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Collision Detection Is Hard: The Story of Alf
- wildmanx 5y agoA more suitable title is perhaps "Collision Detection In Videogames Is Hard: The Story of Alf" There are many more areas that the HN crowd would be interested in where "collisions" are a thing. Self-driving cars, hash functions, lock-free data structures, etc. "The Story of Alf" does not make this more specific either. "Alf" could easily be the nickname of some self-driving project or the acronym for some lock-free data structure or so.
- tinus_hn 5y agoPerhaps, but according to the rules of this site you are supposed to use the title of the linked article.
- ganafagol 5y ago"unless it is misleading" which could be considered to be the case here.
- nkrisc 5y agoIt’s not misleading, it’s vague. It is in fact about collision detection, maybe just not the kind you assumed at first. It’s also not clickbait.
- testermelon 5y agoI’m not sure how many people here share my view, but when I see “collision detection” I think about video games first, not self driving cars.
- maweki 5y agoCollision detection in cars is very easy, I'd say. Collision prevention is the hard part.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bigbillheck 5y ago"Collision Detection" is a term of art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_detection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_detection
- croes 5y agoCollision shouldn't be a thing for self driving cars.
- eru 5y agoYet, you should still have code that handles them. Eg something that automatically calls the police and ambulance.
- FeepingCreature 5y agoMaybe I missed it, but what was the actual cause of the bug?
- strbean 5y agoWondering the same thing!
- djmips 5y agoHehe, I don't think it's actually solved in this article. The article is kind of rambly right, so it's hard to tell for sure.
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago> So collision did happen! For just two frames (this code runs every frame; I was able to trace it back to the frame interrupt handler, so once every 60Hz). You’d expect a real collision to last more than two frames. It happened but was too fast for a human eye.
- croes 5y agoBut what collided?
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y agoAs per the next header there "But why is the bat there?".
- quietbritishjim 5y agoBut that bat is miles away from the Alf character, so it's still missing an explanation of why it counts as a collision. (Plus, that section "But why is the bat there?", doesn't appear to answer that question.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- testplzignore 5y agoDarbian (of Super Mario Bros speedrun fame) has been speedrunning this game on Twitch recently, on an actual Master System console. Previously he had played on the Genesis, which had different strategies due to the collision detection differences. His world record on it is just a bit under 5 minutes. Most of the runs die on that (very frustrating) bat section due to collision detection. I wonder if he has seen this article yet.
- kleiba 5y agoTo you young folks: hands up who had never heard of "Alf" before? (The character I mean, not the game.)
- meepmorp 5y agoOnce upon a time, the TV only had 3 apps on it and you had to get up to swipe between them.
- quickthrower2 5y agoOr turn the tuning dial
- moron4hire 5y agoThat was the joke
- quickthrower2 5y agoOh ok!
- animal531 5y agoAlf was pretty big all over the world, we even had a dubbed version here in South Africa. It was no fun as an adult to see the movie version and have him sound so weird.
- at_a_remove 5y agoAh, this sort of brings back memories. When I was making my own extremely crappy and derivative games on the TI-99 4/A, the agony of doubly-interpreted BASIC meant that my pre-programmed walls and pits and such were painful to check for. I hit upon the idea of just checking the video array for where my sprite was going to move. Which wasn't bad for a tween.
- woxko 5y agoThere's still no proof that Near is dead.
- wk_end 5y agoTheir employer "confirmed their death to USA TODAY" [0]. [0] https://news.yahoo.com/respected-developer-died-suicide-experts-165758039.html https://news.yahoo.com/respected-developer-died-suicide-expe...