CapMac Meeting Report for October, 2002
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The October, 2002 meeting of Capitol Macintosh was held in Room 3.106 of the UT Pharmacy Building Thursday, October 10 with about fifty people in attendance, which is about ten more than last month and about twenty more than the August meeting. Austin's Brian Greenstone of Pangea Software was our guest presenter, showing the very first public preview of Bugdom 2. Brian played it on a PowerMac G4 Cube that was already in the classroom, with projection on two state of the art Barco screens at the front of the auditorium on either side of the speaker's desk. |
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 Skip, just before his knapsack is stolen |
The animation and design of the characters is astounding, the music and play is hypnotic to watch, and it appears to be a worthy successor to the original Bugdom which won MacWorld's Arcade Game of the Year when it was released in 1999. The main character for this game is a grasshopper named Skip. There is no appearance of Rolie, the hero from the original Bugdom, so if you have a little one who is anticipating him you may want to set expectations accordingly before beginning the game.
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Speaking of little ones, our audience featured several of the younger set in attendance who waited patiently through many questions about graphic engines and system requirements in hopes of winning a prize in the raffle.
Brian said that Bugdom 2 is about two weeks away from release and will first appear as a complete version download from the web for 29.95 and about three weeks later as a boxed version for about 35.00. There will also be a downloadable demo version to try before you buy. Keep an eye on the Pangea web site for this stunning game. |
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| A bit of disappointing news is that this game will not be bundled with Apple computers as previous Pangea games have. It also will not be available in Apple Retail Stores because as Brian explained Apple will not carry anything which is not handled by a distributor like Ingram. Since Brian does not want to use a distributor due to the significantly increased cost Bugdom 2 will only be available directly from the Pangea Software web site. Brian mentioned that he had a less than optimal experience with CompUSA and had no intention of allowing them to carry his products again. Brian talked about the camaraderie among the Macintosh game development community and about plans for some of his upcoming projects, as well as how he came to be a Mac game developer and which tools he uses. He is very concerned about the new machines which are scheduled to be released by Apple in January which will not boot into Mac OS 9 since many of his development tools will not run in Classic and are not compatible with Mac OS X. He is particularly concerned about the state of audio tools and their lack of compatibility with Mac OS X. |
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| After strong applause and many thanks to Brian, the meeting proceeded with a new feature called "The CapMac Genius Challenge" which was a short quiz of Apple and Macintosh trivia with prizes and certificates for the top scorers. This 12 question quiz is available on the CapMac web site for those who were unable to attend but would like to test their knowledge. The contest was won by Jim Quinn who missed a perfect score of 12 by just one. Jim received a silver Apple logo lunchbox from the Apple Company Store. Second place (wth just two misses) went to Mason Hale, Giles Bateman, and Ken Uecker, who were awarded a silver Apple logo pen, ruby Apple logo pen, and silver metal Apple logo travel coffee mug, respectively. |
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After the quiz Glenn Chase reviewed CapMac web site changes, showing off the new page devoted to the Special Deals page, and explaining that ordering information for the Special Deals is now posted to the Members Only area of the CapMac forums and provided directions on how to gain access there. He also showed the new "Join CapMac" web page which enables online payments for new or renewal regular and student memberships via PayPal which allows CapMac to accept payments via credit cards. Glenn provided an update on the status of online services, explaining that the CapMac web site had been successfully transitioned to San Marcos Internet and was running smoothly after a week of being offline due to Chelanie's server being hacked and Network Solutions dropping the ball during the change in domain name information. Coming very soon will be CapMac email services and personal web space as soon as we can get our server ugpraded and located in the SMI server room. Glenn thanked Andrew Bateman for helping get CapMac Online up and running in a matter of hours at SMI after Chelanie's server had to be taken offline. |
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| CapMac Officer nominations for 2003 followed: President: Glenn Chase Vice-President: Alan Combs Secretary: Jack Jordan, Robert Fletcher Treasurer: Midge Kocen,David Somers Member-at-Large (3 to be elected): Mark Millard, Ken Uecker, Tom Straus, Andrew Bateman Glenn showed the group that the meeting had been a headline feature of the main User Groups Calendar web page at Apple and had also been featured on the News8 Austin Community Bulletin Board, as well as in the Tech Calendar of the Statesman, and thanked Mark Millard for outstanding press release work. A short Q&A session followed, and after thanking Brian Greenstone for an outstanding presentation and everyone for attending, the meeting was adjourned. |
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| Our next general meeting is November 14. Our presentation will cover Digital Photography, and will feature Apple's Jeff Hussey, who will demonstrate how to get the most of out iPhoto. With the holiday season fast approaching when many pictures are taken we thought this would be a great time to learn the many benefits of getting your pictures organized with iPhoto. Jeff is Product Champion for iPhoto in the Austin Contact Center and an authority on its many features and is sure to provide many useful tips about this wonderful "Mac-only" application.
We look forward to seeing you there, |
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Copyright © 2002 Capitol Macintosh
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