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Show HN: What would mechanical programming look like?

mockmechanics.com

131–140 of 150 posts

Re: Show HN: What would mechanical programming look like?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much! I won't, if anything sometimes I go too far trying to make things even simpler. For instance I use a track for both building wagon paths and as a motor, I thought maybe that's confusing but the track value wasn't being used for anything why add yet another part when it isn't necessary? In fact, there are things I know I can simplify. The button part for instance is completely unnecessary, I have bu…

Thinking of some ways you could build this product into a business, which I think is the best way to scale the positive impact of your work. First thought was building a network interface so folks could interact and collaborate within the environment. The other thought was to offer it as an educational tool, as a gateway to more advanced programming; for that to work, though, I think it’d need some sort of game-like…

That's exactly how I have been thinking. What I was thinking was to make it a Steam game, but entirely open ended, maybe with a bit of resource scarcity so that people have to scramble to get what they want. I said to someone else yesterday maybe things like cities with user built transportation systems for rent, resource wars with medieval siege engines all designed in an arms race between users could evolve organically. In a way that combines the two things you mentioned: the shared aspect and the incentive to learn programming. When I was a kid I knew all the pokemon and their stats, why? Because it was required to advance in a game. Now suppose you have a castle and someone figured out a way to outsmart your defenses. Either use programming ideas to update your cannons or lose the castle... I could add a basic "building block" of damage to avatars like being hit with anything moving faster than x, then anything you can design that throws things could be a weapon, figure a way to store balls "under pressure" triggered by a step plate and you have a bomb/booby trap.

edit: (sorry I keep having ideas and editing the post) At some point the game itself might be open kinda like the internet, the reality of the game what things exist where, who has what can be agreed upon with some sort of blockchain system, then several "browsers" can be written to "plugin to the matrix" if you know what I mean.

Re: Show HN: What would mechanical programming look like?

#135

This is awesome. Definitely, the best showHN I ve seen this year! Keep it up ;) As a developer, I want to ask which programming languages did you used to build this & why. I think you didn't open sourced the tool or am I wrong?

Thanks! Clojure all the way. Why? Because lisp is awesome :) I haven't made it open source yet, and I'm not entirely sure I will, depends what's best for the project, if making it a paid game on Steam is the way to go... But even if I do I would have to refactor the code somewhat first.

Re: Show HN: What would mechanical programming look like?

#136

This is awesome. Definitely, the best showHN I ve seen this year! Keep it up ;) As a developer, I want to ask which programming languages did you used to build this & why. I think you didn't open sourced the tool or am I wrong?

Thanks! Clojure all the way. Why? Because lisp is awesome :) I haven't made it open source yet, and I'm not entirely sure I will, depends what's best for the project, if making it a paid game on Steam is the way to go... But even if I do I would have to refactor the code somewhat first.

Awesome. I'm a fan of functional programming too :D

I definitely think that there is a possibility to turn this project to a business. I would find it ideal if you can do both, turn it into a business and at the same time open source the code. Maybe you ll find a way. Good luck ;)

Re: Show HN: What would mechanical programming look like?

#137

I was working on an mini-game just like this using Unity but with lasers, some sort of kids game to learn the basics of programming concepts by completing simple puzzles, I lost motivation so its idle, so far it looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/MN4xm4j.mp4 (the T-shaped object represents an if-else, if blue go left else...), I was thinking of making orbs to represent lists/arrays and so forth, anyway I'm glad you…

Your mini-game looks really cool! I think you should stick with it.

Re: Show HN: What would mechanical programming look like?

#139
post #138

I really love what you've put together. So much so that I'm going to boot up a VM to try it out. I'd echo the responses here that there may be a business in it to help you fund further exploration. Nice work.

Thanks, let me know how it goes!

Re: Show HN: What would mechanical programming look like?

#140

Looks amazing! I can imagine this become a wonderful sandbox game! I try to run the app on macOS but it crashes immediately. Do you know why? Log: https://pastebin.com/amQgGz43

Thanks! I just looked up "sandbox game" on Wikipedia to refresh my memory and it gave me the idea of maybe adding challenges to make it one of those "solve this problem anyway you can" deals. Maybe a puzzle mode? I'll add it to my idea file. Someone else mentioned that it crashes on mac but didn't provide the output yet so thanks for that. I don't have a mac but I'll have a look to see if I can fix it.

I emailed you the error log I see when trying to run the jar on macOS 10.14. It contains more errors than the log that trungdq88 posted does.

Oh, whoops, I see that the Download page says JRE 11 or newer must be installed. My JRE version was 8 (Java 1.8).

After switching to OpenJDK 14, I get the same errors as trungdq88.

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