One thing in Haskell that always intrigued me was the idea of combinatorial parsers - a parser that accepts a string and yields not a single parse tree, but all possible parse trees based on the language rules... Simple implementations of those can be implemented in Haskell pretty straightforwardly. Combinatorial parsers for individual rules are stuck together - and while rules may generate a bunch of possible parse trees these are culled by successive rules...
I don't know too much about the practical efficiency of these - but in terms of how they're expressed I think they're great...
Might that be because infinite data structures don't often exist in mainstream and/or commercial software applications?
Might that be because mainstream programming languages don't support infinite data structures?
Might that be because infinite data structures don't often exist in mainstream and/or commercial software applications?
(OK, now everybody imagine that this is in fact an infinite thread of responses and counter-responses which aren't actually evaluated or stored until you ask to see them...)
Joking aside, though - lazily-evaluated, conceptually-infinite data structures are a useful way to express things sometimes... I figure most programmers don't have a deep enough understanding of how that style of expression can be useful - in part because so much software development these days is dominated by the procedural model...
Features of Haskell I really enjoy are how it handles constructors, pattern-matched function arguments, user-definable infix operators (with configurable precedence!) and the way it handles higher-order programming and lazy programming. But I never got monads...
Of course, my philosophy is that that's not necessarily a bad thing. Haskell is, IMO, a domain-specific language specialized on functional problems. I feel it's better to have different specialized languages working together well, rather than have one that attempts to do everything...
But if they use cement, they can't separate until they're needed to reform Voltron again.
Same's true for snap-fit, actually - the pegs will typically lock the parts together firmly enough that you can't separate them without breaking the pegs - and possibly damaging part edges in the process of trying to pry it apart... If you want to assemble a snap-kit and be able to take it apart again, you need to trim the pegs or cut the side of the socket to reduce the "locking" feature... Of course then you'll need cement again to make the assembly permanent...
Well, they tend to be better at text parsing than modern games. How many times do you run into a character in a modern RPG and are given multiple choice answers to his/her questions? Heck I occaisionally even run into a game that requires, gasp, typing and the interface is at best more Scott Adams (the other one) than Infocom. This is in 2008.
So, we've got this big homebrew IF culture now, right? And it's 2008. So where is our better text parser? (Better than Infocom, I mean... In an age where the phones people carry in their pockets are a good couple orders of magnitude more powerful than the machines Infocom games were made to run on, we should be able to make a better text adventure, right?)
In terms of interacting with objects, Infocom games were more or less equivalent to games like Day of the Tentacle - verb, direct object, indirect object. You could type dialogue, but the chances of it actually being understood were pretty slim. And then there's the classic problem with all manner of adventure games - the more freedom you're given to try things, the more apparent it becomes that the game may not support sensible actions the designer didn't think of...
Cornerstone was a fiasco for sure (I guess they should have figured out after a few years that Infocom had already made their name in games, and going after the productivity market, even if it was their goal in the first place, wasn't gonna work...) but I think text adventures were on their way out anyway. Even Infocom was moving away from text-only games, starting with stuff like Lurking Horror, Beyond Zork, and then Zork Zero, etc... So I think there's a strong argument that Infocom's niche was dissolving. No one was "force-fed" the new graphics technologies, gamers wanted that stuff.
But back to the topic at hand - how does text-based gaming's lack of graphics equate to a better game? Why is text adventures' reliance upon the player to mentally imagine the scenes and events considered such a holy property? To me a good game is a fun game. I don't fault people if they find games more enjoyable when they have a decent user interface...
Terry Pratchett is, and always will be, one of my favorite authors. I hope he is cured or at the VERY least the progress is halted for a good long time. His books are worth their weight in freaking platinum. Or something.
I dunno - I enjoyed "Going Postal" but "Equal Rites" kind of put me off Discworld almost entirely...
That's interesting. The rumor I heard was that Mostly Harmless was written to finally put an end to the series and get everyone off his back about sequels. But, like I said, that was a rumor I heard before the days of the Intarwebs.
It certainly seemed that way. I mean, the book ended not only with the re-destruction of Earth and the death of all the characters - but the destruction of all the parallel-universe Earths. It was as if he was burning the bridge behind him...
I would have to re-read the book to see if my opinion on it has changed, but back in the day I found it pretty boring.
BTW, this snippet:
The book will "make no claims for Eoin being Douglas", according to Prior. "It's not Eoin Colfer writing as Douglas Adams, as was the case with Sebastian Faulks,"
makes me happy. I hate when there's some dead author's name in big print on the cover, and then you read the small text and it's just some other author masquerading as that guy for name recognition. Bullshit. If Ian Fleming didn't write it, don't pretend he did. So I'm glad they're not putting on that kind of a sham with the new Hitch-Hikers book. Which I would totally read, BTW, in paperback at least.
OK, first, Adams didn't work in a vacuum or finish the screenplay himself, what with being dead and all. Second, why does everyone assume that the potential for that movie to suck, to miss the point of the original books, etc. is inversely proportional to the extent of Adams's involvement in the project? I don't care if they held a seance to get Adams to review the script before they started shooting - the movie has real problems. And a few high points, but mostly just a lot of problems.
The draft that ended up being made was not how Douglas wanted it... and was horribly mis-cast (Ford should be knowledgeable and a man of the world, not an bumbling idiot, just odd)
The good bits were pure Douglas the bad bits were shoehorned in by the screenwriter
Yeah, I think people miss the point of Ford being miscast sometimes. They focus on "Oh my god! Ford is black!" or "Oh my god! Ford doesn't sound British!" and miss the rather more important "Oh my god! Ford isn't funny!"
Though I guess it may not be entirely fair to blame Mos Def for that. Some of his best material (the bar scene, more or less straight out of the book) was squeezed into way too short of a time-frame. Compared to the performance in the TV show it just feels like they were rushing through it. (Appropriate, perhaps, given that the world was supposed to end in a few minutes - though if you look at it that way Ford wouldn't stand around talking at all - and good comedy needs good timing...)
The question is: are people willing to use their imagination when they are force-fed every feature directX 10 has to offer (shading, tons of light sources, fog, environments, shadows, physics engine, ragdoll physics) at insane resolutions.
Oh, snore... Not that old bit about kids these days with their polygons and their shaders. I suppose next you're gonna tell me to get off your "West of house"...
I mean, I like classic games and text adventures - I just hate this attitude that there's some fundamental quality of them that makes them better than today's games. That's just nostalgia talking.
It got modded down because there are vast numbers of Slashdotters who are congenitally incapable of recognising any humour that isn't a minor on a known meme.
I'm a minor on a known meme, you insensitive clod!
The follow-up mission, "Mars Astronomical Research Viewpoint INstallation", will establish a remote-controlled astronomical observatory on Mars. Through the thin Martian atmosphere they hope to be able to get a better view of Venus, with no pesky obstructions.
"This rationale was proposed, and discredited, over 150 years ago. Trade secrets are notoriously hard to keep, as the poster JesseMcDonald points out."
Oh really? Pop quiz time then....
Name the 12 secret herbs and spices in Original recipe KFC, and their proportions therein.
Slashdot Mirror
That underlying C code is what needs to be written carefully, because you use Haskell itself to write its own compiler.
There's a Haskell compiler written in Haskell already. Where does C fit in to that?
After the 'l' and before the 'o'.
Don't you mean "After the 'g' and 'h'"?
One thing in Haskell that always intrigued me was the idea of combinatorial parsers - a parser that accepts a string and yields not a single parse tree, but all possible parse trees based on the language rules... Simple implementations of those can be implemented in Haskell pretty straightforwardly. Combinatorial parsers for individual rules are stuck together - and while rules may generate a bunch of possible parse trees these are culled by successive rules...
I don't know too much about the practical efficiency of these - but in terms of how they're expressed I think they're great...
I call meme misuse.
I call no tagbacks!
Might that be because infinite data structures don't often exist in mainstream and/or commercial software applications?
Might that be because mainstream programming languages don't support infinite data structures?
Might that be because infinite data structures don't often exist in mainstream and/or commercial software applications?
(OK, now everybody imagine that this is in fact an infinite thread of responses and counter-responses which aren't actually evaluated or stored until you ask to see them...)
Joking aside, though - lazily-evaluated, conceptually-infinite data structures are a useful way to express things sometimes... I figure most programmers don't have a deep enough understanding of how that style of expression can be useful - in part because so much software development these days is dominated by the procedural model...
Features of Haskell I really enjoy are how it handles constructors, pattern-matched function arguments, user-definable infix operators (with configurable precedence!) and the way it handles higher-order programming and lazy programming. But I never got monads...
Of course, my philosophy is that that's not necessarily a bad thing. Haskell is, IMO, a domain-specific language specialized on functional problems. I feel it's better to have different specialized languages working together well, rather than have one that attempts to do everything...
They're going to use the LHC to make energon cubes.
There, fixed that for you. Also, turn in your geen badge.
That's harsh... The geen badge is the one that lets you control pokemon up to level 50, and lets you use "fly" outside of combat...
Well, looks like you're hoofin' it then...
Are you a slave to karma? If I spin the wheel will you be a king reborn? Will you be coming back, coming back for the last time?
But if they use cement, they can't separate until they're needed to reform Voltron again.
Same's true for snap-fit, actually - the pegs will typically lock the parts together firmly enough that you can't separate them without breaking the pegs - and possibly damaging part edges in the process of trying to pry it apart... If you want to assemble a snap-kit and be able to take it apart again, you need to trim the pegs or cut the side of the socket to reduce the "locking" feature... Of course then you'll need cement again to make the assembly permanent...
Well, they tend to be better at text parsing than modern games. How many times do you run into a character in a modern RPG and are given multiple choice answers to his/her questions? Heck I occaisionally even run into a game that requires, gasp, typing and the interface is at best more Scott Adams (the other one) than Infocom. This is in 2008.
So, we've got this big homebrew IF culture now, right? And it's 2008. So where is our better text parser? (Better than Infocom, I mean... In an age where the phones people carry in their pockets are a good couple orders of magnitude more powerful than the machines Infocom games were made to run on, we should be able to make a better text adventure, right?)
In terms of interacting with objects, Infocom games were more or less equivalent to games like Day of the Tentacle - verb, direct object, indirect object. You could type dialogue, but the chances of it actually being understood were pretty slim. And then there's the classic problem with all manner of adventure games - the more freedom you're given to try things, the more apparent it becomes that the game may not support sensible actions the designer didn't think of...
Cornerstone was a fiasco for sure (I guess they should have figured out after a few years that Infocom had already made their name in games, and going after the productivity market, even if it was their goal in the first place, wasn't gonna work...) but I think text adventures were on their way out anyway. Even Infocom was moving away from text-only games, starting with stuff like Lurking Horror, Beyond Zork, and then Zork Zero, etc... So I think there's a strong argument that Infocom's niche was dissolving. No one was "force-fed" the new graphics technologies, gamers wanted that stuff.
But back to the topic at hand - how does text-based gaming's lack of graphics equate to a better game? Why is text adventures' reliance upon the player to mentally imagine the scenes and events considered such a holy property? To me a good game is a fun game. I don't fault people if they find games more enjoyable when they have a decent user interface...
Terry Pratchett is, and always will be, one of my favorite authors. I hope he is cured or at the VERY least the progress is halted for a good long time. His books are worth their weight in freaking platinum. Or something.
I dunno - I enjoyed "Going Postal" but "Equal Rites" kind of put me off Discworld almost entirely...
It's a trap!
Admiral Ackbar!
That's interesting. The rumor I heard was that Mostly Harmless was written to finally put an end to the series and get everyone off his back about sequels. But, like I said, that was a rumor I heard before the days of the Intarwebs.
It certainly seemed that way. I mean, the book ended not only with the re-destruction of Earth and the death of all the characters - but the destruction of all the parallel-universe Earths. It was as if he was burning the bridge behind him...
I would have to re-read the book to see if my opinion on it has changed, but back in the day I found it pretty boring.
BTW, this snippet:
The book will "make no claims for Eoin being Douglas", according to Prior. "It's not Eoin Colfer writing as Douglas Adams, as was the case with Sebastian Faulks,"
makes me happy. I hate when there's some dead author's name in big print on the cover, and then you read the small text and it's just some other author masquerading as that guy for name recognition. Bullshit. If Ian Fleming didn't write it, don't pretend he did. So I'm glad they're not putting on that kind of a sham with the new Hitch-Hikers book. Which I would totally read, BTW, in paperback at least.
Now, how about the return of Svlad Cjelli?
Are you refering to the Disney movie that Doglas Adams wrote the screenplay for?
OK, first, Adams didn't work in a vacuum or finish the screenplay himself, what with being dead and all. Second, why does everyone assume that the potential for that movie to suck, to miss the point of the original books, etc. is inversely proportional to the extent of Adams's involvement in the project? I don't care if they held a seance to get Adams to review the script before they started shooting - the movie has real problems. And a few high points, but mostly just a lot of problems.
The draft that ended up being made was not how Douglas wanted it ... and was horribly mis-cast (Ford should be knowledgeable and a man of the world, not an bumbling idiot, just odd)
The good bits were pure Douglas the bad bits were shoehorned in by the screenwriter
Yeah, I think people miss the point of Ford being miscast sometimes. They focus on "Oh my god! Ford is black!" or "Oh my god! Ford doesn't sound British!" and miss the rather more important "Oh my god! Ford isn't funny!"
Though I guess it may not be entirely fair to blame Mos Def for that. Some of his best material (the bar scene, more or less straight out of the book) was squeezed into way too short of a time-frame. Compared to the performance in the TV show it just feels like they were rushing through it. (Appropriate, perhaps, given that the world was supposed to end in a few minutes - though if you look at it that way Ford wouldn't stand around talking at all - and good comedy needs good timing...)
The question is: are people willing to use their imagination when they are force-fed every feature directX 10 has to offer (shading, tons of light sources, fog, environments, shadows, physics engine, ragdoll physics) at insane resolutions.
Oh, snore... Not that old bit about kids these days with their polygons and their shaders. I suppose next you're gonna tell me to get off your "West of house"...
I mean, I like classic games and text adventures - I just hate this attitude that there's some fundamental quality of them that makes them better than today's games. That's just nostalgia talking.
Corelation. Is. Not. Causation.
I had a correlation... with yo' mama!
It got modded down because there are vast numbers of Slashdotters who are congenitally incapable of recognising any humour that isn't a minor on a known meme.
I'm a minor on a known meme, you insensitive clod!
That's pretty funny...
The follow-up mission, "Mars Astronomical Research Viewpoint INstallation", will establish a remote-controlled astronomical observatory on Mars. Through the thin Martian atmosphere they hope to be able to get a better view of Venus, with no pesky obstructions.
I mean, really... "Wrath of the licking"? ...Yeah, I'd like to see that one.
"This rationale was proposed, and discredited, over 150 years ago. Trade secrets are notoriously hard to keep, as the poster JesseMcDonald points out."
Oh really? Pop quiz time then....
Name the 12 secret herbs and spices in Original recipe KFC, and their proportions therein.
Chicken Grease Salt!
It's apparently very cold in space...they can probably just open a door if it starts to get too hot in there.
Do you know the old Klingon proverb which tells us that revenge is a dish that is best served cold...?
You guys can't blow up the Earth! It's where I keep all my stuff!
So, since I am neither a hooker nor LSD, I'll have to get my own drinks?
No, but on the other hand you won't be hearing from the lawyers, either...
Hope you are ready for a let down, it is likely to be months before they discover anything of significance.
That is... even if everything works. With all the code running this thing, there has got to be a few bugs.
"I've got a bad feeling about this..."