Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coffee Is Hard

stilldrinking.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 232 posts

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#11

Post by whatshisface »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #10

I really like this guy's writing and am grateful that he shared some of the coding challenges. I'd really like to be able to program games like this, and while I'm not a programmer, I'd like to learn how. In TFA he shares some of the code to check the coffee "state": >'LOOK AT COFFEE MAKER': () => { if( State.scene.state.coffeedrunk ) { return "The coffee maker has done its job and mercifully drained the last life ou…

It looks like JavaScript to me. Yes, these games are usually coded in scripting languages like JS or Python, even back in the day they were programmed in custom scripting languages running on the engines of yore. Finally, yes, these kinds of games are a great way to learn programming because they map very well on to basic control flow constructs (if, else, while) and don't usually require additional computer science knowledge.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#12

Post by gameguy43 »

Amped to see Still Drinking on HN again.

If you enjoy devouring this guys writing, buy his book, “And Then I Thought I Was A Fish” (I think it’s the “novel” he references the game being based on?). I really really liked it. Link at the bottom of the original post.

The other book is just a collection of blog posts. It’s /okay/. But I really really liked ATITIWAF. The kind of book that makes you want to try your hand at writing.

—a random internet fan.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#13

Post by LunaSea »

godot wrote: post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

Interesting! What kind of life optimizations did you use before?

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#14

Post by icebraining »

gameguy43 wrote: post #12

Amped to see Still Drinking on HN again. If you enjoy devouring this guys writing, buy his book, “And Then I Thought I Was A Fish” (I think it’s the “novel” he references the game being based on?). I really really liked it. Link at the bottom of the original post. The other book is just a collection of blog posts. It’s /okay/. But I really really liked ATITIWAF. The kind of book that makes you want to try your hand a…

Never read the book, but I'm a fan of his blog! I keep an excerpt of one of his posts pinned on my notes app:

"The only reason coders' computers work better than non-coders' computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases and we don't beat them when they're bad."

https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#15

Post by brians »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #10

I really like this guy's writing and am grateful that he shared some of the coding challenges. I'd really like to be able to program games like this, and while I'm not a programmer, I'd like to learn how. In TFA he shares some of the code to check the coffee "state": >'LOOK AT COFFEE MAKER': () => { if( State.scene.state.coffeedrunk ) { return "The coffee maker has done its job and mercifully drained the last life ou…

I’d start without the animations, in something like Inform 7: http://inform7.com/

It’s easy to learn small things, reasonable to scale to harder things, and the award winning games regularly publish their sources—so you can copy and tweak and learn.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#16

Post by monktastic1 »

godot wrote: post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

At the risk of sounding hippie, "tedious" and "boring" are emotional reactions to the chores, and not attributable to the chores themselves. We don't have to do that.

"Everything in life is miraculous. It rests within the power of each of us to awaken from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness." ― James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest

Not that I've remotely mastered it, but I think there's a lot of wisdom in there.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#17

Post by [deleted] »

gameguy43 wrote: post #12

Amped to see Still Drinking on HN again. If you enjoy devouring this guys writing, buy his book, “And Then I Thought I Was A Fish” (I think it’s the “novel” he references the game being based on?). I really really liked it. Link at the bottom of the original post. The other book is just a collection of blog posts. It’s /okay/. But I really really liked ATITIWAF. The kind of book that makes you want to try your hand a…

[deleted]

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#18

Post by aidenn0 »

As an example of one of the more notorious puzzles in the Sierra games of yesteryear, in Space Quest, you have a sand skimmer (think Luke's sand speeder).

When you get to where you are going, you need to sell it for money. If you get out without removing your keys, it is stolen. Then someone offers you enough money to continue on in the game. If you say yes, then much later in the game you die because you don't have a jetpack. If you say no, they offer to throw in their old jetpack. There are literally no hints that a jetpack would be related to selling your skimmer. You just have to reload old saves and try random things until you get one. And hope you have enough saves that you didn't overwrite one from before you sold the skimmer, or you need to start the whole game over.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#19

Post by raldi »

aidenn0 wrote: post #18

As an example of one of the more notorious puzzles in the Sierra games of yesteryear, in Space Quest, you have a sand skimmer (think Luke's sand speeder). When you get to where you are going, you need to sell it for money. If you get out without removing your keys, it is stolen. Then someone offers you enough money to continue on in the game. If you say yes, then much later in the game you die because you don't have…

This is a major piece of the linked article.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#20

Post by meroes »

gameguy43 wrote: post #12

Amped to see Still Drinking on HN again. If you enjoy devouring this guys writing, buy his book, “And Then I Thought I Was A Fish” (I think it’s the “novel” he references the game being based on?). I really really liked it. Link at the bottom of the original post. The other book is just a collection of blog posts. It’s /okay/. But I really really liked ATITIWAF. The kind of book that makes you want to try your hand a…

I would also recommend his story about acid to anyone

https://www.stilldrinking.org/the-episode-part-1

Post reply on HN