations. I'll have a look about to see if anything stands out... a lot is disappearing.

I'd stay unless there is a space issue, but I'd only drag my wife (Kristin) along for trips/dinner rather than have her stay, due to vacation time issues.

Definitely add me, I'll come almost certainly since I live a little outside of Boston. Really look forward to it!
Makes no difference to me, but yeah September is usually a decent bet in terms of weather, and it's also a bit cheaper for flights from Europe.
I might be able to bring a car or two, if people want to do anything off the T.

Hey guys. I've mentioned this on Discord a bit before, and AGA pointed out this discussion. I haven't read it all yet but I will! Just thought I'd update people on what I'm doing if they don't know.

Years ago I was reimplementing the run time engine so that I could make web games. This was back when Flash was the only practical option. I recently salvaged that work and ported it to modern JS/WebGL because I'm trying to get more open source code out lately. I hope it'll be up on Github over the summer (but I'm currently moving continents and have to work to support that). IMO it's the best bet we have for new engine work. I will of course be looking for contributors so look out for it if you like that sort of thing.

I won't get into why I think it's important to do when people are making nice games in more complex tools like Unity. Just to say I obviously do think there's some value in it. Also I also don't think new features should be done on the C++ engine because it's too hard to build let alone refactor. If I do get this project moving properly I would suggest a freeze, and then 4.0 to be on the new code after community discussion on what features are in demand.

Rough status:

• Compiled game asset/module recompiler works for most historical games, but code needs refactoring, and ancient dialog scripts need converting.
• AGS Script VM feels reliable. Relatively fast and debuggable. Plays nice with JS objects so you can implement modules in JS or AGS script - whichever is more appropriate.
• AGS API is only 25% implemented. This is where all the drugery is. Each of the 1000+ API items in https://dai.io/jagse/misc/agsapi_definition.js must have an implementation, but I'm getting down the list. Boring but also relaxing. It's decoupled so that the legacy stuff is emulated in the API layer and the core engine remains clean.
• Rendering is WebGL/ES only and is fast and supports effects shaders.
• Game logic, character animation, pathfinder stuff still has its quirks but it's getting fixed as the API gets testted.
• Cross-platform font rendering needs some consideration.
• Async asset loading needs some work.
• Save states aren't implemented at all
• Need to make a lot more test games so I can iron out differences between AGS event loop and mine.
• Desktop/mobile builds needs to be done. Platform stuff is abstracted so it's easy but I'm leaving it until the engine functions properly.
• Integration with the editor will be started at that point. At the least I'd hope for an Export to {Platform} feature.

I'll update you when I get enough working that it's worth opening up for contributions.

Edit: I should note this is a fresh implementation using the very good API reference as the standard. I'm using the C++ source as a reference but there's no transpiling involved, so it likely never will operate *precisely* like the original engine. My hope is that most old games will be completable after conversion. Maybe a some games will break but that's the cost of going unicode-only, hardware accelerated only and gaining a maintainable codebase.

Less fires, less hiking, less brainy discussions, more theme parks, more discoteques and alcohol!

You realise how awful this will sound to a large number of people right?

I'm going to try and make it but that depends entirely on money. I think a 20 person limit is reasonable but I definitely think it would be hit. For me it doesn't matter where in Florida it is, I don't really have any interest in the big attractions, just the Mittens! A house would be a huge bonus for me, I think the private group areas are about the most important feature of a mittens location.

Dave Gilbert needed something like this a long time ago, and I gave him the ags shell plugin: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=30948.msg397988#msg397988
So the ShellExecute method should work fine for loading a default browser.

I couldn't play CMI very well on my 486! As he conceded himself, it doesn't really matter what the reviewer thinks is "enough" hardware for point and clicks. On a modern computer or console these 3D adventures can run hundreds of frames a second.

3D adventure games like The Sleeping Dragon usually have heavily constrained camera angles so the overhead of 3D objects is a lot lower than in a game with a more dynamic camera. There's no technical reason why you can't have as much on screen as in a 2D game if you are aiming for computers built in the last few years. In fact you should be able to fit more into a scene when you are able to move the camera to highlight stuff. It's all the fault of the designers and artists. Don't blame the technology!

I can think of good reasons to use 3D in an adventure game but I would argue pre rendered 3D is almost never a good choice. If you have the luxury of such a static view you may as well use all the traditional illustrative and compositional techniques you can. It's tough maintaining that personal artist's touch in a renderer, and you're not getting any of the benefits of a true 3D scene, so it's the worst of both worlds.

I have been making a reasonably complicated web program the past two days, and Chrome rendered it with only one glitch, pretty good going compared to anything else (though the SVG features lag behind Opera and FF3 slightly). But then I write to standards as much as I can and Webkit is a pretty good engine. I suppose this means we don't really have to test on Safari anymore? I hate that Windows port.

IE took 8 hours of hacking involving scouring for posts about glitches on usenet and it still looks crappy, but that's hardly notable.

It's a nice location, but there are many nice houses all over the world, and most of them are cheaper than in France. AGS meets are the main holiday of the year for a lot of us, so it's nice to be able to see new places.

We have talked about doing a Dutch meet next year, in place of Brittens, because AGA's house is getting a bit old. It's too early to get too heavily into that though, of course, and it'd have to be low budget, because of Miami.

I'm finally alive after mittens. Suffering with the mysterious virus and the usual mittens withdrawl symptoms. Had a great time, as usual. One of my favourite meets.

Many happy memories, including the space center, the caves, the failed boulangerie runs - all those mind expanding adventures - but most of all sitting around talking to all the AGSers I'd met before, the ones I hadn't, and Marijke, everyone is great fun*. Twenty seven people was way more intimate than I expected, so thanks Chateau le Risdoux for managing that.

Now I'm off to my hibernation pod. Wake me up for my flight to Miami.

*except AGA, obviously

In addition to the address AGA gave, in case anyone has forgotten, because the place is not in town or on a public road you should be aware of how to get to it when you get to town (Call CJ/AGA if you do get lost).

Drive to Vireux-Molhain. Cross the bridge in the middle of town, into Vireux-Wallerand. After the town hall, turn right, go along Rue Edmond Guyaux for a few hundred meters, right into Rue de 8 Mai, 1945, and keep going. It will turn into Rue de Ridoux, then it'll turn into the path alongside the river, and after 3km you'll see the house on your left.