Turn any part of your screen into a playable level of Super Mario Bros | Hacker News Reader

Turn any part of your screen into a playable level of Super Mario Bros

aaronrandall.com

120 pointsaaronrandall28 comments

Could we get a binary rather than install a dependency manager to install a dependency manager to install god knows what to build the code for an app that we'll probably run once than delete?

I mean, it's cool, but it's a lot of work to get it running. A lot more people could appreciate it if you had a binary.

As far as I can tell, this only works on Mac OSX, which doesn't seem to be explicitly stated. It seems worth pointing out.

All of the technologies it references (e.g. Cocoa, SpriteKit, the various specific API calls it mentions) are all strictly OS X. I would have thought the name "Cocoa" is recognizable enough on its own to indicate OS X.

I had no idea what Cocoa was before this. I still...don't know what Cocoa is.

Cocoa is the name for the set of Objective-C frameworks that powers nearly every OS X and iOS app.

That's how I figured it out.

> All of the technologies it references (e.g. Cocoa, SpriteKit, the various specific API calls it mentions) are all strictly OS X

I've never heard of Cocoa or SpriteKit, as I'm sure is the case for many others who don't use OS X - when seeing the name of something for the first time nobody thinks "oh that must be for OS X"...

> when seeing the name of something for the first time nobody thinks "oh that must be for OS X"

No, but when seeing a few technologies referenced for the first time, your immediate reaction shouldn't be "I bet that's cross-platform" either. And since the screenshots show OS X and the referenced browser (Safari) is an OS X browser, it should be pretty easy to figure out it's an OS X thing.

Seems like a really simple way to do a level-editor on paper - draw it, scan it and convert it.

That's a great idea. If I could get the image processing to run fast enough, I'd love to get to a point where you could have Screentendo overlay a video (of a scrolling level for example), and have the level blocks generate as the video played.

I'm almost 100% sure I've seen this demoed before, and obviously it wouldn't be real-time, but would certainly be a cool proof of concept.

My Sony phone has augmented reality toys that kind of do this. Point your phone at a table top, and dinosaurs appear which are able to navigate objects on the table and trees grow out of things.

The Sony PS4 also has demos with the same idea.

Nintendo, if given that idea, would love it. They have an upcoming game called Mario Maker that lets you create Super Mario Bros levels, on the Wii U. And the 3DS has a camera.

(Well, I can dream...)

Someone already did this:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/30/5666092/pixel-press-review

No binary? I couldn't build this on my Yosemite box. ld: library not found for -lPods-Screentendo-GPUImage

You'll need to install cocoapods (the dependency manager) using:

  sudo gem install cocoapods

then in the project root, run the following to install the dependencies:

  pod install

I'll update the GitHub repo with instructions :)

Thanks!!

So I have done that, and I am still not able to build. It cant find libpods-Screentendo.a. I am assuming that this should be built along with the project. Or prebuilt? I have not had to do much troubleshooting in the XCode build process, so any pointers would be much appreciated.

There's something very strange about using a third-party package manager to install another third-party package manager.

also run the Screentendo.xcworkspace file. Still buggy on MBP Retina, as everything looks zoomed in.

Ha, fantastic stuff! I've always wanted to do this in my code editor, with the platforms being the various levels of code indentation.

Yeah I played around with building levels in TextEdit while I was developing the app - it's a lot of fun watching lines of text turn into platforms for Mario, and it allows for iterating on level design really quickly :)

That is a really funny idea! The execution looks good too. Great thing to have on ones resume/portfolio!

Thanks, glad you liked it!

terrific idea!!

now somebody should hack a bookmarklet?

yes, please, so my free time is not long for this world

I'd love to see someone build this as a bookmarklet - I wouldn't know where to begin with image processing in JavaScript. Maybe a project for another day...

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