This may be like one of those great 19th century discoveries in math and physics for which there were no real-world use cases at the time, but were applied decades later with world-changing consequences.
Some day, Apple logo made out of nothing but checkboxes might just save the world.
I don't think you can really say you've exhaused this until you can run DOOM rendered with checkboxes. You might need to get into checkbox dithering with multiple checkboxes to give you a few different fill levels, and use really small checkboxes, so you get both the resolution and can actually see what you're shooting at.
Given it is interactive, he should instead make a virtual touch screen that is connected to the actual hardware that runs a WebAssembly implementation of DOOM in a modern web browser.
If you are interested in how to hack the task manager, Dave Plummer did a video on it yesterday[1]. Turns out you can fake cores on the task manager to get the resolution you need, so you don't need a Dual Socket Epyc CPU.
Who does this? I mean... who has the talent, time, and inclination? Is this what happens when startups IPO and nerds retire and have too much free time?
I think something like this (1-bit-color, might be extremely hard to have Doom not look like mush) might also benefit from a local contrast filter (like the clarity slider in Photoshop). That filter would increase the visibility of line pairs that may have otherwise been rendered as the same color. Maybe you could then not need as much dithering or multiple checkboxes.
I'm surprised this got so much praise. It's cool and quirky but it doesn't seem like anything special. I guess the truth is, HN really wants to be Reddit.
Impressive? Interesting? Wonderful? Not to me at least. And I'm struggling with why it is to anyone else, but that's on me.
The sheer simplicity of this idea - a 1-bit grid, which you can interact with in real-time - echoes that of Pico-8 [1], a fantasy console with strict limits such that you're not overwhelmed with ideas, but instead given bounds to play with. Its limits keep it realistic: you can do immensely wondrous things with the console, but its graphic and music style are limited, and as such it provides much more of an incentive to make a game - it's far less overwhelming, and you can concentrate on fun. But also, it offers a challenge! As you begin to hit the limits, you come up with clever tricks to save space, and because the computer isn't blisteringly fast, you're pushing yourself as much as you are the computer.
But this checkbox playground would be, in my eyes, an even better virtual console - reduced to the bare minimum of what you could make into a game that can be enjoyed. Provide a nice interface such that the user only has to write the game code, provide events to hook into - start(), frame() and click(x, y) - and this would be an immensely satisfying console to immediately get to work on, as rather than worry about graphics and audio, you're free to get right into making it fun.
...also, it'd be an excellent framework for teaching kids how to code! :D
I'm struggling to find any of them now, bit I think there's many sites that provide a toy and interface similar to what you describe.
One in particular, I recall, provided a grid of colourable dots and a minimal language to program them in. There were social features to browse demos people had written. Anyone remember what it's called?
(16 × 16 grid of dots governed by a "shader-like" (?) function getting time, order, column and row indices arguments; negative values red, positive white, zero proximity shrinks.)
Not sure about those "social features", though you can just share the URL with your creating
There's ShaderToy, that works with actual pixels and shader code, but allows some fun effects to be made with very little code: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ljGD1 (and some really crazy raymarching stuff to be done by those with serious math/shader skills)
You’re almost describing TI Basic, which is how I got in to programming in middle school. Of course, TI Basic had the additional advantage that I could mess with it during school, before laptops were common in classrooms
The original post also reminded me very much of QBasic. A major charm was how easy it was to just get some graphics on the screen. Some tiny resolutions, functions for a circle, a pixel, a line and a rectangle and you can do stuff from there. I very much remember making simple animations like the author has shown in QBasic.
And that's also why I think environments like QBasic, TI Basic or - more modern - godot, Game Maker Studio and such are very valuable. They allow kids to start programming with something simple and fun.
I'm immediately seeing the possibility of turning checkboxes into registers and RAM and rolling out Knuth's MMIX from TAOCP[1]. I mean, if you're going nuts. . .
There's a free tool that integrates with Ableton Live to make these easier to set up. I can't remember the name and Google is (as usual) useless for finding it, but I do remember it wasn't updated for Live 11 last I checked. Maybe someone else will be able to name it.
That lets you assemble views from a handful of pre-fab components. What I'm thinking of is a full pad controller light show suite. Components doesn't have anything like that.
I remember someone had made an early iPhone game out of UI elements (around 2009 ish?). I thought it was such a cool idea, and spent a bunch of time messing around with "ui-elements-as-graphics". My favourite thing I came up with was sine-wave scrollbars: https://www.mrspeaker.net/dev/sinescrollbars/
Castle of the Winds' characters, items, and monsters were made entirely out of Windows icons. You could crack it open in a resource editor and change most things. There's probably a lot more of these between your example and mine. Someone should make a list.
I can never work out whether there's an in-joke on HN where everyone pretends that they don't have a sense of humor, or whether the truth is a less favorable statement about the HN community. HN is great, but this thread is an example of where it doesn't do so well, since TFA is inherently humorous, and it's not possible to respond to it from an entirely humorless position.
115 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] threadAnd with the ability to check/uncheck the boxes and influence the course of the simulation.
Some day, Apple logo made out of nothing but checkboxes might just save the world.
I love this kind of experimental noodling with no real purpose except fun.
I wonder what other form elements can be pushed into weird usages?
I'd guess radio buttons and select boxes with ASCII in could be next.
Next step: Variable size checkboxes. Something you can't do with ordinary pixels.
Checkbox made out of checkboxes should then be put into an animation loop, zooming out to single chexel.
[1]: https://www.bryanbraun.com/checkboxland/
I don't think you can really say you've exhaused this until you can run DOOM rendered with checkboxes. You might need to get into checkbox dithering with multiple checkboxes to give you a few different fill levels, and use really small checkboxes, so you get both the resolution and can actually see what you're shooting at.
I know: I'm a bastard.
https://youtu.be/L-q6Gz_4Yqc?t=160
"I heard it can run on any computer. Is that right?"
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQ1X_4JCn0
https://healeycodes.com/doom-rendered-via-checkboxes
It looks decent but dithering would be nice so I created an issue for it here: https://github.com/bryanbraun/checkboxland/issues/20
Interesting posts get lost, and this hits the first place.
Impressive? Interesting? Wonderful? Not to me at least. And I'm struggling with why it is to anyone else, but that's on me.
https://www.bryanbraun.com/checkboxland/docs/demos/game-of-l...
[1]: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
But this checkbox playground would be, in my eyes, an even better virtual console - reduced to the bare minimum of what you could make into a game that can be enjoyed. Provide a nice interface such that the user only has to write the game code, provide events to hook into - start(), frame() and click(x, y) - and this would be an immensely satisfying console to immediately get to work on, as rather than worry about graphics and audio, you're free to get right into making it fun.
...also, it'd be an excellent framework for teaching kids how to code! :D
One in particular, I recall, provided a grid of colourable dots and a minimal language to program them in. There were social features to browse demos people had written. Anyone remember what it's called?
(16 × 16 grid of dots governed by a "shader-like" (?) function getting time, order, column and row indices arguments; negative values red, positive white, zero proximity shrinks.)
Not sure about those "social features", though you can just share the URL with your creating
And that's also why I think environments like QBasic, TI Basic or - more modern - godot, Game Maker Studio and such are very valuable. They allow kids to start programming with something simple and fun.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programm...
https://www.bryanbraun.com/checkboxland/docs/demos/game-of-l...
While intended for music production, people have used it for interactive lightshows or games
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/filter-func...()
My coworker hacked together a demo that's pretty wild: https://twitter.com/nathanAlan/status/1436145205019922440
It kind of reminds me of this pattern I saw that someone made out of range sliders (though not as animated): https://codepen.io/xdesro/pen/dyRNqqY
[0] https://youtu.be/JnCkF62gkOY
You may checkout my this work: :-)
https://github.com/amzn/computer-vision-basics-in-microsoft-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357374
I can never work out whether there's an in-joke on HN where everyone pretends that they don't have a sense of humor, or whether the truth is a less favorable statement about the HN community. HN is great, but this thread is an example of where it doesn't do so well, since TFA is inherently humorous, and it's not possible to respond to it from an entirely humorless position.