Almasch

I must confess that I have found at least ten points in the following song which already happened to me. Please do not hurt while watching…

This performance “Nieder mit IT” from Thomas Pigor & Eichhorn is only in german language available. Thanks to Philipp Weißmann for giving me the hint to listen to this song.

I found a treasure in my book shelf today. It is only a small book but it was one of the first books I bought as I made my first experiences in computer science.      

It was printed in 1990 and all laws are still applicable. You only have to replace the words floppy disk by usb stick or modem by DSL. Technology may change but the problems are still the same. In my opinion a must have read book for everyone who work with computer. After reading you know, you are not alone…

If you watch the following movie and….

…you don’t know what you are watching. You are too old.

…you don’t understand why the resolution is too low. You are too young.

…you remember when you have played the game you are watching. You know how old I am

Once upon a time there were many different kind of games like in this short movie. All games run on a very limited hardware. In contrast to that hardware we have now unlimited ressources but only a few types of games. I hope the guys of the Games Convention know this too and bring back some more variety instead of the reincarnation of the last year games with better graphic effects…

Is not in wonderland but opens very creative way for young people to start learning programming. It is designed for high school and college students to teach them object oriented programming language while creating animated 3D movies and even simple games.

Alice is an approach to introduce the basics of computer programming for beginners and uses a simple drag-and-drop interface instead a written language. The cycle of writing, compiling, searching spelling mistakes, frustration is missing the spelling mistake and frustration part. It is concentrating on the most important parts, the concept, of object oriented programming languages.

The first contact with programming a computer can be done while trying to understand a cryptic language and persuade the compiler to accept the program or understanding the concepts from the beginning and have even some fun while learning. Its still enough time later to become a master in a production oriented programming language.  

Alice is a gift from the Carnegie Mellon University and is available for free at www.alice.org. There you will find versions for Windows, Mac and Linux and information about how to use it and who created it. 

Last time I wrote about Crayon Physics. This time I found in the irrlicht blog another interesting Software which plays with physics and let you draw and move objects.

Phun was created as a master of science thesis and is indented to explore and play with physical objects. On the webpage of phun by Emil Ernerfeldt you can find more detailed information, screenshots, video and downloads for for windows and linux systems. Mac version is coming soon.

You can do more than draw only simple objects and let them fall or rotate on a fix point. There are more complex objects like chains and rotating wheels. With a bit patient and time you can build even virtual machines

A very promising game with a interesting idea. Draw objects which become physical objects and fall, roll, slide, tumble downwards and try to move the little red ball to the jumping yellow start. Thats all!

The Deluxe Version is still work in progress but Crayon Phsics is already playable and you can download release version 1 from Kloonigames. On the website of the Crayon Physics Deluxe you can see a video of many nice features not included in the done-in-under-a-week game version of crayon.

There you can also register a e-mail address to get informed when the game is done. Even if the author claims the downloadable version more a prototype as a demo version it already teases for more…

After long time of work should also follow some recreation. Best for recreation is gaming. Meet friends, play game, have fun…

Munchkin is easy to learn (in fact there are also a few rules and all other important stuff you can read on the cards). Its ideal for all people who like to play rpg games. All other propably will not understand the funny side of the jokes.

How to play? Become the most powerful player! Thats all. You fight against monsters, find treasures and cheat and bend the rules whenever it is possible. Sounds simple but all you opponents do the same. You can play together with them, you can play against them, you can support them or you give them more trouble they already have… In the end there is only one winner.

For more information you can visit the homepage of Pegasus Spiele or check your local game dealer.

While thinking about strategies to create a good ant community there a two big classes. Every ant is an individual and make its own decisions or there is a bit master ant in the background which gives order to all workers.

Using a master ant is ok to organize the worker. Using a static class member to let the ants communicate is a kind of cheating. Many system rely on the communiction over that static variable but finding a way to let the ants communicate with signals is much more interesting.

So in the beginning my little ants will be talk active idividuals. One for all, all for one and all apples to me.

The game of life is very old and everybody has seen it many times at least on the home pc as screensaver. As I visited a museum in Shrewsbury If found the biggest game of life I have ever seen in my life.

On the frontside you see a big “living area” of little lights and on the backside is no single computer which control the life. No! There is a complete wall of computers!

If you want to visit it, too, than go to The Museum in Shrewsbury and play a bit. Setup your starting cells on the big wall with a little joystick lay back and see what will happen. Or if you still ask “what the hell is the game of life?” read a bit here.

At the last conference I have attended there was a presentation of a funny programming game. Its easy to understand, easy to learn and exciting to get a higher score.

What is to do? Just program the behavior of ants to let them collect as much as possible food. For that task there is a simple API with only a few easy to understand commands. Basicly you only have to derive from a given BaseAnt class and overwrite the existing functions. Whatever you program here the ants will do it!

How does it work? You implement the behavior of your ants and start the game. A game controller calls the methods of your ants everytime an interesting event occurs e.g. your ant is near a food resource or the ant becomes tired. After the game is started you can do nothing more than watching the small black worker running in a virtual world. For people with a 3D accelerator card even in 3d and not flat.

You can either use C# or Visual Basic for developing your own ant peoples. All you need to start you can find on the coding4fun website from Microsoft.