The Quest for Tetris

K Zhang

12:32 AM

I think I'm 100% ready to post, too.

El'endia Starman

Alright, let's do this! Leerooyyyyyyy Jenkiiiinnnsssss!!!

(Also, cc @PhiNotPi.)

PhiNotPi

ayyo @El'endiaStarman @KZhang

El'endia Starman

:D Lemme know when you've posted the overview.

PhiNotPi

12:47 AM

One moment, I need to fix an image

K Zhang

You know, as a later project, I might want to try to make this computer based on 8x8 or 16x16 cells instead of 11x11, just as a fun challenge that would speed up hashlife's emulation of this computer.

PhiNotPi

quartata

nice

PhiNotPi

cheap image uploading

quartata

Goes to the same place ultimately

PhiNotPi

12:49 AM

Guys I'm about to actually do it.

quartata

JUST DO IT

K Zhang

The hype is real

El'endia Starman

History in the making!

quartata

Well PPCG history

PhiNotPi

@El'endiaStarman you're up

El'endia Starman

12:51 AM

Posted. @KZhang, your turn.

K Zhang

All right, posted

PhiNotPi

Posted mine

quartata

Posted overview in TNB

El'endia Starman

@PhiNotPi: You could add a permalink to QFTASM with the Tetris code loaded and RAM display set.

PhiNotPi

@El'endiaStarman added "Part 2" to your post title

ASCII-only

12:54 AM

> dividion

@PhiNotPi D: why

El'endia Starman

@PhiNotPi Yeah, noticed that pattern after you guys posted. Thanks for adding it.

PhiNotPi

@ASCII-only fixed

ASCII-only

I'm sure everyone wants to take a break from QFT now but I'm still wondering if anyone can see any obvious reasons this wouldn't work

I guess the question really is: what components do you use apart from logic gates and clocks

K Zhang

It could technically work, but we're not actually that good with GOL stuff to do that.

El'endia Starman

@ASCII-only Wire crossings and delay components.

ASCII-only

1:00 AM

:| Why do you need so many delay components

El'endia Starman

Signal synchronization.

K Zhang

Everything is based on collisions, so synchronization is essential

ASCII-only

They wouldn't be needed if all components are synchronized right?

El'endia Starman

How closely have you looked at the computer hardware? :P

PhiNotPi

Oh hey I earned the "revival" badge.

El'endia Starman

1:02 AM

@PhiNotPi Yep, you definitely earned it. :)

PhiNotPi

Someone can edit the overview post to include links in the table of contents.

ASCII-only

@El'endiaStarman :| not very, but ctrl+f doesn't really show anything about using e.g. the 4 tick delay

PhiNotPi

As for me... I have 6 pages of fluid mech homework due tomorrow... so peace out.

El'endia Starman

@ASCII-only I found those delay components in the hardware circuitry. There's a bunch of delay components all over the place.

ASCII-only

WHAT IS THIS

El'endia Starman

1:04 AM

@ASCII-only I KNOW IT'S MADNESS

K Zhang

That is some 100% totally not jank circuitry

Don't worry about it

PhiNotPi

me: creates 11x11 grid system. KZhang: #yolo

K Zhang

(It's a read counter)

At least the inputs and outputs are aligned with the 11x11 grid

And all the timing works out

quartata

@ASCII-only giggles

El'endia Starman

It still boggles my mind how he managed to get everything lined up and working. Especially in that monster component.

K Zhang

1:07 AM

I'm actually kinda surprised, too

It's amazing how flexible you can make the wires using these B1/S and B2/S cells, and that definitely helped to get things working

El'endia Starman

Yeah, no doubt.

quartata

@muddyfish ?

ah shoot they're not here

PhiNotPi

I think Muddyfish is probably asleep

quartata

> last seen 3h ago

we might have picked a bad time

UK so definitely

El'endia Starman

He can post in the morning.

quartata

1:13 AM

what do?

I guess the big ones are posted so not a huge deal

PhiNotPi

Technically the future directions post could come before his post.

El'endia Starman

That's Mego's, right?

PhiNotPi

yeah

quartata

That kind of seems like weird flow

Like "the future" should be the conclusion

PhiNotPi

okay let's just have @muddyfish post in the morning and then Mego can post tomorrow

El'endia Starman

1:17 AM

Sounds good to me.

quartata

actually

I think muddyfish's post could go last

since the new language isn't in use yet

ASCII-only

New language? O_o

quartata

It does kind of fit with the "future" aspects mentioned

El'endia Starman

Somewhat relatedly, I'm actually kinda surprised that there's been comparatively little reaction so far. Is everyone else asleep or something? :P

ASCII-only

Yes

sets zoom to 25%

upvotes every post

El'endia Starman

1:19 AM

That's...actually rather clever.

ASCII-only

I still have to scroll a lot

But at least now I won't get carpal tunnel

not sure if I should bounty the CW?

PhiNotPi

The rep wouldn't go to anyone, would it?

El'endia Starman

I don't think it would?

ASCII-only

Yeah it wouldn't

PhiNotPi

What will probably happen is a bunch of +50 bounties everywhere

ASCII-only

1:26 AM

???

El'endia Starman

in The Nineteenth Byte, 2 mins ago, by Downgoat

:/ I can't evently distribute bounty beacuse new one must be at least twice old one

Unfortunately...

So, should we ping Mego and tell him to post his answer?

El'endia Starman

1:50 AM

Necromancer badges for everyone! :P

quartata

@El'endiaStarman Honestly I think so

here's why though

the QFTASM and Cogol part translates perfectly into the "how is the ROM made"

it's a good transition I think

El'endia Starman

Yeah. @Mego, time for you to get in on the action!

quartata

I'll change the order in the overview post

Joe Z. accepted

ASCII-only

Can anyone take a screenshot of the entire computer

quartata

er

hrm

El'endia Starman

1:58 AM

I don't have a monitor big enough to capture the entire computer for the prime-finder program without it becoming a big white blob-ish mass.

quartata

yeah it's just too big

ASCII-only

@El'endiaStarman D: does your browser not have full page capture

chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/full-page-screen-capture/…

Used to use this for those purposes before I switched to Vivaldi

El'endia Starman

@ASCII-only The full computer is in Golly though. Not a browser.

ASCII-only

@El'endiaStarman Oh wait I meant the varlife one >_>

El'endia Starman

I mean, it could be done by stitching screenshots together. I don't really want to do that tonight though.

@ASCII-only I do mean the VarLife computer.

ASCII-only

2:00 AM

Oh yeah forgot it's in Golly too

quartata

I'm actually kind of happy that we're not getting too much attention yet, I was legitimately concerned that Varlife might get hugged to death

also @El'endiaStarman you might overtake me in rep for this :P

ASCII-only

conwaylife.com/scripts/download.php?f=save-image.py

quartata

if you get a good bounty

El'endia Starman

@quartata I'm fairly sure I've got enough bandwidth. You've got a point though.

ASCII-only

Should I start a bounty

quartata

2:03 AM

do what you like

I think most people are hesitant to bounty because of the split answers which is kind of sad

El'endia Starman

Yeah. Quick, petition SE to remove the doubling requirement!

quartata

I messaged Mego on Steam by the way

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

I would bounty but don't want to drop from 2k :_(

Just an FYI I am going to see if I can get Forbes to do an article about this

ASCII-only

Why Forbes though

quartata

uh

it's not THAT big a deal

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

2:12 AM

Because I can, I mean they have a tech section about cool stuff. So this would be cool

ASCII-only

@Christopher2EZ4RTZ :|

El'endia Starman

Meh about Forbes. Better would be like Hackernews, Reddit, a GoL forum, etc...

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman Posting now, uploading images

El'endia Starman

Huzzah!

quartata

Praise be

My Steam nagging worked maybe

Conor O'Brien

2:15 AM

good job guys :D this is a big step in the GoL programming community :p

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

If you want me to send the email about this to any specific people just send me adresses

besides I was thinking of attemting this right about when you finished so let me have this :P

Anonymous

Done

PhiNotPi

Here's to not getting sniped.

Anonymous

@quartata Actually it was El'endia's ping notification showing up on my phone

quartata

shoot

PhiNotPi

2:19 AM

What's the biggest pattern ever created in GoL?

El'endia Starman

Oh, FYI Mego, I did implement permalinks for the QFTASM interpreter.

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman Excellent! Editing.

Anonymous

@PhiNotPi Probably this one.

PhiNotPi

@Mego add "Part 5:" to your post title while you're at it

Anonymous

@PhiNotPi Done

PhiNotPi

2:22 AM

I've added a link in the table of contents

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman We should definitely post on Reddit and get in contact with HN

ASCII-only

:/ I can't run Golly scripts

Anonymous

@ASCII-only What's the issue?

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

Imagine how many months of reddit gold is going to happen to you guys

ASCII-only

No module named golly

@Christopher2EZ4RTZ Not very many

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

2:27 AM

I think the end score (with basic reddit calculations) will be $\text{-2*Pi*r^2}\cdot MPGofprius$

ASCII-only

@Christopher2EZ4RTZ :| not everyone has the userscript

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

@ASCII-only :|

Anonymous

@ASCII-only Run it in Golly

Conor O'Brien

I for one don't have the userscript because it's obtrusive and people should just accept that mathjax isn't in chat :P

ASCII-only

@Mego Oh yeah :/

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

2:29 AM

Fixed it :P

ATaco

:D

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

@ATaco you magnificent dinner

Conor O'Brien

I'd be happy to cede a portion of my reputation for the bounty. I'll wait until later into the bountying phase, in case people want to start lower.

ATaco

We're already started at 500.

Conor O'Brien

oh cool

I'll bounty it in a week then

ATaco

2:40 AM

I'm happy to bounty it as well, this has been an incredible feat, everyone involved deserves it.

El'endia Starman

Keep in mind that bounties have to be at least twice as much as the previous one.

I actually wish the current bounty was lower so there isn't quite as much of a barrier for later bountiers.

ATaco

I don't think it'll be a good idea for me to drop 2k of my 4k rep...

Conor O'Brien

wait I thouhgt it was capped at 500

quartata

Unfortunately it's because of that 50 rep bounty posted before we posted

El'endia Starman

Yeah, I just semi-remembered that. Makes no sense to allow/have a 10,000 bounty.

ATaco

2:42 AM

We'll find out in 7 days, 'eh?

El'endia Starman

> Slice off anywhere from +50 to +500 of your own hard-earned reputation, and attach it to any question as a bounty.

Crisis averted! Every bounty will be 500 from here on out. I think.

Conor O'Brien

as a proof of concept, you should try interpreting GoL in cogol/(gcc when it's done)

@El'endiaStarman \o/

PhiNotPi

> One or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty.

quartata

@ConorO'Brien We already mentioned that

PhiNotPi

What does the "or more" imply?

ATaco

2:44 AM

Well just saying "one" would imply that the others aren't.

El'endia Starman

Not sure. I found a Meta.SE post from 2009 that says bounty splitting is a status-declined feature.

ATaco

"Or more" suggests that there may be more worthy of an additional bounty, however, this is the one in question.

Conor O'Brien

It's probably also been discussed but have you guys made a program that writes Hello, World! to the ram?

El'endia Starman

......y'know, that never occurred to me.

PhiNotPi

actually no we haven't done that

quartata

2:48 AM

. MLZ -1 72 1; .MLZ -1 blah blah

PhiNotPi

^ basically will be that, though

El'endia Starman

@quartata Could be a little golfing challenge though, akin to doing it in BF.

quartata

Fair

Conor O'Brien

although I think the naive way would be shorter

ASCII-only

Okay got the image :D

Do I scale it up

quartata

2:50 AM

Once we improve the assembler we'll just do data: . ASCIINZ "Hello, World!" or whatever

El'endia Starman

@ASCII-only Does that mean you can see the computer in Golly now?

ASCII-only

@El'endiaStarman >_> I could always see it, it just took a while for me to figure out how to run a script

quartata

hrm tough to see the components

El'endia Starman

Haha yeah, the ROM and RAM are massive.

ASCII-only

@quartata So do I scale it up

ATaco

2:53 AM

Bit of a side effect of storing each bit in its own cell I suppose.

quartata

no it's not your fault

ASCII-only

Not hard to scale it up though

quartata

@ATaco and that's with the new RAM no less

ASCII-only

Just wondering because it's hard to see but one of Mego's images are 1:1 scale

ATaco

It kind of looks like someone dropped Langton's ant in places :P

ASCII-only

2:56 AM

@ASCII-only WAT THERE ARE THREE OF THESE

Okay so how exactly do the RAM/ROM work

El'endia Starman

@ASCII-only KZhang explains that in his Hardware post?

Conor O'Brien

I have successfully read half of the posts in an attempt to not write an essay, I feel enlightened and terrified at that same time

ASCII-only

looks

doesn't understand

So the cells do nothing unless they recieve both inputs at once right?

And then they give a signal only when they're set to 1

Hang on.

Can't you store ROM on a glider tape

ATaco

Is this a magic eye? :P

K Zhang

I should make some animated gifs of all the components. I feel maybe that would make understanding easier.

ASCII-only

3:01 AM

*Multiple glider tapes

El'endia Starman

@KZhang I'm pretty sure you'll immediately have the problem that many of the components are too big.

K Zhang

True... I guess make varlife links?

Although, I did make links on a bunch of the images, so you can click on most of the images to open them in varlife

El'endia Starman

Yeah. I think that's good enough. The bigger components are effectively too big to have in-browser anyway since the viewing and editing controls aren't as sophisticated as Golly's.

PhiNotPi

3:40 AM

> Secondly, how fast is the computer and how fast is the tetris game?

Do we have any hard numbers for this?

Anonymous

@PhiNotPi Slow and slower

Anonymous

@ASCII-only Sure, but we were working in metapixels anyway, so might as well build VarLife-based memory

ASCII-only

Yeah

quartata

@PhiNotPi Where is this from?

ASCII-only

But if everything can be made 100x smaller isn't it golfier then :P

El'endia Starman

3:47 AM

First of all +1, because this is an insanely awesome achievement (especially since you built a computer in game of life, rather than just tetris). Secondly, how fast is the computer and how fast is the tetris game? Is it even remotely playable? (again: this is awesome) — Socratic Phoenix 20 mins ago

We could measure the number of generations it takes for the clock signal to travel around the computer and the number of instructions between each drop of a Tetris piece.

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman That's a good point - we should figure out the clock speed in steps/instruction.

Anonymous

We can do that in VarLife for simplicity and then multiply by 35328 to get the instruction cycle period in GoL.

ASCII-only

Normal computer: 2.4GHz
QFT Computer: 1.17 nanoinstruction/tick

:P

Anonymous

@KZhang probably knows the number of steps per clock cycle, since he designed it

El'endia Starman

@Mego I dunno; he designed it so the clock signal triggers the movement of data, so the actual flight time wouldn't matter that much.

Anonymous

4:01 AM

@El'endiaStarman I would think he would still know how long the clock signal's cycle is. If not, it's not too hard to count.

Mistah Figgins

4:49 AM

Just wanted to stop by and say Congrats! really liked the explanations

Anonymous

6:45 AM

We should probably pin the answer in here

7

muddyfish

7:34 AM

I've posted now

Doorknob

11:35 AM

congrats to all of you! this is really just insanely impressive :D

muddyfish

1:07 PM

And everyone's hit the rep cap :D

balpha

1:25 PM

WOW

(I just had to drop in here to say that)

El'endia Starman

@muddyfish So did the challenge poster! :P

K Zhang

1:43 PM

The number of steps per cycle can vary, since some instructions read from RAM and some instructions take longer to read in general.

quartata

1:57 PM

Just woke up. I find it rather odd that the question is at 346 now but the answers are still around 70-80, maybe someone linked just the question somewhere?

also yay muddyfish posted

muddyfish

My colleague at work posted it somewhere

Here: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15246348

quartata

ah HN

El'endia Starman

> Even though it seems like implementing an aircraft carrier to kill a fly, what a amazing bunch of work.

:D

muddyfish

:P

You also need to invent the nuclear missles

quartata

"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indrection" that should be in our room description

Christofer Ohlsson

2:00 PM

y'all cray

muddyfish

:3

El'endia Starman

A Cray supercomputer might make real-time playing of Tetris in GoL possible.

Christofer Ohlsson

:)

Also, I think this quest is more akin to building an aircraft carrier from glued-together flyswatters, in order to kill a fly

El'endia Starman

There's four posts of this on Reddit so far, but three of them don't have substantial comments and the fourth is here: reddit.com/r/programming/comments/701tzd/…

quartata

yessss a linker

mwahahahahah

El'endia Starman

2:11 PM

Also, looks like I'm getting about 100 times the normal traffic to my play.starmaninnovations.com domain, which includes VarLife and QFTASM. And the day's just begun.

quartata

So should we talk about Pong?

El'endia Starman

Nah, let's bask in the glory we're receiving right now.

8

quartata

@El'endiaStarman Now would be a perfect time to add some ads ;)

If you ever get overwhelmed trafficwise you could probably move QFTASM to github pages btw

you'd lose out on serverside permalinks is all

El'endia Starman

Well, actually, it looks like my bandwidth usage hasn't really increased very much. I'll bet that rendering gifs takes up a lot more than transferring text. The gifs in the SE posts are all hosted by SE, so that takes a lot of load off me.

I'm watching the access log file for my site and it's so unreal to watch requests come in every second.

quartata

2:37 PM

I kinda feel bad for dim, I know he said he tried to make a solid state solution

he shouldn't have tortured himself like that when he could have just made an entire computer

Артём Матеуш

I just dropped here to say that you guys are geniuses. And insane. Hope this project will get recognition it deserves.

Elliot Bonneville

This is wild. Amazing job guys

quartata

@PhiNotPi A better absolute value:

. MLZ -1 <argument> 1;
. SRA A1 15 2;
. ADD A1 A2 3;
. XOR A3 A2 3;

only needs one word of scratch memory which is convenient for me

I'd like to make it so that addresses 1-4 are all that I use

for scratch that is

reddit.com/r/programming/comments/701tzd/…

I don't think we should accept that challenge

El'endia Starman

3:07 PM

> With enough blood, sweat, tears, and RAM, yes.

quartata

Making it playable is a different story though

you thought keyboard controls were bad

El'endia Starman

Oh yeah, certainly. A year between frames.

muddyfish

First we need a terminal interface

El'endia Starman

Actually, the bigger problem might be the lack of memory to store the VarLife computer with full ROM and RAM for Doom.

reddit.com/r/programming/comments/701tzd/… Seeing it put like this makes it much clearer how insane this is.

quartata

Yeah I do think not a lot of people get the purpose of the metapixel since all of our screenshots just have different colors for the rules (for good reason though)

This is why VarLife is great

PhiNotPi

3:52 PM

room topic changed to The Quest for Tetris: For discussing this: goo.gl/kuCiRF | VarLife: goo.gl/StrPLC | blog: goo.gl/msLj67 | QFTASM interpreter: goo.gl/dhNznv | Github org and repos: github.com/QuestForTetris (no tags)

switched out sandbox answer link for actual answer link

quartata

4:10 PM

If our plan is to make a "Pong in Game of Life" challenge and then answer it I could probably write the specification pretty easily

muddyfish

When can we start answering regular challenges in GOL?

El'endia Starman

We already can for questions that are not too hard to answer in QFTASM.

quartata

Any time we like. We'll just lose hard because the computer is massive

PhiNotPi

@quartata Correction: it's only considered losing if there's other GoL entries to the challenge.

quartata

Fair. Hello World for instance is just as simple as defining an encoding in still lifes though

I think it's better to answer challenges in QFTASM than GoL specifically

El'endia Starman

4:18 PM

I think so too.

quartata

It's actually fairly interesting to golf in

As I've found from trying to golf these instructions down

El'endia Starman

4:34 PM

Congrats, @muddyfish, your answer just passed 100 upvotes!

muddyfish

:D
Though I'd rather it be spread out more so moar rep :P

El'endia Starman

Yeah, that's what we all think. :P

muddyfish

Still haven't got the gold badge yet

And are we meant to get points towards tag badges for that question? I'd have expected to get a code-challenge badge from it (or the upvote requirement)

El'endia Starman

@muddyfish I think they get awarded every half hour or something. You'll get it soon.

quartata

5:14 PM

Tag badges are slow as molasses

I think it's like once every day

El'endia Starman

6:08 PM

Aaand the overview answer is now past 200 votes.

quartata

6:35 PM

in The Nineteenth Byte, 52 mins ago, by New Main Posts

-3

Q: Run skyrim or Doom in conway's game of life

It can be in black and white for sake of simplicity. Or if you feel frisky at least use 8 colors.

the downsides of reddit

mfw skyrim

El'endia Starman

@quartata Probably due to the meme that Bethesda keeps releasing Skyrim on new platforms.

quartata

I thought the joke was new water shaders

I don't know, I don't play Skyrim

El'endia Starman

Me neither. I just learned of it via Imgur.

quartata

7:03 PM

I'm honestly going to be pretty interested to see how GCC handles how I've defined the registers currently

I've basically told it that there aren't any hard registers available for every possible data type, and all the instruction patterns can take memory addresses

If it's as smart as everything on the Internet is telling me, it'll compare the cost of keeping it in memory to the infinite cost of trying to put it in a register

If it's dumb then we'll find out I guess

quartata

7:37 PM

TARGET_FUNCTION_VALUE says it can return any RTX, but then goes on to say that they're of type reg or parallel

gcc pls