HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

monos

78 karma · joined July 9, 2009

http://twitter.com/oberhamsi
submissionscomments
monos··on Why Angry Birds is so successful and popular?
Angry Birds is a poster child for the way "modern indies" design there games:

  * evergreen mechanic
  * cute visuals
  * generated content
monos··on Ask HN: I made an app that makes people happy, how do I let them know about it?
related: http://infiniteblank.com/

Infinite Blank is a massively multiplayer online canvas. The game’s world is endless, because players draw all of it. Anyone can draw a new piece in a blank spot. It then becomes a permanent part of the map.

monos··on List of JavaScript Game Engines
https://github.com/bebraw/jswiki/wiki/List-of-JS-Game-Engine...

direct link to the now "official" github wiki page.

monos··on List of JavaScript Game Engines
full ack. The only way I can speed up my games is by doing less canvas calls, everything else is negligible. Although I A* often runs and a couple dozen simple state machine AIs for the actors.
monos··on List of JavaScript Game Engines
I guess like most of those projects, GameJs grew as a library while I was coding games.

Still, I have only managed to finish small games and the biggest - roguelike RTS - is still in the making http://gamejs.org/apps/rtsimple/ (rough tech demo)

If you do game programming as a hobby, then the only predictable way to finish a game is during a competition. It is much easier to finish a game within 48 hours than with unlimited time.

monos··on New 3D technology without glasses (what could possibly go wrong?)
Nice. Looks good.

But that's not how the facial nerve works. That wouldn't even be the right location to trigger the eye lids. This could possibly work if he put the stimulants on his eye lids. But even then other parts of his face would gringe.

No way to get that kind of specific control over one part of the face without surgery. Certainly not by just sticking something at your temple.

monos··on Inequality in Equalland
> What do I care if 1% of the population have 99% of the > wealth if there are no consequences to it? I certainly > don’t want to reduce inequality out of spite.

You might want reduce it because the lowest x% don't have enough to eat. Share the cake.

monos··on Google Will Become an AI Company
Self-driving cars will be important in 10-20 years that is obvious. You can look into that certain future by watching how far R&D has come in recent years.

But I strongly doubt that cars as we know them today will still be around. Todays car design - fast & heavy - is absurd and only serves to satisfy the image we have of a car. 'Sensible cars' are often not perceived as cars at all <http://www.google.at/images?q=smart>.

Making cars slower triggers a positive cycle of being more efficient (half speed = 1/4 energy), safer and allowing for lighter designs.

The problem of efficiency is not somehow magically solved by making cars 'electric' but only by making cars slower and lighter.

monos··on JavaScript simulation of an iPad

    This is extremely impressive! It always surprises me how 
    far people can go with web scripting languages like
    JavaScript and CSS.
I hate to be the one who pisses on this nice looking project... but you guys do realize that this is not a "simulation of an ipad".

This a couple of jQuery plugins and ~200 LOC of JavaScript to make it look like the iPad interface.

Did anyone actually look at the code?

I'm not even sure I understand what the point of this is.

monos··on Impact HTML5 Game Engine released
Although I'm a gamejs committer, i disagree :)

Take for example doodlejs: it doesn't have any of the things you mention, BUT its scene graph is superior to all other engines.

Not everyone wants the same things in his framework. E.g. sprite animation makes no sense (not a lot) if your lib is vector & tween centric.

See my list of favorites in a comment higher up.

monos··on Impact HTML5 Game Engine released
If you care for game centric libraries that use canvas, then only the following are valid choices.

In my personal favorites order with random remarks:

  * https://github.com/kesiev/akihabara - arcade game centric
  * https://github.com/oberhamsi/gamejs - (my lib) port of PyGame; commonjs
  * https://github.com/biilly/doodle-js - scene graph
  * https://github.com/batiste/sprite.js - simplistic but fast sprite handling
  * https://github.com/fairfieldt/xcjs - coffeescript
  * http://easeljs.com/ -
monos··on Impact HTML5 Game Engine released
1. agreed.

2. flash = javascript + super vector libs + sweet IDE. it has been around for a decade+ so yes: it is better.

3.a. 3D (webgl) does not make 2D obsolete. I'm not sure you imply that?

3.b. not everyone wants a scene graph for doing games. SVG + CSS is superior if you want a scene graph but plenty (and i would argue: the best) libraries for opengl, sdl, you name it are non scene graph driven.

monos··on Impact HTML5 Game Engine released
gamejs.org is my baby.

coolest features are:

   * similar to PyGame.org API (so lots of docs & known patterns)
   * commonjs support
   * server-side support built in (via ringojs.org)
   * modern browsers only
   * MIT license
monos··on Down the 'ls' Rabbit Hole
THE AMULET OF YENDOR: INSIDE THE KERNEL

JUST ONE MORE TURN...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack

monos··on Ask HN: Best server-side Javascript framework
please don't make such general statements about some program being X times slower then another program :|

you will not get good performance and easy scalability for free - no matter which tools you choose.

also see: RingoJS vs. Node.js: Runtime Values http://hns.github.com/2010/09/21/benchmark.html and the follow up http://hns.github.com/2010/09/29/benchmark2.html

monos··on Ask HN: Best server-side Javascript framework
Ringo is fine.

The number of add-on frameworks is probably so small because Ringo came bundled with a web-framework. But it will be removed from the core within the next releases.

And additional frameworks for Ringo are already appearing, like https://github.com/hns/stick or the proprietary http://erbix.com platform

monos··on Dear Foursquare, Gowalla: Please Let’s Stop Pretending This Is Fun
"Twitter strikes me as a very anti-intellectual medium because of the 140 character limitation."

You can always write multiple tweets on the topic. Also it forces you to think about the essence of what you want to say. (122 chars)

monos··on John Carmack on government

    > Discuss their crimes with them and persuade them
    > to pay restitution?
Why restitution? In some cases - violent crimes - any amount of money would not be enough. Punishment has no positive effect for society.

Discussing and admitting the crimes would help the victim and be cheaper. In our current law system the victim, who is the one we should pay most attention to, is mostly ignored.

For more on this controversial standpoint read up on how Tutsi & Hutu learnt to live together after the genocide.

or:

When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/0691148643

monos··on DumbledORM a novelty PHP ORM in &lt; 200 lines
in this context 'Object-relational mapping' is the most likely meaning.
monos··on Rethinking JavaScript for-loops
I sometimes find this nicer to read when I just want to collect a property from an array of objects (yes, map would work too):

    var ids = [story.id for (story in stories)]
monos··on Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.
in austria everyone pays ~7% into the public health fund. by law the insurrance is bound to send you a letter listing the benefits you recieved (per quarter i think).

sometimes mind boggeling number - e.g., several thousand euro for a short hospital stay - sometimes zero.

monos··on Google Translate now supports Latin
isn't it more likely someone or a group of people "contributed" this bad translation.

it doesn't even make sense.

monos··on Notch (the Minecraft Developer) Answers Your Questions
Some of his reasoning can be found in posts in that thread

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=6273.0

I like to think that 'interesting decisions' are what make any game fun but that alone doesn't explain it... ludology?

monos··on Why node.js excites me
"With node.js you don't worry about performance (...)"

"Now we know that we can easily write well performing servers (...)"

these kind of statements are why i rarely read nodejs articles nowadays. you can't just say that in general.

monos··on Ask HN: JavaScript book recommendations?
Start with:

http://eloquentjavascript.net/ (has pdf download)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/A_re-introduction_to_JavaSc...

Most JS books are geared towards browser scripting. I would still recommend "JavaScript. The Definitive Guide" by David Flanagan.

Also watch all the Crockford Videos on JS: http://video.yahoo.com/watch/111593/1710507

After that all you will ever need is:

  * JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford (must have)
  * https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference
     (extensive, lots of examples and hints)
monos··on In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars (2009)

  > I just don't want to see some zealot telling me I can't have a car,
  > and that I am some sort of evil person for having one.
I am not saying you are a bad person, but giving a car to everyone - like we do right now - is a terrible idea.

I'm hoping for legislation that will ban private persons from buying cars. No one (...) needs half a ton of metal and 70PS to move his 70kg ass.

monos··on Why is computer science a sausage fest?
It doesn't translate to coding skills, but the underlying task is similar:

You must act in a system with lots of arbitrary, human-made rules and must figure out the rules and how to use them to your advantage.

The difference to other games - board or sports - is that figuring out the rules is usually part of the game. They are never - fully - explained to you.

monos··on Threaded vs Evented Servers
Not specific to this article:

I find it unrealistic that threaded vs evented (or blocking vs non-blocking I/O) comparisons always use a slow database server as the prototypical thing to wait for.

I get that this is not the point but to a newcomer it must seem like "oh.. database servers are super slow, I must first and foremost worry about optimizing access to them".

If your queries regularly take more then 10ms to complete, something is wrong with the database (do caching, put database closer to querying server - maybe even on the same machine).

monos··on BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher
US was lucky that it was such a big spill.

~ 15.000 barrels per year spill in nigeria since 50 years. won't fix. (half of what deepwater spilled per day).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_the_Nig...

monos··on The Feynman Algorithm
not sure what the point of this is, but for hard problems (= you have no experience or it involves humans) that won't work.

you can't know what the problem is until you tried a couple of solutions.

Page 1 of 3Next →