Live data from Hacker News

Ask YC: What are you working on right now?

news.ycombinator.com

121–130 of 161 posts

Re: Ask YC: What are you working on right now?

#122

Checking stats after a new release of http://www.tudumo.com It's a to-do list. Seriously, because there weren't enough. Unique, like the others :)

Hey, I just downloaded your app. Nice job. I especially like how you guys seeded my tasks so that it's natural for me to start using the app instead of getting a dauntingly blank task list.

Have you guys considered a watered down free version with a lower price tag to buy the full? Like $10?

Re: Ask YC: What are you working on right now?

#124
Setting up a cash bonus plan for my team to clean up our code base. $5 for quarantined methods or blocks that just need to be deleted, $10 for deprecated blocks that need to be extracted from active code, and $25 for useful rewrites of badly designed methods. 3 days cut the fat code cash cookoff!

Re: Ask YC: What are you working on right now?

#125
post #67

Working on a "souce code annotating debugger" for an esoteric programming language. So instead of painfully stepping through your code line by line, you just press M-t inside a function definition and voilà: it shows you what goes on inside the function, using some example inputs to annotate the source code in a new Emacs buffer.

So, you're working on SLDB?

Pretty much the one thing that bothers me about working with Lisp in Emacs/Slime is the lack of what I would call a normal debugger with breakpoints, code highlighting, single-stepping and so on. Does anybody know if there's a deep reason for not having this? (I've often wondered, for example, if macros make it harder.) Or is it just that it hasn't been much of a priority?

Re: Ask YC: What are you working on right now?

#126
I'm working on a startup. www.hybir.com (not much there yet)

A really different approach to online backups. My nightly full backups take only a couple of minutes over broadband...

Right now I'm porting C# code to win32 C/C++. .Net has some really nasty bugs. So half my code is already in win32 C/C++.

I will give away some free subscriptions here when I am ready.

Re: Ask YC: What are you working on right now?

#127
post #122

Checking stats after a new release of http://www.tudumo.com It's a to-do list. Seriously, because there weren't enough. Unique, like the others :)

Hey, I just downloaded your app. Nice job. I especially like how you guys seeded my tasks so that it's natural for me to start using the app instead of getting a dauntingly blank task list. Have you guys considered a watered down free version with a lower price tag to buy the full? Like $10?

Thanks - been a lot of work! On the lower price: have thought a little but not convinced. One problem is "price-as-signal", another is that below a certain amount it just costs you too much in payment fees, marketing and support. Also, you are essentially selling the difference between the two apps for the price difference. That takes some serious thinking to get right so you don't shoot yourself in the foot...

Re: Ask YC: What are you working on right now?

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for the NPC ai, I recommend having the online part of the algorithm not use GAs, but just some sort of statistically learning on decision trees, GAs done right are tricky, and its worth pointing out that they're basically an optimization technique best used when the problem domain doesn't have enough structure to use other techniques which provide much stronger guarantees.

I have to say though, that having an MMO which has an open content creation system and is well architectured would be fun

What I mean when I say that the "users make the best content anyway" is that most people just ignore game-company produced "content" or just figure out how to blow through it to get the items. What takes the place of such "content" is the real content -- players vying against players to achieve their own varied and often conflicting goals. What players have done to me and with me has excited, terrified, exhilarated, and entertained me 50X more than any game content ever has.

There are certain elements of "content" for which there will be "structured content creation." Players will be able to design new items. They will be able to play as whole factions if they want. (Using a distinct RTS style of play, controlling an entire economy of autonomous drones.) But there will be no drudgery of missions, no mining, no leveling up, no camping. Only either the action of combat, or the management of wealth generating economies.

Re: Ask YC: What are you working on right now?

#130
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also working on an MMO. It's a space game. My spin is that everything in this game will be emergent. The players can design and play anything in this game, or it will evolve through genetic algorithms. I've worked out how to do most of this. I'm still working out how to evolve NPC ship AIs, but that's not the most important. Also, everything in this game will be scriptable. Users will be able to create programs…

I find the concept of Second Life interesting, but it is difficult to use. If you could create something along the same lines of Second Life that is easier to use and eliminates the lag problem, it would definitely be something I would try. I found Second Life after reading about Asperger's Syndrome and the communication problems associated with the syndrome that Second Life seems to break down. (No, I don't have Asp…

It will be like Second Life, but everything will be a Ship, an inert object in space, or an Item to be used aboard a ship. Users will be able to design Ships and Items, but only after they have built and supplied a special ship outfitted as a Research Facility and operated it for a certain period of time. Designs will be vetted at first, but this will transition to a Slashdot-like moderation system.

The galaxy will be procedurally generated. There will be millions if not billions of star systems. You will not be able to bookmark arbitrary locations in space, however. (Hyperspace is extremely chaotic and changing, so any jump to a coordinate in "Real" space will always be randomized and never precise.) You must drop an item called a "beacon" to be able to warp back to a specific location. A user will only be able to afford a certain number of beacons.

Post reply on HN