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Web Nuggets: Genius gamer creates working computer in-game

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      CommentAuthorgroundxero
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2010
     (8085.1)
    2nd2ndlife

    Genius gamer creates working computer in-game

    Chris Head (IDG News Service)
    17 April, 2010

    Dwarf Fortress is similar to many "God Games" in which the player assumes the role of an omnipotent being concerned with the care of a group of virtual followers.

    However, instead of instructing the dwarfs to create a home, dwarves under the command of one player, "Jong89," have recently put the finishing touches on a working digital computer.

    The computer consists of "672 pumps, 2000 logs, 8500 mechanisms and thousands of other assort bits and knobs like doors and rock blocks."


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  2.  (8085.2)
    WHAT. There is no end to how cool that is.

    Hmm... I wonder if that computer can play Dwarf Fortress...
    • CommentAuthoricelandbob
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2010
     (8085.3)
    ... and then it becomes sentinent, believes the dwarves to be a threat to it´s existence, and therefore brings about an apocalypse with wooden "terminators"

    No wait! it could happen....
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      CommentAuthorCameron C.
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2010
     (8085.4)
    Ummm... well... what the?
  5.  (8085.5)
    Oh God... the thought of someone having their character in Second Life play Second Life...
    • CommentAuthorRenThing
    • CommentTimeApr 19th 2010
     (8085.6)
    @warped

    You think that might cause a recursive singularity?
  7.  (8085.7)
    @RenThing
    Wouldn't it actually be a sort of reverse-singularity? Instead of our smart computers learning to make smarter things, our timewasting distractions find a way to waste their own time while also wasting ours. I assume the end result is all intelligence grinding to a halt.
    • CommentAuthorFlabyo
    • CommentTimeApr 20th 2010
     (8085.8)
    If the tools are there this is surprisingly easy to do. Computers are, in their purely logical form, really quite simple things to construct.

    I admire the man for realising you could do it with Dwarf Fortress though, and for having the patience to actually do it.

    You could probably do it in Little Big Planet as well if the PS3 had more internal memory to hold it. As it is, I've seen adding machines built in that.
    • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeApr 20th 2010
     (8085.9)
    So how many people (connected by the internet) would you need to emulate am 8 bit CPU?
  10.  (8085.10)
    Anyone ever see that 1999 film, the 13th Floor?
  11.  (8085.11)
    The question is can he build a virtual computer with greater computing power than the physical computer it's stored on?
    • CommentAuthorZJVavrek
    • CommentTimeApr 20th 2010
     (8085.12)
    It's weird. I read the topic title and went "Pfft, somebody already did that in Dwarf Fortress." I mean, this isn't a terribly new idea to the DF community.
    • CommentAuthorFlabyo
    • CommentTimeApr 21st 2010
     (8085.13)
    @Kosmoplit - one. It just wouldn't be very fast.

    @Brendan - If you don't care about the speed it runs it, you could probably get to something computationally equivalent in power. You'd need a ridiculous amount of memory to actually do it though.

    Emulation is a fun thing to read up on if you're not familiar with it. Machines pretending to be other machines is a pretty fantastic thing. There are emulators for the Bletchley park machines that will run on your laptop quite comfortably. The Gameboy advance can play Doom using a CPU that costs a fraction of the price of the 486 you would've needed when it first appeared.

    My favourite comedy emulation thing is where you take one of those arcade classic collections, lets say the Capcom one for the PlayStation One, and then run *that* on a PlayStation 3. An emulator, running an emulator. It's actually possible to go to ridiculous depths now (A spectrum emulator running on an Amiga emulator running on a Windows emulator running on Linux...)

    Required reading for people who know a little math and want to understand what I meant by 'purely logical form' in my earlier post. The Turing Machine.
    • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeApr 21st 2010 edited
     (8085.14)
    Flabyo - yeah but I'd like to get several hundred - and use them to play Pong or Santa Paravia or something like that.
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      CommentAuthorgroundxero
    • CommentTimeApr 22nd 2010
     (8085.15)
    @meaninglessnoise

    When I read about this it immediately reminded me of 'The 13th Floor'. Well, that and Dwight's "Second Second Life" from 'The Office'.

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