#Conway's “On Numbers And Games”

[janmisali]

could you give any advice to figuring out hackenbush as a puzzle game? on that itchio game, i'm completely stuck on level 1-11, i'm always exactly one hack short

in pure blue and red hackenbush, literally any move you can do will always be "bad", in that it's making the state of the game slightly more advantageous for the other player. conway called games like these "numbers", and learning how to do the mental math in your head to convert a hackenbush position into a (sur)real number is an extremely powerful tool to have.

this particular hackenbush position consists of five disconnected parts. (it might look like it's only four, but that second one from the right has two different "roots" that don't interact at all, so it's functionally two different things.) any move you make in any of these subgames will be giving Blue "points", and it is your goal as Red to ensure that you give up as few points as possible.

basically, the faster you can do this in your head,

the better you'll be at hackenbush

[boughclan-clangen]

🌍 and ✍️!

-Direclan

i'm gonna put some of this under a readmore because it got SO long hahaha

🌍 What are some of your irl inspirations for the lore/worldbuilding of your comic?

hmm! this is tough, i'm not sure if this includes media (but if it does i'm going to include it later because i'm in a rambly sort of mood, haha).

so as far as the kitty cats go, i definitely take a lot of inspiration from my own dreams. i am very bad at taking my medications at the correct time and i currently take one where the first withdrawal symptom that makes me definitely aware i forgot to take it is that i have really vivid, sometimes very scary dreams. i kind of seek to depict these vivid dreams, so i will likely be doing a lot of experimentation during future dream sequences to capture that feeling of dreamlike unreality.

i also have a small document that includes a list of common foliage in the alaska wilderness. i so far have not taken a whole lot of time to depict it in my art but the chugach mountain range has been a particular focus of mine when i do research about shrubbery and tree diversity. i was a dual ecology & math major in college, so if there's anythign i'm kind of determined to get at least sort of correct it's the environment. (that said, there are tidepools on the coast of this setting where reefclan hunts, so take it with a massive grain of salt. it's fantasy)

my partner's d&d campaign has also had a massive (and i really do mean massive) impact on just like. how i create and how i conceptualize characters, symbolism, colors, and the rest of the works. we've been playing a 1-20 campaign since 2017 and we're in the end-game right now--it's a world-spanning, time-spanning adventure and i am NOT the same person i was coming out as i was going in. half of that is other life stuff but the other half is just that it's made a very profound impact on me as a person, and i consistently seek to emulate the sheer depth of the world he has built, the decades of thought he put into it, the strength of even the most convoluted mechanics and stories. it's rock solid. i'm normal. i'm so normal I PROMISE.

and, as far as media goes, i've definitely taken a lot of inspiration from the lore and worldbuilding of the destiny duology. it's kind of hard to get a handle on the story, but once you do, it really opens up into this incredible saga and some of the worldbuilding is just, SO sick. the idea that you could use conway's game of life as the origin myth for a whole universe really gets me so good. i said this earlier but i have a degree in applied math and i NEVER looked at any numbers or proofs and thought "i could make an origin myth out of that" and it's just SOOOOO cool to me that someone did do that. also it's like sword and sorcery with guns. which rules.

there might be some visible star trek (tng/ds9 specifically), bloodborne, nier automata, pokemon, ffxiv, and hollow knight, but it might be a bit of a challenge to point to anything directly. i think it corresponds to what i've made playlists for, really, hahaha.

✍️ What inspired you to make your clangen comic/ other media?

i've been wanting to publish a comic for a really long time! i've always been hesitant to because i have a really hard time sticking with anything long-term--i tend to cycle between several activities, where i do one or two very intensely for a few weeks to a few months and then switch. not something i do consciously, it's just naturally how my interests tend to manifest. you can actually see my first attempt @/starclan-clangen, which............................. i plan to return to eventually but lost the file for hahaha.

but i never wanted to do a comic sort of half-interested that way--i always wanted to make something that was good, that i could be proud of. it wasn't until i saw other folks making clangen comics that it clicked for me that a comic doesn't have to be my magnum opus and that i can just have fun with it if i want to. folks like @/ranchclan, @/direclan (hehe, thats you), @/nimbusclan, @/cutieclan, @/fallenclan, @/splinterclan, @/sporeclan, @/juniperclan, and @/vaporclan helped me realize i could just... do it, that i didn't have to wait until my art or my writing were more honed in order to like. make something i liked and have fun with it. there are SO many more that i haven't listed here that i love very dearly. the clangen community in general has been such a wonderful galvanizing force for me.

other inspirations that aren't clangen-related include my friend earthtonequeen on comicfury, who does more short story comic work. they've been making comics for a long time and their work is such a huge inspiration to me--i love the stories they tell.

@/jumalanpelko, WOW. the style is so gorgeous, their color work is absolutely phenomenal, and i love love love the worldbuilding.

@/whatlurksbean, what lurks beneath was HUGE for me in the past year or so. i found them after there were already like 500 pages and binged the entire comic. they write characters with such skill, it's incredible to see a story where there's such nuance to each player.

@/thewhalesheart is such a beautiful comic. i love the way they draw lambpaw, it's influenced how i differentiate characters!

@/milosfromhome is a HUGE inspiration to me. this is one of the comics that helped me really decide that comics were what i really actually wanted from my art, and helped me realize that seeing someone's improvement throughout a comic is actually really sick, so i just gotta hit the ground running. huge, huge inspiration for sure hahaha.

the comic "i didn't know" on comicfury has also been a recent but huge inspiration, it addresses real-life issues in a very nuanced way with kitty cats and i'm a huge fan.

@/caemidraws has been an inspiration to me as an artist in general and recently she's started her own comic so i recommend checking her out too! her compositions and general symbology are SO cool.

if i think of further inspirations i may come back and add them but off the top of my head, those are the ones i've been checking back with regularly recently! thank you so much for the ask, i love your work! <3

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, Introducing the Snoops!

Introducing the snoops! You just saw one right now in the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy logo! These shady little guys are kind of the mascots for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, found all over the rulebook* playing hero and villain alike. They are meant to invoke the image of an old-timey detective or spy, as you can probably tell.

We went through a number of little terms for them before settling on snoops for now, including “dicks”, but the rest of the team won’t let me swear in the rulebook. They're called snoops because they be snoopin', among other things.

They serve kind of a similar role in the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook to the role Vault Boy serves in the Fallout games. In fact, Vault Boy was a direct inspiration for this kind of iconography. Like Vault Boy, snoops appear unreal all kinds of different roles, sometimes hero, sometimes villain, but always there to iconografy some kind of rules concept or game mechanic.

Like here how Vault Boy appears dressed as the Grim Reaper to demonstrate the Grim Reaper's Sprint perk, and appears holding a all the types of weapons that get a damage boost from the Cowboy perk to demonstrate the Cowboy perk, we have—or plan to have—a snoop for every occasion.

Traits in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy are not exactly the same thing as Fallout perks, nor were they inspired by them, but in much the same way as how Fallout uses a Vault Boy for ever perk, we plan to have a snoop for every Trait. Here is a link to a post all about Traits.

as well as use them to demonstrate key concepts and mechanics in the rules themselves.

This is not only fun and looks good, but the snoops also help readers find exactly where to stop when scrolling or flipping quickly through the Eureka rulebook. If you’re trying to find the beginning of the Composure section fast, you just have to remember that that’s the snoop that’s breaking down into puzzle pieces. Also, here's a link to a post all about the Composure mechanic.

*unfortunately, art is hard and time-consuming, and that’s why relatively few snoops have made it into the existing prerelease rulebook and demo that you might've seen thus far. But, I have some good news, the next patreon update will include a bunch more, including many of the ones you’ve seen here.

If you want to play this game, you can get the full prerelease rulebook plus a bunch of other bonuses for just $5 on our patreon, or go to our website to download the free demo version along with a free starter adventure module. However, the free version has very few snoops. Sorry, you get what you pay for. The patreon supporters will be getting a bunch of snoops in the next big update, though, so stay tuned!

Also, we are running a TTRPG Book Club, where everyone nominates indie TTRPGs, votes on what to play, reads&plays them, and discusses! It has over fifty members at the time of writing this! You can find the invite link to the book club on our website!

By the way, the snoop that appears in our company logo below and who is also kinda the main snoop, his name is Conway.

[entropy-game-dev]

Phylogenesia Automatorum is out!! A roguelite / incremental / life simulation hybrid

Download it here!

Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on my entry for the New Years Incremental Game Jam 2024, and I finally submitted it late last night.

It's a silly little game where you tend to your garden of digital plants, hoping to generate enough Life and Death points when they spawn/die respectively, in order to buy more plants, mutate their characteristics, and expand the field in which they live.

Mutations and field properties will directly (and indirectly) change the plants' behavior on both a local and global level, with some very interesting and unexpected results. Numbers going up isn't always better either too, as, if you upgrade their stats too much, you might make a superplant that chokes the life out of the rest of your simulation and other plants!!

(Oh, and my friend did the music for this game, and it's awesome - each plant as their own instrument/track and they layer on top of each other as you buy more!)

It's a roguelite in the sense that each run you will be choosing between random upgrades, plants, and field tiles with various effects between simulation runs in order to try and maximize your point gains and stay ahead of the reset cost. It's not totally balanced (as it was whipped up in 2 weeks), but with a bit of knowledge and juuuust a hint of luck, you can make almost any run pop off! The goal is to buy all 10 plants and have them all produce points within a single run (representing a diverse garden or something, rather than a monocrop).

As I mentioned previously, it's based heavily on Conway's Game of Life, as I am a huge sucker for incrementals with hypnotizing visuals that change and evolve as you interact with the various systems at play. I took this idea, added a bunch of plants that are variations on the standard ruleset, and went from there.

You might also notice that I used some assets from Stellar Terminus, namely, the 3 sound effects, fonts, color palette, and, retro computer theming. I swear I can do other styles, just, er, not in 2 weeks when I already had quite an ambitious idea!

Over the coming days I'll post some more about the development of it, how I implemented certain systems, and a post mortem. You can probably imagine how datastructures-heavy this game was. In the end I had 1 object that ran the entire simulation, 1 that displayed the breakdown of how each plant was doing, and like 20+ objects for UI...

For now though? I'd love for you to try it out, play a few runs, and hear your thoughts on it!!

[krjpalmer]

People's Computers November-December 1977

"Our PET's First Steps" described putting "PET number 54" into service at a school; for that matter, Commodore's Chuck Peddle and Radio Shack's Don French were both invited to build up the respective computers of their companies (and subtly put down the competition) in half a page apiece of this issue. One game, "Survivor," adapted John Conway's "Life" into a two-person competition. There was a column's worth of Star Wars ASCII/printer art.

[hannahhook7744]

If you're in the mood for depressing story, how about the BDA filling Carlos's death report

Threw in a bonus:

------------------------------------------------------------

Badun Detective Agency: Death Report.

Name of Detective: Harold 'Harry' Badun.

Age of Detective: 18 years old. 

Date of Report: August 13th, Year 23.

Name of the deceased: Carlos Oscar de Vil.

Age of the deceased: 17 years old.

File number: 0499.

Report: The Deceased (17, Male. Child of Estella ‘Cruella’ de Vil and Jean-Pierre Le Pelt) has been 100% confirmed to have died from injuries obtained in an accidental explosion.

The Deceased was last seen tinkering with one of his inventions nearby his chemistry set by his older cousin, Diego de Vil, age 21 half an hour before the explosion occurred at 12:22 PM (or 14:22 Military Time).

The Deceased was quickly rushed to Charmington General Hospital and treated by Dr. Dottie McStuffins but passed away because his injuries were too severe and he’d lost too much blood. 

His time of death was recorded at 1:01 PM (or 13:01 Military Time) on August 13th, Year 23.

His next of kin, crew, and partner were all informed as soon as the agency was and his funeral is scheduled for August 27, Year 23. 

For further information, reach out to Dr. Dottie McStuffins and the Badun Detective Agency.

Harry signing out.

Note: In honor of Carlos de Vil’s memory, a section featuring him has been added to the Badun Detective Agency Museum by those behind the program at the agency’s request.  A plaque honoring Carlos de Vil has been added to ‘ISLE OF THE LOST, CARLOS’ HOUSE: A SAFE PLACE FOR LOST BOYS AND LOST GIRLS. DEPARTMENT OF DISORDER.’ Several extensions funded by Benjamin 'Ben' Florian Léandre, Malanie 'Mal' Bertha Fae-Athanasiou-Léandre, and Evie’s 4 Hearts have been approved and construction should start sometime next year. Plans for an advanced Tech School and Veterinarian's Office with his name attached have also been constructed.  A section featuring Carlos de Vil has been added to the Badun Detective Agency Museum. A new song by the Bad Apples has also been made by his cousin, Diego Ethan Ramirez-de Vil, in his honor.  Listen Here.

------------------------------------------------------------

Badun Detective Agency: Getting To Know The Dead.

Name Of The Dead: Carlos Oscar de Vil.

Age Of The Dead: 17 years old.

Father: Jean-Pierre Le Pelt

Mother: Estella ‘Cruella’ de Vil.

Sibling(s):  

Carlisle de Vil (Older Brother),

Carlotta de Vil the 1st (Older Sister),

Conway de Vil (Older Brother),

Codias de Vil (Older Brother),

And Carlotta de Vil the 2nd (Younger Sister).

Favorite Food: Chocolate, Chocolate Yogurt Pups, Chip’s Grilled Cheese, Pizza, and Dwarf Gems.

Favorite Color: Black, White, and Red. 

Favorite Toy/Object: His copy of the video game ‘Hero Rising’, his laptop, his headphones, and his tool belt.

Dream Job/Job Had: Founder of CARLOS’ HOUSE: A SAFE PLACE FOR LOST BOYS AND LOST GIRLS, creator of Canine Appreciation Day, app designer, dog walker, and veterinarian.

Hobbies: Fencing, Tourney, fog Walking, playing Frisbee, gaming, playing with dude and Beelzebub, inventing/tinkering, listening to music, going to Gadgets and Gizmos club, programming, dressing to impress, etc. 

Pet(s): A dog named ‘Dude’ and a cat named ‘Beezlebub’. 

Cause Of Death: Accidental explosion. 

Signature Of Person Who Filled Out The Report:

Detective Jason ‘Jace’ Badun.

------------------------------------------------------------

This isn't canon to the rest of the series.

[desmos-calculator]

Hey, pssst!!! Which cool math books do you recommend if I am in the middle of maths degree and I like it very much?? Any theme.

Oh, yeah, sure, Though I will say, I read most of these recently so I'm heavily biased

Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays by John H. Conway Comes in 4 volumes, you don't need to read all of them to understand how silly yet profound these books are. Made me fall in love with game theory

Surreal Numbers by Donald Knuth Technically also from John Conway, but this is a lot more mathematical compared to the first one, imo. Still a lot of game theory though

Statistics for the Rest of Us by Albert Rutherford Seems like a read for people who don't do math, but it managed to still be such a great read for me, give it a go even if you're a statistics major

Math Girls by Hiroshi Yuki The least mathy book here. It's kinda a romance novel, but it's mostly people talking about combinatorics.

[word-problem-posting]

Tungle.hell, a social media site, is experiencing a sudden increase in gimmick blogs. Their user base can be simulated as an infinite grid of users, with each user being mutuals with the eight users next to them (wrapping to the other side for edge squares).

If a non-gimmick user has exactly three mutuals who are operating gimmick blogs, they will jump on the trend as well.

If a gimmick blog has EITHER less than two OR more than three gimmick mutuals, it will get bored and revert to non-gimmick status.

A gimmick blog with two or three gimmick mutuals continues to operate.

Staff presumes that for any initial configuration with a finite number of gimmick blogs, their total quantity cannot grow beyond some finite upper limit. Prove or disprove that conjecture.

Conway's Game of Tumblr

[birdietrait]

OCS as OBSCURE ASSOCIATIONS

with miss winifred conway herself <3 ty for tagging me @rottengurlz!!

ANIMAL: deer !!

COLORS: dark green, blush pink

MONTH: january or february

SONGS: i know the end - phoebe bridgers, forwards beckon rebound - adrianne lenker, blues run the game - jackson c. frank

NUMBER: 7 or 12

PLANTS: dried daisies and queen anne's lace

SMELLS: books, honey, earth

GEMSTONE: bayldonite

TIME OF DAY: 7am

SEASON: late winter / early spring

PLACES: deep in a forest, a bed tucked in a corner, a rocky creek

FOOD: bichon au citron

DRINKS: peach lemonade, green tea w lemon + honey

ELEMENT: earth

ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: cancer (even though she's an aquarius)

SEASONINGS: saffron

SKY: golden hour, sunset

WEATHER: chilly + light rain

MAGICAL POWER: clairvoyance

WEAPONS: fingernails

SOCIAL MEDIA: .....pinterest

MAKEUP PRODUCT: brown mascara

CANDY: tootsie roll

METHOD OF LONG DISTANCE TRAVEL: walking + hitchhiking

ART STYLE: pointillism

FEAR: fear of the unknown, fear of drowning, fear of death

MYTHOLOGICAL CREATURE: ceryneian hind

PIECE OF STATIONARY: crumpled paper from a sketchbook

THREE EMOJIS: 🦷🪡🍂💽🪟 (couldn’t pick just 3)

CELESTIAL BODY: the moon

[piles-of-numbers]

the stars are the same as ever, but I don't have the guts to keep it together.

Happy Birthday to so much (for) stardust! I can't wait to go see the show in Albany later today.

I made this little gif based on objects from John Conway's Game of Life (you can play around with it here, more about it and rules here). Basically, each cell glows on a turn depending on the number of on/off neighbors in the previous turn. A lot of this leads to chaotic patterns or clearing the board, but there are some patterns called oscillators that go back to the same pattern they were before. Stuck in a lonely loop, if you will. My CS nerd brain thinks of this whenever I listen to this part of the song.

[nomaxart]

Happy Birthday, Conway!

Happy 1st Birthday to Conway!

Yep! It is the 1 year anniversary of the release of version 0.01 (or whatever the versions were called back then) Let's have a talk, shall we? February 8th is when I uploaded and released it on itch. Why February 8th you may ask? Well, I had only planned January as an experimental month for myself, with the oil painting and the VN test. So I'd release it on february 1st... And then it, naturally, took longer. But I guess it works out so that we don't have the anniversary right on update release days.

The past 

And yeah, what a year it's been! Thank you to all of you first of all for making this possible. Quite simply it wouldn't be possible without the support of all you generous peeps here. As it turns out, developing a game is a fuckton of work, and if I would need to pay the bills through commission work or what have you there would be no way I'd find the time and energy to work on Conway on the side. And I've mentioned it before in a few places, but for a while around May, June-ish it did look really dicey. The first half of the year I was bleeding about 500-700 bucks a month of my savings. The game didn't really pick up and a good amount of my walks were spent contemplating just when I'd have to see a sign before pulling the plug. End of June? Maybe it's worth to stretch it to July? At the lowest point, we were about a month away from pulling the plug on Conway. But right around that time, the trend in people subbing here started to pick up. While it's only in the past month or two that I've reached the point where I'm not actively bleeding money each month, the trend was the bit I needed to see that maybe people are interested after all!

The present

I've attached the itch stats of the past year. So those of you who would like to have a peek can do so. As you can see, Update 10 was a massive success at least in terms of numbers for the game. Update 9 was already the first one to break the record for downloads that the release day set, but Update 10 got picked up by the algorithms and sat in the most popular furry games for a while. Soooo, yeah, quite chuffed with that spike! We'll see what the long-term effects are, but for now I just enjoy the aesthetic of -BIG SPIKE-. And yeah, the game as a whole is just sitting in a good spot. We've had about 12k downloads in total, around 80k page visits, and a rating of 4.8/5 with 127 ratings (which btw, easy way to help, is to leave a juicy 5* rating on itch. Does wonders for the placement of the game in the different categories on the site, plus it gives me a fuzzy feeling in my tum tum.) It's also been such a joy to see that all characters end up having their share of fans judging by comments and that nobody is left in the dry. Of course, some of them have a bit of an easier time, like Samuel and Julian being the more sociable lot they are, and just the screen time they've had so far. While others like Raj or Arthur are slower burns and even they get some mentions as the favorites of some people, and that just makes me chuffed. Naturally, they're designed to cover different interests and preferences, but I'm always nervous if the characters are good, resonate with people and hope that they can be fun to be around. So any time someone mentions a character it just makes me so goddamn giddy. Some of them will be difficult to handle with grace, and I'm not perfect, so I'm sure for at least one of the main cast what I've planned will fall flat, or I mess it up in some fashion. But fuck it, I'll try. Not everything has been peaches and roses recently though, so I have to admit Updates 10 and 11 have been/are a bit of a struggle. I just messed up planning for my support writers, and it's been more or less just me handling everything for both updates 10 and 11. That's why art has been a bit sparse... Because most of my time is just taken up doing writing duty, and I'm not the fastest writer, unfortunately. Like, at this point, with the game having all the branches and 125k in total word count, the story for the characters and how they've interacted on the two initial days. It makes it a bit more difficult to actually get people on board in a timely manner. I can't just go and say, "Hey, write me a scene where this character and that character are involved, and they do that." Since a new writer knows absolutely zero about all the stuff that's been there before, all the stuff that's planned for the characters and all that jazz. So if one support writer is busy or just has writing block or whatever, it may be, my solution so far has just been going, "Well, shit." :') Not the fault of my writing buddies, of course. They've been absolutely invaluable and I can't offer nearly enough to expect to be the highest priority for them. I'm just happy they want to help out AT ALL for what I can pay them in return. I should have planned contingencies but didn't. Simple as that. So, I've made the decision to bring on another writer in Televassi, and also want to hopefully integrate Robert Baird more again going forward. With more of them willing to help out I will be able to assign things to people as they're available. Which hopefully will avoid me having to do whole updates on my own and take the pressure off of wonderful peeps like Rubric. So yeah, I learned my lesson there, but since it just takes time for people to get familiar with the Conway world and characters, it ended up with me being a bit swamped with EVERYTHING for Updates 10 and 11.

The future

Speaking of what's planned, then? Update 10 closes out day 2, and Update 11 starts after our first time skip. I don't know if you've ever looked at how slow these ships were, but if we ever want to make it to Cape Town, then we'll need those time skips. Not only that, but it also allows for characters to just develop in the meantime, and also their relationship towards the player character. While Characters like Nomax and Julian ended up having some raunchy scenes right away, it wouldn't exactly fit to have others throw themselves at you on day 2. So skipping ahead just keeps things moving, keeps things interesting because we can focus on specific parts more, and just show the development of characters at a more natural pace.

So the next sections are this first post-time skip section that subbed patrons already get a taste of in the WIP update, and then next up on the itinerary will be Morocco. Both sections I'm really stoked about! And I hope you are too. :)

Stretch goals? Patreon did away with them a while back, but we'll just make our own stretch goals, with blackjack and hookers. Just instead of blackjack and hookers, how about we talk Animations?! Hell yeah! I'm no animator, and it's not really a discipline I particularly enjoy either from the times I tried. So, since Patreon is currently about break-even, we can start thinking ahead a little, and I think the first point I want to tackle is some simple animations. Stuff like moving tails, ears, and eyes. Stuff like that.

So how about that, we're currently floating at around 1250 USD a month, and if we're crossing the 1500 USD mark, I'll be holding out my feelers to get these small animations into the game. If you like to contribute to making animations possible, consider supporting the Patreon over here: https://www.patreon.com/Nomax

Possibly animations, an exciting new section of the story, some more v2 character art, some more maritime menagerie characters. Sounds good for a year 2 plan?

I certainly hope so and hope that you all will be along for the ride, as it's been an absolute blast, and I can't thank you enough for making it possible. I just want this thing to be the best it can be for all of you. :)

[piratesexmachine420]

Anyway the ultimate goal of this project is actually similar to that stupid backwards GPGPU/CPU OS idea that wouldn't actually work, except way, way stupider. Stoopid with two Os, to quote Knives Out.

Here's the gist: distributed operating system that runs on a bunch of interlinked TI calculators, using a PC as a sort of hub. (The TI-Link protocol is only bidirectional, but there's no limit to the number of SilverLink USB cables I can plug into the same computer, at least until I run out of USB ports.)

Because TI calculators are both more documented than GPUs (which is to say, there's any documentation), and there actually exist tools for writing low-level code on them, this is actually a doable project. Not easy, but doable. On the order of months to years instead of decades to centuries.

Additionally, I won't actually be writing any "real" ring 0 code (or 68k/z80 equivalent) for this project, basically just treating each machines' resident OS as an overwrought BIOS--which, on a calculator running machine code, it might as well be. As a distributed OS, the "machine" would already be highly virtual, and there are a lot of benefits to sticking to userspace.

For one, I don't want to brick any of my hardware; writing dodgy code to any of my calculators' flash memory would absolutely do that. For another, I don't want to write my own USB stack. Also, rebooting is annoying. Especially if it involves, like, four different machines. And debugging will be easier. And so on and so forth.

Here's a rough roadmap for how I want to get familiar with this toolchain:

Write an echo program that uses the TI PLT-KBD, a product you've never heard of. Maybe turn it into a full keyboard driver, if I feel like it.

Do the same, but with a TI-92+. Would involved remotely loading a simple program onto the calculator to tell it to send keycodes over the link port. Again, if I feel like it could be turned into a full input driver.

Write a simple, but non-trivial program that uses the TI-92+ as an "accelerator", maybe Conway's game of life. Would also involve remotely loading code.

Do the same as 3, but with two calculators--the TI-92+ and TI-89, maybe. At this point I'd have to buy more SilverLink cables, so this is the point of no return. (They go for like $20.)

Same as 4, but integrating a Z80 calculator too, probably the TI-83+.

Start working on the "OS" proper.

[winebrightruby]

Hello, number 24 of the ask game please, or kvetch about a resouce that was unavailable or disappointing if you rather, best witchings!

Literally anything by DJ Conway. Y'all, skip it. It's all bad. If it's not outright made up, it's plagiarized. And honestly "plagiarized from a reputable source" is the best you can hope for, since then it's at least potentially useful.

[daisyjonesgf]

do what you’d like with it, but going off of 📚’s headcannon, muse would love the hunger games. she would love finnick. billy would hate it. but he would genuinely have a soft spot for sweet girl.

billy: stop talking about finnick for fucks sake!

muse: okay, fine. i can’t stand when sweet girl—

billy: TAKE HER NAME OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MOUTH—

correct, billy is down bad for sweet girl, she's just sweet and tortured, and hates herself sm and billy relates to that and adores her

and muse loves finnick, he's so attentive, he loves sweet girl no matter what she does, is so adoring, and muse definitely gets annoyed whenever sweet girl is having one of her moments, but billy is her number one defender

"she's self sabotaging-"

"she's struggling and doesn't think she's good enough!" billy will die on the hill defending sweet girl, and is a conway HATER

🎶 isn't it ironic 🎶

[entropy-game-dev]

Phylogenesia Automatorum Post-game Devlog #4: Content & Balance

In the final stretch of development, I had finished implementing all the various systems and now it was time to make content to fill it all out!

If you haven't tried the game out yet (it has a web version now!) please do if you want to discover the different plants and their behaviours for yourself. You can also rate it here if you have an itch.io account, otherwise read on!

So at this point in development I had 4 plants I was happy with:

Conway Grass: Default/standard plant that needs a critical mass to thrive based on the Game of Life ruleset

Nullberry: A sporadic plant that has a small chance to pop out of nothingness, and disappear just as quickly

Creeping Mold: A hardy plant that can easily take over the field but generates low amounts of life/death points

Overhedge: A plant that rarely dies or propogates, but generates a fixed amount of points when or if it does.

Starting with the Overhedge was very difficult but doable with some luck, and all other 3 plants were about average difficulty. At this stage, I needed the other plants in the game, so I could see what sort of points should be generated on average (irrespective of plant).

And thus, the other plants I conceptualised were:

Crossthatch: A plant with a very limited spawn/sustain range such that it only grows in lines or diagonals.

Dynamite Tree: A plant with more "explosive" growth style compared to Conway Grass, more permissive in spawn range, but with only a chance to spawn more trees, and a high chance to die each turn.

Shrunk Violet: Supposedly a "shy" plant that spawns a bunch at simulation start, then the entire mass shrinks away, layer by layer. The middle of the clump does not die due to the high min/max sustain range.

Shocklily: A plant with similar characteristics to the Dynamite Tree that would spawn and perish unpredictably. Where this plant differed, however, is that it can randomly persist and spawn over ticks.

Paradise Bird: The second M:tG reference (the first was Creeping Mold). With the way I tuned the birds' spawn and instant death chance, you get a really nice pattern where (sometimes) you will see a flock of birds migrating across the field.

0range: The story of the 0range goes something like this: "I need an orange plant to fill out my rainbow of plants, and it needs to be a pun. Oh I know, I will replace the "O" (letter) with a "0" (number), and turn all of its stats to 0 :)".

On the first few playtests, the meta was choosing a plant with a low spawn minimum, and fishing for an upgrade that reduces the minimum spawn to 0. This in effect makes the plant like a Nullberry, allowing it to spawn on any unoccupied tiles, BUT, unlike the Nullberry, most other plants have a 100% chance to spawn. Thus, every turn, all empty cells would be filled with plants, and on the next would immediately die off, only to repeat the cycle. While this was cool, I decided that you could only get to a spawn min of 0 on a critical upgrade roll.

The second problem was that the the shrinking violets were incredibly oppressive late game. In the early game they wouldn't generate enough life/death points to be worth choosing as a starter, but whenever you had an established field, they would choke the life out of all the cells except the very border, and would not leave. Lucinius and I eventually determined that the violets needed to die off randomly, and I also reduced their sustain max from 8 to 7, such that a completely surrounded violet would die off. They are still, by far, the most unbalanced plant, but they aren't run ending now at least.

The third problem was that some plants were just way too weak and variable in how they generate points. Lucinius had the great idea of giving players 5 free restarts (instead of 1 like I had originally programmed), and this not only served to smooth out early-game point gain but also give me a metric by which I was going to balance the game!

Within 5 runs, all un-upgraded plants should be able to generate AT LEAST 5 death points (enough for the first plant upgrade), and at most 14 death points (enough for the first two plant upgrades. Of course, these were just rough guidelines on average, and some plants will be stronger starters than others. However, as I have set it to ensure Conway Grass always appears on the starter plant roll (and the 0range never appears), one can always have a playable game.

It was still quite easy to get to a state where the points generation vastly outpaced the costs of the upgrades, but this was a more fundamental issue that, if I tried to address it by tweaking numbers, would result in an absolutely brutal early game that would be no fun to play, and promote only a single type of strategy. I'd prefer the game to be more lenient, as it lets people try out different starter plants, and different sorts of builds, without worrying too much about their turn count.

I did end up adding way more stats to the end screen so that if people wanted to compete for lowest amount of runs/mutations, or highest points they could do so, without making the game unfun for those (basically everyone) who wanted to play casually!

And that's it for the last part of the post-game devlog, thank you so much for reading (and for playing)! Stay tuned for the post-mortem! I have lots I want to discuss regarding what went right, what went wrong, and future directions for the game!