If you've ever wondered what a fully fledged sandspiel Roguelike (technically more a roguelite for those of you who mind) hahe a look at a game called Noita on Steam. It is a masterpiece of weaving an incredibly rich game out of the sandspiel apps of yore. I was suprised by how much I enjoyed it, evej if it is a little punishing.
I love Noita, though I could only really enjoy it after installing a save mod. I don’t care about the roguelike ethos enough, don’t have the time to get gud enough to make that feel thrilling, and there’s too much wonder in the exploring the game world’s further reaches to miss out on for a casual like myself.
I am a huge fan of Sandspiel, which Max described in this article from 2019, and recently I was delighted to discover that he and TodePond have been doing a huge amount of wonderful work since then.
What happens when you combine Sandspiel with a Scratch-like blocks based visual programming language that lets you look inside and see how rules work, tweak and modify them, and even define your own rules for different types of particles? And then form a community around it for sharing and learning from each other and building on top of each other's work.
Here is Max's and TodePond's brilliantly ambitious visually programmable sequel, Sandspiel Studio!
I've written more about Sandspeil Studio and related topics of artificial life, cellular automata, and visual programming, and quoted some interesting discussion with Max and TodePond from their Discord server (they actually already knew about most of this stuff, but they love it as much as I do), in the "Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?" discussion, in reply to api's comment about Digital Artificial Life:
api 67 days ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/pa...
Digital Artificial Life -- as in evolving program ecosystems, artificial chemistries or cellular automata that can manifest life-like phenomena, etc.
Haven't done much with it in a while but was very into it in college. It's both a minor scientific field (would probably be grouped under both theoretical biology and AI research) and a hobbyist field with some really interesting projects.
DonHopkins 67 days ago | prev [–]
That's one of my long time interests and hobbies, which I write about on HN and discuss with other people frequently. I'm supposed to be doing something else right now so I'll quickly drop a few disorganized quotes and links here. (Sorry I didn't have time to be more concise!)
A few years ago I ran across Max Bittker's beautiful "Sandspiel", which is a delightful cellular automata toy that simulates sand and other rules:
A few days ago I saw him tweet some amazing stuff that resonated with me, which then led me to discover what he's been working with Lu Wilson (TodePond): Sandspiel Studio -- user definable rules using a block based visual programming language.
I found Sandspiel and its creator's blog a while back, and it was really humbling and inspiring. Max is clearly very talented and dedicated, and his projects served as a reminder to me, as a jaded person tired of seeking the profitability or usefulness of software projects, that at the end of the day, programming (and, by extension, one's use of their time) can just be about fun and creative exploration.
Alex Mordvintsev
@zzznah:
Pleased to share our new work: “Particle Lenia and the energy-based formulation” by @eyvindn @RandazzoEttore and me! (thread ⬇ )
Flow Lenia: Mass conservation for the study of virtual creatures in continuous cellular automata
Erwan Plantec, Gautier Hamon, Mayalen Etcheverry, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Clément Moulin-Frier, Bert Wang-Chak Chan
Lenia is a family of cellular automata (CA) generalizing Conway's Game of Life to continuous space, time and states. Lenia has attracted a lot of attention because of the wide diversity of self-organizing patterns it can generate. Among those, some spatially localized patterns (SLPs) resemble life-like artificial creatures. However, those creatures are found in only a small subspace of the Lenia parameter space and are not trivial to discover, necessitating advanced search algorithms. We hypothesize that adding a mass conservation constraint could facilitate the emergence of SLPs. We propose here an extension of the Lenia model, called Flow Lenia, which enables mass conservation. We show a few observations demonstrating its effectiveness in generating SLPs with complex behaviors. Furthermore, we show how Flow Lenia enables the integration of the parameters of the CA update rules within the CA dynamics, making them dynamic and localized. This allows for multi-species simulations, with locally coherent update rules that define properties of the emerging creatures, and that can be mixed with neighbouring rules. We argue that this paves the way for the intrinsic evolution of self-organized artificial life forms within continuous CAs.
11 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 47.6 ms ] threadWhat happens when you combine Sandspiel with a Scratch-like blocks based visual programming language that lets you look inside and see how rules work, tweak and modify them, and even define your own rules for different types of particles? And then form a community around it for sharing and learning from each other and building on top of each other's work.
Here is Max's and TodePond's brilliantly ambitious visually programmable sequel, Sandspiel Studio!
https://studio.sandspiel.club/
Here's my profile, where you can play with the version of Max's flower growing rule that he shows here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifyYITDq1oo
...to grow underground potatoes and fancy flowers:
https://studio.sandspiel.club/user/clanzgor8006109mtjooi348t
I've written more about Sandspeil Studio and related topics of artificial life, cellular automata, and visual programming, and quoted some interesting discussion with Max and TodePond from their Discord server (they actually already knew about most of this stuff, but they love it as much as I do), in the "Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?" discussion, in reply to api's comment about Digital Artificial Life:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33698163
api 67 days ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/pa...
Digital Artificial Life -- as in evolving program ecosystems, artificial chemistries or cellular automata that can manifest life-like phenomena, etc.
Haven't done much with it in a while but was very into it in college. It's both a minor scientific field (would probably be grouped under both theoretical biology and AI research) and a hobbyist field with some really interesting projects.
DonHopkins 67 days ago | prev [–]
That's one of my long time interests and hobbies, which I write about on HN and discuss with other people frequently. I'm supposed to be doing something else right now so I'll quickly drop a few disorganized quotes and links here. (Sorry I didn't have time to be more concise!)
A few years ago I ran across Max Bittker's beautiful "Sandspiel", which is a delightful cellular automata toy that simulates sand and other rules:
https://sandspiel.club/
A few days ago I saw him tweet some amazing stuff that resonated with me, which then led me to discover what he's been working with Lu Wilson (TodePond): Sandspiel Studio -- user definable rules using a block based visual programming language.
https://twitter.com/maxbittker
"working on goth fungus kidpix":
https://twitter.com/maxbittker/status/1593868837111451649
Lu Wilson (TodePond):
https://twitter.com/TodePond
Sandspiel Studio:
https://studio.sandspiel.club/
Sandspiel introduction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecCVor7mJ6o...
Holy fucking wall of text!
https://twitter.com/zzznah/status/1606294595330940928
Alex Mordvintsev @zzznah: Pleased to share our new work: “Particle Lenia and the energy-based formulation” by @eyvindn @RandazzoEttore and me! (thread ⬇ )
https://google-research.github.io/self-organising-systems/pa...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.07906
Flow Lenia: Mass conservation for the study of virtual creatures in continuous cellular automata
Erwan Plantec, Gautier Hamon, Mayalen Etcheverry, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Clément Moulin-Frier, Bert Wang-Chak Chan Lenia is a family of cellular automata (CA) generalizing Conway's Game of Life to continuous space, time and states. Lenia has attracted a lot of attention because of the wide diversity of self-organizing patterns it can generate. Among those, some spatially localized patterns (SLPs) resemble life-like artificial creatures. However, those creatures are found in only a small subspace of the Lenia parameter space and are not trivial to discover, necessitating advanced search algorithms. We hypothesize that adding a mass conservation constraint could facilitate the emergence of SLPs. We propose here an extension of the Lenia model, called Flow Lenia, which enables mass conservation. We show a few observations demonstrating its effectiveness in generating SLPs with complex behaviors. Furthermore, we show how Flow Lenia enables the integration of the parameters of the CA update rules within the CA dynamics, making them dynamic and localized. This allows for multi-species simulations, with locally coherent update rules that define properties of the emerging creatures, and that can be mixed with neighbouring rules. We argue that this paves the way for the intrinsic evolution of self-organized artificial life forms within continuous CAs.