this is what happens when you give Computer Scientists access to piped chocolate

We had a Children in Need quiz night at work yesterday.  One round was to decorate a cake. Our team (The Flying Robots) felt that a fractal, with its infinite chocolate complexity, should be a sure winner.

Sierpinski cake

The judges, for some unfathomable reason, preferred another:

double decker artistry

Okay, maybe we weren’t taking it that seriously…

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another evening well spent

A new level for Cut-the-Rope Experiments announced itself to my phone.  It was swiftly downloaded.

The "ant hill" level has little lines of (4-legged!) ants that carry the candy from one place to another.  Tapping the candy then releases it from the ants at the desired spot.  This adds a new form of time-criticality to the manoeuvers, with some interesting new puzzles.

Aaaand ... my work here is done:

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steamy success

On Friday I finished preparing a large document that had been consuming most of my time over the Christmas "vacation" (when I wasn't reading, watching TV, or eating, of course).  I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend, so was pleased to see that a new level of Cut theRope was ready for my phone.

This has a new "Steam Box", with little 3-state steam valves that you can use to hold a candy in vertical place, or give it a horizontal push.  For some reason the steam doesn't burst the floaty bubbles...

In between bits of (other) pottering around yesterday, I completed all but three of the 25 new levels.  Then I got stuck, so put it to one side for the evening.  Picking it up again this morning, I stared at the tricky level, went, "oh, of course", and polished off the whole thing.

Relaxation accomplished!

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still addicted

Yesterday I downloaded "Spooky Box", another new level for Cut the Rope.

Today I completed it, achieving another (temporary, until everyone else catches up) second place.

  I have been doing a few other things as well...

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gamified research

My day job includes working with people who research on flocking, social networks, and other complex interactions of groups of agents.  A while back, some of our researchers decided to see if their work could be brought to the public through "gamification".  Over the summer, the University has funded a couple of interns to work on this, and now ComplexCityApps have just released the first game for the Android: Floqua.

As the game's website says:

Find all of the lost fish in each level and guide them to safety in the castle. The tricky part is keeping them in your flock. Swim too fast and you'll leave your fish behind. Watch out for the predators: they're hungry!

The game is now available through Google play.  I confess, I've spent more time than I should herding fish.  It's easier than herding cats, which is part of my day job...

In addition to being a fun game (we hope!), it's educational (we also hope!).  You can simply play the game.  But, if you want to know more, there are pointers to the science behind the app.

And the developers have bravely been keeping a blog, so you can also dig down into some of the game design process, including effort to make sure the colour-coding of fish types is accessible to colour-blind players.

Okay, I'm off to try the next level, which has two rather hungry predators trying to eat my fish...

hiding from predators...

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now up to silver

Okay, I've wasted spent far too much time on this:

My excuse (if I need one) is that it's 30°C outside, and nearly the same indoors, which as far as I'm concerned is way too hot to do anything more sensible.  (Also, Cut the Rope is such wickedly addictive fun.)

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currently bronze

A new Cut the Rope Experiments leaderboard came out today -- I'll have to work hard to maintain my global ratimg once everyone else starts playing!

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all ropes cut

I thought Angry Birds was the Most Addictive Use of a Physics Engine Ever. I was mistaken.

I’ve just finished Cut the Rope. The premise is simple: you have to feed the candy to a cute little critter called Om Nom. That’s it.

Well, except for the fact there are tools, and barriers, and gravity, and puzzles, and stars to collect. In the usual way, things get harder as you progress, and the game slowly trains you to solve fiendish puzzles at speed.

There are floating bubbles, elastic ropes with movable supports, extendable ropes, bees towing rope ends, candy-stealing spiders, puffers, electric sparks, teleporting hats, halved candies needing to be joined, reversible gravity, bouncy platforms, rotating saws, limited time stars, and (when you move on to the second game, Cut the Rope Experiments), shootable ropes, suckers, rockets, bath tubs, and robot hands. Not all at once, of course.

Here I went for all three stars on all levels, despite arguing against the need for that in Angry Birds. That's because here it’s a bit different: getting all three stars is part of the puzzle. And some of the puzzles require some subtle out-the-box and creative thinking: hours of fun and frustration.  (Backward-chaining from knowing where the candy has to end up is a useful analysis approach.  As is considering the use of all the tools provided; although, cunningly, sometimes tools are red herrings.)

This is a truly marvellous combination of puzzles, accuracy, and speed. Much more variety than Angry Birds.  Best 62p I’ve ever spent (leading to splashing out another 62p for Experiments). I'm now in serious withdrawal, desperately waiting for new levels...

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narrating complexity

Our new interdisciplinary network on Narrative and Complex Systems is having its first workshop, in York.  Yesterday we had a great time explaining to each other what we did, from narrative in fiction, in films, in computer games, to the narrative of complexity and emergence, and trying to discover common concepts.  We finished the day by brainstorming a mindmap:

This process was amazingly helpful in distilling our ideas.  The result, however, is pretty incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't there!

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it's gravity, Jim, but not as we know it

I’ve just finished Angry Birds * Space (which everyone seems to call Angry Birds in Spaaaace, of course), released March 2012.  So that didn’t last long, either.

This time, the birds and pigs are fighting it out in space, and the birds have rocket drives.  There’s gravity in some places (near planets), and not in other places (not near planets). Only it’s not as simple as that. The existence of a gravitational field is shown by a red disc centred on the planet. Inside the disc there’s gravity, with the force directed towards the centre (I can’t tell if it’s 1/r^2 or constant on my little tiny phone screen); outside there’s no gravity. Gravity just switches on when an object enters the disc. Real gravity in space doesn’t work like that, of course.

Outside the disc, in the no-gravity regions, things travel in straight lines. So far, so good, maybe. But they gradually drift to a halt. No gravity, okay, but friction?? (Which is why the birds' rocket drives are on all the time.)  Real gravity in space doesn’t work like that, of course.

Also, there are some “black holes”: nothing visible at the centre of the gravity field, but stuff does get broken up if it goes there. There are also, confusingly, sometimes large planets with no gravity field at all, that act as hard (but massless!) obstacles. (Cases with invisible gravitating black holes plus visible gravity-free planets are particularly … interesting.)

There are two new birds: a light blue "ice cube" bird which freezes stuff, making it easier to break later, and a purple ("Lazer") bird that boosts in the direction of your tap (instead of the yellow Lazer bird that boosts along its tangent when you tap).

It's a Small World

The planets are very small – Clanger-esque, or even “Little Prince”-like.  In order to erect buildings on these small spheres, there are often large flat platforms. Sometimes this can lead to an almost square planet. Even with these platforms, gravity still points to the centre of the planet, so there is a small resultant force along the direction of the platform. I was delighted to notice, when an ice block was at the end of a platform, it slid towards the centre, overshot, then slid back: simple harmonic motion in action. Yay!

Square planets!

I did this time go for a perfect three stars on all levels.  That’s because the alternate-physics is fun, and three stars often required an interesting solution exploiting the possibilities, especially where planets are so close their gravity-discs overlap. Fortunately there is a helpful little "preview orbit" dotted line, that gives a partial clue to the final trajectory.  (The "Golden Eggsteroid" extra levels are great little spoofs on Space Invaders and the like.)

So, I’m just back from the Science Fiction Eastercon, where I was telling a friend that I’d nearly finished Angry Birds Space. So that’s all three done! (Vanilla, Seasons, Space) There’s also Rio, he said.

AAARGH! WHY DID YOU TELL ME THAT!

I’m now on Rio level four, collecting golden bananas…

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perfection v. progression

Well, that didn't take long. 17 sets of games, each with 15-21 levels, completed.  Not perfectly: I have a few one star, and several two star, levels, and I found only 4 golden eggs along the way, so not all the bonus levels. (There are cheat pages on the web for finding all the eggs ... but that's cheating.)

I have found only four of these

  

So what next? (I have downloaded the Angry Birds "Seasons" set of level, but am waiting for the holiday to play that.)  The game itself suggests I could try for three stars on every level. Now, I admit I did a few levels more than once as I went through, when it seemed I just lucked out, or when I wanted to explore an alternative solution.  But, I prefer to move on once I have achieved what's needed, which here is to "clear the level" of pigs.

It's important not to spend too much time perfecting what you have done, in place of doing new things.  Do something as well as it needs to be done, then move on.  If you have moved on, don't go back and redo, knowing you could do it better now. (Of course you can do it better now: you've moved on!  Only go back if the earlier imperfect version is proving a shaky foundation.)  Polishing is much easier than progression, but is often only a displacement activity.

So, I will maybe try to get better scores on a few more levels (maybe try for no one star levels, anyway) in my "spare time", but it isn't anything like the same as marching on to new levels.

Next?

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most addictive use of a physics engine ever

I've been holding out, but yesterday I finally installed Angry Birds on my Android phone.  Four hours and two levels (of 21 stages each, for the remaining person on the planet who hasn't yet installed it) later, I decided it was a keeper.

An early, but difficult, level

And again, for that one remaining person, the concept is simple, but addictive.  You "fire" birds from a catapult (these birds don't fly, they fall with style) to knock over and blow up structures, in order to explode the pigs.  (What do you mean, "why"?)

The physics engine means that if you hit things just right, they fall in glorious cascades, squashing everything in sight.  If you don't, they fall in the wrong place, or wobble, or tilt, and you have to try again. And again.  And again.  Hence the four hours.

Different kinds of birds have different capabilities, and you get only a limited number, so you have to plan carefully.  And then you have to execute the plan, which involves a combination of skill and luck (that's the way the castle crumbles).

It took me back a couple of decades, to Lemmings, which absorbed a lot of life back then (I really should know better by now).

more screenshots available

What impressed me those years ago about Lemmings was the implicit training programme.  At the computer show (remember them?) where I tried it, and bought it, there were three demo levels: v triv, triv, and impossible.  After having played it for several months a completely non-significant part of my life, I realised I had just sailed through the "impossible" demo level, having been thoroughly and efficiently trained in exploiting Lemming capabilities to solve fiendish mining problems. Angry Birds (and, I assume, all its ilk) has the same approach, introducing the new capabilities one by one, having specially designed levels that you use these capabilities to solve, and slowly increasing difficulty, to keep you engaged.  In addition to being a brilliant teacher, it's a brilliant implementation of what Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow".

Time has moved on since the relatively simple graphics and trivial dynamics of Lemmings.  Angry Birds has that physics engine which gives a whole new level of realism (although I do think the friction model is a bit too sticky). But Lemmings had its own great feature: insanely compelling use of background music. To this day, whenever I hear a certain piece of Mozart, I flash back to images of hordes of grimly marching lemmings.

Now, have I got time for just one more go before lunch? 

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