Laurens writes "Despite slow sales of LittleBigPlanet in the USA, you might have heard of the calculator made within the game, but now that has been topped. I found a fully-functioning AI machine which plays Tic-Tac-Toe against the player. Considering that you can't actually program in LBP, this feat is impressive; it is a machine which has mechanical AND and OR ports made of pistons and proximity detectors, a physically moving Program Counter, and hundreds of wires. The level is called 'Tic Tac Toe' and is by author Cristel."
Another player created a similarly amazing level that is a recreation of John Conway's Game of Life.
And LBP is the only way that the Hypervisor (the babysitter OS in the PS3) will let you access the full 3D capabilities of the system for homebrew development!
(Of course, Sony owns anything you make...)
And LBP is the only way that the Hypervisor (the babysitter OS in the PS3) will let you access the full 3D capabilities of the system for homebrew development!
(Of course, Sony owns anything you make...)
I just made a baby. Glad I don't have to support him.
I find it very interesting, and somewhat ironic, that the most powerful home gaming console in history has people programing in mechanical gates.
Very cool indeed.
Unless you were trying to make a joke, I'm not sure if you understand the difference between how games are made for the PS3 (by developers/producers) and how a user-level-creator within a specific game is being playfully used to expand the frontier of possibilities of that construct.
I find it very interesting, and somewhat ironic, that the most powerful home gaming console in history has people programing in mechanical gates.
Very cool indeed.
Unless you were trying to make a joke, I'm not sure if you understand the difference between how games are made for the PS3 (by developers/producers) and how a user-level-creator within a specific game is being playfully used to expand the frontier of possibilities of that construct.
What the hell are you talking about? What exactly do you think he doesn't understand?
The minor resurgence of interest in mechanical computers brought about by LBP is pretty cool, but I think Media Molecule could really latch onto this and offer some excellent DLC for the advanced users.
Mechanical computers are fun to watch, but they require lots of level space as well as complex physics simulation to perform even the most basic operations. Here's where an expansion pack could pick this trend up and run with it: Add the ability to build little breadboards with transistors. Now there's no physics overhead, and just imagine the stuff you could wire up!
Here's where an expansion pack could pick this trend up and run with it: Add the ability to build little breadboards with transistors. Now there's no physics overhead, and just imagine the stuff you could wire up!
That would remove all the charm of these hacks. What's really cool about such mechanical machines is that they demonstrate computer science in a visual manner. Even we professionals who know that computers != electronics are wowed to death when we see a mechanical computer large enough to watch its operation and see its inner workings. (Even if it is virtual.) Imagine what it's like for those not familiar with computer science? Such a massive computational machine is beyond their belief, even if it performs a simple task. It hearkens back to 60's scifi where computers are monstrously large creations that have incredible brain power. It's pretty cool stuff!
Replace all the mechanics and physics with a few virtual circuit boards and you remove all the charm. The levels stop being machines of wonder and go straight back to their black boxes. To the average user, a circuit board in the game is nothing but a fancy script.
No. That involves gears. These mechanical computers don't use gears, and there's a good reason for that - the physics simulation doesn't quite work for gears.
The way it works is that when the game has decided that an object has been sufficiently crushed by another object, it just deletes it in a puff of smoke. (It's a kind of neat effect.) Creating gears, sadly, causes them to crush each other as the game tries to figure out how to make them spin. They have pre-crafted gears and I tried to make a simple set of three gears turned by giving power to one gear - and it worked for like three seconds before the game decided one of the gears had been crushed and deleted it.
For added nuisance, it's next to impossible to "anchor" the gears dead-center since you're using a PS3 controller. You can turn on a grid to try and help you, but it doesn't help that much.
You can get gears to work reliably if you scale them all down by one grid unit to allow centering. If you scale them by different amounts though, the teeth will grind in that effect you mentioned.
GMod by itself is already so much better than this. With Wiremod, it's incomparable (a radar or an automatic turret are one of the easier machines to make. With skill, you could make an AI robot or a car that converts to a boat on water.)
For those who don't know, GMod is a modification for Half-Life 2 that allows you to spawn and manipulate the game's objects, and use motors, constraints, and other tools to make contraptions, vehicles, puzzles, and random fun stuff. Wiremod is an extension of GMod that giv
I can see it now:
Posted by JConnor on April 21, 2011, @08:45PM
Another Mechanical AI Made In LittleBigPlanet
John writes
"This new AI, playfully named Skynet, was created to help students in Africa reach for the sky and learn to play checkers. Support this effort by downloading the fun new application."
I was going to post about this myself, I wonder if there's a limit on the number of components you can put in an LBP level (probably) and if so, whether you can put enough components to create a large enough Game of Life board to fit a Turing complete pattern in... (probably not, but I want to believe;)
It's impossible to fit in a Turing-complete pattern without infinite space; any finite amount of space is not enough. Although the pattern itself could be finitely large, it would try to modify things outside its own location as part of its processing. (Access to an infinite amount of memory is one of the things required for Turing-completeness; that's why the term "bounded-storage machine" exists, referring to something like a real-world computer which is Turing-complete except for limits on its storage.)
All of this was done very extensively within concentrated groups of use-map-settings Starcraft map makers. There was one calc map capable of simple math and even algebra. There were also chess, custom user built skill sets and spells that were tagged to your controllable character. this was in no way part of the original game. There was one which my friend made that you could paint pictures, make animated minimap clips, stage firework displays, and even play short movies drawn with sprites and explosions se
All of this was done very extensively within concentrated groups of use-map-settings Starcraft map makers. There was one calc map capable of simple math and even algebra. There were also chess, custom user built skill sets and spells that were tagged to your controllable character. this was in no way part of the original game. There was one which my friend made that you could paint pictures, make animated minimap clips, stage firework displays, and even play short movies drawn with sprites and explosions set together pixle by pixle.
All these things were controlled by simple move, kill, spawn, and count triggers which were all linked to areas the player would position a controlable unit to start whatever programed trigger set was needed. we had hidden computation areas of the maps where creatures would spawn and die and move to work the trigger math out. we used a simple center view trigger to prevent these from being viewable(lagged like nuts with thousands of creatures spawning and being moved etc.
Brings back memories of wiring up 7400 series TTL gates with a wire-wrap gun. I wonder how they developed the thing. It would be amusing to write a back-end for a VHDL compiler or a logic simulator to generate logic in LittleBigMan devices. Probably easier than trying to debug the thing inside the game.
Danny Hillis once made a Tic-tac-toe machine out of Tinkertoys and string. I've seen the thing. I'm amazed that it worked. He once told me that it didn't work very well.
Years ago, I read a book called "The Adolescence of P1," which included mention of how to teach matchboxes to play tic-tac-toe. The protagonist ran with this, and ended up developing an artificial intelligence.
Anyway, the idea of teaching matchboxes to play tic-tac-toe was in an article in Scientific American.
Wow. That has to be the first reference to that book I've ever seen. My father (an electrical engineering professor) bought it for me, especially relevant considering my chosen profession and real name;-)
Anyway, I've been thinking recently about writing a platform for my kids to tinker with. We have a Wii, and I've got the homebrew dev kit, along with the nous to make it work (I develop software for a living). What I want to do is put something together where people can author stuff, easily, in (possibl
When I was a kid, I started designing a Tic Tac Toe game using only mechanical relays. I abandoned the effort when I realized the thousands of relays required to make it play well would be prohibitively expensive. While writing a good Tic Tac Toe in LISP is relatively easy, doing it using discrete components is a major time sink.
Is this really AI? Or is it more just a mechanical computer built inside of an electronic computer?
I was under the impression that AI involved being intelligent, and not simply computing moves in Tic-Tac-Toe (or chess, etc).
It computes the correct moves to choose from just like how your brain does that same thing when you play the game. Do you compute your moves or are you simply "intelligent" enough to do so? Intelligence isn't a physical object. This mechanical contraption has intelligence at playing tic-tac-toe, and as a nonliving contraption, its intelligence is simply artificial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#Deduction.2C_reasoning.2C_problem_solving [wikipedia.org]
Even though tic-tac-toe is a simple game, it requ
You know, if you could create a level which allows you to create a level inside it (in a way that lets users send a recorded data stream) you could get around the level banning.
Look up at the top of the page and read the smaller words just to the right of the site name. "News for nerds"
You might be a gamer, and after looking at your comment history I note that you're even a tech. But if you don't see the appeal in making things like this, then you aren't a nerd.
Slashdot ceased being a nerd site the moment "can grandma use it?" became a valid question in any software discussion... back in 1999. I find it interesting that the GP is marked 'troll' when in other discussions, a similar point might be +5, insightful. But now that the machine is simulated in a game environment, it's back to being 'nerdy' in the Slashdot sense. Really, Slashdot is just a consumer site for gadget freaks.
Except of course that on Slashdot it's always asked by a whiny wannabe who thinks that if any idiot (himself) can't use it, then neither should anyone else. There's never any specific follow-up as to what should be done, just that grandma should be able to use it, and use it "out of the box". It's as helpful as telling Barack Obama that people should be rich and happy.
Besides, producing things for general consumption has never been the way of the nerd. The nerd tweaks his tools to do stuff it's not supposed
Seriously, if you had read through what you just wrote, you would probably not post it. It's just a bunch of rambling nonsense. Here's a hint for you: when I say it might be '+5 insightful', that doesn't mean I support it. Most of the highest rated comments on Slashdot are groupthink.
Some people like to produce, others, like yourself, just suck.
And still others, really enjoy seeing how complicated of a maze they can get out of, making a mod for Fallout, or GTA is fairly easy in comparison, and from another perspective its too infinite, a lot of people like a small, finite, "controlled experiments", where the results are in direct relation to the input, whereas Fallout/GTA/et al, generally have a point and click type design.
Same reason why some of use will fire up an IDE and program a utility we need, and others will just go Google for one they can download, sometimes the means is more enjoyable than the ends.
They finally start making video games where you're free to make whatever you want, like a Mario Paint you can walk around in, like what we all wanted when we where kids...
...and you're SHITTING on it?
You, sir, are no gamer. No flame intended, but you'd rather be part of an interactive movie than play a game. This is a game for real gamers.
Not everyone knows how to mod Half-Life 2, but anyone can pick up LBP.
But wait - if people use it to create levels, that means that EVERYONE has to have the resources in it in order to play those levels.
Actually you only need the addon content to create the levels. Users can play the level and use the content, they just can't save it for their own use.
If you think charging for add-on content is a rip off, perhaps you should buy an X-Box and pay for Live, where they then charge you for...wait for it...add-on content!
And since the level editor isn't powerful enough to allow the creation of really new content - it just kind of sucks too.
Wow, posted on the article about how the level editor is so versatile you can even create mechanical computers in it. That's trolling at it's worst, you've forgotten the subject at hand! Lame.
Actually, they just overhauled the system [kotaku.com] complete with a protocol for explicitly citing the violation and an opportunity to edit and republish.
The most powerful... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it very interesting, and somewhat ironic, that the most powerful home gaming console in history has people programing in mechanical gates.
Very cool indeed.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The most powerful...Mr Mom. (Score:3, Funny)
And LBP is the only way that the Hypervisor (the babysitter OS in the PS3) will let you access the full 3D capabilities of the system for homebrew development!
(Of course, Sony owns anything you make...)
I just made a baby. Glad I don't have to support him.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. Except for a unknown game called Unreal 3 [unrealtournament3.com]. The Playstation 3 version support mods.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I find it very interesting, and somewhat ironic, that the most powerful home gaming console in history has people programing in mechanical gates.
Very cool indeed.
Unless you were trying to make a joke, I'm not sure if you understand the difference between how games are made for the PS3 (by developers/producers) and how a user-level-creator within a specific game is being playfully used to expand the frontier of possibilities of that construct.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I find it very interesting, and somewhat ironic, that the most powerful home gaming console in history has people programing in mechanical gates.
Very cool indeed.
Unless you were trying to make a joke, I'm not sure if you understand the difference between how games are made for the PS3 (by developers/producers) and how a user-level-creator within a specific game is being playfully used to expand the frontier of possibilities of that construct.
What the hell are you talking about? What exactly do you think he doesn't understand?
Re:The most powerful... (Score:5, Funny)
It seems the irony of using an amazingly powerful digital computer to emulate a simple mechanical computer is completely lost on you ...
Parent
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
YO DAWG, we heard you like computers so we put a Turing engine in your Turing engine so you can compute while you compute.
They could take this a huge step further (Score:5, Insightful)
The minor resurgence of interest in mechanical computers brought about by LBP is pretty cool, but I think Media Molecule could really latch onto this and offer some excellent DLC for the advanced users.
Mechanical computers are fun to watch, but they require lots of level space as well as complex physics simulation to perform even the most basic operations. Here's where an expansion pack could pick this trend up and run with it: Add the ability to build little breadboards with transistors. Now there's no physics overhead, and just imagine the stuff you could wire up!
Parent
Re:They could take this a huge step further (Score:5, Insightful)
That would remove all the charm of these hacks. What's really cool about such mechanical machines is that they demonstrate computer science in a visual manner. Even we professionals who know that computers != electronics are wowed to death when we see a mechanical computer large enough to watch its operation and see its inner workings. (Even if it is virtual.) Imagine what it's like for those not familiar with computer science? Such a massive computational machine is beyond their belief, even if it performs a simple task. It hearkens back to 60's scifi where computers are monstrously large creations that have incredible brain power. It's pretty cool stuff!
Replace all the mechanics and physics with a few virtual circuit boards and you remove all the charm. The levels stop being machines of wonder and go straight back to their black boxes. To the average user, a circuit board in the game is nothing but a fancy script.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Would it be possible to make the Antikythera http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism [wikipedia.org] in LBP ?
Re:They could take this a huge step further (Score:5, Interesting)
No. That involves gears. These mechanical computers don't use gears, and there's a good reason for that - the physics simulation doesn't quite work for gears.
The way it works is that when the game has decided that an object has been sufficiently crushed by another object, it just deletes it in a puff of smoke. (It's a kind of neat effect.) Creating gears, sadly, causes them to crush each other as the game tries to figure out how to make them spin. They have pre-crafted gears and I tried to make a simple set of three gears turned by giving power to one gear - and it worked for like three seconds before the game decided one of the gears had been crushed and deleted it.
For added nuisance, it's next to impossible to "anchor" the gears dead-center since you're using a PS3 controller. You can turn on a grid to try and help you, but it doesn't help that much.
Parent
Re:They could take this a huge step further (Score:4, Insightful)
You can get gears to work reliably if you scale them all down by one grid unit to allow centering. If you scale them by different amounts though, the teeth will grind in that effect you mentioned.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
In the Future... (Score:5, Funny)
Posted by JConnor on April 21, 2011, @08:45PM
Another Mechanical AI Made In LittleBigPlanet
John writes
"This new AI, playfully named Skynet, was created to help students in Africa reach for the sky and learn to play checkers. Support this effort by downloading the fun new application."
Re: (Score:2)
Hooray for Life (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to post about this myself, I wonder if there's a limit on the number of components you can put in an LBP level (probably) and if so, whether you can put enough components to create a large enough Game of Life board to fit a Turing complete pattern in... (probably not, but I want to believe ;)
Re:Hooray for Life (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Game hacking with Marathon (Score:3, Interesting)
This reminds me of things people did with Marathon 10 years ago, for example:
http://webwonks.org/Marathon/Forge/Harper/Clock.html [webwonks.org]
Ahh, Youtube comments (Score:5, Funny)
Fun news, but old news... Starcraft? (Score:1, Interesting)
All of this was done very extensively within concentrated groups of use-map-settings Starcraft map makers. There was one calc map capable of simple math and even algebra. There were also chess, custom user built skill sets and spells that were tagged to your controllable character. this was in no way part of the original game. There was one which my friend made that you could paint pictures, make animated minimap clips, stage firework displays, and even play short movies drawn with sprites and explosions se
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Firehose:Skynet Comes Online, Becomes Self-Aware (Score:1)
All of this was done very extensively within concentrated groups of use-map-settings Starcraft map makers. There was one calc map capable of simple math and even algebra. There were also chess, custom user built skill sets and spells that were tagged to your controllable character. this was in no way part of the original game. There was one which my friend made that you could paint pictures, make animated minimap clips, stage firework displays, and even play short movies drawn with sprites and explosions set together pixle by pixle.
All these things were controlled by simple move, kill, spawn, and count triggers which were all linked to areas the player would position a controlable unit to start whatever programed trigger set was needed. we had hidden computation areas of the maps where creatures would spawn and die and move to work the trigger math out. we used a simple center view trigger to prevent these from being viewable(lagged like nuts with thousands of creatures spawning and being moved etc.
this is cool and all but its not really NEW news.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis [wikipedia.org]
Does it know the winning move though? (Score:2)
And will the next version play a nice game of chess?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wire wrap, the headache. (Score:4, Interesting)
Brings back memories of wiring up 7400 series TTL gates with a wire-wrap gun. I wonder how they developed the thing. It would be amusing to write a back-end for a VHDL compiler or a logic simulator to generate logic in LittleBigMan devices. Probably easier than trying to debug the thing inside the game.
Danny Hillis once made a Tic-tac-toe machine out of Tinkertoys and string. I've seen the thing. I'm amazed that it worked. He once told me that it didn't work very well.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, the idea of teaching matchboxes to play tic-tac-toe was in an article in Scientific American.
article describing how it's done [davincigames.it]
P1, nostalga, and a hopefully altruistic idea (Score:1)
Kudos to the author (Score:2)
I'd be really impressed... (Score:1)
AI or just a computer (Score:1)
I was under the impression that AI involved being intelligent, and not simply computing moves in Tic-Tac-Toe (or chess, etc).
Re: (Score:1)
Is this really AI? Or is it more just a mechanical computer built inside of an electronic computer? I was under the impression that AI involved being intelligent, and not simply computing moves in Tic-Tac-Toe (or chess, etc).
It computes the correct moves to choose from just like how your brain does that same thing when you play the game. Do you compute your moves or are you simply "intelligent" enough to do so? Intelligence isn't a physical object. This mechanical contraption has intelligence at playing tic-tac-toe, and as a nonliving contraption, its intelligence is simply artificial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#Deduction.2C_reasoning.2C_problem_solving [wikipedia.org]
Even though tic-tac-toe is a simple game, it requ
Re: (Score:1)
Level-creation level (Score:2)
You know, if you could create a level which allows you to create a level inside it (in a way that lets users send a recorded data stream) you could get around the level banning.
Re:Is anyone playing this game? (Score:5, Funny)
Look up at the top of the page and read the smaller words just to the right of the site name. "News for nerds"
You might be a gamer, and after looking at your comment history I note that you're even a tech. But if you don't see the appeal in making things like this, then you aren't a nerd.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot ceased being a nerd site the moment "can grandma use it?" became a valid question in any software discussion ... back in 1999. I find it interesting that the GP is marked 'troll' when in other discussions, a similar point might be +5, insightful. But now that the machine is simulated in a game environment, it's back to being 'nerdy' in the Slashdot sense. Really, Slashdot is just a consumer site for gadget freaks.
Re: (Score:2)
"Can Grandma use it" is an excellent nerd question, if it is in the context of "how can *we* design it so Grandma can use it."
Re: (Score:2)
Except of course that on Slashdot it's always asked by a whiny wannabe who thinks that if any idiot (himself) can't use it, then neither should anyone else. There's never any specific follow-up as to what should be done, just that grandma should be able to use it, and use it "out of the box". It's as helpful as telling Barack Obama that people should be rich and happy.
Besides, producing things for general consumption has never been the way of the nerd. The nerd tweaks his tools to do stuff it's not supposed
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, if you had read through what you just wrote, you would probably not post it. It's just a bunch of rambling nonsense. Here's a hint for you: when I say it might be '+5 insightful', that doesn't mean I support it. Most of the highest rated comments on Slashdot are groupthink.
Re:Is anyone playing this game? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people like to produce, others, like yourself, just suck.
And still others, really enjoy seeing how complicated of a maze they can get out of, making a mod for Fallout, or GTA is fairly easy in comparison, and from another perspective its too infinite, a lot of people like a small, finite, "controlled experiments", where the results are in direct relation to the input, whereas Fallout/GTA/et al, generally have a point and click type design.
Same reason why some of use will fire up an IDE and program a utility we need, and others will just go Google for one they can download, sometimes the means is more enjoyable than the ends.
And no I didnt forget to check Post Anonymously.
Parent
Re:Is anyone playing this game? (Score:5, Insightful)
...and you're SHITTING on it?
You, sir, are no gamer. No flame intended, but you'd rather be part of an interactive movie than play a game. This is a game for real gamers.
Not everyone knows how to mod Half-Life 2, but anyone can pick up LBP.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
But wait - if people use it to create levels, that means that EVERYONE has to have the resources in it in order to play those levels.
Actually you only need the addon content to create the levels. Users can play the level and use the content, they just can't save it for their own use.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with the AC below. This is a total troll.
If you think charging for add-on content is a rip off, perhaps you should buy an X-Box and pay for Live, where they then charge you for...wait for it...add-on content!
And since the level editor isn't powerful enough to allow the creation of really new content - it just kind of sucks too.
Wow, posted on the article about how the level editor is so versatile you can even create mechanical computers in it. That's trolling at it's worst, you've forgotten the subject at hand! Lame.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
...wait until the level gets taken down by Sony with no explanation!
Why the hell would they do that?
Let me guess, because you think they're evil right?
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
How about because they've demonstrated themselves to be cocks who'll fuck over anybody they think has something they want.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, they just overhauled the system [kotaku.com] complete with a protocol for explicitly citing the violation and an opportunity to edit and republish.