[HN Gopher] Put the DVD logo in the corner (2023)
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       Put the DVD logo in the corner (2023)
        
       Author : EndXA
       Score  : 264 points
       Date   : 2024-07-05 14:48 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (eieio.games)
 (TXT) w3m dump (eieio.games)
        
       | frakt0x90 wrote:
       | That was really fun and a good explanation of the PICO-8
       | environment. Well done! I got 19 but think I got lucky towards
       | the end.
        
       | tombert wrote:
       | Stuff like this makes me utterly adore Pico-8. It's one of the
       | most fun coding environments I've used since I first discovered
       | the ActionScript in Macromedia Flash MX.
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | The retro IDE is a huge attractor for a lot of people but for
         | me I just love the limited constraints at runtime. I wish I had
         | a high resolution modern editor for code/sound/graphics to work
         | with, but was still limited by resolution, cpu power, API, etc.
        
           | galleywest200 wrote:
           | Check out Lexaloffle's new project, Picotron. You can
           | _almost_ think of it as a "Pico-64" with desktop environment.
           | Comes with a tracker, larger text editor, etc.
           | 
           | https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php
        
           | tombert wrote:
           | Yeah I agree. Being constrained to a relatively low
           | resolution and memory makes everything a lot more
           | approachable and more fun for me.
           | 
           | Obviously I _could_ have as much flexibility as I want if I
           | learned Vulkan and wrote all the graphics calls myself, but
           | of course that 's really hard and time consuming. Pico-8
           | being restricted makes it easy for me to quickly hack
           | something together just for fun.
        
           | hbn wrote:
           | Creating within set constraints breeds unprecedented
           | innovation and some really interesting stuff.
           | 
           | For about 25 years there's been a small but dedicated group
           | of people making romhacks for Super Mario World, and the
           | early stuff was pretty quaint -- mostly rearranging tiles and
           | enemy placements to make new levels. But over the years
           | people have done some incredible hacks with custom graphics,
           | enemies, mechanics, you name it. I've played some of them on
           | real Super Nintendo hardware with a Super Everdrive which
           | allows you to load rom files to the cartridge memory from an
           | SD card. It's amazing what some people have made.
        
             | tombert wrote:
             | Extremely tangential but I think relevant: some of the DOOM
             | mods that are still being made are utterly phenomenal.
             | 
             | It's easy for people to think "Why would you constrain
             | yourself to a DOOM engine when you could use
             | Unity/Godot/Unreal/whatever and have better graphics and
             | more freedom?!", but that's kind of missing the point. The
             | point is figuring out how far you can stretch something,
             | and how to get the most out of something limited.
             | 
             | Blade of Agony, for example, exclusively runs on GZDoom,
             | which while more advanced than the vanilla DOOM engine, is
             | still a lot more limited than Unreal or something, but I
             | think that what they did to really stretch that engine to
             | its fullest extent has made something that's extremely fun,
             | charming, and gives it a distinct look and feel that you
             | simply wouldn't have if you used a "modern" engine.
        
               | whou wrote:
               | Selaco is also another jaw dropping example of a modern
               | game using the GZDoom engine!
        
               | tombert wrote:
               | I am surprised I haven't heard of this one, doing a quick
               | search it looks downright incredible and hard to believe
               | that they managed to stretch GZDoom to handle it.
        
               | davikr wrote:
               | Yeah, it runs surprisingly well due to their
               | optimizations. Sadly, you are still somewhat CPU-
               | constrained due to the way BSP processing works (every
               | single wall is processed, one by one, and the map is
               | rendered a few triangles at a time)
        
             | Waterluvian wrote:
             | I love the SMW romhack that's an entire game just in the
             | over world.
        
             | eieio wrote:
             | Have you played with Mario Builder 64? I did a game jam
             | with it last month and found it really delightful. You're
             | pretty restricted in what you can do - practically no
             | coding, just pulling in components from the Mario 64 base
             | game - but in exchange it's really simple to get a whole
             | level up and running in like an hour (our whole game jam
             | was 2 hours long).
             | 
             | My level design skills are pretty weak. Being able to
             | partially compensate for that by getting built-in nice
             | character movement, enemy design, etc for free was really
             | really nice. If I wanted to do more 3D stuff right now I'd
             | almost certainly be using something like Mario Builder (I
             | think stuff like Doom custom maps get at a similar idea).
        
           | noman-land wrote:
           | You can actually set it up to do Pico-8 code editing in your
           | normal editor, while auto reloading in the browser, then
           | building the cartridge and deploying the game via GitHub
           | actions. It's been a little while but I set something like
           | that up in some of my Pico-8 explorations1.
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/noman-land/piconet/
        
         | noman-land wrote:
         | +1 on this. The Pico-8 is a delightful little platform. I have
         | a few unfinished projects kicking around and this is inspiring
         | me to go back to them.
        
       | tyronepalmer wrote:
       | This would be a blast on the Playdate, perhaps even using its
       | little crank to advance time (and additional points for keeping
       | the right rhythm?)
        
         | nosrepa wrote:
         | Stars Of the Screen has a DVD attract screen game.
        
         | omoikane wrote:
         | Here you go:
         | 
         | https://uguu-org.itch.io/bouncing-dvd
         | 
         | It's pretty bare bones since I made it just now, feel free to
         | fork it:
         | 
         | https://github.com/uguu-org/playdate-dvd
        
       | eieio wrote:
       | dev here, fun surprise to see this on the front page (I'm glad
       | it's resonating! give the pico-8 a try!)
       | 
       | happy to answer q's if anyone has one. I haven't built a full
       | pico-8 game since this (my stuff got...weirder...[1]) but I miss
       | it + have been toying around with playdate and picotron ideas.
       | 
       | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40800869
        
       | onemoresoop wrote:
       | I absolutely love PICO-8. Never been a hardcore gamer but started
       | playing PICO-8 games on my commute after buying a Myioo mini. The
       | games are simple but are extremely playable and fun.
        
         | sureglymop wrote:
         | Same here and I highly agree! My favorite games are simple
         | (e.g. Suika Game Demake) but so fun and addicting.
        
       | smokel wrote:
       | Amazing to read about the Recurse Center [1]. It seems to be some
       | kind of artist-in-residence, but for programmers.
       | 
       | I've spent some time in residencies as an artist, and it's
       | amazing how much it helped me to open up new perspectives. It'd
       | be nice if there were more of these opportunities to do
       | nonsensical (i.e., non-commercial and non-competitive) things in
       | science. I'm sure it's beneficial to society or at least for the
       | lucky individuals who get accepted there.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.recurse.com/
        
         | zellyn wrote:
         | Check out https://sfpc.study/ too!
         | 
         | The School for Poetic Computation is an experimental school in
         | New York City and online supporting interdisciplinary study in
         | art, code, hardware and critical theory. It's a place for
         | learning and unlearning.
        
         | eieio wrote:
         | (post author here)
         | 
         | If Recurse sounds fun and magical to you - it is! And you
         | should consider applying :). You can always defer your
         | acceptance until the timing works out. It's free (they make
         | money via job placements, but when I applied I was clear that I
         | wasn't looking for work). I've been meaning to write a blog
         | about my time there - here's what I would want to say:
         | 
         | The best thing that Recurse (RC) did for me was help me get in
         | touch with my own taste. When I arrived I was making games that
         | were pretty "normal" - Flash-style games with high scores and
         | weak themes. While there I got weird. One of my first projects
         | was an abuse of the OpenSearch spec to make a version of Wordle
         | that ran in the Firefox address bar[1].
         | 
         | It was the perfect place to build something like this - folks
         | were encouraging and supportive and interested; it made me
         | realize that people were interested in the type of thing I
         | actually wanted to do. I think I shipped 8 games during my 12
         | weeks at RC. I wouldn't have started making the types of things
         | I now make without RC. I think plenty of folks have similar
         | experiences across all sorts of techy things, not just games.
         | Kinda like finding product-market fit but for your own
         | interests.
         | 
         | RC also connected me with a bunch of folks that were doing
         | similar things. The community is huge and kind and weird in the
         | best way. It is like a writers' retreat but for people that
         | want to program (and become better programmers).
         | 
         | I am probably coming off as shilling RC hard and I suppose I am
         | (although I'm not being paid for this - I'm just a grateful
         | alum). I'm literally typing this from the RC space right now (I
         | occasionally stop by to chat with people in batch and work).
         | 
         | [1] https://eieio.games/nonsense/implementing-wordle-in-the-
         | fire...
        
         | guessmyname wrote:
         | I also attended the Recurse Center years ago, but it didn't
         | quite click for me, which was surprising because everyone I
         | spoke to had such positive experiences there. Even now, I find
         | it hard to pinpoint exactly why it didn't feel worthwhile for
         | me.
         | 
         | Perhaps it was the location. New York City is expensive, and
         | although I had enough savings to justify taking unpaid leave
         | from work, many things seemed unreasonably priced. New Yorkers
         | also have a reputation for being unfriendly, which added to my
         | feeling of disconnect. Despite hearing glowing reviews from
         | others, I didn't quite mesh with the environment at Recurse
         | Center, similar to how some visitors to the city might not feel
         | entirely welcomed during certain encounters.
         | 
         | On the bright side, some of the residents and alumni [1] have
         | become quite well-known in the tech industry. You might get
         | lucky and find one of them around the space, which could lead
         | to some really insightful conversations. During my time there,
         | I had the chance to meet people like Robert Lefkowitz [2] and
         | Filippo Valsorda [3], which was pretty cool. They definitely
         | added some interesting perspectives to my experience.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.recurse.com/residents
         | 
         | [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/r0ml
         | 
         | [3] https://filippo.io
        
       | robin_reala wrote:
       | Worth mentioning this tale of the psychological and social
       | suffering brought about by the DVD logo never quite hitting the
       | corner of the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ
        
         | EGreg wrote:
         | Jazz Emu fan!
        
       | pseudosavant wrote:
       | Obligatory post to my DVD screensaver done in all CSS and inline
       | SVG. https://dvd-player-screensaver.glitch.me/
        
         | rylittle wrote:
         | Is there an easy way to actually make this my screensaver? (on
         | mac)
        
           | pseudosavant wrote:
           | I've never used it but it seems like this would do the trick.
           | https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver
        
           | jimbosis wrote:
           | There is this Rust program to display a bouncing DVD logo in
           | a terminal:
           | 
           | https://github.com/pythops/bouncinamation
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35785932 [2023]
           | 
           | I haven't used a recent macOS in years, but I use the
           | following command to get a fullscreen screensaver and locked
           | screen on (Devuan GNU+) Linux. It's probably about as secure
           | as a cheap padlock and flimsy chain or cable to lock a bike.
           | xtrlock -f & xterm -fullscreen -e 'sleep .05 ;
           | /path/to/file/bouncinamation'
           | 
           | You can skip the 'xtrlock -f &' part to just run
           | 'bouncimation' in a fullscreen xterm. 'Esc' exits.
           | 
           | If running with 'xtrlock' you must enter your password first
           | to unlock 'xtrlock', and then 'Esc' to exit 'bouncinamation'.
           | 
           | The 'sleep .05' is to make it work better or more reliably. I
           | don't remember exactly what, but there was some kind of issue
           | that was fixed when I did 'sleep .05' before running
           | 'bouncinamation'.
        
       | chrisstanchak wrote:
       | Made this a while ago if you just want to look at the
       | screensaver.
       | 
       | https://stanchak.github.io/dvd/
        
       | bluedays wrote:
       | https://youtu.be/QOtuX0jL85Y?si=Kwo8OZSYOVzoI-Uh
       | 
       | Obligatory The Office reference.
        
         | bookofjoe wrote:
         | Huh. And here I thought it was a reference to "Saturday Night
         | Fever."
        
           | fsckboy wrote:
           | "nobody puts the DVD logo in the corner!"
           | 
           |  _Dirty Dancing_
        
         | Ylpertnodi wrote:
         | >Obligatory The Office reference.
         | 
         | At first I thought 'Huh?". After clicking the link I see you
         | were referencing the US version of The Office.
         | 
         | Thought I was going crazy for a few secs.
        
           | averageRoyalty wrote:
           | Americans appear to habitually do this. They'll label the
           | original "UK" but won't relabel their remake. They've done
           | the same with Wilfred and other shows. Just an insular
           | viewpoint.
        
             | ghostie_plz wrote:
             | I'd be curious to ask someone from outside the UK and the
             | US which version of the show they thought of first
        
               | newsclues wrote:
               | Canadian here. I think UK office because my family has
               | lots of UK ties and grew up with that humour.
               | 
               | Eventually saw the US office and hated it.
               | 
               | Canadians are culturally stuck between US and Europe, so
               | it can go either way
        
             | BolexNOLA wrote:
             | I would say you are generally correct re: the insular
             | viewpoint, except when it comes to _The Office_ the US
             | version was immensely more popular - it was a worldwide
             | phenomenon. So when people say _The Office_ they are way
             | more often talking about the US version. It's a reasonable
             | assumption imo. Kind of like how people used to talk about
             | _House of Cards._
        
               | rahimnathwani wrote:
               | TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_%28Briti
               | sh_TV_s...
        
             | 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
             | Do Brits ever remake American shows? And if so, do they
             | label their own as (UK)?
        
             | paulddraper wrote:
             | FYI you happen to be on an American-based forum.
             | 
             | Fair warning, you might see a disproportionate number of
             | American-centric references.
        
         | dingaling wrote:
         | If it somehow did hit exactly right angles into the corner,
         | wouldn't it then be stuck bouncing between diametrical corners?
         | 
         | In fact I don't see how it ever could hit a a corner exactly.
        
           | NAR8789 wrote:
           | Try on paper originating it from a corner on a rectangle
           | where the initial path is just offset from the diametrical
           | corner.
        
           | sopooneo wrote:
           | You clearly know more about this than me, because I'm
           | currently Googling to understand what "diametrical corners"
           | are. But in a simple implementation, wouldn't the x and y
           | velocities both be reversed at once with a corner hit, both
           | side and top/bottom collisions having been detected "at once"
           | in the same part of the code between updating positions? And
           | then the logo would just bounce out exactly the way it came
           | in?
        
           | Retr0id wrote:
           | Here's the math:
           | http://lostmathlessons.blogspot.com/2016/03/bouncing-dvd-
           | log...
        
           | Aditya_Garg wrote:
           | Only if the tv is a square, which most tvs are not.
        
       | SebastianKra wrote:
       | Somehow got 19 by hitting a lucky streak at the end. Now I can
       | rest easy knowing I'm not gonna beat that.
        
       | make3 wrote:
       | it would be fun to make an open-ai gym wrapper on this & train an
       | rl agent to hit the corner every single time
        
       | davikr wrote:
       | Fantasy consoles would make for interesting programming learning
       | environments for aspiring school or even CS students, I think.
        
       | shortrounddev2 wrote:
       | I love these little fantasy consoles. I think this is how coding
       | should be taught, with small runtime requirements and simple
       | tools which let people start adding graphics and movement on the
       | screen immediately
        
       | loafus wrote:
       | I made this a while back if you just need your corner bounce fix
       | https://oopsallcornerbounces.com/
        
       | eleveriven wrote:
       | Short games that are based on humor or a simple concept can be
       | incredibly refreshing and entertaining.
        
       | brcmthrowaway wrote:
       | Has anyone reverse engineered the original DVD screensaver
       | algorithm
        
       | thih9 wrote:
       | Direct link to play the game: https://itseieio.itch.io/dvdlogo
       | 
       | Source code (pico8): https://github.com/nolenroyalty/put-the-dvd-
       | logo-in-the-corn...
        
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       (page generated 2024-07-05 23:00 UTC)