Edwin Pilobello wrote:
> I just spent a marvelous afternoon at the toy store ... just me, no kids.
> Among the many things I wanted to check out were the software titles.
There
> were lots of Disney titles for all sorts of activities.
>
> Does anyone know if any of the titles are done in Squeak?  I'd like to get
> one and use it as a demo to recruit for my Squeak class in the Fall.  I
> would also use it to inspire and motivate these budding programmers.

I actually wrote one of the first Disney CD-ROM titles (The Lion King
Activity Center -_not_ the infamous The Lion King Animated Storybook), and
if they've stuck with the pattern, they're done in regular old C/C++ like
most other multimedia applications.  We also did an Aladdin Activity Center
for them, though I only wrote part of that one.

I think that Squeak is getting pretty close to being able to handle the sort
of things being done in a title of that vintage.  If it had been around in
this condition at that time, I certainly would have made an attempt to
develop a title using it - it would have made it easier to do a
cross-platform version, since back then we had to maintain two versions of
the code for Mac and Windows.  These were high-volume titles (on the order
of millions of units sold) and Disney was quite demanding of performance and
robustness.

I still have the raw, unprocessed animation, art, and audio content archived
for a couple of these titles - it might be entertaining to try and see if
Squeak is up to the task, though certainly nothing could be released.

-- Duane