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[Warmist]

So in rexpaint thread i started development of "particle toy based on rexpaint drawings". This is an continuation of that. Once I started playing with it, it immediately sparked many ideas about possible toys/games. So this is a conglomeration of them:

• Draw stuff with rexpaint, add particles = fun - simplest idea. 50% done, now it needs stuff to make particle behaviour easy
• Particle interaction stuff = more fun and complexity... What if you particle touches wall and it heats it?
• Reactor simulator - now this would be first game-like thing. You could ask player to construct (using rexpaint) reactor which converts particles X to other things (energy/electricity/other particles...) but then why stop with reactors...
• ANYTHING SIMULATOR - ok it needs better name... maybe "High energy machinery simulator" or HEMS. You would be tasked to construct e.g. particle accelerator or plasma igniter or quark splitter and you would see how it works

So how would it look?
One layer would be background (particles don't interact, maybe transfers electricity etc...), one would be the particle layer, and one for foreground (like background). One idea was to supply some stuff at the edges (e.g. if you draw 30x30 machine, it would show 31x30(+gui?) sized window with "taps" at the left (or top?) other idea was to use the last layer for special stuff.
Lastly big dreams in the sky:

• Simulate particles as 10(or 100 or 1000...) smaller than grid and show only "density" of them
• Add fields to the play

And finally the most important thing - the goal of all of this: to create a toy/game that would encourage crazy but nice looking "functioning" machinery (because cogmind ascii looks epic!)

So ideas/thoughts?

[Kyzrati]

That sounds pretty awesome. I wonder how it could be turned into more of a game than a toy to add a little more meaning. Though once you start adding too many rules and goal conditions you end up restricting creative freedom. The best idea would probably be to design it as a toy, then consider converting it later depending on what users do with it and what possibilities present themselves.

Simulate particles as 10(or 100 or 1000...) smaller than grid and show only "density" of them

This is similar to how Cogmind handles particle effects, and the results look much better for it, so that's a good goal to work towards.

[Warmist]

Just some news on development of this:

• Github repo here: linky
• Next on todo: rewrite particles to use grid instead of "free particles", that way particles could collide/check for other particles- needed for stuff like smoke and energy
• kd-tree would be nice in the long run