#programming simulations

[disk28]

[pixlokita]

It his birthday…

[wynandcore]

Okay lemme go crazy for a sec

Season 2, episode 9: Guilt

When Tron’s simulation machine malfunctions while he’s attached to it, Beck has no choice but to manually figure out what’s wrong, getting transported into Tron’s system. Time for a trip down memory lane.

As Beck travels through Tron’s system, things start to freak out, as it slowly starts trying to fit Beck into these simulations so as not to disrupt or alter them. This leads to him being put in some weird positions.

When Beck finally gets to the dream simulation that led the machine to malfunction, he finds a horrifying sight.

If Tron doesn’t stop, he’ll end up not just hurting his subconscious.

[leafofkudzu]

Hi hello my computer exploded earlier this week so apologies for the cursed and late announcement post, but prepare yourselves! The first Saturday of a new month is tomorrow, which means it's time for another...

[VS] Art Party

July 6th, 2024 Captain's Cut, Stormbluff Isle Bloodtide Coast

Round 1 (EU): 9pm-12am CEST (3pm EDT) Round 2 (NA): 7pm-10pm EDT (1am CEST)

For those who aren’t familiar with art parties, they’re a concept carried over from Final Fantasy XIV - in-game get-togethers for artists/writers/creatives of all types to hang out, chat, and create together! Get your favorite character/look together, head to the location, find someone that catches your eye, and create! Afterwards, everyone posts their creations in a shared tag (ours is #VSArtParty) so others can see, interact, and share! Tl;dr: the ‘goal’ of an art party isn’t to be drawn, but to draw others, and share with the community!

Time and /squadjoin information is under the cut, but will also be posted again via reblogs as the squads go up on the day of the party!

Location Information:

It's another, proper beach episode! While I don't have the technical capacity at the moment to get a map screenshot of the location, it's essentially the southwest edge of Stormbluff Isle, the nearest waypoint being Stormbluff Waypoint! Here's a picture from the wiki of the entire island for reference:

Time & Squad Details:

As we always do, we’ll be having two parties - one on EU servers and one on NA ones - with an hour break in between. People tend to arrive early and/or jump between accounts as soon as the break comes up, so don’t be surprised to see tags and announcements going up ahead of schedule!

The first party will be on EU servers and begin at 9pm Central European Summer Time (aka 3pm Eastern Daylight Time or 5 hours before in-game reset). This time due to work conflicts I will NOT be the one starting the squad, but will instead be joining about an hour or so in! So, please welcome our first 'guest' [VS] tag, @vampiricsheep! Please /squadjoin or whisper Vegetarian Maneater for an invite in my absence, it'll treat you well and with my blessing. ♥

The second party will be on NA servers and begin at 7pm Eastern Daylight Time (aka 1am Central European Summer Time or an hour before in-game reset). I’ll be back to hosting this one and be on my main account, so to join either /squadjoin or whisper Kirslyn for an invite.

Closing Words

I said it at the top of the post but here I am saying it again - I am so sorry for the delay. The intention was to get this out on Mon/Tues at the latest due to me being busy with Dawntrail, but both my SSDs thought it was time to fry themselves and I've been scrambling to rebuild everything from scratch ever since. I've more or less got things back to a usable state now though, so I look forward to seeing everyone (and their shiny new anet-sanctioned beach outfits?) tomorrow! Thank you for always coming out to these and making them fun, they're one of the highlights of my time in game! ♥♥♥

[dontvap0rdawave]

Collab with @milksundaychoco

(sorry for the shitty image quality, I'm literally uploading this from my phone because my computer is currently in rendering hell 🥲)

[videogamepolls]

[lonestarflight]

Skylab 2 astronauts during EVA training in the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama. This training with Skylab mock-up was to prepare for the repairs needed to get the damage Skylab operational and habitual. In the first photo, weitz probes undeployed solar array on the Skylab mock-up. In the second and third photos, tech and divers work in NBS with a twin-pole solar shield one type contemplated. The 2 poles were 53 ft long.

Date: May 22, 1973

NASA ID: 108-KSC-73P-324, NASA-0-40526, NASA-0-40523

[askagamedev]

My Twitter is melting down over Tears of the Kingdom having a chain wrap around a wheel to lift a door open. Can you explain why senior programmers are calling this “black magic”?

Physics simulation starts off simple when you have simple situations, but each additional factor creates additional layers of complexity that the simulation might not handle all that well. Let me try to give you an example of such.

Let's go with a basic physics problem - I am standing still and drop a ball I am holding in front of me. What should happen? The ball starts with a velocity of 0, gravity pulls it downward, and it falls over time. Creating a general equation to simulate this is not that difficult - it's pretty basic physics.

Now let's add another layer of complexity. I'm still holding the same ball, but now I am standing on a mine car that is moving at a constant velocity along a straight rail. I drop the ball over the edge of the mine car. What should happen? The movement of the ball should take the movement of the mine car into account in addition to gravity, causing it to move differently from the above example. Creating a general equation to simulate this result is much more difficult.

And then we add another layer of complexity. I'm holding the same ball and standing on the same mine cart, but instead of the mine cart moving at a constant velocity, the cart got a big initial push and is now slowing down. In addition, we're no longer on a straight rail, but we're actually going in circles along a circular rail. I drop the ball over the side of the mine cart. What should happen? How many different factors must the physics simulation take into account in order to calculate the result correctly?

We can make this even more complex. Instead of dropping the ball, let's throw the ball. Instead of it being a ball, let's make it bola - a rope with balls on either end - that we're twirling over our heads before we release it. And we'll be doing the release while on an accelerating mine cart on a circular rail.

What the engineers on Tears of the Kingdom did was build a physics simulation system that can elegantly handle multiple layers of complexity. That's an impressive engineering feat, which is why so many skilled engineers are impressed by it. It's very similar to the fawning over the rope physics from the Last of Us Part 2 a few years back, and for the same reason - it's an exhibition of physics simulation elegantly handling multiple layers of complexity.

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[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!!

[silentstaresfanficandfanart]

i FRICKED UP ONE OF MY ASSETS AND NOW IVE JUST GOT THIS FRICKED UP IMAGE BURNED INTO MY RETINAS FOREVER

ENJOY FREAKING EVIL MONSTER EICHI I GUESS

He also does appear to have a moustache perhaps.

what even. MY FRIENDS ARE ALL CLOWNING ON ME saying "hAHHAHA you made your own creepypasta"

i got jumpscared, like a loser. by MY OWN ASSETS. I AM YOUR *MAMA* why would yOU BETRAY ME LIKE THIS EICHI ASSET

[yuenity]

You ever vehemently disagree with something that the majority of fandom seems to accept as fanon

[emeraldspiral]

Wondering just how much of Dib's Wonderful Life actually played out for Dib. Like, did he only see what the audience saw but it was like in Inception where because he's in a dream he doesn't notice that he can't remember all the transitions in between important moments and massive time-skips?

In all likelihood, that probably is the case. But imagine if it wasn't, and there was actually a bunch of stuff that happened in Dib's imaginary life that the audience didn't see. Like every time he banged one of his girlfriends, who appear to be directly controlled by Zim, like every other NPC in the simulation, given that they all become him at the very end.

[caprice-nisei-enjoyer]

After being reminded of that one TTRPG a friend is hosting on GitHub, I decided to check in and see the status of it and good lord

Why is it 30% Rust?? What is happening

[discordiansamba]

also I was thinking about the Shiro Krolia bodyswap fic early and just. remembering that Shiro had a hand in training the cadets combined with Krolia's unwinnable simulator that she built for the paladins that she was really excited about, and just...

Adam, leaning over Krolia's shoulder to see what she's working on: Uh. 'Takashi'? This simulator you're putting together looks kind of... impossible?

Krolia: Yes. That is the point. I want to see how long the cadets can survive. :)

[optimizim]

aaand my half of an art trade with @minimoosedraws! min supremacy 💪