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

My 1981 adventure game is now a multimedia extravaganza

technologizer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–48 of 48 posts

Re: My 1981 adventure game is now a multimedia extravaganza

#41

Post by piltdownman »

jimmaswell wrote: post #25
gyomu wrote: post #21

> Almost nobody programs computers in machine language. Mostly, programmers work in high-level programming languages that simplify many aspects of the job. Thanks to AI, I realized, English is just an extraordinarily high-level programming language. And vibe coding is coding. It's funny how people feel the need to repeat that last mantra. Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd. Compare two…

> Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd. Is this supposed to be an implicit dig at audiobooks? The scientific consensus seems to be that there's no difference to comprehension or retention. https://time.com/5388681/audiobooks-reading-books/

I mean no one is listening to an audiobook of an Eternal Golden Braid - even if one existed it couldn't lead to an equivalent outcome compared to reading it. Let's not even get started on the impact on literary devices like Wordplay and Neologisms.

There doesn't need to be an implicit dig; audiobooks are explicitly a different medium, and in the Marshall McLuhan sense obviously thus impact comprehension, retention, and the overall grok.

Re: My 1981 adventure game is now a multimedia extravaganza

#42

Post by xnx »

gyomu wrote: post #21

> Almost nobody programs computers in machine language. Mostly, programmers work in high-level programming languages that simplify many aspects of the job. Thanks to AI, I realized, English is just an extraordinarily high-level programming language. And vibe coding is coding. It's funny how people feel the need to repeat that last mantra. Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd. Compare two…

> Are they doing the same kind of activity? Getting the same kind of cognitive development out of it?

Definitely not, but one activity isn't necessarily better than the other. A carpenter and an architect don't do the same activities either.

Re: My 1981 adventure game is now a multimedia extravaganza

#43

Post by tracker1 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #25
gyomu wrote: post #21

> Almost nobody programs computers in machine language. Mostly, programmers work in high-level programming languages that simplify many aspects of the job. Thanks to AI, I realized, English is just an extraordinarily high-level programming language. And vibe coding is coding. It's funny how people feel the need to repeat that last mantra. Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd. Compare two…

> Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd. Is this supposed to be an implicit dig at audiobooks? The scientific consensus seems to be that there's no difference to comprehension or retention. https://time.com/5388681/audiobooks-reading-books/

I'm pretty sure it will vary a LOT from person to person... I remember what I see very well.. what I hear, not nearly as much. I say this as when I was commuting I'd listing to a lot of audio books and podcasts... I didn't retain much at all. But I can skim a written article and retain a lot more. Further still, if I literally copy something I see while writing it down, it's hard for me not to remember. That last bit got me through high school as I never did any homework, but always aced tests.

Everyone is definitely different in terms of how they learn best. That's not to say that listening to non-fiction is or isn't better for oneself than nothing, or even different forms of music may be different. There's nothing wrong with entertainment or factual knowledge... (See "Fat Electrician" on YouTube/Pepperbox for a lot of both.)

Re: My 1981 adventure game is now a multimedia extravaganza

#44

Post by jimmaswell »

jader201 wrote: post #31
jimmaswell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd. Is this supposed to be an implicit dig at audiobooks? The scientific consensus seems to be that there's no difference to comprehension or retention. https://time.com/5388681/audiobooks-reading-books/

You’re proving the exact point of the OP arguing against the “And vibe coding is coding.” statement. You’re focusing only on the results, and not the difference in cognitive function necessary to achieve those results. An illiterate person can “read” an audiobook. Just like a person that knows zero about coding could (theoretically) vibe code a program with similar/same results. So yes, if you focus 100% on only the…

The medium feels wholly immaterial in this case. The words reach your brain, and then it's up to you to think about them, imagine the scene, process ideas. Audiobooks let the narrator add inflection, which maybe takes a slight load off you, but I don't see the big deal. I've read lots of fiction, and listened to a lot on road trips, and I don't feel like my comprehension suffered in either case compared to the other. The important thing is you can have the same level of conversation about the material - I don't believe all this woo about reading being the only pure and intellectual way to process information.

Re: My 1981 adventure game is now a multimedia extravaganza

#45

Post by vbsd »

gyomu wrote: post #21

> Almost nobody programs computers in machine language. Mostly, programmers work in high-level programming languages that simplify many aspects of the job. Thanks to AI, I realized, English is just an extraordinarily high-level programming language. And vibe coding is coding. It's funny how people feel the need to repeat that last mantra. Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd. Compare two…

Even if we accept this metaphor of English as a programming language, it’s used in a highly unusual way.

With regular programming, you have a full specification of the program (the code) and it gets turned into an executable. When you want to change some behavior, you change the code parts that relate to the behavior and the whole thing is compiled again.

With agentic programming, there’s no full spec, no “codebase in English”. You write instructions but they are discarded as soon as you close your session, and what’s left is this lower level thing (the code written in a traditional programming language).

It’s almost like a difference between declarative and imperative paradigm for the process of creating software.

Re: My 1981 adventure game is now a multimedia extravaganza

#46

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

gyomu wrote: post #21

> Almost nobody programs computers in machine language. Mostly, programmers work in high-level programming languages that simplify many aspects of the job. Thanks to AI, I realized, English is just an extraordinarily high-level programming language. And vibe coding is coding. It's funny how people feel the need to repeat that last mantra. Kind of similar to the "listening to audiobooks is reading" crowd. Compare two…

> Are they doing the same kind of activity? Getting the same kind of cognitive development out of it?

Who cares as long as the game is good? There is no inherent moral value in the how with artistic creation. What matters is the end result.

And if people are happy with what they produce, who am I to judge them? I will happily give my opinion on the game but the act of creation is them.

Same with audiobook. You are adding value judgment where there doesn't need to be one. Is the Odyssey less significant because it used to be an oral story?

Re: My 1981 adventure game is now a multimedia extravaganza

#47

Post by DonHopkins »

technothrasher wrote: post #2

"In high school, I loved playing text-based TRS-80 adventure games written by Scott Adams. Moved to write an Adams-style adventure myself, I set it in the Arctic." So many of us growing up at that time were inspired by Adams. I think he quite literally is responsible for a huge number of people becoming programmers and game designers. I was lucky enough a few years ago to be able to thank him personally for what he d…

Scott Adams (the good Adventure pioneer, not the evil racist anti-vax cartoonist) inspired me too! Check out this Hacker News discussion where he dropped by and answered questions:

The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams (madned.substack.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330015

https://madned.substack.com/p/the-further-text-adventures-of...

Here's an email I recently wrote Scott about MOOLLM (like LambdaMoo meets The Sims in Cursor):

https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/designs/email/...

He responded:

Scott> BTW I also captured the original Hacker thread for my biography notebooks. I am using NotebookLM with Gemini and have uploaded many thousands of emails, web interviews, articles etc. I added this in today. For some reason it didn’t seem to have found it before when I was web searching. Been thinking about how I actually want to structure the biography. Was thinking about having mini adventures in the narrative that require folks to play on some webpages I set up to get more of the story. Now I am also thinking about MOOLLM

The essential idea we're both pursuing is "Play My Blog":

Adventure Compiler: Hybrid Simulation Architecture

"YAML-jazz in, playable worlds out."

The adventure compiler is the showcase app that comes after the practical stack: Leela Edgebox DevOps, thinking/writing tools, and Cursor‑Mirror. It is the final attraction — a web app where anyone can play my blog.

https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/skills/adventu...

I've made a lot of progress recently on importing Sims characters:

https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/tree/main/designs/sim-ob...

Here's The Sims character animation system reimplemented in JavaScript:

https://vitamoo.space

https://github.com/DnfJeff/SimObliterator_Suite/tree/main/vi...

Post reply on HN