Comments on: Rocky’s Boots http://blog.melding-monads.com/2009/05/03/rockys-boots/ Math, Computer Science, and Education Wed, 08 May 2013 14:59:04 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: lpsmith http://blog.melding-monads.com/2009/05/03/rockys-boots/#comment-21 Mon, 04 May 2009 00:53:49 +0000 http://blog.melding-monads.com/?p=75#comment-21 Well, it was definitely the user interface that kept me from exploring the game further. (This was 2-ish years ago, when I first interacted with the game) I doubt the puzzles would have posed tremendous difficulty, although I’m sure there are a few puzzles that I would have found challenging. I’m not a digital design guru, but I’ve got some chops, including an FPGA design or two. ;-)

I’m aware that RB simulates propagation delay, I just sort of forgot which way with regard to RO. And yes, if your only goal is to re-create Robot Odyssey, then the efficiency of the simulation won’t be an overriding concern, and then FRP might be a very nice way to structure and express the simulation. But if you’d like to go above and beyond, the efficiency of simulation might well become a concern… e.g. would it be fast enough to simulate a small CPU in real time?

I’m not an FRP guru either, but it is still very much an experimental research topic with various run-time efficiency problems yet to be solved. I don’t know if FRP has been applied to multicore computations either. You can apply the same techniques to things other than UI and animations, two of the historical application domains thanks to Conal Elliott.

]]> By: James http://blog.melding-monads.com/2009/05/03/rockys-boots/#comment-20 Sun, 03 May 2009 19:46:02 +0000 http://blog.melding-monads.com/?p=75#comment-20 Hah! I’m not sure it was only the interface that held you back. Robot Odyssey is a really, really hard game. ;)

Robot Odyssey (and RB) does simulate propogation delay. It takes time for the power to go through a gate.

Considering the original engine ran on a computer thousands of times slower and with tens of thousands of times less memory, I don’t think multicore functional reactive programming will show any noticeable improvement over a bunch of spaghetti and goto statements.

It might, however, improve the speed of the interface, but that’s only because of today’s extremely resource-intensive operating systems/virtual machines.

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