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A talk with Walter Bright about Empire

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Re: A talk with Walter Bright about Empire

#21

Post by fb03 »

WalterBright wrote: post #10
juanuys wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Walter, thanks for your time! Do you play many games nowadays? Which ones? What do you think is going to be the next big gaming breakthrough? Or the next big genre/theme? (E.g. for economics, it was F2P/IAP, never of which I'm a fan of. Also, city building + survival is really big right now.)

The itch to write a better language & compiler than anyone else is more compelling! But I am attracted to full motion simulators that would, say, enable me to drive an F1 car without risk or much investment.

If you're into that, I highly recommend you looking up Force Dynamics (a friend of mine) for high quality affordable driving simulators that are really close to actually driving the Real Thing (TM)

https://www.force-dynamics.com/

Re: A talk with Walter Bright about Empire

#22

Post by OJFord »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #12
WalterBright wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graphics are great for initial attraction to a game, but it's the gameplay that keeps one's interest. It's similar to movies. Special effects are momentarily interesting, but it's the plot that overwhelmingly matters.

And characters.

That pretty much sums up American vs. British comedy (televisual anyway) for me.

US: 'momentarily interesting' (resp. funny at the time) - series of one-liners and the like; UK: character development, hard to explain why it's funny, might take 'getting into'.

Green Wing for example - I thought it was absolutely absurd when I first saw it, and it is. But for some reason I went back to it (or was made to) and stuck with it for a few episodes while I learnt to love it. And now I do, it's one of my all-time favourites. And of course I've been back (several times) to watch the first episode(s) again, and they're hilarious too.

Or perhaps a clearer example is the original UK The Office (Ricky Gervais) vs. the US version (Steve Carell). Same rough outline obviously, some of the same (especially early in the remake) storyline and jokes, but somehow even then the humour is very different.

(I'm not hating on the remake, I enjoyed it enough to watch it all once I accepted it's different, and stopped expecting 'The Office' as I knew it. Especially once it found its own path and diverged from the same jokes - IMO - worse delivered.)

Re: A talk with Walter Bright about Empire

#23

Post by sp33der89 »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #16
WalterBright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm not sure about lessons forgotten, but there are definitely lessons never learned. One is the use of macros in programming languages. Macros are one of those great ideas that seem almost miraculous. They provide immense power to the programmer. Unfortunately, the dahk side of macros inevitably consumes the user. The macros inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the aut…

> The macros inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the author winds up inventing his own undocumented mess of a language, unusable for anyone else. This is not limited to macros, but any abstraction. Let's step back and rewrite the quote: > The abstractions inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the author winds up inventing his own undocumented mess of a language, unusable fo…

So I'm not a fan of metaprogramming or heavy abuse of tricks for convenience either, and I do get and agree with your point!

But for some anecdotal nuance concerning the React example: > Take React for example. It's an abstraction, arguably a new "language", and requires ample documentation and usability concessions to be palatable. You could accomplish this with macros as well.

I feel like the standard before React was just every (web) framework inventing its own templating language, whereas I found React to be really easy to learn, because the way it abstracted things were straightforward and well explained. It's tooling however is one of the scariest things I've ever seen haha.

Re: A talk with Walter Bright about Empire

#25

Post by justin66 »

WalterBright wrote: post #3

Walter here! AMA!

Hey Walter. I played a lot with the DOS version of the game that Mark Baldwin worked on (perhaps also a later windows version, although I probably just played the DOS version on Windows). Two things that struck me as "off" at the time were the way calculating the distance when moving units wasn't as consistent or intuitive as it could be when moving diagonally because the board consisted of squares, and that multiple units couldn't be parked in the same place unless they were in a city.

Are these things you'd handle differently today? Are there any games that you think handled this better? A hexagonal board layout seems like it might be a better approach to calculating distance between points, but what about the limit of one unit per one square on the grid?

I love the idea of allowing players to supply a bot to compete against other bots.

Re: A talk with Walter Bright about Empire

#28

Post by kbenson »

OJFord wrote: post #22
JKCalhoun wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And characters.

That pretty much sums up American vs. British comedy (televisual anyway) for me. US: 'momentarily interesting' (resp. funny at the time) - series of one-liners and the like; UK: character development, hard to explain why it's funny, might take 'getting into'. Green Wing for example - I thought it was absolutely absurd when I first saw it, and it is. But for some reason I went back to it (or was made to) and stuck wit…

I think it's less that the US doesn't have those, it's just that they have both types, and they also mix them. Seinfeld wouldn't have been half as good as it was without you knowing the character and how they would react to specific situations.

I think part of what you're identifying about first episodes is maybe a difference in style between the US and UK. A lot of UK comedy definitely seems like the characters are pre-baked into the writing and the actor is already mature in the role in the beginning, while in the US it feels like they've left the role a little hollow at first and allow the actors (and future writing) to evolve the role into what it will be. This can make the first episodes feel "off" when you go back to watch them, but I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad way to go if the goal is to find a really good character.

It's also possible that the UK network(s) are amenable to planned out entire seasons while the US networks are more accepting of buying a pilot of a few episodes and seeing where something goes, which would favor some of these approaches in each case.

Re: A talk with Walter Bright about Empire

#29

Post by raverbashing »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #16
WalterBright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm not sure about lessons forgotten, but there are definitely lessons never learned. One is the use of macros in programming languages. Macros are one of those great ideas that seem almost miraculous. They provide immense power to the programmer. Unfortunately, the dahk side of macros inevitably consumes the user. The macros inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the aut…

> The macros inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the author winds up inventing his own undocumented mess of a language, unusable for anyone else. This is not limited to macros, but any abstraction. Let's step back and rewrite the quote: > The abstractions inevitably become so confusing, pervasive and complex that the author winds up inventing his own undocumented mess of a language, unusable fo…

Disagree. There are abstractions and there are abstractions.

Macros are too big of a footgun of an abstraction. Because they can change the syntax of the language, they can hide functionality in non-obvious ways and they're just another band-aid on top of the languages limitations (the two latter points are especially true for C). And more often than not they're worse than just writing using the languages capabilities.

Yes I'm sure people writing C macros will sit down and document them, and make them usable. Not.

That being said, Rust macros are a world apart from C macros.

Re: A talk with Walter Bright about Empire

#30

Post by cybernautique »

WalterBright wrote: post #3

Walter here! AMA!

Hello Walter!

I'm interested in programming languages and the design of compilers. I'm relatively novice to programming, but languages have long captured my imagination.

Three questions for you: Do you have a blog where I can read about your compiler escapades? have you any advice for the aspiring novice? which is your favorite language, and why?

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