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Automat

automat.org

256 pointssurprisetalk91 comments

So let me get this straight, not only does it not explain what it is, it's a bit of a puzzle to even get to the download links, and then it straight up downloads an .exe which you expect me to run on my computer?

Give me more info without me having to pry it out of you through finding your github which honestly isn't much more descriptive.

I don't think you are the intended audience for this. I also don't think the project is finished.

It is great to see projects like this, clearly a labour of love rather than beaten out of someone for some faceless corporate website.

It is always the experiments like this that you remember. 99% of the web is a forgettable experience.

Props to the creator for sharing this with us.

I like the website. The little puzzle holds my attention for enough seconds to make me curious. The issue is just the lack of information after you figure it out. I still can't tell what this software is. It "plays games"? Is it supposed to be a game-playing AI? Is it a game console? A fantasy console? A game engine?

I wish web designers would understand they do not have unilateral, unchecked power to make my browser do what they want - if they want that power they're going to have to ship a PDF or a program.

The accessibility for this site additionally looks like it's a goddamn nightmare.

> I wish web designers would understand they do not have unilateral, unchecked power to make my browser do what they want

They don't have that power, which is why they cannot do that. What they can do though, is use the provided checked powers (HTML, CSS and JS APIs) to deliver whatever damn experience they want. And if you don't like it, you can close the page.

> if they want that power they're going to have to ship a PDF or a program.

The comment you're replying to, seems to say the website is literally doing that.

There is some more information on their GitHub page [1].

"Automat's objective is to be able to semi-autonomously play a variety of games. It's the first step towards a more general environment for interacting with computers."

[1] https://github.com/mafik/automat

You drink the coffee by holding the cup to the bottom of the screen. When cup is empty, you can clip the github logo and go to the repo.

https://github.com/mafik/automat

I thought Automat was the framework for displaying the website, but I guess it isn't.

If you click on the moleskine notebook, you can read seven pages of "handwritten" notes, though they are full of analogies and exhortations that still don't actually explain what it is.

I did click on it and got nothing. It appeared to 'pick up' and then immediately 'put down' the notebook. Guess I wasn't holding my mouth right..

If you look at it as if it were an everyday object, where would you start opening it?

I also appreciated the subtle hints of the VHS logo on the tape and the display.

There's no notebook for me. There's a black square for some reason.

However if you double click and it zooms in there is no way to zoom out to actually see both sides of the notebook.

if I have to sit and think about what to do on your website without reading a manual, then it has already failed the user experience department

This style of website will be rife soon - there’s more and more popping up. Even yesterday, I was looking at https://comancheindians.tilda.ws/en

These websites would have been super hard to resource the assets, but now with Gen AI it’s simple.

When I was at university, Flash was very popular.

Websites like this were our main projects.

It was easy to make them team projects, they asked us to split between programmer and designer.

The designer had to create the assets.

We had a photo lab and the designer was sent into town to take photos.

We weren't allowed to use stock images, which would have speeded up the process.

However, it was still relatively simple for young adults to create the elements.

AI is cool, and yes, it will make everything faster.

But I don't think the wall here was feasibility, it's more that the skeuomorphism trends ended and the market was saturated with highly dynamic interactive websites thanks to Flash making them easy to manage.

So the trends stopped.

It's nice to see it coming back, it was a lot of fun creating them.

A lot of people’s personal sites are still like this. The trend never really bucked for that.

Although it’s more the websites for designers and artists rather than developers.

There are also websites that showcase these types of websites, although I don’t know any anymore.

I have to say, building these kind of websites is more fun now in HTML than Flash because you aren’t constrained to a fixed viewport. And HTML has surpassed in Flash in features and you have WebGL and WebAssembly and other fun things… well, except a nice IDE with a timeline.

Why is this formatted like one of those wanky linkedin posts?

The wrapped monospace text in HN's comment textarea, on a narrow mobile display, tends to look imposingly long. If each sentence renders as four "lines" long in the textarea, then some people get the feeling that they should put a paragraph break after each sentence. Even when their text takes hardly any space at all once it's rendered in non-monospace (let alone on non-mobile.)

Bingo! I use a vertical screen.

It's really not that hard to do. The big trade off here would be SEO and performance. So although they are good art projects or infographic type sites it's fairly useless for other things.

Ok so hard is a subjective quantifier. I should have said time consuming. Look at the link I shared. With Gen AI the amount of time involved would be a fraction compared to doing it without. I’d bet 1% when including things like concept development and look development.

I can’t imagine the way you build this website is the same way you build your static sites or a landing page. Is it WebGL? Looks extremely complex to be honest.

Author here :) There is no trick here actually. It's just HTML / JS / CSS. Browsers are pretty good at compositing CSS transforms - and know how to handle DOM updates coming from event handlers & requestAnimationFrame. There is one CSS hint that speeds it up a little "will-change: transform". Another important ingredient is to update the object position in the (pointermove) event handler - so that the responsiveness is low - physics engines also could do this, but it's usually an overkill.

You can take a look at the script in the website's sources - it's inline.

The trick is to use a game engine or something similar (not vanilla CSS/HTML). Flutter web would work well here, once Safari's WebAssembly GC support gets merged, you will have a lot of options.

This website can be written with vanilla JS, HTML and CSS on any framework or in a raw HTML file.

If this was still 2004, you could have gone to DyanmicDrive.com and stolen some sample code.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040117050039/http://dynamicdri...

An interesting experiment, very reminiscent of the early 90s' Magic Cap, Microsoft Bob, et al. But objects in physical space afford a discoverability that can't be replicated here, and the metaphor thus quickly and inevitably becomes a burden.

Also, in the Flash days, everyone and their dog had this sort of thing as their personal \ portfolio site.

What even is it? I read the github repo but that explains nothing about what it actually is.

From the Github Readme[1]:

Automat's objective is to be able to semi-autonomously play a variety of games. It's the first step towards a more general environment for interacting with computers.

Currently Automat's functionality is limited to keyboard macro recording & playback. It's fairly unstable but if you're lucky and it runs on your machine, it can be useful for automating some basic actions.

[1] https://github.com/mafik/automat

That's not really helpful. It's software that plays games on its own? But also it's some sort of new GUI environment? But also, all it can do is record and playback keyboard macros? What actually _is_ it?

edit: I haven't downloaded it because I don't have access to a Windows PC. But I guess, based on that description, it's basically AutoHotkey with a snazzy UI?

Finally, I can automate Factorio.

Yeah I had no clue what this site was until reading the comments. I saw you could move things on the page around, then gave up because I had no idea what the point was. I didn't even find the github link until I saw your comment and decided to play around more.

Yes

Marek gave some helpful background for this project during a recent Future of Coding meetup (first demo in the stream).

[0] https://mrogalski.eu

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7z77QGARLE

[2] https://futureofcoding.org

Ah, I guess then that this is unrelated to the 1978 Brazilian electronic music LP?

https://www.discogs.com/release/443321-Automat-Automat

  "in the beginning there was the "MACHINE"
  the survival and the organization of the
  planet depended upon the "MACHINE"
  the future an the past depend upon
  the "MACHINE"... the past?
  but who wanted the "MACHINE"... ?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

I thought that was an italian album?

IF Discogs is accurate (often is but does have some errors) THEN it's Italian artists, Italian management releasing via a Brazilian record subsidiary (a number of UK groups, for example, recorded and pressed in the Carribean)

Automat Italian one-album duo with veteran songwriters - producers from the progressive rock era. Their album is an electronic disco-tinged suite with an alien - futuristic concept.

    Sites: italianprog.com 
    Members: Claudio Gizzi, Romano Musumarra

EMI-Odeon Fonográfica, Industrial e Eletrônica S.A.

    Brazilian record company and wholly owned subsidiary of EMI Ltd. operating from 1974, successor of Indústrias Elétricas E Musicais Fábrica Odeon S.A..

Ah yes, indeed, my apologies, discogs threw me a loop. Wikipedia says it was Romano Musumarra and Claudio Gizzi, two Italian fellows.

I don't get it, what is this supposed to be? Another drag and drop? I am failing to understand the uniqueness of this.

Also, if you put the cup on the tape and try to move the tape, the cup removes itself.

Open the notebook and flip through it. Drink the coffee (drag the mug downwards). Put the floppy in the device. Put the VHS tape in the device.

I first tried to shake the coffee to see if I could make a mess, didn't work. When the mug is empty, the github logo becomes visible and you can click through to the github repo.

That's an illustration of the difficulties. I got the disk, video dvd and even drank the coffee but I initially thought the notebook was some sort of box for the video so didn't realise you could open it to read!

I think that's on purpose/by design, so that users are nudged into exploring. Things like these were pretty common in adventure games back in the days, which I probably spent too much time on playing...

How do you open the notebook?

I can drag it around, no problem. The cursor also changes to a pointy hand when over notebook's right side, but clicking doesn't do anything. Nor does click-and-hold-then-dragging.

Clicking on the right side (pointy hand) worked for me.

Drag the floppy to the console and you'll get a download link for the tool.

That was very touchy for me; it took 4 or 5 goes to get the floppy in, at least. The tape worked easily. (I didn't see the floppy or notebook being able to do anything)

Got so far, but what does the tool do?

It looks like it's some sort of game-playing AI?:

> Automat's objective is to be able to semi-autonomously play a variety of games. It's the first step towards a more general environment for interacting with computers.

That's not what I got from the notebook, though. From the notebook, I thought it was some sort of new programming paradigm, so I'm confused.

It’s like a mini myst puzzle as an way of consuming content

"Automat's objective is to be able to semi-autonomously play a variety of games. It's the first step towards a more general environment for interacting with computers."

What is this wonderful device that takes VHS tapes and floppies? :)

The old skeuomorphism used analog analogies. I like that this demo uses older computing technology.

Generally I think the time is right for a reversion to richer textured interfaces. GUIs are pretty pointless for 90% of the desktop software I use, but if you’re not going to do the decent thing and give me a good textual interface, at least give me some eye candy instead of these stale, dreary flat interfaces.

This is like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etoys_(programming_language). About fifteen years ago I used to teach high school students that came along to my university to get a taste of IT a session called "How to Write a Computer Game in Ten Minutes" using Etoys. I found this was the fastest way to get all of those "Tech Savvy" (ugh) teenagers an experience of writing computer programs instead of learning word-processing and spreadsheets they did in Design & Technology. As an extra I got them adding track sensors to control steering with "Artificial Intelligence". So isn't this a fancy version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)?

Is there a way to play with the app presented in the video?

Edit: Looks like you have to pick the blue 3.5 floppy, insert it into the video player and then you see the links to download windows / linux binaries[1].

[1]: https://github.com/mafik/automat/releases

After ignoring the download links I ejected the floppy, drank some coffee, and read from the notebook. What did you try?

I like how the website is a great visual description of why skeumorphism is terrible. Its also fun to use.

Kinda wish the coffee mug left a coffee ring when you set it on the napkin.

Yes! I wish CSS had decals support!

I was really hoping for a web ode to Horn & Hardart [1] or at the very least FEBO [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO

Interesting, there is a short description of the project in the Moleskine book that you can click through after dragging it into view.

Man, I thought that was a dead tablet!

The notes within are interesting, though it's not clear to me if Automat itself meets those ideals? (Or even tries to? From what I understood, the notebook seems to first praise tech that is ubiquitous and enduring, but then rejects web apps due to bloat?)

Is this something like LabView for hippies?

It was lovely until I double tapped and accidentally zoomed in with no apparent way to zoom back out again.

Otherwise, lovely.

I like the easter egg where you can drink the coffee if you drag it to the bottom of the screen.

You just came up with a good name for this type of interface: the Easter Egg Interface in which everything need to be discovered, a bit like walking through a forest with paths to the South, South-East and North and there is an old house there with a mailbox, the flag on the mailbox is raised.

The name in vogue a few decades back was "mystery meat navigation."

That just sounds like an interface without enough affordances to be understandable to the user. Reminds me of Snapchat (at least when I used it a couple years back) - to block a user just tap and hold their name, then swipe right twice, then turn your phone upside down.

A point and click adventure :)

I think it’s got a unique, nerdy charm that stands out in the best way.

You can't put the diskette into the device by pushing it in. Instead, you have to hold it at a position that makes an arrow appear and when you release it, it will push itself magically.

Reminds me of Spycraft: The Great Game

I am pretty sure it had this kind of interface complete with the sound effects, or maybe i am confusing it with another game from that era

> "Future proofing means to run on any computer, regardless of its form factor. From PC to VR goggles..."

> "Some devices will require headless operation. They should still be accessible over some web-based interface."

> Running on any hardware (let's but (sic) the bar at Raspberry PI (sic)) means that every megabyte counts.

> "This elliminates (sic) browser-based solutions at the get go"

How does that conclusion follow from anything that was said?

Anyone else who was a child of the early 90s get immediate Myst vibes when flipping through the notebook? I think it’s the page turn sound effect.

It's interesting to observe how something so outwardly trivial or whimsical can elicit a visceral agitation borne from ignorance.

The splash page is nearly illegible. The only textual description of what this product is renders partially outside of the viewport. The splash video has a fake-LCD effect and is so small that I can't see what it is demonstrating. What is this thing?

I tried for a while to spill the coffee on everything, but I was never able to make it happen.

perhaps off topic: for many months i’ve been thinking about creating tactile buttons. are there any APIs to produce vibration in the phone via the browser? i’d like a way to create a vibration response curve when toggling a switch. i’d like to feel the friction and resistance like a real-life switch. is this within the realm of possibility with current browser APIs?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Vibration_A...

Not supported on iOS

thanks will look into it, pity about iOS

Delightful! I wish there was more.

Reminds me a little bit of widget workshop from the 90s

There's a name collision with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

Automat is a common European word for 'machine' or 'vending machine', many languages have it.

Only if the context in which you're writing/speaking is such that you are likely to be referring to a historical restaurant genre or whatever this thing is

Automata were super common in popular culture in the 50s and 60s. The way of the future. I think many people would first think of them, especially without context.

Aaaand I'm still stuck on the anachronistic idea of hierarchical menus with text that explains what you're about to do, along with keyboard shortcuts and - in the non-mac world - "mnemonics" (sequential keyboard shortcuts).

High-efficiency symbolic communication, in other words.

I appreciate the whimsy, but also, I don't have the patience to figure out how to do anything with this.

Its 1998 again!

hey everyone

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