Raspberry Pi 'community'

[Heater]

darkbibble,

The last computer game I ever played for any time was Star Glider on an Atari ST520. When I finally exceeded 100,000 points it ranked me as "Cheat". WTF? Never played a computer game since.

Well, I did mess with the original Doom a bit.

[Heater]

Hmm...Just occurred to me that "ISIS Operating System" probably has a very different meaning nowadays. I guess some 3 letter agency is now monitoring me !

[jamesh]

I wrote a text adventure for the BBC that was published - Marooned on Mars it was called. Also wrote one based on the original Tron film that won the school a BBC micro, and me a..,...Walt Disney book. Yay!

Loved writing those. Even had assembler subroutines for text output, to stop words being split over lines, meant you could squeeze a few more words in the BBC memory. IRC, the Acorn text adventures actually compressed text to get more in.

[darkbibble]

would be great to have a tutorial on the main site on how to write text adventures in python or scratch, as kids love making stories up. and a lot of adults could be interested in it too

[ecotec]

Interesting points raised here, if I can add one extra item. I know the "forum" is strongly adverse to tapatalk, but I find the app great to keep track of forums on my commute, syncing over both phones and tablets. I suspect if the forum supported tapatalk it would continue to build the community.

[Heater]

ecotec,

...I find the app [tapatalk] great to keep track of forums on my commute,...

What problem does this solve? I check the rapsi forum and others on my commute with no problem already.

I certainly don't need:

"Tapatalk can provide advertising that seamlessly integrates into the user experience."

or any third party like tapatalk spying on or at least tracking my every move.

[W. H. Heydt]

I have (or should have) the source to the ascii-art Star Trek game from the mid-70's. Mainframe fortran source code.
Except that it's on an FDR backup from a mainframe, I don't have a tape drive, or a mainframe.
But if I get it off I'll port it.

Somewhere I have an assembly listing and output of a program I wrote in ALC (IBM S/360 assembly language) to find all solutions to the Soma Cube. Took a S/360-40 4.5 hours to run. If I find it again, I should re-write it in something that will run on a Pi. It would probably run in seconds....

[W. H. Heydt]

darkbibble,

The last computer game I ever played for any time was Star Glider on an Atari ST520. When I finally exceeded 100,000 points it ranked me as "Cheat". WTF? Never played a computer game since.

Well, I did mess with the original Doom a bit.

Last computer game I played was...this morning when I logged in to Lord of the Rings Online.

[Heater]

Thing is, getting a computer to do whatever it is you want to do is game enough for me. No matter if you are programming "on the metal" for some micro-controller, fighting with some operating system or libraries, or writing a web app.

Who has free time to play games?

[lpsw]

I think we all do, life is just a game.

[ecotec]

ecotec,

...I find the app [tapatalk] great to keep track of forums on my commute,...

What problem does this solve? I check the rapsi forum and others on my commute with no problem already.
I certainly don't need:
"Tapatalk can provide advertising that seamlessly integrates into the user experience."
or any third party like tapatalk spying on or at least tracking my every move.

The problem is solves is ease and convenience, I have one app to check all the forums I follow. Its ease of use and it saves be lots of time. Its also much more efficient when relying on 2/3g cellular networks. I do take your point on tracking and its valid, but I'm OK with the unobtrusive text ads.

If its adopted you can choose not to use it.

[Heater]

lpsw,

I think we all do, life is just a game.

I think you have to state what you mean by "game" there.

Sometimes life is a fight to the death. As it was in the second world war for my father and the first world war for my grandfather. And, sadly, countless others before and since.

Do you want to compare that to a game of tiddlywinks or whatever is the latest chart topping computer game? Played on a rainy day when there is nothing more pressing to do.

[Pithagoros]

Ooh, getting a bit serious.

I don't get time for games, last game I spent any serious time on was the original Taito Space Invaders.

[mthomason]

"Hmmm, looks like Inform 7 works on the Pi, and it looks like it might be possible to write an extension to talk to the Pi's GPIO."

I justs had a look at that site and am confused by the need for interpreters and virtuals machines are needed to manage a huge string of IF, ELSE, THEN, GOTO, commands

It's not a virtual machine as in something like VMWare or Virtualbox. It's more like a Java VM - it just sits and processes instructions and converts those at runtime to machine code, meaning the games themselves don't need compiling for specific processors or operating systems. Sure, you could write a true compiler for it, but with text adventures run it's not like you need to worry about speed. I guess they find the portability of being able to run the same text adventures on any platform far more valuable than squeezing things down to tiny machine-specific executables.

[skspurling]

would be great to have a tutorial on the main site on how to write text adventures in python or scratch, as kids love making stories up. and a lot of adults could be interested in it too

Okay, back to an interesting topic. I think text based games can be very creative and educational, as it allows for a more detailed story line, and teaches logic and decision making. You can also use this format to tie the Pi into other classes, such as history or literature.

Why doesn't someone make a text adventure tutorial in the resources area?

[jbeale]

I think the MagPi magazine has shown at least one simple interactive text game in Python (?) I spent several of my early computer years playing text adventures (eg. the Zork series) and thinking about writing my own, although never got beyond very small-scale test worlds. Previous to that, wrote some paper-based equivalents (Do you walk through the door? Turn to page 7..) Come to think, I believe I actually typed in a lot of basic code from a magazine to get an "Eliza" program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

[lpsw]

lpsw,

I think we all do, life is just a game.

I think you have to state what you mean by "game" there.

Sometimes life is a fight to the death. As it was in the second world war for my father and the first world war for my grandfather. And, sadly, countless others before and since.

Do you want to compare that to a game of tiddly winks or whatever is the latest chart topping computer game? Played on a rainy day when there is nothing more pressing to do.

Not at all. No insult to any military veterans intended.
I don't understand the tiddly thing. Life is a game, but a little more complex than that.

Edit: corrected typo

[Heater]

lpsw,

What, you never played tiddlywinks as a kid? That is a game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiddlywinks

I was not really demanding respect for war veterans in particular.

I am questioning your meaning of "game".

If one says "life is a game" that implies there are some games that are not life. Can you name one?

Life is not a game. You did not choose to play, you were born anyway. You never can win, we all die in the end.

If you insist that "life" = "game" then one or other of those words has totally lost it's meaning.

Yeah, I know, I'm just being pedantic

[blc]

I think the thing I find frustrating with this forum sometimes is the same frustration you get with all forums: it's a text based interaction with essentially anonymous participants. I know it can be a bit of a cliche to say it, but people often lose sight of the fact that there's a person behind that avatar, and people might say things or phrase things in a way that they wouldn't do in real life.

Having said that I still think this forum is the most useful resource out there when it comes to matters related to the Pi. If someone hasn't already solved my problem, or someone can't give me the answer, then someone can usually put me on the right track to figuring out the answer myself.

The innovation of basic circuit building ,and understanding is loosing favor
It is all pre-packs and plug in circuit boards now," Soldering Irons what are they"
Test benches nearly obsolete I'm speaking from experience having worked as
a technician for for many years, Seeing both sides , before the chip and and after
the chip. All very good for production lines. I've been retired 20 yrs, but still miss
the buzz of fault finding

If you are interested in the Pi, it is worthwhile learning basic electronics.

I blame surface mount components... and fat fingers... of course, aging eyes don't help. And, as clock frequencies go up, so does the cost of test gear. If you can't test it, you might as well buy prebuilt components and modules. I love the idea of wire wraping s100 cards, but my generation just built with isa, pci, and pci-e cards on a motherboard.

If you're really going to start taking things seriously, you really do need to go surface mount. I'm going through this transition right now: a lot of the components I want to use simply don't exist in through-hole variants; the pins are so densely packed that a through-hole package would be unfeasibly large, or the manufacturer simply doesn't offer a through-hole variant in the first place. It's extremely frustrating for me: to move forward with one of the projects I have on the go I need to solder a 0.5mm pin-pitch component. That is tiny; I tried on a practice board - a 50-pin flat-flex breakout board - and made a right hash of it. There were bridged pins all over the place, and I tried to re-work it so much that I ended up lifting PCB traces.

Taking your electronics hobby to the next level is an expensive proposition, no doubt. A halfway decent multimeter and a basic adjustable constant current/constant voltage bench power supply recently cost me the best part of ~£100, and a good quality entry-level digital storage oscilloscope will cost at least £300 (like the Rigol DS 1054Z https://www.rigol-uk.co.uk/Rigol-DS1054 ... s1054z.htm). You can try and make do with an old second-hand analogue model, and that might do to start with, but analogue scopes are getting increasingly irrelevant with far more digital work going on.

But you don't need a densely-packed surface-mount board and a £300 DSO in order to get people of any age interested. Get 'em blinking an LED, even if they start off doing it with a microcontroller (or a Pi ) it's incredibly engaging. After a break of over 15 years the Arduino (specifically, the Duemilanove) got me back into electronics: it wasn't long between getting LEDs blinking and building a primitive robot out of an RC car.

[Pithagoros]

lpsw,

Life is not a game. You did not choose to play, you were born anyway. You never can win, we all die in the end.

If you insist that "life" = "game" then one or other of those words has totally lost it's meaning.

Yeah, I know, I'm just being pedantic

John Horton Conway might have something to say about all this.

[Heater]

Yeah, Conway says: "I hate the Game of Life" and "I don't think the Game of Life was all that interesting" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kUJL04ELA

moderator corrected the URL. Works now.

[mthomason]

Yeah, Conway says: "I hate the Game of Life" and "I don't think the Game of Life was all that interesting" ghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kUJL04ELA

I never really understood why, I mean, I loved the little cars with pegs for the spouse and children, and seeing what job you got at the beginning, and.... oh, wait...

[Nickcn]

Rive had received warnings which he didn't respond to for some other stuff - which you won't have seen, of course. And his responses to EihmGhey (I may be misspelling that), which I am hoping most of you did not see, because I deleted them, were appalling. They were incredibly offensive to other people who have autism spectrum disorder - and I mean INCREDIBLY offensive. We felt we didn't have any choice but to push the button.

I have to cry BS on this.

Also, I personally know "Rive", and contrary to what you state, he never received any such official "warnings" from Mods or Admins here for his post content.

Now it is true that other regular users, posted that they did not like the "condescending" way in which he commented on cooling/overheating threads, or the way he recommended the Chromium 48 over the "rpi-youtube" Chromium 49 by Kusti, But as far as I am aware that did not violate any "abitrary" foundation rules. Especially considering other Users with 4000+ posts have posted very obnoxious comments to no effect.

Obviously, had he been breaching the social "etiquette" (as it may be), of this forum, one would think he would have received a warning via message from either a Mod or Admin for frowned upon behavior. But he didn't.

BUT he did on the otherhand, call you and the foundation out on buggy software in regards to the UART fiacso... Perhaps you didn't like the egg on your face?

Also, I did read the posts he made in the austism thread before they were removed by the Mod, he stated the clinical term that [autism] is a mental disorder, and not something one should flout as a desirable quality, or be proud to suffer from, and that having a child diagnosed with autism is heart breaking for a mother, and he also stated that "Eimghey" was essentially being disrespectful to those families.

To wit:
source: https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and autism are both general terms for a group of complex disorders of brain development. These disorders are characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors. With the May 2013 publication of the DSM-5 diagnostic manual, all autism disorders were merged into one umbrella diagnosis of ASD. Previously, they were recognized as distinct subtypes, including autistic disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) and Asperger syndrome.

Also, You can delete my User too. Since I obviously do not agree with you, or your spun version of events.

[Heater]

What nonsense. Both participants had some screws loose. Not sure who needed banning most.

[ukscone]

Rive had received warnings which he didn't respond to for some other stuff - which you won't have seen, of course. And his responses to EihmGhey (I may be misspelling that), which I am hoping most of you did not see, because I deleted them, were appalling. They were incredibly offensive to other people who have autism spectrum disorder - and I mean INCREDIBLY offensive. We felt we didn't have any choice but to push the button.

I have to cry BS on this.

Also, I personally know "Rive", and contrary to what you state, he never received any such official "warnings" from Mods or Admins here for his post content.

Now it is true that other regular users, posted that they did not like the "condescending" way in which he commented on cooling/overheating threads, or the way he recommended the Chromium 48 over the "rpi-youtube" Chromium 49 by Kusti, But as far as I am aware that did not violate any "abitrary" foundation rules. Especially considering other Users with 4000+ posts have posted very obnoxious comments to no effect.

Obviously, had he been breaching the social "etiquette" (as it may be), of this forum, one would think he would have received a warning via message from either a Mod or Admin for frowned upon behavior. But he didn't.

BUT he did on the otherhand, call you and the foundation out on buggy software in regards to the UART fiacso... Perhaps you didn't like the egg on your face?

Also, I did read the posts he made in the austism thread before they were removed by the Mod, he stated the clinical term that [autism] is a mental disorder, and not something one should flout as a desirable quality, or be proud to suffer from, and that having a child diagnosed with autism is heart breaking for a mother, and he also stated that "Eimghey" was essentially being disrespectful to those families.

To wit:
source: https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and autism are both general terms for a group of complex disorders of brain development. These disorders are characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors. With the May 2013 publication of the DSM-5 diagnostic manual, all autism disorders were merged into one umbrella diagnosis of ASD. Previously, they were recognized as distinct subtypes, including autistic disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) and Asperger syndrome.

Also, You can delete my User too. Since I obviously do not agree with you, or your spun version of events.

As I know for a fact that Rive was given a temporary ban for cause which was then upgraded to a perma-ban for cause I call BS on you, and as you have also not replied to the PM asking you to play nicely on the forums your wish is my command, although it is not the policy to delete accounts I will ban you for cause. For your disrespecting the mods and continued trolliness.

I am also going to lock this thread as it really is getting a bit iffy.