I think I may learn some C# just so I can play this game.
I've only done the first few levels but it might as well be pseudo-code. I haven't hit anything language specific yet.
Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
11–20 of 31 posts
Re: Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
#12This is really cool! However, I was somewhat disappointed that it only models a linearizable memory (each low-level operation atomically acts on the same global state). It would be great to teach people that they can't actually think about memory this way, since various reorderings are possible. The UI design gets a lot trickier, but this could become a great way to teach people how to deal with things like atomic instructions, memory fences, and the differences between the x86 and ARM memory models.
Re: Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
#13This is awesome! I love this kind of games - they are very fun and educational at the same time. If you're like me, you might enjoy these as well: 1. Microcorruption - https://microcorruption.com/ (a game that teaches about embedded systems and security basics) 2. Over the Wire - http://overthewire.org (several games based on Web security) 3. WeChall - http://www.wechall.net/ (a big list of games with progress tracki…
Ruby Warrior is another great one. I had a lot of fun with it when I needed to learn Ruby for work. https://www.bloc.io/ruby-warrior
Is there any way past the first level besides logging in with facebook?
A friend of mine just started (yesterday) looking at Ruby stuff and this looks awesome, but I wouldnt recommend any service that has an impassable FB login after level 1.
Re: Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
#14Took me about an hour to beat it, I'm still fairly new to concurrent programming so this was pretty great for showing me the pitfalls you can come across.
Re: Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
#15This is really cool! However, I was somewhat disappointed that it only models a linearizable memory (each low-level operation atomically acts on the same global state). It would be great to teach people that they can't actually think about memory this way, since various reorderings are possible. The UI design gets a lot trickier, but this could become a great way to teach people how to deal with things like atomic in…
Thanks! We agree, memory models/instruction reordering is where it gets really fun and educational. The complexity scared us and we wanted to make the game usable as soon as we could, so we rather left it on the TODO list for now. Maybe one day in V2 :)
Re: Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
#16Hey! This was built at HackCambridge (and it won first prize)! Great to see it here - it's such a cool project.
Pretty funny that one of the judges said that this would definitely be on the front page of HN soon
Re: Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
#17This is awesome! I love this kind of games - they are very fun and educational at the same time. If you're like me, you might enjoy these as well: 1. Microcorruption - https://microcorruption.com/ (a game that teaches about embedded systems and security basics) 2. Over the Wire - http://overthewire.org (several games based on Web security) 3. WeChall - http://www.wechall.net/ (a big list of games with progress tracki…
Scalatron is another great one https://scalatron.github.io/ "a free, open-source programming game in which bots, written in Scala, compete in a virtual arena for energy and survival"
Re: Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
#18That's the Welsh Dragon! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Dragon
Funny, I immediately associated it with Team Cymru [1] and apparently they did use the original Welsh Dragon as their logo but changed it to a more modern variant [2].
[1]: https://www.team-cymru.org/about-us.html [2]: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=team+cymru+logo
Re: Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
#19That's the Welsh Dragon! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Dragon
Yep. My creative process: "Need quick & nice fantasy-styled logo" => "Hey, I remember Wales has a dragon on its flag" => "Ooh, and Wiki Commons even has a CC0 SVG! Done."
Re: Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency
#20This is awesome! I love this kind of games - they are very fun and educational at the same time. If you're like me, you might enjoy these as well: 1. Microcorruption - https://microcorruption.com/ (a game that teaches about embedded systems and security basics) 2. Over the Wire - http://overthewire.org (several games based on Web security) 3. WeChall - http://www.wechall.net/ (a big list of games with progress tracki…
Continuing the theme of replying to this post with good examples of these kinds of game: https://alexnisnevich.github.io/untrusted/ ("a user javascript adventure game")