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digitalmars.D - Empire and D are in the news

reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
https://madned.substack.com/p/a-talk-with-computer-gaming-pioneer

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qc00bp/a_talk_with_computer_gaming_pioneer_walter_bright/

https://news.ycombinator.com/newest at about 5:29 AM PST
Oct 20 2021
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:


https://news.ycombinator.com/
Oct 20 2021
parent Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 13:13:37 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:



 https://news.ycombinator.com/


Btw I ported it to D2 some time ago. Do you want the source?
Oct 20 2021
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Basile B. <b2.temp gmx.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 13:01:21 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 https://madned.substack.com/p/a-talk-with-computer-gaming-pioneer

 https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qc00bp/a_talk_with_computer_gaming_pioneer_walter_bright/

 https://news.ycombinator.com/newest at about 5:29 AM PST



 _"Eventually, my clandestine activities were discovered and the 
 computer division demanded that I be reprimanded"_


very cool anecdote.
Oct 20 2021
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/20/2021 9:13 AM, Basile B. wrote:

 On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 13:01:21 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 _"Eventually, my clandestine activities were discovered and the computer 
 division demanded that I be reprimanded"_


 
 very cool anecdote.


Having upper management go to bat for me against bureaucratic fiefdoms was very 
gratifying.
Oct 20 2021
parent reply max haughton <maxhaton gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 20:33:50 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 On 10/20/2021 9:13 AM, Basile B. wrote:

 On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 13:01:21 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 _"Eventually, my clandestine activities were discovered and 
 the computer division demanded that I be reprimanded"_


 
 very cool anecdote.


 Having upper management go to bat for me against bureaucratic 
 fiefdoms was very gratifying.


I mentioned this anecdote to a friend of mine who is aiming to 
work in aerospace, he didn't actually believe me. Totally 
unimaginable today with all these finite element solvers 
available that run really fast on commodity hardware, although I 
think the art/intuition of sitting down and actually doing the 
maths on some mechanical component might be going the way of the 
dodo.
Oct 20 2021
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/20/2021 3:47 PM, max haughton wrote:

 I mentioned this anecdote to a friend of mine who is aiming to work in 
 aerospace, he didn't actually believe me. Totally unimaginable today with all 
 these finite element solvers available that run really fast on commodity 
 hardware, although I think the art/intuition of sitting down and actually
doing 
 the maths on some mechanical component might be going the way of the dodo.


In the flight controls group, I was probably the first engineer to use a 
computer. I wrote my own programs to do things like matrix inversions.

The rest used calculators, and a method of using mechanical drafting tools to
do 
calculations, which I had no idea how to do.

The 757 was the last airplane to have a full size wooden mockup built. The 
mockup was to check clearances so that two assemblies didn't occupy the same 
space. Internal space is awfully tight on a jet, and everything has to fit in 
somewhere.

Computerized drafting was coming, but it wasn't good enough at the time. Pen
and 
ink had its last stand with the 757.
Oct 20 2021
parent reply rikki cattermole <rikki cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 21/10/2021 5:50 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 In the flight controls group, I was probably the first engineer to use a 
 computer. I wrote my own programs to do things like matrix inversions.


Ugh, I've been working on fixing bugs/improving my matrix struct 
recently. With the bug fixes for inversions/Gaussian elimination.

The latest bug was with floating point, multiply one number with another 
*should* result in another and it even writeln's to that value! But it 
wasn't that value. Which of course meant... the resulting multiplication 
was like E-6. Tiny but it threw off everything with chromatic adaption.

Honestly? If I had fixed point or IEEE-754 to choose from, I'd probably 
go with fixed point every time.

Anyway hearing about all this is quite interesting!
Oct 20 2021
next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/20/2021 11:34 PM, rikki cattermole wrote:

 The latest bug was with floating point, multiply one number with another 
 *should* result in another and it even writeln's to that value! But it wasn't 
 that value. Which of course meant... the resulting multiplication was like
E-6. 
 Tiny but it threw off everything with chromatic adaption.


I had a lot of trouble with rounding errors. This was before the intertoobs,
and 
I didn't know there were standard techniques for dealing with it.
Oct 21 2021
prev sibling parent reply jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 21 October 2021 at 06:34:09 UTC, rikki cattermole 
wrote:

 [snip]

 Ugh, I've been working on fixing bugs/improving my matrix 
 struct recently. With the bug fixes for inversions/Gaussian 
 elimination.


You can't use LAPACK?
Oct 21 2021
parent rikki cattermole <rikki cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 21/10/2021 11:01 PM, jmh530 wrote:

 On Thursday, 21 October 2021 at 06:34:09 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:

 [snip]

 Ugh, I've been working on fixing bugs/improving my matrix struct 
 recently. With the bug fixes for inversions/Gaussian elimination.


 
 You can't use LAPACK?


Nah, need something small and in D. Don't want to complicate things.
Don't want to bother with libraries either due to -betterC requirements ext.
Oct 21 2021
prev sibling parent Basile B. <b2.temp gmx.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 22:47:50 UTC, max haughton wrote:

 On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 20:33:50 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 On 10/20/2021 9:13 AM, Basile B. wrote:

 On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 13:01:21 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 _"Eventually, my clandestine activities were discovered and 
 the computer division demanded that I be reprimanded"_


 
 very cool anecdote.


 Having upper management go to bat for me against bureaucratic 
 fiefdoms was very gratifying.


 I mentioned this anecdote to a friend of mine who is aiming to 
 work in aerospace, he didn't actually believe me. Totally 
 unimaginable today with all these finite element solvers 
 available that run really fast on commodity hardware, although 
 I think the art/intuition of sitting down and actually doing 
 the maths on some mechanical component might be going the way 
 of the dodo.


it's not about the domain, it's more about when this happened, 
e.g the 80's
It's totally an [Halt and Catch 
Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series)) story.

the guy has gained access to the mainframe to perform his 
computations... it's basically too good.
Oct 22 2021
prev sibling parent reply Brian <bcallah openbsd.org> writes:
Hi Walter --

Very nice interview. I have to admit to long knowing about, but 
never playing, Empire. I suppose I will have to remedy that 
someday!

~Brian
Oct 20 2021
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/20/2021 4:53 PM, Brian wrote:

 Very nice interview. I have to admit to long knowing about, but never playing, 
 Empire. I suppose I will have to remedy that someday!


Don't start if you have a deadline looming!
Oct 20 2021