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It's okay to make something nobody wants

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Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#171

Post by neontomo »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #148

:) I'm making something nobody wants right now and it's going great. It's giving my life the most purpose it's had in a few years. It's a financial disaster, of course, but trading money for personal fulfillment is a sweet deal IMO. (and a shameless plug...) https://ant.care/ if you want to derp around with a digital ant colony for a bit. The nest devolves into a mess after a couple of days tops right now. If you thi…

I didn't quite understand the ants behaviours, like moving sand around, but thoroughly enjoyed this simulation. Cute.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#172

Post by SeanAnderson »

neontomo wrote: post #171
SeanAnderson wrote: post #148

:) I'm making something nobody wants right now and it's going great. It's giving my life the most purpose it's had in a few years. It's a financial disaster, of course, but trading money for personal fulfillment is a sweet deal IMO. (and a shameless plug...) https://ant.care/ if you want to derp around with a digital ant colony for a bit. The nest devolves into a mess after a couple of days tops right now. If you thi…

I didn't quite understand the ants behaviours, like moving sand around, but thoroughly enjoyed this simulation. Cute.

I'm glad you found it cute and enjoyable! I completely agree their behaviors need a lot more love, but I am ready to give it! :)

The actions of the workers are just probabilistic for now - they lack any true motivation.

The queen ant has an instinctual goal of creating a sufficiently spacious nest that is sufficiently deep underground. When she achieves that goal, she stops movement and begins giving birth to ants. Those ants then dig out the nest further.

I am trying to figure out how to make the digging more... inspired? Something like "If ants keep finding themselves surrounded by other ants underground then they need more space and should consider digging" or "If an ant fails to find a place to put food then it should consider digging"

I think that both of these things have a prerequisite of having tunnels/chambers built more effectively, though. I've played around with some rules like "Don't dig dirt if there is air on the opposite side of the dirt" in an attempt to prevent the nest from turning into a giant pit, but this doesn't result in tunnels and chambers, just delays the inevitable pit-like behavior.

In the future, there will be an "outer world" which has the more classic "ant follow pheromone trails to find food" mechanism. You'll see ants disappear out the sides of this view and see them explore from a top-down view. The outer world will get covered in fog each night and push all the ants back to their nest for sleeping and eating. Just trying to get to the point where they sensibly store food before expanding into that.

.. and if that was more info than you were looking for, sorry :D Just excited to talk about my thing.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#173

Post by wly_cdgr »

Of course it is - there is no duty to be useful. But it's even better (funner, more fulfilling, more likely to make you money) to make something that some one specific person you know wants. Could be you, could be a partner or a close friend/relative - doesn't really matter, as long as it's someone you know well.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#174

Post by neontomo »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #172
neontomo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't quite understand the ants behaviours, like moving sand around, but thoroughly enjoyed this simulation. Cute.

I'm glad you found it cute and enjoyable! I completely agree their behaviors need a lot more love, but I am ready to give it! :) The actions of the workers are just probabilistic for now - they lack any true motivation. The queen ant has an instinctual goal of creating a sufficiently spacious nest that is sufficiently deep underground. When she achieves that goal, she stops movement and begins giving birth to ants. T…

I wish I could help you figure it out, but I don't know much about these types of algorithms. Possibly, they already exist and you can plug them in. I know there's a lot of work done on maze-generation in games, maybe you can think of the tunnels as a maze, and pre-generate a path they will take, and update that model as other ants interact with it. Anyway I love the enthusiasm and wish you luck!

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#175

Post by SeanAnderson »

neontomo wrote: post #174
SeanAnderson wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you found it cute and enjoyable! I completely agree their behaviors need a lot more love, but I am ready to give it! :) The actions of the workers are just probabilistic for now - they lack any true motivation. The queen ant has an instinctual goal of creating a sufficiently spacious nest that is sufficiently deep underground. When she achieves that goal, she stops movement and begins giving birth to ants. T…

I wish I could help you figure it out, but I don't know much about these types of algorithms. Possibly, they already exist and you can plug them in. I know there's a lot of work done on maze-generation in games, maybe you can think of the tunnels as a maze, and pre-generate a path they will take, and update that model as other ants interact with it. Anyway I love the enthusiasm and wish you luck!

Thank you! And yes, I agree. I was looking at uh https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse and wondering if that were applicable here :)

Have a good day!

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#176

Post by davidhariri »

hermannj314 wrote: post #81

I wasted a lot of my life being too scared to make something out of fear. This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didnt make every perfect decision for their product. Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop. I wish I'd learned that sooner.

> Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop.

That's beautiful. Did you make that up? Brilliant!

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#177

Post by coolhand2120 »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #148

:) I'm making something nobody wants right now and it's going great. It's giving my life the most purpose it's had in a few years. It's a financial disaster, of course, but trading money for personal fulfillment is a sweet deal IMO. (and a shameless plug...) https://ant.care/ if you want to derp around with a digital ant colony for a bit. The nest devolves into a mess after a couple of days tops right now. If you thi…

This is awesome!

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#178

Post by chaos_emergent »

davnicwil wrote: post #113
hermannj314 wrote: post #81

I wasted a lot of my life being too scared to make something out of fear. This community especially can be very toxic to people that are starting out, that aren't geniuses, that didnt make every perfect decision for their product. Life is more enjoyable in a create-fail-learn loop than a consume-criticize-gloat loop. I wish I'd learned that sooner.

A negative reception to putting a product out there is actually a really great outcome. It shows you are doing something right if this happens. The expected and typical outcome is to be completely ignored - crickets. This is perhaps the main reason you should not fear shipping! I have a post which elaborates on this if it's interesting for anyone: https://davnicwil.com/negative-feedback-is-positive/

I totally agree with negative reception! It means that people give enough of a shit to feel about your product. Which means that with more development - either in product or in market - you’ll find people who love what you made.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#179

Post by xwdv »

barrysteve wrote: post #147
xwdv wrote: post #98

What’s with the sappy, weepy tone here? If someone made a household cleaning detergent or some vitamin powder that nobody wanted, would we still be saying these products aren’t really for users, but rather are just another medium of self expression? Is it okay for them to still exist? Sure, it’s also okay to be a loser . Seen through a capitalist lens, the point of a product is to serve a useful purpose. If nobody wa…

Good luck making something as big as cattle if you can't even make dogs, or mice. Good luck avoiding burn out, making nothing but cattle all day long. Sometimes, making a peacock will get you laid. Sometimes, making a dove will being you peace of mind. Sometimes making a turtle will teach your child how to make (eventually) cattle too. The market sure is a conversation, and I'm impressed by developers that can create…

A guy that consistently makes what the market wants sounds pretty exciting for the market.

Re: It's okay to make something nobody wants

#180

Post by araes »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #172
neontomo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't quite understand the ants behaviours, like moving sand around, but thoroughly enjoyed this simulation. Cute.

I'm glad you found it cute and enjoyable! I completely agree their behaviors need a lot more love, but I am ready to give it! :) The actions of the workers are just probabilistic for now - they lack any true motivation. The queen ant has an instinctual goal of creating a sufficiently spacious nest that is sufficiently deep underground. When she achieves that goal, she stops movement and begins giving birth to ants. T…

If you have never looked at Dwarf Fortress, I recommend you take a look. https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Note: Dwarf Fortress is enormous, like trying to look at those 7000 item long Factorium expansions while not going crazy, and I suggest it not as discouragement. Simply ideas about those types of goal based behaviors.

Much of the behavior is based around creating caverns of various types, and then sending workers to find resources, gather resources, process resources, and then use those for even greater complexity tasks.

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