Slashdot Mirror
Mechanical AI Made In LittleBigPlanet
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.
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.
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."
The Game of Life thing is awesome. Now he just needs to use it to simulate a Turing machine. Then the universe can implode.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
This reminds me of things people did with Marathon 10 years ago, for example:
http://webwonks.org/Marathon/Forge/Harper/Clock.html
...wait until the level gets taken down by Sony with no explanation!
They make me feel better about the level of discourse here at /.
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.
Technoli
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.
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.
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!
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
And will the next version play a nice game of chess?
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
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.
Similarly, I've often considered getting a PhD in archeology and looting the burial grounds of ancient civilizations.
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.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
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.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
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.
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.
I'm not impressed. Once someone builds a programmable computer in LBP, I'll give it another look.
But when someone builds a programmable computer, AND successfully boots Linux on it, then I'll be impressed.
People have been building basic computers in Dwarf Fortress for a while now. It is much harder in df because your computers need to take up half a mile of countryside in the world and it has to be built from the ground up by dozens of dwarves who also need to be kept fed and happy and protected from raiding goblins while they build. Then of course you need a supercomputer to run the game with all the circuits running.
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Mechanical_logic
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.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If the level knew not to play, and instead offered a chess match.
feel bad about owning a xbox 360 eh?
also, lbp is a very fun game, reminds me of the classic platform games
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).
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
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
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.
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.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
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 (possibly restricted variants of) Ruby, C, Logo, and probably a Pascal flavour.
It's an educational thing. I'd see the languages being offered in the system as a 'grade' - you do all the Logo problems to unlock the next language.
I leave the ordering as an exercise to the reader ;-) And the actual design as a surprise of mine!
There aren't any BBC's, C64's or Speccy's anymore - what are the kids going to do? Turn into script k1dd1es, sadly at a guess. Or talented malware authors. It's not the like the demo scene gets much creds anymore (IMHO - please don't take this as flamebait).
"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."
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 to do, for himself. Not because it's useful, or makes life easier, but because you have to see whether it can be done. Nerdiness is a kind of technological and scientific playfulness (usually combined with a magpie-like attitude to knowledge within a specific field), not the marketing director's feeling for what consumers "want". Thus, you get pieces of software like Konqueror instead of the far simpler yet underpowered and authoritarian Nautilus or Finder (or Dolphin).
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.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?