Duplo and the Third Dimension - Part One

Returning to the Annals of Duplo narrative… Here I will begin descanting on the multimedia phase of Duplo. This period is of especial interest, as it demonstrates the prescience of Duplo's futurological contemplations.

Nowadays, nearly all computer games employ a 3D graphics engine to some extent. It was quite a different story in the early to mid-1990s when 2D was the dimension du jour. Of course, some notable games bucked the trend, but hardware capability was an issue (particularly on the Commodore Amiga) and there was also the sense that 3D negated the artistry and characterfulness achievable with 2D. There persisted a doomed faith in 2D graphic engines - spurred on by the prospect of full motion video incorporation - exampled by the production of short-lived platforms such as the Philips CD-i, the Amiga CD32 and the misnamed 3DO, all of which were geared toward 2D.

Around 1993, I had programmed a game utilising the Freescape 3D engine (via 3D Construction Kit and Amos) called Mount Viewpoint. Mount Viewpoint was a clumsy game set in a commune where each inhabitant had mislaid a possession, and the protagonist would brave various tightropes, planks over acid-filled swimming pools and murderous hovering cuboids to reunite people with their objects. On completion of the game, the player could climb the stairway to Mount Viewpoint itself, overlooking the entire commune, where the community could literally be 'looked down upon' by the player from a great height in an open-ended sense of lordship.

Mount Viewpoint was unrelated to Duplo - being more of a side-project. It was difficult to inject character into 3D games at this time (making Duplo's character-craft very resistant to a 3D makeover - Freescape did not have textured 3D objects), however, the superior sense of spacial realism and 'infinite control' within interactive 3D environments was very much in evidence, especially when one was virtually stood atop Mount Viewpoint! The superiority of 3D was sensed, along with its seemingly endless possibilities. Sadly, this original Mount Viewpoint is now lost (but possibly still owned on floppy by somebody). Although, there was a larger 'sequel' of a very different nature (now archived)...


Around 1994, there was a widely-felt desire to replicate the school environment in the form of a computer simulation. An ultra-realistic simulation of 'life' was suggested, indistinguishable from real life, where outrageous gestures, surreal actions and sundry vengeances could be enacted freely. With the help of my peers, I set about trying to recreate known locations using this same Freescape engine. The large sprawling secondary school and its teacherhood was still quite unfamiliar and complex, so instead I created a representation of the old primary school. Due to laziness with titling, this new game retained the Mount Viewpoint tag despite this being a completely different and somewhat controversial new project.

This new Mount Viewpoint sequel was offered to an Amiga public domain distributor by post, but the disk was returned with a letter explaining that the game was too slow (pushing the Amiga to its limits!) and "very sick" in theme. In the text-heavy game, all characters were based on real life characters (except the nameless balaclava-clad assassin).


The plot sees a fascist headmistress targeted by a hitman, hired by the teachers' union, after it is disclosed that the headmistress had shot an infant dead in an appallingly misjudged act of corporal punishment (which the player witnesses whilst hiding under the headmistress' office desk). Lacking any true moral framework, the player autistically ambles around with the vague intention of killing both the headmistress, and (nihilistically) random teachers too… With a laser gun.

Familiar locations were painstakingly virtualised. Many banal flourishes were featured, such as the player's reluctance to "step on the nice floral arrangements", and an incident where the player is compelled to stalk a dog walker whose dog fouls a footpath - carrying the turd and sneakily posting it back into the owner's letterbox for bonus points. The protagonist would also suffer tiredness and would fall asleep in sheds and dustbins after exertions. Touches such as these added some realism. Despite this reality-borrowed tedium, it was noted by Duploista Peter R- that all Mount Viewpoint's characters resemble "jelly babies" (lack of character was a real bugbear with the Amiga's 3D capabilities).

Copies of this game were circulated amongst a limited circle, and it was dreamt that we could somehow use a telephone line to all "meet up" virtually inside the 3D world (this dream prefigured the rise of multi-player internet gaming).

Following this game, 'Duplo disks' were developed and distributed. These contained a gallery of several Duplo images and scans, prior to a menu offering a selection of choice playable commercial game demos ripped from magazine coverdisks. The images on these disks featured stills from Mount Viewpoint, with scanned 2D drawings overlaid onto the scenes.

In 1995, the use of the PC allowed for further graphical editing and subsequent conversion to the Amiga IFF image format using CrossDOS. Because there were more Amiga owners than PC owners, the Amiga 'Duplo disks' were still distributed as late as 1997, by this time featuring Duplo music as well as enhanced galleries and animations. At school, Duploistas would submit drawings to be scanned, and placed in virtual worlds before inauguration into Duplo disk galleries. On the walk to school every morning, new multimedia disk ideas were discussed.

As a footnote, it is unfortunate that when 'Mount Viewpoint - The Richard Whittington J.M.I. School Hullabaloo' was finally completed in 1999, its release was understated in the extreme, hence everybody had moved on technologically, mentally and physically. I was rather ashamed to have programmed it in the first place, deeply weird and disconcerting as it was (to illustrate further: in 1999 the Columbine killers in the U.S. were [mistakenly] reported to have designed Doom levels based on their Columbine school). To be continued...

'Sexual Offences' of the Nod Gods

A couple of tuppenny ha'penny printing shops have flatly refused to print a run of pamphlets detailing doodlecraft. Both have insinuated that they find the content to be libellous, defamatory and of worrying taste. Yes, it is true that local hindrances to doodlecraft mechanics are identified, and several case studies in 'muse-deflation attempts' are plainly expounded in no uncertain terms. But surely the job of the printing shop is to print what is presented - 27 pages of hard-won wisdom - not to critique its content?! Denying custom, they thus stand in the way of information dissemination.

In the manuscript, one particularly misconstruable diatribe highlights the usage of the law to smear the efforts of any effusionist. A controversial argument: flypostering or depositing codices in public places for persons to discover may fall under the criminal act of "sending a menacing communication". Inversely, the act of simply glancing in (or out) windows, or into any other portals of realtime information, carries with it a sham-magnetic draw toward a 'sex offence' aesthetic. Non-institutional research, that is, to naturally insearch and exsearch, becomes an illicit process - a situation thoroughly explored in the manuscript. It appears that in the anechoic surroundings of a small-town bovine marshland, any enlightening emission be it aural, kinetic, glyphic, chemical or digital is assumed to gravitate ultimately onto the ViSOR (Violent and Sex Offender Register) annals. To treacly sensoria, anything difficult-to-understood is assumed to be malign. This is explained in the manuscript, but it all remains unprinted.

Sympathetic souls have advised that many printing shops elsewhere would print it. However, my intention is to have it printed locally as a matter of principle, as it concerns local matters. One nearby printing shop said: "it's just 'not on' to run down local businesses like the way you do in your text". Au contraire, small local businesses behave atrociously, and if a business was a person, that person would be almost criminally psychopathic (a concept earnestly explored in Joel Bakan's book 'The Corporation'). These morally askew actions should be advertised to all. Evidently this printing shop comprises part of the fabric of small-town business and this hive mind smothers all criticism to defend itself. From my extensive night research, local businesses routinely dispose of incredibly useful objects and papers on an industrial scale. They are not only defiling all matter itself, but also nullifying inventive possibilities. Very little recycling takes place - and recycling should only involve substance-retrieval decompositions once all actual use-value has been extinguished. The ignorance of these companies is beyond belief: economic snobbery and American Psycho-style hubris: thick-as-pigshit employees indoctrinated to view third-party reclamation attempts as acts of war or something equatable to sexual molestation, paedophilia, etc.

Alchemists have long sought to transmute base substances to gold. Gold merely represents a purchasing potential facilitating the acquisition of crafted objects, and any crafted object owes its existence to the faculties of inspiration. And so it is these faculties which are truly sought, isn't it?

In all the libraries of the world including the entire Internet, I estimate that less than 1% of everything that has ever happened is actually recorded. This is unfortunate for posterity.

Here is just one unrecorded episode serving the dual-purpose of highlighting monumental wastage... From mid-1995 to early 1996, a recording studio operated quasi-legitimately behind The United Reform Church in Roydon, Essex. The site was once a mushroom farm (requiring darkness), but at this time, the single-storey complex served as a means for recording artists to perpetuate their work. Whether the adjacent church took umbrage at the concept of liveliness happening near its graveyard, I don't know, but the studio was mysteriously demolished with all the expensive electronic equipment still inside. Mixing desks, microphones, giant speakers, specialised computers, effects modules and all manner of apparatus lay amidst the wreckage. Despite the "Keep Out" signs, some days after the bulldozing I climbed over the rubble to salvage various devices. Oddly, the electricity remained live, with the quondam mains sockets sparking and buzzing, signposted with "danger" signs. Some gypsies were also engaged in salvaging the countless electronic gadgets from under the rubble. Whether they were involved with the studio, or were just taking the opportunity to rescue items of value remains unknown. The site was bulldozed by Blaze Construction Ltd. (groundwork specialists) on behalf of CALA Homes, who later built a housing development over the site, now called Little Brook Road (originally intended to be called Roydon Park Grange). There was a distinct sense of sadness that this recording facility was felled mid-stride, with the richnesses of its innards still humming with potential. Post-scrounge, I was walking toward the cemetery's gravel car park with a battered tape device (inscribed as an 'Echo Unit') and a handful of loose sockets, when a fat lady told me to "f*ck off". ("F*ck" is an onomatopoeically consciousness-penetrating word meaning "sex" - again, a sex offence is implied). Not the sort of language you'd expect in Roydon village, especially in such close proximity to a church. To this day, objects loaded with potential are smugly junked in the abstract name of "business" and "capitalism". Why must there be Deflationistas? CALA Homes' bulldozers. These muse-rubbishing 'anti-inspirationers'? These forces obstructing all creativity push any non-conforming crafted matter into an abyss of unrecorded, undocumented, unpublished non-remembrance.

If the laws of physics permitted the extraction of all mental and physical energies expended in creating any given manmade object, how many joules could be saved? How much inspiration could be wrung out? Free energy would be possible. Of course, thoughts like this are heretical given my science background, yet long-term unemployment does prod one into metaphysics.

Damn those vampire universities for conning prospective students into keeping over-fed tutors in pay!! Universities are fraudulent institutions, providing no employment prospects. Knowledge is to be found everywhere for free, yet even in junked knowledge's final journeys inside the Biffa trucks to eternal landfill, their passages are jealously guarded by outrageous bastards! When binned by businesses, objects are deliberately soiled to make them unpleasant to reclaim. Coffee shops may pour their muck over neighbouring businesses' discards (a pact, maybe?). Metalworks smear grease on discarded metals. Papers are ripped up. Texts made unreadable. Bleach sodden wood. Toilet waste on dream plastics. A litany of criminally not-officially-criminal acts could be relayed. As I write this on October 31st - 'trick-or-treat' night - it seems unjust that organised begging (trick-or-treating) is permissible, yet regularly looking in industrial waste containers is greeted with abuse and consternation.

These woes stemming from the printing shop negativities are a deviation from the Annals of Duplo narrative, but this all sets the context for the as-yet-unexamined multimedia phase of Duplo, beginning in the mid-1990s...