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Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

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Re: Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

#21

Post by cedric-h »

gred wrote: post #18
cedric-h wrote: post #13

Hey everyone, I'm Cedric and part of the Sprig team. I'm 19. I've been trying to make games since middle school. Right now I'm working on getting Lingdong Huang's - who has made a bunch of really cool interactive experiences[0] (like a human face eating simulator) - he made a Sprig game for us[1], I'm trying to get it working on the physical device - but there's a problem, since the device is Raspberry Pi 2040 based…

This looks pretty cool, and takes me back to my early programming days. > by teenagers, for teenagers > I'm 19. Do you plan to continue contributing after you turn 20? I'm not familiar with the project, so I'm not sure what "by teenagers" means in practical terms (e.g. certain types of contributions no longer allowed?).

I started out as a member of Hack Club's online community -- I discovered them through the GitHub Newsletter, and then made a multiplayer game with its own economy playable through their Slack (github.com/hackagotchi/hackagotchi) -- and then graduated high school in the middle of Covid with no plans and ended up working here. The purpose of the Sprig project is to engage and energize our online community. While our mission is to support teenage hackers, there are no hard and fast rules about what it means to be one. While we're not sending out devices to people over 19, we still accept games from them and show them in our gallery. Does that answer your question?

Re: Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

#22

Post by rytor718 »

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #12
apexedison wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha thanks. Hack Club certainly has adults involved (like myself) but we structure projects so teens can be core contributors (the rest of the core engineering staff on Sprig are all less than 20 years old and I'd say 95% of the games in the library are from teenagers). As for Sprig itself the only part that is limited to teens is that we give the console away for free to teenagers who submit games to the gallery. O…

Would be nice if you sold them to us old people at a 2x cost so we can get one and pay for one for a teen

I second this but mostly because I'm an unrepentant nerd who REALLY wants one of these to show off at my tech workshops for kids :D

Re: Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

#23

Post by cedric-h »

apexedison wrote: post #11
pjmlp wrote: post #6

In a way it is funny to see JavaScript vs Python competing for the next BASIC in this kind of platforms. Good work, it looks cool.

We debated running JS (Kaluma) or micropython on the Pico. We started with Kaluma because the editor is in the browser. After we got some game submissions though we realized we'd have to do our own wrapper around Jerryscript for performance reasons which is what the console ships with.

hi - Sprig firmware dev.

Things would go wrong on the device but I would have no idea how to diagnose it because I didn't know what all Kaluma was doing for us. EX: to write to flash, you can't have any IRQs going or code running on another core. How do we know what all Kaluma is doing while running our code?

We were going to need a Kaluma-less runtime just to debug our renderer, audio and input handling anyway, haha. I didn't think you were going to let me spend time doing it instead of scrambling to fix bugs with our Kaluma-based impl, so I spent a weekend prototyping our own runtime. It worked, so I didn't have to wait for Kaluma's 2 minute build times anymore.

Re: Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

#24

Post by cxr »

apexedison wrote: post #4
sampoder wrote: post #3

Curious, what's the thinking behind making projects like this?

The idea is to help people learn programming by making it easier for them to think of and execute projects which they share with others. In this case those projects are the making of the console/engine itself and for a much wider group of people the contribution of games to the game library. Thanks for contributing to both! We decided to make the physical console because it was a cool thing to do and would help motiv…

What do you make of Microsoft MakeCode?

Re: Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

#25

Post by scandox »

Slightly OT: I've been wondering recently if the word teenager and it's use has been a bad thing for people between 12 and 20. If we didn't have this word I'm guessing we wouldn't view them as such a distinct lump and be less ready to generalize about them.

Re: Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

#26

Post by hoppityboppity »

cedric-h wrote: post #13

Hey everyone, I'm Cedric and part of the Sprig team. I'm 19. I've been trying to make games since middle school. Right now I'm working on getting Lingdong Huang's - who has made a bunch of really cool interactive experiences[0] (like a human face eating simulator) - he made a Sprig game for us[1], I'm trying to get it working on the physical device - but there's a problem, since the device is Raspberry Pi 2040 based…

Focus on building things with Unity, Unreal & CUDA.

Now that you have hopefully read my one takeaway Cedric...

This is from the perspective of someone who has been in the games industry and entrepreneurship for a long time, long enough to become the villain.

You're clearly a very talented programmer.

In 2008, when I was at elite fancy school, an opportunity that is probably open to you, GPGPU programming had just begun.

The last decade of software innovation - machine learning, cryptocurrencies, immersive video games - owes its debts, fundamentally, to people who learned and authored GPU software all day. The ability to program GPUs, and nowadays to build infrastructure for distributed GPU computing, is the primary bottleneck to the greatest innovations in software.

If you love low level stuff, this is where you should go.

If this doesn't interest you, at least learn Unity and/or Unreal. No more custom game engines. There is a time limit. I know a lot of people in R&D across industry and academia, and the #2 bottleneck for innovation (after #1, GPGPUs, i.e., performance) is Unity and Unreal skills, i.e., presentation.

Why write here?

I've seen people in your situation, at 19 years too, capable of great things, attracted to scenes of other talented people like the Hack Club folks.

Every 5-10 years there are certain technologies on which all innovation is built. It isn't going to be Raspberry Pis. Please, don't focus on that anymore.

Like someone else I know in your situation, who was modding video games: put a time limit to... the "kid shit." That's going to get me downvoted, but seriously, the world flies by you, and people like you have a lot more potential.

It is extremely downvotey, but there are objectively more important things for you to be doing. There are other people in your life who know this too (like probably your parents) but they may lack the sophistication to know, really, what you should target your talent cannon on.

Re: Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

#27

Post by dopidopHN »

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #12
apexedison wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha thanks. Hack Club certainly has adults involved (like myself) but we structure projects so teens can be core contributors (the rest of the core engineering staff on Sprig are all less than 20 years old and I'd say 95% of the games in the library are from teenagers). As for Sprig itself the only part that is limited to teens is that we give the console away for free to teenagers who submit games to the gallery. O…

Would be nice if you sold them to us old people at a 2x cost so we can get one and pay for one for a teen

Yeah that would solve a kinda chicken and egg issue.

Re: Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

#28

Post by dopidopHN »

scandox wrote: post #25

Slightly OT: I've been wondering recently if the word teenager and it's use has been a bad thing for people between 12 and 20. If we didn't have this word I'm guessing we wouldn't view them as such a distinct lump and be less ready to generalize about them.

Historically it’s a new concept. At least for the west but I suspect for human as a whole.

We used to jump from childhood to adulthood without lingering.

I don’t cast any judgment on the concept of teenagehood. I think it’s out there now.

Re: Show HN: Sprig, open-source game console and engine, by teenagers for teenagers

#29

Post by apexedison »

threesided wrote: post #19

Love to see the combo of hardware and software being offered up to aspiring young game developers! I'm a huge fan of Pico-8 and other "fantasy consoles" so always welcome to see another one. Awesome work!

Thank you! I found the other fantasy consoles quite inspiring, PuzzleScript too.
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