• screwlisp proposes kittens

Back of envelope game logic

Having drafted counting sensors I think we can just finish up game logic with a typecase basically. I have a little bit of time after planning for Kent Pitman’s interview tomorrow (where he will read an unpublished essay live and share finding out about Ted Nelson /after/ writing his own Cross Referencing Editor Facility in England).

Here is my back-of-the-envelope draft of the game mechanic to implement.

Basic mechanic

1. Call action on grid
2. randomly choose an entity from the grid’s entityfile
3. Update that entity

• Plant has some chance to propagate
• • Checks sensors for plants
• • Propagates away from plants
• Insect tries to eat plants
• • Checks sensors for plants
• • spawns = moves towards plants
• • Eats a plant iff plant
• • • (Or has some probability of dying)
• Bird needs to eat and sleep
• • if hungry > tired
• • • tries to eat an insect iff insect
• • • • else chance of dying
• • • spawns (‘moves’ towards insects)
• • • low chance /not/ to remove the current position
• • • • i.e. the bird who moved away left an egg=new bird
• • else
• • • tries to sleep iff plant
• • • • else chance of dying
• • • else spawns (moves) towards plant
• • • • no chance of leaving an egg iff -plant