Play this game for 20 minutes - learn about concurrency | Hacker News Reader

Play this game for 20 minutes - learn about concurrency

scarybuggames.com

This game is pretty awesome. You can actually get yourself into a paradox, in which case, a big Paradox warning sign comes up reminding you to be careful with causality.

You have to play through level seven to appreciate my point -- fork-and-exec is basic Level One stuff but you need to play for a bit to appreciate the full horror of shared-resource contention.

Aha - I think this thing I just encountered on Level 13 is an object you can synchronize on!

Of course, I now know this game better than I actually know concurrent programming, so this metaphor could be wrong.

I want to create another instance of myself so it can play this game all day while the other one works.

(shameless plug) - If you are an achievement addict try it on my site - http://www.kongregate.com/games/Scarybug/chronotron

I'm stuck on level 15. I found the key is to alter as little as possible and make each life of your bot do a simple action repeated for longer than you think you may need to.

Conceptually reminds me of this game:

http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html

Once you win that game play it again, this time trying to click on all the triangles.

Really fun game, but there's probably better ways to learn about concurrency... Like reading about it and implementing it.

Well, yes. It's not so much a teaching tool as it is a riff on concurrency.

Playing pool really well isn't a great way to learn physics, either. And, yet, if you know a little physics pool becomes more fun, and vice versa.

Nifty game.

It runs slow on my 4-year old computer. Maybe because of all the ads on the page. Using the .swf file directly works better: http://www.scarybuggames.com/chronotron.swf

I had this idea a while back. But I think it would be fun in the context of a massively parallel action or arcade game. Imagine an assault on Normandy. Continue till you get killed, then jump back in time into someone else. If you manage to take out the guy you got you last time, that character is available to play to continue from that point on.

It could also work with a zombie invasion, and as an MMO.

Only one-way interaction between different selves? And you call this time travel.

A paradox could result if you could influence the behavior of the other versions of yourself. That's why it makes sense to use senseless robots.

I'm stuck on 31, I'm so stuck I lowered myself down to looking in the walkthrough and I'm still stuck.

Is it a bug on that level? I throw down the block and try to jump on it but I don't get high enough.

You need both blocks down there.

It's a great ide but there is too much timing involved in it. I prefer either timing or thinking, not both.

I find the combination of timing and thinking is what makes it very interesting.

Really superb game. Few games make you think both logically and philosophically.

Very cool mindbender!

up to 19, haven't seen anything that is hard to figure out, just things that are tricky to time.

There is a clock built into the game. Just perform every action on a multiple of 5s and it is very easy to remember when to move.

duh :p it's not the movement of the character that's obnoxious.

the timing in level 28 is just obnoxious. I would prefer more puzzles and less timing.

This would be a great way to teach kids programming if you combined it with Logo.

has anybody finished it? I'm stuck on level 11.

EDIT: looks like there are 35 levels of increasing difficulty. This could waste a LOT of my day away...

I got to level 13 and saw another see-saw thing and decided I was done. It was really cool while it lasted though.

what's the song playing in the background? i'm tired of leaving the window open and letting it loop lol

I misunderstood.

reading comprehension...

I got to level 35, awesome!

this is great =]

the game is way too easy. even high levels are repetitive and simple and there is a lot of waiting.

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