by archon1410 on 1/27/24, 8:58 PM
by boredhedgehog on 1/28/24, 7:29 AM
I'm greatly fascinated by this kind of thing, but I have to call it "this kind of thing" because I don't even know if there are genre terms to categorize and analyze them.
They're inspired by game algorithms, but they aren't games; Conway's "Game of Life" was a misnomer. They're animated, but they aren't scripted like animations. In the real world we have someone like David C. Roy, who calls his art "kinetic sculptures".
Algorithmic motion pictures? Game simulators? Autonomous automatons?
by dorus42 on 1/28/24, 11:59 AM
by sega_sai on 1/27/24, 10:08 PM
It is really cool. It would be interesting to make the speed proportional to the either the number of squares owned or the square root of that. Because right now as the area the ball owns gets smaller, the number of hits will increase at the same speed.
by ramijames on 1/28/24, 1:26 PM
This is genuinely beautiful on a few levels. Esthetically it is pleasing to just sit and watch. Philosophically it is interesting in that it is a digital metaphor for an ongoing struggle.
Lastly, and most interestingly, it remixes two really simple old ideas into something new. This is an exceedingly rare thing to do well.
Kudos. Many kudos.
by geor9e on 1/27/24, 8:52 PM
3 colors would get interesting, because as the other two bully one into a corner, the small space causes rapid block zapping, quickly bringing it back from the brink of defeat.
by senkora on 1/27/24, 8:49 PM
by ognarb on 1/28/24, 1:19 AM
by breaker-kind on 1/28/24, 3:26 AM
by cypherpunk666 on 1/28/24, 4:21 AM
by TacticalCoder on 1/27/24, 9:08 PM
There's beauty in knowing that one could be ported and run perfectly fine on any old 8 bit computer! So simple yet mesmerizing...
by dbrueck on 1/27/24, 11:22 PM
Darn, I wish they had named it breakout wars instead.
by billylo on 1/27/24, 9:39 PM
What if it has real paddles? left-hand (using A,Z) vs. right-hand mode (K,M)? :-)
by totetsu on 1/28/24, 3:47 AM
It’s like staring into a mirror for the soul. It’s just dots and square why should it feel so dramatic
by orenlindsey on 1/27/24, 8:37 PM
Only a single HTML file. All you need.
by layer8 on 1/27/24, 10:57 PM
There’s a universe in which it will reach a yin-yang configuration.
by throwaway2046 on 1/27/24, 8:36 PM
So hypnotizing... I was waiting for something magical to happen when the two balls touch.
by Wowfunhappy on 1/28/24, 2:55 AM
I wish the speed of the balls didn't change. I would prefer that randomness come from slight changes to the bounce angle.
by jmmv on 1/28/24, 9:40 PM
So cool I had to spend an hour replicating it in EndBASIC:
https://repl.endbasic.dev/?run=jmmv/pongwars.bas -- Super-hacky and buggy, but it works for a quick demo! Make sure to press any key while this runs to drop into the interpreter and play around :)
by ericskiff on 1/27/24, 10:12 PM
by pbiggar on 1/27/24, 9:02 PM
Would love to be able to speed this up!
by quercusa on 1/28/24, 6:32 PM
Setting the with to 1200 in
<canvas id="pongCanvas" width="1200" height="800">
give flatter bounces off the long walls. This makes for some interesting 'drill' patterns
by charlieyu1 on 1/28/24, 10:11 AM
Interesting, but is it possible to speed up, or change the color scheme?
by prakashn27 on 1/28/24, 8:52 AM
Can someone explain what is use of this ? Is there something I am missing?
More confined the area ball bounces more
Other ball always occupies 1 spot at time
These two conditions make this game never ending
by Tepix on 1/28/24, 1:30 AM
Neat.
Isn't it a bug that sometimes the ball drills deeper?
by widea on 1/28/24, 11:01 AM
Interesting, I wonder if randomness and jitter as its source play a part here. Than, is this the visualisation of a True Random Number Generator?
by qwertyforce on 1/27/24, 8:42 PM
dx1*=2;
dy1*=2;
dx2*=2;
dy2*=2;
by busfahrer on 1/28/24, 10:29 PM
This reminds me of a blog post a while advocating less state, as a demo they implement the infamous DVD screensaver completely stateless.
by Duanemclemore on 1/28/24, 3:36 PM
Tooo cool. I sat and watched it play for a length of time that's longer than I'm comfortable admitting last night.
by Waterluvian on 1/28/24, 12:26 AM
I love how the “losing” side has a shorter distance to go to “fight back” so it is a somewhat endless battle.
by MegaDeKay on 1/28/24, 4:41 PM
This would look great running on a HUB75 LED panel driven by an ESP32!
by qwertox on 1/28/24, 12:10 PM
Great idea, but watching it makes me feel terribly anxious.
by tamimio on 1/27/24, 9:22 PM
It look like the white ball is faster..
by jb1991 on 1/28/24, 10:13 AM
This is unexpectedly hypnotizing.
by robblbobbl on 1/28/24, 10:23 AM
haha cool, reminds me of kid cudi day 'n' night
by BorisMelnik on 1/29/24, 6:25 PM
very cool! reminds me of Arkanoid
by eigenvalue on 1/28/24, 2:18 AM
Not trying to steal anyone's thunder here, but I was so taken with this little program when I saw it earlier today on Twitter that I thought it might be fun to make it somewhat interactive, so that the players could actually influence the path of the balls using the keyboard, and also activate a "speedup" (mode but at the expense of their ability to influence the path). I also added some charts to track the state over time. You can "play" it here:
https://dicklesworthstone.github.io/ball_fighters/
And code is here:
https://github.com/Dicklesworthstone/ball_fighters
I give full credit to the original author of this post FWIW.