Doom on the MacBook Pro Touch Bar [video] | Hacker News Reader

Doom on the MacBook Pro Touch Bar [video]

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180 pointsmadmax10864 comments

It's funny, a long time ago, my brother and I were debating what would be a good definition that draws a line between a real "computer", as opposed to a calculator/controller/toy/etc. I was advocating running a real OS kernel as a heuristic (but then you'd have to define what a "real kernel" would be), and him, being a Doom fan, came up with:

"It counts as a real computer if it runs Doom."

Better heuristic: You can run custom programms on it (doom included ;))

I just had to take 5 to ask my brother what his Hacker News handle is to confirm that you're not him.

I'm sorry to tell you it is even more complicated than if it can run doom. Does this count as doom?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TuupoxmeQ6U

Another definition i have seen is the QWERTY keyboard restriction. If i remember correctly some good calculators from Texas Instruments have abc keyword to be allowed on some big math tests in US. (Or is this maybe just a myth in Europe?)

I've always considered a TI-83 to be a computer in its own right. It's called a calculator, but for as long as it's been a thing, it's been used as a more general computer as well.

TI-83 has alphabetic input (but not QWERTY)

Also, that's quite clearly not Doom. A Doom port must have at least E1 of the original Doom, with minimal layout changes. That means multiple levels, and up/down moving platforms, by definition.

That video looks more like wolfenstein

> If i remember correctly some good calculators from Texas Instruments have abc keyword to be allowed on some big math tests in US. (Or is this maybe just a myth in Europe?)

Not a myth. College Board has a blanket ban on QWERTY keyboards in tests, so TI Nspire line has ABCDEF keyboards

Wait, why would they ban keyboard layouts?

probably an outdated heuristic for distinguishing a "real computer" from a "calculator".

I imagine they were trying to define "computer" versus "calculator," and then banned computers.

That is insane. Why?

But then, a lot of things about the College Board are pretty nuts: It is the reason that graphing calculator companies can continue to scam the public by selling overpriced machines running at absurdly low speeds (Their most popular calculator is a 6-15MHz Z80, with 48-128K ram (but YOU, the programmer, can only access 24K): That's pathetic, and yet you can buy a chromebook (a LAPTOP capable of running the famously resource-hungry Chrome) for the same price). The Plus CE did a bit to improve this, but it's still less capable then the phone in your pocket: That is inexcusable).

> Their most popular calculator is a 6-15MHz Z80, with 48-128K ram (but YOU, the programmer, can only access 24K): That's pathetic, and yet you can buy a chromebook (a LAPTOP capable of running the famously resource-hungry Chrome) for the same price). The Plus CE did a bit to improve this, but it's still less capable then the phone in your pocket: That is inexcusable).

The Nspire line isn't that bad.. It's not high-end by any means (it's still a damn calculator), but it at least got the lineup to 21st century.

Yes, but firstly, the Nspire line is nowhere near as popular, and secondly, everyone who would ever need such a calculator is already carrying around a phone that's more powerful, and can run better software (Android has ports of Maxima (the open source descendant of MACSYMA) and REDUCE, as well as simpler CASes), as well as full support for all the calculator software (Android runs Wabbit)

K12 teachers don't want students distracted by phones in class. It's much easier to police which physical device a student is handling than which capability they're exercising.

Even in BYOD netbook world, you can bet all social networking and messaging is blocked at the web filter. (Sometimes time-based restrictions open it for lunch and after school, sometimes not).

>K12 teachers don't want students distracted by phones in class. It's much easier to police which physical device a student is handling than which capability they're exercising.

...Which is why they get away with it. But the calculators are still absurdly overpriced.

Besides, any student can load all sorts of software onto those calculators fairly trivially.

For an earlier example, see the TI-92 and TI-89. The 89 is basically exactly the same as the 92, but with the button layout of the TI-81/85 series.

Programmable calculators and computers are rather close, no?

What about eCig batteries?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvQ6K8ariWs

TI Voyage-200 and TI-92+ had a QWERTY keyboard, and almost the same internals as the TI-89.

It is the same with questions like what counts as intelligence, what counts as alive? The boundaries shy away. In fact it is probably impossible to find simple definitions for these terms, i.e. definitions that get by without special rules for all kinds of instances which just feel more intelligent, alive or like a computer, or less. The definition is irreducible in the sense that we cannot explain our intuition without tracing back the history of our species and of the memes and neuronal firing patterns inside our brains, information that likely cannot be compressed very well. The same applies to human values.

Stephen Wolfram just gave an interesting talk and Q/A session on this problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxQwpdB9wbg

> "It counts as a real computer if it runs Doom."

Haha. I remember back in the days when the benchmark for computing and graphic processing power was measured in terms of "Does it run Microsoft Flight Simulator?"

Also, "Is it a real PC clone?" used the "will it run MS Flight Simulator" test.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=D0O_-ER3Z_gC&pg=PA168&lp...

(Bottom of 3rd column) https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PjwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA41&lpg...

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Wcv9oIHOrjQC&pg=PA170&lp...

If it can run a Turing machine simulator, then it's a real computer.

It counts as a real computer if you can program it with itself.

That's my bar at least.

Does this count? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xCd55oSgO4

A million headless servers would disagree :)

Xvfb?

A million headless servers can X-forward DOOM to a desktop.

The demoscene doesn't really much care for these distinctions, if it has at least a display, the scene will try to get a cube rotating on it, or some copper bars, or something.

Sometimes even a display isn't necessary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1f6UE27KTo

https://web.archive.org/web/20061029111228/http://www.itplay...

The classic Doom Law of Computing: As the time from a computer's release increases, the odds that it will gain a Doom port approaches one.

This is probably in part because Doom is simple enough to implement on most (relatively modern) machines, but also because we're all massive nerds, and Doom is one of the most beloved computer games ever (right behind Tetris, SMB, and Quake).

If you can believe it, the classic Japanese x68000 machines still don't have a completely working port of the game.

Wait, the m68k? No, that's not right: The Amiga got a port, and it's 68k.

Or are you thinking of a different processor?

Behold, the greatest computer of its age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X68000

and a great video on some of the games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQPt69UCyIA

Ah. You should be able to port DOOM to that fairly easily. Especially if it's got SDL, but even if it doesn't...

I expect nobody has bothered yet, because it was Japan-only, and DOOM is largely a western phenomenon: I don't think Japan even got DOOM when it was first released.

Neat! But how great would it be if it just rendered the DOOM status bar down there, while the rest of the game rendered fullscreen on the main display? :D

The best comment on YT so far:

minigunexo12 hours ago (edited)

1300$ just to play doom, amazing we've come full circle.

What's the resolution on the touch bar?

2170x60

I can only imagine the company sourcing these displays thought that was a typo. It's such a crazy aspect ratio.

In another universe that touchbar would be used to relentlessly hound people with advertising since a classic 468x60 ad would snug right in there.

Give it a few months, and that "other universe" will silently merge with our own.

YOU HAVE BEEN INFECTED - CLICK HERE TO CLEAN IT! <click> ... <touchbar gets full of jumping monkeys> HIT THE MONKEY TO WIN $$$$$ !

Just wait for the Chrome team to make it have a JS API

They probably thought Apple was building one of these: http://www.startrek.com/database_article/la-forge-Geordi

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/can-t-see-shit-captain

Why stop at one when you can fit four?

Wouldn't something like Mario be a better fit for that resolution.

Gameplay would be rough, but it would be cool to modify an emulator to render a level preview into the Bar, with a yellow box showing the current player location, or something.

I think NES Mario was originally rendered at 240px height with 16x16 tiles, so to fit that into 60px tall display would neatly be a div by four, with 4x4 tiles. Could be barely playable as-is, and definitely usable as a "minimap"

Yep, The NES's original rendering is 256x240, naturally stretched to a 4:3 aspect ratio. Since TVs tended to be a little "off", Nintendo also recommended not putting anything important in the top+bottom 8 pixels, so all the important info should be in an area 256x224. The hardware used 8x8 tiles, 16x16 color zones in the background, and could group foreground sprites into 8*16 pairs. Games also triggered various interrupts and flag registers based on tile location+overlap, so you'd need to render at the full size, then scale down for display.

Sideways Tetris. Or find a way to have a simple multiplayer game share the same keyboard. 8 people at 270x60 would allow for one window each.

Or you could have a really slow, boring, easy version of Pong...

Defender.

So the perfect resolution to have a 22 player coop run. 96x60 should be enough to play. I think our mobile phone in a slide projector project we did 14 years ago should proof that. Of course we also ran doom on that one. You can see the project here: https://dividuum.de/download/beamer/

This is clearly a gross misuse of the capabilities of the new MBP, clearly it was designed for flappy bird....

Wolfenstein 1D would fit the bill as well: http://www.wonder-tonic.com/wolf1d/

Okay, this is the first time the touch bar convinces me, hahaha.

Only a question of time, really.

Between cat videos, Rick Astley, and Doom Everywhere future digital alien archeologists are going to be very confused.

I'm holding out for the one with "special offers" pricing :D

I didn't know the bar was that high res.

Slightly off topic but it happened so often in the past, that apple products would be ridiculed on launch. Now the same people who complained how Apple is not making computers for them anymore are thinking of "cool" ways to hack the touch bar.

That has nothing to do with how efficient (or not) it is replacing actual keys with a screen. Try again.

Not to mention that every time you read about "same people" complaining about X but doing Y there's no evidence that it's ever the "same people".

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