TITLE: Saving Private R0108

NAME: James C. Tillman
COUNTRY: USA

EMAIL: tillmanjames@hotmail.com
TOPIC: Classic Sci-Fi.
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: savingpr.mpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.5


TOOLS USED: 
    Bmp2Avi, TMPGEnc, MSPaint for the poster.


CREATION TIME: 

        I have no clue... I worked on the battle engine at least two months,
then maybe a month total of refining. Probably about a day of rendering &
parsing time total.


HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 3


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

        This is classic sci-fi, because classic (corny) sci-fi does these
things. (A) It takes for granted whom the good guys are. (B) Makes you watch
gigantic battles. (C) Lacks meaningful dialogue.



VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 

        I made it on a comp with 800 by 600 pixels and 24 bit true color. You
should definitly set the player to full screen.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

        The idea for the engine I use here came into my head long ago... when I
read about how Weta made the program Massive just for LOTR. I searched online
for a freeware program to automate gigantic land battles, and surprise, I
couldn't find one. So I had to make my own.
        The robots in this animation are basicly boids. They have a total of
three different movement behaviors. The first is that they repel anyone within
a certain distance. Secondly, if there are more than a certain number of
freinds within a certain distance, they move away from the average location of
the freinds. If there are less than a certain number of freinds in that
distance, it moves toward the average location of those freinds. The third and
last effect makes the robot move towards the closest enemy if the enemy is out
of laser range, and it makes it move away from the closest enemy if the enemy
is within laser range.
        The program is not finished... It hopefull will be far better when I am
done. All my programs seem to never quite get finished...