WireWorld - 0.2

Zadok Regex (blacklemon67)

Tags:

puzzle automata cellular wireworld automation

Description

Wireworld is a cellular automata that has been proven to be Turing complete and has been used to make a computer that calculates primes. I have used this automata for a while now and have been thinking about making a puzzle game based around it. The premise is you have to complete parts of a circuit to make it work and advance to the next level. This is the first step toward the game, an implementation of the core rules.

Changes

Revamped the code, split it into smaller files. Binary saving and loading of my invented file-type specific to wireworld is now supported (can i get a woot wut?) Loading only works if the size of the board in the file is the same size as the current board. Also I changed the way it calculates rules, instead of checking the neighbors of every wire it checks the neighbors of wires around electrons. Slows down proportionally to the amount of elections than to the amount of wires (which is a very good improvement) My next steps in this project are making a class that returns a pygame surface that has the board on it, taking care of mouse clicks and I/O rather than have the main python script take care of it :D

Links

Home Page: http://www.pygame.org/
Source: http://www.mediafire.com/?zmykj3qwmrj

Screenshot

click to view original size

Releases

WireWorld - 0.3 - Jul 14, 2010
WireWorld - 0.2 - Jun 10, 2010
WireWorld - 0.1 - Jun 1, 2010

Comments

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June 13, 2010 8:07pm - Zadok Regex - nickname: (blacklemon67)
I don't think I'll add special cell states as I want to keep this as simple as possible and not fall into the trap that most puzzle games fall into, the trap that is overly complex rules (aka "I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON!!!") so instead it will just use the original wireworld ruleset. I was thinking today that I could have the campaign be a story similar to the plot of Neuromancer where you're the hacker and you have to solve problems using wireworld, but I think an epic adventure is far beyond the scope of a game based of cellular automata. I will make it so the endgame parameters for each level are inside the saves, but I'm not sure how I'll implement that (though I have a rough idea.) There will be a level editor that can be used to make full campaigns. So far the only thing from letting me step further down the development cycle is the question of how the ui is gonna look (not the layout the style)
June 7, 2010 1:28pm - Donpachi - nickname: (donpachi)
I'm impressed so far. For best results, I hope you'll put the puzzles in an external file with clear scripting syntax or a complete level editor, so that it's easy to add custom stuff in. You might want to put the import psyco line inside a try-except (ImportError) block. The actual game play might be more complicated to implement. For training puzzles, just some partially constructed structures that need to be filled out are probably enough. There should be a limit on the amount of available blocks you can construct. Some blocks could be special, like teleports, reverse, grounding, explosion (of signals), and so on. Timers could be used for the level and for the special blocks themselves. Maybe there could be an advanced campaign on how to build machine parts with the basic wireworld, like memory cells, logical gates, and such. :)
June 6, 2010 6:17pm - Kris Schnee - nickname: (snow)
FYI for others: it's sort of like Conway's Game of Life. You define "wires" and "empty space" with colored pixels. Then you place a color representing an electrical pulse, and simple GoL-like rules make it move along the wires. You can build simulated circuits with these rules that do very complex things.
June 2, 2010 12:52pm - Carsten Eggers - nickname: (masterlee)
For WireWorld you can find the Rules on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireworld
June 2, 2010 6:35am - Enrico Kochon - nickname: (enno)
Sounds intresting, would you please explain the rules a little bit further?