Two things work for me, either reading on my phone (I have a support thing) with the eye shield to avoid the blue light or listening to music until I feel sleepy enough to stop.
I've considered that, I'm well aware of how easy is to fabricate memories and think they are real, but I've checked with my parents (without giving them the information, just asking questions), the memories are real. To clarify, I'm not claiming to remember everything about being one year old, just to have a few very clear memories that match with what my parents know happened, the layout of the house etc.
I agree with you exactly about the simulation idea of consciousness and the difference between conciousness and self awareness. Here's an interesting question, do you actually remember when you were about 1 year old? Apparently most people don't but I do very clearly. I read something recently that autism is correlated with the ability and I always thought I had a bit of it (like a lot of people that is into computers). For people that don't remember and don't know what he's talking about, being conscious without language (so probably what is like to be a dog) is a world of now, there's no past, or future, no planning, no if this then that, just what you can see and hear and feel at that moment. Emotions come and go like clouds for no reason, you don't have the capacity of wondering about reasons and they are very strong, you don't have the ability to regulate them or to compare them with anything else for perspective.
It doesn't. My point is that finding people, healthy food, safe places and so on pleasant and beautiful benefits us. We use things like symmetry and color to decide if those things are beautiful. Flowers, rainbows etc just happen to have symmetry, color, simplicity, etc too so they get considered beautiful, almost by accident if you know what I mean. I believe in biology that concept is called a spandrel after the architectural term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)
Why are flowers beautiful? For the same reason rainbows, fireworks and a million other things are beautiful: they have symmetry, vivid colors, etc that we evolved to find appealing for our own reasons, selection of mates mostly, healthy fresh food etc. Flowers are beautiful incidentally. That's my guess anyway.
I once read that singing might have evolved before language proper to enhance group cohesion. If so maybe there's a deep instinctive pull towards it. There might be something to this idea, I'm an atheist but when I saw that titanic scene where they are all singing together in the chapel I felt ... something. Maybe I should find a secular way to sing in a group like the a cappella in the article.
Thanks, it started as a hobby project that gradually became more and more "the thing I do" as I noticed it's potential, whether it makes money or not. I'm investigating two routes right now, one is to see if I can get support through patreon, youtube ads and things like that and then eventually release it as open source. The other is to release it as a game on steam, maybe get funding first, but not necessarily. I'm leaning more towards the second one at the moment, people have pointed out that the project would have a wider impact that way.
Thanks! That's an interesting angle I hadn't thought about before. I mentioned in the site creating prototypes of real machines, but I was thinking more of you brainstorming your own ideas. Maybe people can create virtual machines, ask other users to use them in the virtual world, work out all the design bugs, then if people really like it (and it is physically feasible) build it in the real world.
Thanks. Yeah, one of the great inspirations for this project is Emacs, which I love. Emacs is so good because of the different modes that everybody can write. In the future maybe anybody can write a mode for MockMechanics (like the Avatar Mode that I keep talking about), we'll see.
Unless you are talking about the machines themselves? The copier machine for instance can be set to copy in place or not, it has a toggle button for it. So, yeah, people can build library machines with all sorts of toggles, sliders etc to tweak their behaviour, and then you can use those to build even higher machine abstractions.
Hey guys, I'm not sure if I should post this here or create a new post on the main page? I spent the morning implementing the music box that I talked about with @bigiain yesterday. I went even further and created a little submachine to load text file songs from the computer. I hope you like it. If you would like updates like this, follow me as MockMechanics on twitter and Instagram, and if you'd like to support my work I'm now on Patreon too.
Thanks! Clojure all the way. Why? Because lisp is awesome :) I haven't made it open source yet, and I'm not entirely sure I will, depends what's best for the project, if making it a paid game on Steam is the way to go... But even if I do I would have to refactor the code somewhat first.
That's exactly how I have been thinking. What I was thinking was to make it a Steam game, but entirely open ended, maybe with a bit of resource scarcity so that people have to scramble to get what they want. I said to someone else yesterday maybe things like cities with user built transportation systems for rent, resource wars with medieval siege engines all designed in an arms race between users could evolve organically. In a way that combines the two things you mentioned: the shared aspect and the incentive to learn programming. When I was a kid I knew all the pokemon and their stats, why? Because it was required to advance in a game. Now suppose you have a castle and someone figured out a way to outsmart your defenses. Either use programming ideas to update your cannons or lose the castle... I could add a basic "building block" of damage to avatars like being hit with anything moving faster than x, then anything you can design that throws things could be a weapon, figure a way to store balls "under pressure" triggered by a step plate and you have a bomb/booby trap.
edit: (sorry I keep having ideas and editing the post) At some point the game itself might be open kinda like the internet, the reality of the game what things exist where, who has what can be agreed upon with some sort of blockchain system, then several "browsers" can be written to "plugin to the matrix" if you know what I mean.
Thanks! I just looked up "sandbox game" on Wikipedia to refresh my memory and it gave me the idea of maybe adding challenges to make it one of those "solve this problem anyway you can" deals. Maybe a puzzle mode? I'll add it to my idea file.
Someone else mentioned that it crashes on mac but didn't provide the output yet so thanks for that. I don't have a mac but I'll have a look to see if I can fix it.
Thank you so much! I won't, if anything sometimes I go too far trying to make things even simpler. For instance I use a track for both building wagon paths and as a motor, I thought maybe that's confusing but the track value wasn't being used for anything why add yet another part when it isn't necessary? In fact, there are things I know I can simplify. The button part for instance is completely unnecessary, I have built one that looks and works identically using a wagon on a short path and a few chips hidden in another layer. One of the things I may do is to make it a library part that can be imported instead.
Thank you. One idea I thought I might implement is to have little special library machines to do things like read a file and create a physical representation of it so that other machines can manipulate it. Maybe a XML file can be represented by a physical tree which machines could prune and rearrange. You could make sure it works on a small test file then there should be a way to run the program without the expensive 3d rendering on bigger files.
I saw that first one yesterday, it was one of the first things people posted on this thread. Very cool stuff. The second one will be a great reference for the kinds of movements to try to create once I get gear mode working. Thanks.
Simscape Multibody looks very cool and I can see how it and MockMechanics could complement each other: create something super fast without any real physics considerations on MockMechanics just to brainstorm an idea, then once you have narrowed it down, model it properly with Simscape Multibody.
I'm super thankful already for all the support I received with all the comments from you guys. But if you want to support me a little more, now you can.
Maybe this is moot as I'm thinking I may release the code as opensource anyway, but I didn't think I was giving much away by not using proguard, since the code comes from clojure? There is no link to Patreon because I haven't created an account there yet, let me do that right now. And thank you! If I can get some support on something like Patreon, crowdsourcing, youtube ads or something like this I definitely will release the code.
> Any chance of increasing the size of the world and making it like a first person gaming experience?
That's the plan, except it will be the most open ended game ever, what you do inside is up to you... want a epic battle game? Build medieval siege engines yourself and fight other people. Want a city simulation? build the transportation system yourself, charge people to use it...
Thank you. Yes one of the directions I want to take this is to create an avatar you can move around just like minecraft and then interact with your machines like I show in the first video. I always thought educational gamefication is something that could be done better. When I was a kid I knew every pokemon, their evolutions, their powers and I wasn't even trying, I just wanted to play pokered. If I create something that makes people, especially kids, care that much about programming... To storm that castle you have to build a catapult and to do that you have to understand these programming ideas...
Thanks, yeah a couple of people have been saying how they are going to try this with their kids, depending on how that goes I can think about how to take it further in that direction.