ZZT and MegaZeux are game building systems that allow you to play and program games in ASCII/VGA text mode. Because you can edit the fonts the graphics can get pretty fancy. With MegaZeux you can add sound to your games.
Each games comes with a built-in programming language (an object-based one) that allows you to program the "robots" in the game. There are also many built-in elements.
My son learned to program ZZT and MegaZeux by himself - by reading the help and by reading other people's code. He was 9 when he started.
I had tried LOGO with him, but he quickly lost interest - it took too long to do anything beyond pretty spirals.
ZZT and MegaZeux run on DOS (although a MegaZeux is being ported to Linux). Here are some links:
AI proponets have been predicting this stuff since early sixties. They just keep changing the date.
It's not the speed of processors or the amount of memory that needs to be compared to the human brain, it's the software. And nobody has any idea how to write it. We can't even agree on what is intelligence (see the IQ discussion) and somehow he expects to program intelligent machines.
I also predicated in the early 80s that Internet would be a big thing and that a computer program would become world champion chess player. I just didn't write a book about it. It was obvious then.
As far as jamming with "cybernetic musicians" I'm already doing that with drum machines and my computer.
...richie
P.S. For an interesting take on the philosophical problems of AI I suggest reading books by Stanislaw Lem.
Slashdot Mirror
Each games comes with a built-in programming language (an object-based one) that allows you to program the "robots" in the game. There are also many built-in elements.
My son learned to program ZZT and MegaZeux by himself - by reading the help and by reading other people's code. He was 9 when he started.
I had tried LOGO with him, but he quickly lost interest - it took too long to do anything beyond pretty spirals.
ZZT and MegaZeux run on DOS (although a MegaZeux is being ported to Linux). Here are some links:
www.zeux.org
My son's Web page
DCE had distributed time service since about 10 years ago. That's prior art. no?
...richie
AI proponets have been predicting this stuff since early sixties. They just keep changing the date.
It's not the speed of processors or the amount of memory that needs to be compared to the human brain, it's the software. And nobody has any idea how to write it. We can't even agree on what is intelligence (see the IQ discussion) and somehow he expects to program intelligent machines.
I also predicated in the early 80s that Internet would be a big thing and that a computer program would become world champion chess player. I just didn't write a book about it. It was obvious then.
As far as jamming with "cybernetic musicians" I'm already doing that with drum machines and my computer.
...richie
P.S. For an interesting take on the philosophical problems of AI I suggest reading books by Stanislaw Lem.
Jon,
:-)
You're climbing up to Linux, not descending. Descent would be if you had to go to Win98...
richie