5 ms·

The Game Designer's Calculator

77 points by akkartik 9y ago

kyleperik 9y ago
The site's wrapping on mobile is cancer
- stevehb 9y ago
  You're being downvoted, but it is pretty bad. Looks like they set word breaks to 'break-all' for those low-width media queries.
zokier 9y ago
I must say I can't see the connection to game design. Nevertheless, DM42 is pretty damn nice looking thingy, so I'm not complaining too much finding it on the front page. Too bad I don't really have any use for it to justify the relatively steep (if understandable) price tag.
- foota 9y ago
  I believe it's talking about table top gaming.
- spartanatreyu 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's meant for tabletop games, as in a DM/GM would use this in their roleplaying game they're running in a campaign they've designed.
  - camtarn 9y ago
    Still seems pretty tenuous. If you're designing a tabletop game, you're probably not rolling dice during the design phase.
    - cableshaft 9y ago
      As someone who just designed a tabletop dice game...I totally rolled a bunch of dice. Distribution charts are good for a sanity and balance check, but rolling the dice gives you more of a feel for the game, what you can expect to get with any given roll, and give you a feel for how to manipulate the dice (physically), see how fiddly it can be, how much time it takes for turns, etc. But you can't replicate that bit with a computer program too well.
      - camtarn 9y ago
        Ah. Different use of designing a game - I was thinking more like a D&D campaign. I suppose it shows my affiliation: tabletop RPGs instead of board games ;) I can certainly see how that would be useful for your case.
zeveb 9y ago
Oh that looks awesome! I've got a real soft spot in my heart for old HP RPN calculators — they're the only way to do figures!
ryanianian 9y ago
I really wish it went a bit further into why a programmable RPN calculator is better than an iPhone app or whatever. Explain why RPN is so much better than infix. Explain why the simple, distraction-free BASIC impl is so liberating for certain kinds of tasks. Explain what kinds of tasks this little gizmo enables and why are these tasks better on the gizmo than on a more "modern" alternative. Riff on the weeks of battery-use, the lack of push notifications, the cool retro factor...any of this to convey the coolness that is the gizmo. Nice little one-off piece, but I'd love to see something similar with more passion and explanation!
- taeric 9y ago
  To be fair, for this dev the reason it is better is it makes them happy. I'm similar. I have my HP 49G sitting on the desk near me. Don't use it much, which makes me sad. I have several things I like more about RPN. Especially over infix, it is a bit easier for me to decompose what I'm doing. Especially since I can't stand the arrow keys to jump around the bloody equation as I'm entering it. That said, I don't think it is "de facto" superior. I do like it, though.
- hsnewman 9y ago
  From the DM website: Compact size - are small enough to easily fit in any shirt pocket or purse or school backpack Extended battery life - have low power requirements, a single CR2032 will last for many years Full-sized capabilities - have all of the mathematical functions and programming power of full-sized HP calculators Connectivity - have an USB connection to save and load the complete state of the calculator including all programs and registers Firmware update - can be updated to the latest firmware release through the miniUSB connection Nostalgia - give you the feeling you had decades ago
- tobyjsullivan 9y ago
  The article links to this explanation of RPN and its benefits. https://www.swissmicros.com/what_is_rpn.php https://www.swissmicros.com/what_is_rpn.php After reading, I discovered the macOS calculator supports RPN (Cmd+R) and it is about as cool as described. Looks like the iPhone calculator does not but I'm sure there are great apps.
aidenn0 9y ago
Since it took me forever to find this info on swissmicro's page, this is for all the portrait calculators: DMXXL: Same size and features as HPXXC DMXX: Credit-card sized HPXXC (but full sized display) They all appear to take cr2032 batteries. The 42 can run off of USB power (and will clock higher when doing so). It is unclear if the portrait calculators will as well.
taneq 9y ago
I have an HP 48G in my desk drawer. Back in highschool I spent months playing with it obsessively, writing games and 3D graphing programs and whatnot. Haven't touched it since then, although I'm still fond of it in some theoretical sense. They're a great "pocket computer" for when you don't have access to a "real" computer (ie. one with a programming environment) but I don't think they're actually useful unless you're in some engineering profession where you regularly use complex formulae in the field.
- tzs 9y ago
  I have a 48SX. I never seriously got into programming it, but I did do one program that I was inordinately pleased with. I wanted a calendar, and found one online but it was very slow. It was written entirely in the User RPL. So I wrote my own, also entirely in RPL, but managed to get it fast enough that there was no perceptual difference between its speed and the speed of assembly language calendars. I got the speed by managing to do almost all of the formatting, which was the slow part, using User RPL string functions, which were all internally implemented as highly optimized assembly. I'd start with these two strings (spaces replaced with _ for clarity): days = "__1__2__3 ... _29_30_31" pad = "_____________________" (that's 21 spaces) Then I'd calculate s = number of days month is shorter than 31 days, and d = day of week of 1st day of month (Sunday == 0, Monday == 1, ...). Shorten the days string by 3 * s, and prepend 3 * d spaces on front of days (which can be obtained by taking an appropriate substring of the pad string). Finally, append the pad string to days. Display a header line: "_Su_Mo_Tu_We_Th_Fr_Sa" Now take the first 21 characters of days and display them on the next line under the header, then the next 21 characters on the next line, and so on for 5 lines, and that's your calendar. This could probably be improved a bit by starting with a days string that has 18 spaces in front and 12 spaces at the end. Then you just have to possibly replace some numbers with spaces if the month is shorter than 31 days, and then use the day of the 1st to choose where you start taking the 21 character substrings from.
  - taneq 9y ago
    There's a much under-rated rush that comes with your first real optimisation job. Mine was with a program to simplify square roots into surds - we'd had the lesson on them in year 10, then been given a sheet of about 100 different square roots to simplify. It was repetitive grunt work and so I wrote a program to do it. The first version worked, but was too slow (it simply tried number from 0 to N/2, checked if it was square, then checked if it was divisible) so I did the obvious thing and instead only checked square numbers, taking it from O(N) to O(SQRT(N)). Simple enough but it made me happy. :)
profsnuggles 9y ago
Why is it impossible to find a small advanced calculator? I use an hp-35s now but I hate it. I want a calculator with rpn, programmability and an equation solver that is pocket sized. I understand rpn is niche, but relaxing that restriction still only finds you huge graphing calculators. SwissMicros has a range of credit card sized calculators that are so close to what I want. However they are running hp firmware in emulation and I don't believe that any of the firmware they are using have an equation solver. We have the technology now to make an advanced pocket sized calculator I'm sure. Why does no one want to release one? The calculator enthusiast community seems content with just emulating 30 year old calculators and everyone else is just selling calculators for people that need to take standardized tests.
kelchm 9y ago
Why this over something like the HP Prime?

77 points by akkartik 9y ago

kyleperik 9y ago

The site's wrapping on mobile is cancer

stevehb 9y ago
You're being downvoted, but it is pretty bad. Looks like they set word breaks to 'break-all' for those low-width media queries.

zokier 9y ago

I must say I can't see the connection to game design. Nevertheless, DM42 is pretty damn nice looking thingy, so I'm not complaining too much finding it on the front page. Too bad I don't really have any use for it to justify the relatively steep (if understandable) price tag.

foota 9y ago
I believe it's talking about table top gaming.
spartanatreyu 9y ago
I'm pretty sure it's meant for tabletop games, as in a DM/GM would use this in their roleplaying game they're running in a campaign they've designed.
- camtarn 9y ago
  Still seems pretty tenuous. If you're designing a tabletop game, you're probably not rolling dice during the design phase.
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    As someone who just designed a tabletop dice game...I totally rolled a bunch of dice. Distribution charts are good for a sanity and balance check, but rolling the dice gives you more of a feel for the game, what you can expect to get with any given roll, and give you a feel for how to manipulate the dice (physically), see how fiddly it can be, how much time it takes for turns, etc. But you can't replicate that bit with a computer program too well.
    - camtarn 9y ago
      Ah. Different use of designing a game - I was thinking more like a D&D campaign. I suppose it shows my affiliation: tabletop RPGs instead of board games ;) I can certainly see how that would be useful for your case.

zeveb 9y ago

Oh that looks awesome! I've got a real soft spot in my heart for old HP RPN calculators — they're the only way to do figures!

ryanianian 9y ago

I really wish it went a bit further into why a programmable RPN calculator is better than an iPhone app or whatever. Explain why RPN is so much better than infix. Explain why the simple, distraction-free BASIC impl is so liberating for certain kinds of tasks. Explain what kinds of tasks this little gizmo enables and why are these tasks better on the gizmo than on a more "modern" alternative. Riff on the weeks of battery-use, the lack of push notifications, the cool retro factor...any of this to convey the coolness that is the gizmo. Nice little one-off piece, but I'd love to see something similar with more passion and explanation!

taeric 9y ago
To be fair, for this dev the reason it is better is it makes them happy. I'm similar. I have my HP 49G sitting on the desk near me. Don't use it much, which makes me sad. I have several things I like more about RPN. Especially over infix, it is a bit easier for me to decompose what I'm doing. Especially since I can't stand the arrow keys to jump around the bloody equation as I'm entering it. That said, I don't think it is "de facto" superior. I do like it, though.
hsnewman 9y ago
From the DM website: Compact size - are small enough to easily fit in any shirt pocket or purse or school backpack Extended battery life - have low power requirements, a single CR2032 will last for many years Full-sized capabilities - have all of the mathematical functions and programming power of full-sized HP calculators Connectivity - have an USB connection to save and load the complete state of the calculator including all programs and registers Firmware update - can be updated to the latest firmware release through the miniUSB connection Nostalgia - give you the feeling you had decades ago
tobyjsullivan 9y ago
The article links to this explanation of RPN and its benefits. https://www.swissmicros.com/what_is_rpn.php https://www.swissmicros.com/what_is_rpn.php After reading, I discovered the macOS calculator supports RPN (Cmd+R) and it is about as cool as described. Looks like the iPhone calculator does not but I'm sure there are great apps.

aidenn0 9y ago

Since it took me forever to find this info on swissmicro's page, this is for all the portrait calculators: DMXXL: Same size and features as HPXXC DMXX: Credit-card sized HPXXC (but full sized display) They all appear to take cr2032 batteries. The 42 can run off of USB power (and will clock higher when doing so). It is unclear if the portrait calculators will as well.

taneq 9y ago

I have an HP 48G in my desk drawer. Back in highschool I spent months playing with it obsessively, writing games and 3D graphing programs and whatnot. Haven't touched it since then, although I'm still fond of it in some theoretical sense. They're a great "pocket computer" for when you don't have access to a "real" computer (ie. one with a programming environment) but I don't think they're actually useful unless you're in some engineering profession where you regularly use complex formulae in the field.

tzs 9y ago
I have a 48SX. I never seriously got into programming it, but I did do one program that I was inordinately pleased with. I wanted a calendar, and found one online but it was very slow. It was written entirely in the User RPL. So I wrote my own, also entirely in RPL, but managed to get it fast enough that there was no perceptual difference between its speed and the speed of assembly language calendars. I got the speed by managing to do almost all of the formatting, which was the slow part, using User RPL string functions, which were all internally implemented as highly optimized assembly. I'd start with these two strings (spaces replaced with _ for clarity): days = "__1__2__3 ... _29_30_31" pad = "_____________________" (that's 21 spaces) Then I'd calculate s = number of days month is shorter than 31 days, and d = day of week of 1st day of month (Sunday == 0, Monday == 1, ...). Shorten the days string by 3 * s, and prepend 3 * d spaces on front of days (which can be obtained by taking an appropriate substring of the pad string). Finally, append the pad string to days. Display a header line: "_Su_Mo_Tu_We_Th_Fr_Sa" Now take the first 21 characters of days and display them on the next line under the header, then the next 21 characters on the next line, and so on for 5 lines, and that's your calendar. This could probably be improved a bit by starting with a days string that has 18 spaces in front and 12 spaces at the end. Then you just have to possibly replace some numbers with spaces if the month is shorter than 31 days, and then use the day of the 1st to choose where you start taking the 21 character substrings from.
- taneq 9y ago
  There's a much under-rated rush that comes with your first real optimisation job. Mine was with a program to simplify square roots into surds - we'd had the lesson on them in year 10, then been given a sheet of about 100 different square roots to simplify. It was repetitive grunt work and so I wrote a program to do it. The first version worked, but was too slow (it simply tried number from 0 to N/2, checked if it was square, then checked if it was divisible) so I did the obvious thing and instead only checked square numbers, taking it from O(N) to O(SQRT(N)). Simple enough but it made me happy. :)

profsnuggles 9y ago

Why is it impossible to find a small advanced calculator? I use an hp-35s now but I hate it. I want a calculator with rpn, programmability and an equation solver that is pocket sized. I understand rpn is niche, but relaxing that restriction still only finds you huge graphing calculators. SwissMicros has a range of credit card sized calculators that are so close to what I want. However they are running hp firmware in emulation and I don't believe that any of the firmware they are using have an equation solver. We have the technology now to make an advanced pocket sized calculator I'm sure. Why does no one want to release one? The calculator enthusiast community seems content with just emulating 30 year old calculators and everyone else is just selling calculators for people that need to take standardized tests.

kelchm 9y ago

Why this over something like the HP Prime?