Quote from: Crane on August 30, 2016, 11:41:16 AM
I have versions of V2

QuoteFor those who have already downloaded V10 of The Wishing Well, please do so again.

Don't re-publish with the same version number. Always increase the number -- even for a miniscule fix. Even if this fix comes 5 minutes after the previous upload.

It's no slur upon a level to reach version 20. If the level begun with many backroutes, the high version number shows good care.

-- Simon

Board games with edge cases: I googled for stalemates in Shogi. Stalemates never happen in normal play, but they're a lovely edge case. Game rules should not have holes. The intuitive result is that the stalemated player loses, and I'm happy that it's the customary result, too.

I found a forum discussion on stalemates in Shogi on Little Golem, a turn-based server. The discussion produced the answers I had been looking for. But I was even more happy about this quote:

Anyone who sees the world in terms of clean logic has to be mystified and bewildered by many of the rules in popular board games. Especially ancient board games, like Go, that have suffered thousands of years of pollution from meddling humans... :-/ -- Darse Billings

Yes! When you have surprising edge cases in games, try to make rules as simple as possible while trying to fix them. Can you make the corner case part of the normal cases?

Empathy: Little Golem runs a daily game, Empathy, which is similar to our Quizmaster's Family Feud.

• The master presents a single word, today's expression.
• Every player private-messages the master with 10 different words. These 10 words should be in close association with today's expression, but players are free to send anything.
• All answers are revealed. For every word you send in, you get 1 point per player who sent in that same word. Singulars and plurals of the same word count as a same word.

-- Simon

Painting is hardly admissible for abstraction or automation.

I can describe how I want the 1.5x icons to look like. Many rules are sharp and formal.

The problem is that carefully writing down these instructions isn't enough. A human has to implement these rules and produce the images. In the end, there's a rule that I can't formalize: If you did everything by the rules, and a few pixels suck, muster your human courage and change the pixels.

To imbue maximum spirit into the 1.5x icons, I should redesign them by hand, from memory of the 1x sprite. I'm timid and would rather fix bugs in the code. Scaling automatically to 1.5x, then fixing the automation errors, seems too tedious.

Another idea is SVG, which requires an extra lib, requires me to get its output into A5's internal bitmap format, and then make all the SVGs. geoo created a lovely blocker in SVG.

-- Simon

Quote from: Colorful Arty on August 25, 2016, 04:52:49 PM
Lix now works! Thanks guys!

Colorful Arty plays the Lix contest levels

Thanks! Happy to see you playing and commenting. You found the intended solution to Flying Squirrels.

The previous contest's entry, Long Divison, enticed chaotic precision batting. Flying Squirrels is clearer, you felt how the batter assignment was right at once.

geoo's Inseparables has version 2 up by now. I believe your method won't solve version 2. Your method failed on version 1 only barely: If you want to delay the non-floater with 2 platformers, wait for its shrugging after the first platformer, only then assign the second.

geoo's NewCompression has new versions, too, to discourage precision flinging.

Meeting Ichotolot next Saturday, to play the NL levels.

-- Simon

0.6.13 uploaded.

• Lemforum levels got updates from August 2016. I deleted the tutorial levels: The lemforum pack is our flagship pack and starts with very easy levels. Other packs need not provide tutorial levels.
• Fix #148: When you fail a singleplayer level, the game halts and allows you to go back in time. It doesn't spawn a dialog box anymore. Problem: Now you need a hotkey to exit the level. :-/ Nuke on a losing attempt doesn't spawn a dialog either. I should revert this, or redesign.
• Fix #144: In the editor, when you mirrored a piece with transparent pixels at its sides, the piece moved. Entire selections diverged on repeated mirroring.
• Fix #84 and #90: The options menu explains its options, except on the editor tab. The box near the menu's bottom provides two lines of explanation.
• Fix #142: There is a virtual file system. It recognizes ./ and ../ now. Other directories, in particular installations in Linux File System Hierarchy trees, aren't supported yet, but the necessary changes have become easy.

-- Simon

Quote from: ccexplore on August 25, 2016, 11:32:47 PM
It is only forced starting on Windows 10 and only on consumer editions I think.  Anyway, it is interesting to keep in mind that when the "software" is in the form of a web application somehow this suddenly is no longer an issue.  I guess because it's not physically on your machine?

I can stop using the web service. At worst, I have cookies left over.

I can stop using software that downloads and installs on its own. But that may have updated random libraries and broke compat with manually-installed old software that I rely on.

My only example is from reading internet news -- first Win10 demanded its own installation, then it BSODed on people's e-readers that worked perfectly in older Windowses. I'm sure the average experience is better than that.

I manually-install the bleeding edge of a few selected programs, and let everything else get old. Until it hurts after 5 years.

QuoteGoogle Play Services (and possibly also the Play Store itself) updates itself silently with no way for the user to control that aspect in any way, since it doesn't even show up as an app.

I don't use this either. >_> Nor Steam, nor any of these DRM package managers.

QuoteIf Windows Update is malware, at least it is usually patching up a security issue, which is more than can be said for the dozens of apparent actual harmful malware

Yeah, the patches from Windows Update are more helpful than what malware hides in other programs' installers.

I have no problems if you can disable the updates in a straightforward way. If, for weird reasons, you don't want to patch your system, and happily risk becoming a malware vector, so be it. I felt the biggest problem in the mandatory Windows-10-updates.

QuoteNot to mention it's a little unbalanced anyway to be comparing level data and resources against executable code affecting core system functionalities.

It may overwrite my precious data or changes with old versions from the internet. If software updates break libraries, I can downgrade the libs, but I can't revert overwriting creative work.

I accept that this risk shouldn't be high. Creative projects belong under version control, and get backed up. Or the tool might have a purely-offline bug that eats my data, so I'm not 100 % safe either way.

-- Simon

You need resource packages xxx, yyy, zzz, and 2 others. Download from NL.com?
Download, Always download, No, Never.

Plus a 3-way option in the global config, always, never, ask, defaulting to ask. This is the obvious method if you can't agree whether auto-downloads are good or evil. But this is the honest approach, appropriate for possible auto-downloads.

Show meaningful errors for the ascetics who click Never. Instead of (No/Never -> You lack the resource), can you find a design that omits at least one dialog of these two?

You need resources!
Download, Always download, Don't play level.

With a more powerful level browser, you can remove even that popup, and integrate the downloading with the browser. You can select and play levels, or download the resources for a level. No popup, the browser offers a download when you highlight a level. Maybe you need a save-your-butt dialog when I bypass the browser, and play a level directly by drag-level-file-on-binary. :-]

The goal should be to write an entire application free of dialog boxes. -- Jeff Atwood >_>

Forced software updates are malware. Forced Windows updates, go stand in the corner with the 1,249 packages that I should update from super-outdated to the shiny new normally-outdated. I should switch from Debian to Arch.

-- Simon

Quote from: IchoTolot on August 24, 2016, 06:04:00 PM
Lix videos are up aswell

Quote from: geoo
Both were quite simple and enjoyable

Thanks!

Quote from: geoothe steel placement in Simon's level looks a bit hackish

I assume this doesn't mean the exact positioning, but purely the visual design. Yeah, I contemplated steel in a tree. I wanted to keep the pointy block visible for honesty, and as a hint. But I didn't find a convincing design that made the steel look belonging here.

Yes, intended route.

Quote from: geooWhy didn't you just use torus instead of fling chain in your level?

I kept the steam for the flying theme. I designed and built the level before I became worried about fling-chain unmaintainability in light of planned physics changes.

-- Simon

Yeah, the pipe trap is explicitly dangerous. I like. Looking forward to user-testing results.

---

nl-anim: See attachment, it's a bash script to turn Icho's gadget source files into animated gifs. Needs ImageMagick and gifsicle. Run without arguments for usage.

Issues:
* doesn't scale the image
* bg is pink, not black
* relies on gifsicle, there's probably a way to do everything with ImageMagick

-- Simon

Replays for both geoo levels, and the intended route for mine. I haven't solved Nepster's. I'll look at the NL levels with Icho.

Inseparables looks backrouted. At first, the level seemed easy and thrown-together (geoo in IRC: "I used only 3 different blocks"), but there is lots of subtlety. Looking forward to re-solving this, if the replay is deemed backroute.

NewCompression has a stacked hatch on the left, I didn't notice right away and planned differently. Later, I found a solution that feels intended.

NewCompression is prone to hack solutions that fail barely. I've attached a 6/8 replay with precision flinging. I managed 7/8 with slight variations, but didn't save. I believe geoo doesn't want strong red herrings here -- can you discourage such precision flinging in the level's design?

-- Simon

Topic name: Yeah, hm.

It's a blog, except that it's on Lemmings Forums and not on its own site. The benefit is that interesting people will read it here. A more permanent solution depends on how I handle asdf-down.

-- Simon

tarzeau knows that asdfasdf is down, but didn't say whether it's permanent or not. I'm preparing for asdfasdf permanently down. There's lixgame.com with minimal content.

I backed up several files from asdfasdf's ~simon/etc/ over the years, but not everything. The spinning hamsters are not in my backups. >_> Maybe I'll start a fresh dump heap. I'll see how to proceed within the next weeks.

-- Simon

My favorite writer on the net is still cbloom.

• Nowadays, the good things land on cbloom rambles: When I go to my editor and click on the "X" button, you don't pop up "this file has changed on disk do you want to reload it?". You just fucking close.
• His classic rant that I've linked before, Fucking fuck the fucking web: Managers are hesitant to ever admit a mistake or cut a huge feature or redo work, because it reflects badly on them. That's terrible. It means that broken awful shit gets shipped just because they politically have to keep insisting "we did a great job".

But I've found Bob Nystrom's StuffWithStuff. This focuses purely on software design and language features. Some gems:

• Higher-Order Macros in C++, let a macro write a list of code-generating macro calls.
• The Impoliteness of Overriding Methods: To guarantee that overridden methods work well with your base class, you can mark the base method final, provide a second virtual method to override, and call the virtual method within the final method. This doesn't scale well with deeper inheritance. BETA was a niche language that made this pattern a core language feature: The base methods provided extension points within themselves, or were final.
• What color is your function? This article made it to reddit/programming and hackernews last year. Languages lack abstractions over mixing sync and async function calls. If you don't want your application to wait on costly I/O, you must jump through too many hoops.

-- Simon

Rant topics that I never got around to rant about

Repeats: Levels with the same terrain as another level. There is lots of fire here. I have several arguments flying around and never wrote them down.

<geoo> SimonNa: where's your rant topic about repeats? :P
<SimonNa> I wrote about one issue, the need to keep otherwise unrelated data in sync manually. That didn't ring with anyone
<geoo> I actually agree with most of your points, I just reject your conclusion

Drawing alongside writing: I am writing a post, and I want to explain something visual. Ideally, I'd sketch with my hand right inside the post. The cumbersome solution is to open a painting program, draw a picture, then upload or attach. Way too cumbersome, and fragile. The image should be data right in the code text, and I should be able to draw on the screen somehow. Technology sucks here.

Generate subforum from topic: I have a topic to split up, but I don't want to generate multiple topics on the existing board. I want these to belong together clearly. Instead of forum topics, I want directories. A directory contains either exactly one linear discussion (screw tree discussions, they suck, everybody replies wrong) or more directories.

Everybody should split and merge: When you have >= 100 posts, you can move and split and merge forum topics to your heart's delight. Like Stackoverflow. The forum software should version everything, which it doesn't right now.

Coins should be square: Then they don't roll under the sofa. And you don't need a 20-cent piece when there exists a 10-cent piece. You learn that from every site that teaches choosing poker chip denominations. There should be a 1-unit piece, this is the smallest unit that you can trade with cash. Then a 4-unit piece, a 16-unit piece, a 64-unit piece, and so on.

Functions compose from left to right: Instead of y = f(x), write y = xf. Then h(g(f(x))) becomes xfgh. Vectors are row-vectors by default, then vM makes sense for a matrix M. Matrix multiplication can stay like it is. Everything becomes a Unix pipe! Stuff gets processed in reading order!

You can treat a piece of data, x in the above examples, as a function from the one-point set into your data domain. Then everything is a function. Everything is a set, everything is an object, everything is a file, everything is a function.

-- Simon

OK from Proxima and geoo in IRC:
Rename Simple -> Lovely.
Rename Setting a Fundament -> Cubic Interpolation.

Rename Finale -> Prelude? Proxima was irritated in #NL why this is Finale in Lix. Maybe because it's ranked after Toccata, and in second-to-last position of the rank. A prelude comes before the other thing, but this comes after.

-- Simon