Kind of 'blobs' effect for Atari 8-bit.. What to do next ?

[popmilo]

Finally managed to finish what I started many months ago

 

 

Screen is hexagonal grid of characters (every second row is scrolled half a character to the right).

All 128 chars are used for smoothing of edges.

Each blob moves in random direction. If it touches another, it gets stuck to it and doesn't let go

 

Question is: what now ?

Any ideas how this could be improved to be more interesting or used for something completely different ?

 

ps. Music is not playing from Atari

 

liquid.xex.zip

[pps]

Put some greetings, wishes or maybe a xmas tale around and send it to me for putting on NYD 2014

[Rybags]

Interesting.

 

Maybe put periodic "Life" rules into effect or maybe some other stuff like offspring.

- overcrowding, kill off cells.

- sufficient large space, create new cell.

[popmilo]

Arghh... Duplicate...

Edited December 25, 2013 by popmilo

[popmilo]

Got an idea to change the invert the main logic (empty-full) and got something different

 

 

Now it looks more like bacterium collective than before...

 

"Game of life" would look better with this approach ...

 

[edit: forgot xex, again...]

 

liquid2.zip

Edited December 25, 2013 by popmilo

[popmilo]

One more change and got this:

Big thanks for music "Sunset on the moon" by XLent.

Still have to learn how to use RMT music in my code, so xex file is silent ...

snowflakes.zip

Put some greetings, wishes or maybe a xmas tale around and send it to me for putting on NYD 2014

Think this is quite in the spirit of holidays (except that there is no snow in sight looking out the window...)

Remaining question - how to finish it ?

Any ideas for some kind of ending much appreciated!

[snicklin]

How about if it fills up to 1/3 of the height of the screen and then displays in "snow text", the comment of "NYD 2014" or something like that?

[potatohead]

I really like the first one, but I think it should have a let go rule case.

 

The snow one is just begging for a holiday greeting of some kind. And you've got tunes already.

 

If there is room and time, I think this would be a lot of fun for people to just play with. Allow for a rule selection and initial screen condition setup, then let them run it to see what happens.

[bob_er]

Or you put all variations into one file, add music and you can send entry for some competition (for example for Silly Venture or somewhere else)...

Here you have an example for simple effects and not so bad result: http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5613 .

Or another one: http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5746

[popmilo]

Or you put all variations into one file, add music and you can send entry for some competition (for example for Silly Venture or somewhere else)...

Here you have an example for simple effects and not so bad result: http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5613

 

Nice effects! That rotating sphere in "komary" looks really cool spinning fast like that.

Entering compo is always an option... As my free time during winter is limited, I would rather just make "something nice" for holidays and than proceed with game coding for next Abbuc

[popmilo]

How about if it fills up to 1/3 of the height of the screen and then displays in "snow text", the comment of "NYD 2014" or something like that?

 

Awesome idea! Think I'll try that over weekend...

 

I really like the first one, but I think it should have a let go rule case.

 

The snow one is just begging for a holiday greeting of some kind. And you've got tunes already.

 

If there is room and time, I think this would be a lot of fun for people to just play with. Allow for a rule selection and initial screen condition setup, then let them run it to see what happens.

Something like this ?

 

 

Making some kind of easily configured rule based engine would be cool.

That blobs demo is using one table with neighbours-as-bits pattern matching. There are 32 combinations for any possible movement in random direction.

Modified tables would produce different results and random generation and dying-off would make all this more dynamic.

 

This char-based approach made sense for smoothing edges of blobs, but for some more complex version of life game, I think simple bitmap mode would offer much more freedom and colors to make everything more interesting.

 

We'll see, thanks for comments guys !

[potatohead]

Yes, exactly.

 

I did that long ago with a less sophisticated program where a simple 8 bit table lookup ran pretty fast. Go and look at all the pixels, shift them into a byte, which indexed the pixel color, like a truth table. Nothing fancy, just a text mode where each of the 256 table entries were shown and the user could just arrow up, down, space bar to toggle the pixel state on or off, or some color, if a 4 color mode was being used.

 

Back then, I wanted to do a four color lookup = 64Kb table., but I had 48K, so I settled for the one bit result pixel on or off was used as the index to color a pixel one of 4 colors. 256 byte table. On the machines we've got now, a whole 64K could be used for the table! Should produce some interesting graphics. I might have to go and explore this idea again. I think these kinds of things are a lot of fun.

 

Your hex cells turn out quite nice. Good effect to watch and tinker with, IMHO.

[NRV]

 

Big thanks for music "Sunset on the moon" by XLent.

Still have to learn how to use RMT music in my code, so xex file is silent ...

snowflakes.zip

Think this is quite in the spirit of holidays (except that there is no snow in sight looking out the window...)

Remaining question - how to finish it ?

Any ideas for some kind of ending much appreciated!

 

 

What? you mean that a small change did give you the best snow effect, just in time for the season and the last demos of the year!?

That sounds too suspicious man x)

 

Talking seriously, you should add some static scenery, like a house or something, but with more colors (if that's possible) and maybe with some moving objects (that clear out the accumulated snow.. or just "melt" it with time ).

If that is too much work, another nice idea could be to do a classic scroller where the falling snow gets attached to the moving letters (but can keep falling).

Bonus points for adding some kind of wind effect that moves the "snow" while falling..

 

Also, adding the real song should not take you more than like half an hour the first time, is pretty easy (if not just ask for help).

 

Regards.

[popmilo]

@Potatohead:

Cellular automatons have always been my interest (A must read book on the subject would be "New kind of science" by Stephen Wolfram).

Speaking of those, I just realized I could have gone without all the moving, directions, falling, borders and bunch of special cases that produced lots of bugs initially if I based everything on basic pattern matching similar to the one I'm using now.

Good thing about hexagonal grid is that number of immediate neighbours is 6. That is only 7 cells influencing each other.

Unlike 9 cells in simple square grid, this fits perfectly in one byte.

Simple 256 bytes table would cover every possible combination (in black and white) of source and destination patterns. Even that eight bit could be used to include certain randomness.

 

For example, snowflakes falling can be produced by these patterns:

 

Bit 7 would be "randomness", bits 0-6 are 'cell' states.

%00001000 becomes %00100000

%10001000 becomes %01000000

 

@NRV: Huh... As every character is used, more colors are only possible with use of PMs... Yeah, Santa with a sled flying around would be nice

Wind - will try it. Snowflakes are only going one cell down and one cell left or right now, would be simple to add an extra horizontal movement.

Song should be priority now, never done it, guess I'll start searching AA for mentions of it.

 

Have to think about this, thanks for ideas!