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.
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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
the british one was only on for two series with 14 total episodes whereas the american one was on for 9 seasons with 201 episodes... it's safe to assume the worldwide insanely popular one is the one being talked about. I loved the british one and wish it were longer too.
From the Netherlands, UK Office, as that one was broadcast on Dutch television already before the American version existed. So I guess the answer depends on your age :)
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.
Sorry we won the war and overshadowed the Empire.
But congratulations on your July 4 2024 Independence Day win against the Tories. Perhaps after November you'll come to dominate the Anglosphere again.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
When I was a student I much preferred hacking around with games I actually liked playing already like Skyrim and Minecraft vs. "fantasy" consoles or purely educational systems like Scratch.
Whenever I became more familiar with programming I liked retro systems like the Apple ][ but I think that was inspired by an old comp sci prof who showed us QBASIC.
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
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.
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'.
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/
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...
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
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.
Obligatory The Office reference.
Dirty Dancing
In fact I don't see how it ever could hit a a corner exactly.
Both seem obviously false but I’m struggling to think how someone could otherwise have come to your conclusion.
You are correct.
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.
Eventually saw the US office and hated it.
Canadians are culturally stuck between US and Europe, so it can go either way
“Married… With Children” was remade as “Married for Life”
“The Golden Girls” was remade as “The Brighton Belles”
“Catch Phrase” was remade as “Catchphrase”, which seems on point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_television_ser...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_Like_These_(TV_series)
Fair warning, you might see a disproportionate number of American-centric references.
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
https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php
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.
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).
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.
[1] https://github.com/noman-land/piconet/
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.
https://stanchak.github.io/dvd/
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
Source code (pico8): https://github.com/nolenroyalty/put-the-dvd-logo-in-the-corn...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ
When I was a student I much preferred hacking around with games I actually liked playing already like Skyrim and Minecraft vs. "fantasy" consoles or purely educational systems like Scratch.
Whenever I became more familiar with programming I liked retro systems like the Apple ][ but I think that was inspired by an old comp sci prof who showed us QBASIC.
https://fennel-lang.org/
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.
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'.