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You know what would be cool? A defragmentation game. It's basically Tetris but in a circular layout, and you get more points the better optimized it is - with f

You know what would be cool? A defragmentation game. It's basically Tetris but in a circular layout, and you get more points the better optimized it is - with frequently used data blocks towards the outer tracks and old/archive file types towards the inner tracks. I always enjoyed watching graphical defragmenters do their magic back in the day and would unironically love to play a defragging game.

reaperducer 3y ago
Sort of the opposite of Breakout.
- samplatt 3y ago
  Or the opposite of a particular type of block-tapping mobile game, like these on Android/iOS: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=clear.tap.geometrydash.puzzle.away.clash.block.games&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=clear.tap.geom... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tap-away-3d/id1568058543 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tap-away-3d/id1568058543
RheingoldRiver 3y ago
it's not really related in concept, but I feel like playing various puzzles with pentominoes would feel a bit similar to this, as it's spatial reasoning puzzles. I adore pentominoes and spent a large portion of my childhood playing with them, recently rediscovered them as an adult.
- joveian 3y ago
  For me it was Tangrams, which I've only seen one somewhat odd (in a "feels outsourced" kind of way) computer game (not that you can really improve on the physical version). I first thought you said pantomimes, which could also be interesting :).
  - RheingoldRiver 3y ago
    Definitely played with tangrams too, and funnily enough, I had a bunch of animal-shaped puzzles that I guess you could call pantomimes haha. If you enjoyed tangrams enough, I can't recommend enough picking up a set of pentominoes - definitely agree that a physical set is the right call. There's 12 total so you have 60 individual squares, (pentominoes are 5-square tiles), so popular figures are 6x10, 5x12 (a bit harder than 6x10), and 3x20 (very challenging). You can also get cubes and do 2x5x6 (really hard) or 3x4x5 (even harder). Recently though, I've been doing 8x8 - 4, which means picking 4 squares to remove from an 8x8 square and then filling in the rest (I have some wooden boards i picked up from an etsy seller but you can just as easily trace the outline on paper and color in the forbidden cells, which I've also done). Which has been delightful!
    - joveian 3y ago
      Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give them a try :).
etrautmann 3y ago
I felt that way about PCB routing and layout when I was building electronics.
- ghodith 3y ago
  Might make a good career then.
  - krasin 3y ago
    > Might make a good career then. Is it, though? As much as the autorouters "known" to not work, I expect that a working one is less than 10 years away. Even for PCIe-level complexity.
    - jakear 3y ago
      The "career" in question could be autorouter developing. That said, I'd suspect it's similar to CS: autoprogrammers are "known" to not work. If you can understand and articulate the business logic in a concise way, understand and articulate all the components of the system and how they may interfere with each other, understand and articulate the system's nominal and practical input ranges, etc., then sure something might autoprogram the code for you, but it's not the autoprogrammer doing the real work.
    - RF_Savage 3y ago
      But will the autorouted pcb pass EMC?
    - junon 3y ago
      Highly doubt that, and routing is only part of the puzzle.
  - etrautmann 3y ago
    somehow I ended up in Neuroscience, where I get to use the electronics skills occasionally, but even that is mostly focused on ASIC design now.
Sparkyte 3y ago
Lets up the stakes and use a real drive as part of the sacrifice to the game.
- seanthemon 3y ago
  Let's up the stakes and use a real production storage in the game
  - jwestbury 3y ago
    An even more specific version of DOOM for sysadmins, then?
    - KevinDonnot 3y ago
      psDooM is what you need: a FPS to frag system processes https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/ https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/
2Gkashmiri 3y ago
windows 98 SE had the coolest disk defragmentation animation. it felt wrong when it just never reappeared.
- iforgotpassword 3y ago
  It looked exactly the same as 98 and 95, there was nothing changed.
  - 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
    i mean, onwards from XP
- ForOldHack 3y ago
  I found jkdefrag, and it was dot based instead of block based. Now that became the coolest - until it was discontinued... Now hard to find... But, mydefrag has become the best defragmenter.
runnerup 3y ago
https://classic.csunplugged.org/activities/community-activities/defrag-game/ https://classic.csunplugged.org/activities/community-activit... (see also: https://www.itgsnews.com/the-defragmentation-game-lesson-plan/ https://www.itgsnews.com/the-defragmentation-game-lesson-pla... ) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/376284/defrag https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/376284/defrag https://www.defraggame.com https://www.defraggame.com There used to be a few old ones in the day that I recall trying which were a bit more direct simulacrums than these. Not sure if anyone else might find them!
MatthewCampbell 3y ago
https://defrag.lolalabs.com/ https://defrag.lolalabs.com/
- bibanez 3y ago
  Cool proof of concept... not a fun game
- will5421 3y ago
  I can’t scroll down to see the rest of the lines
- registeredcorn 3y ago
  I like the idea, but I noticed that there seems to be some kind of issue with it registering clicks. I don't know if I'm just sometimes clicking slightly outside of the hitboxes or what, but I find myself "dragging" stuff by accident when the game doesn't register that I "dropped" whatever object I had selected.
snvzz 3y ago
It is still fun to run the real thing[0]. 0. https://www.nongnu.org/free-defrag/ https://www.nongnu.org/free-defrag/
mos_basik 3y ago
Wilmot's Warehouse is basically this. It's top-down 2D. You are alone in a large, empty warehouse. At regular intervals, a truck drops off a load of assorted objects at the back, and a few people ask you for some specific objects at the counter in front. Your role is to arrange the objects in the warehouse such that you can fill the requests in the least amount of time, and you can do this in any way that works for you (by color, function, name, etc). As the game goes on, the truck drops off more and more different kinds of objects (usually ones that fit into more than one category), and the requests get more and more complicated. At the end you get a time-lapse of the whole warehouse over the whole game and you can see your strategy evolving over time. Pretty well executed and simple. Heard about it from one of its devs in a HN comment actually.

reaperducer 3y ago

Sort of the opposite of Breakout.

samplatt 3y ago
Or the opposite of a particular type of block-tapping mobile game, like these on Android/iOS: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=clear.tap.geometrydash.puzzle.away.clash.block.games&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=clear.tap.geom... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tap-away-3d/id1568058543 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tap-away-3d/id1568058543

RheingoldRiver 3y ago

it's not really related in concept, but I feel like playing various puzzles with pentominoes would feel a bit similar to this, as it's spatial reasoning puzzles. I adore pentominoes and spent a large portion of my childhood playing with them, recently rediscovered them as an adult.

joveian 3y ago
For me it was Tangrams, which I've only seen one somewhat odd (in a "feels outsourced" kind of way) computer game (not that you can really improve on the physical version). I first thought you said pantomimes, which could also be interesting :).
- RheingoldRiver 3y ago
  Definitely played with tangrams too, and funnily enough, I had a bunch of animal-shaped puzzles that I guess you could call pantomimes haha. If you enjoyed tangrams enough, I can't recommend enough picking up a set of pentominoes - definitely agree that a physical set is the right call. There's 12 total so you have 60 individual squares, (pentominoes are 5-square tiles), so popular figures are 6x10, 5x12 (a bit harder than 6x10), and 3x20 (very challenging). You can also get cubes and do 2x5x6 (really hard) or 3x4x5 (even harder). Recently though, I've been doing 8x8 - 4, which means picking 4 squares to remove from an 8x8 square and then filling in the rest (I have some wooden boards i picked up from an etsy seller but you can just as easily trace the outline on paper and color in the forbidden cells, which I've also done). Which has been delightful!
  - joveian 3y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give them a try :).

etrautmann 3y ago

I felt that way about PCB routing and layout when I was building electronics.

ghodith 3y ago
Might make a good career then.
- krasin 3y ago
  > Might make a good career then. Is it, though? As much as the autorouters "known" to not work, I expect that a working one is less than 10 years away. Even for PCIe-level complexity.
  - jakear 3y ago
    The "career" in question could be autorouter developing. That said, I'd suspect it's similar to CS: autoprogrammers are "known" to not work. If you can understand and articulate the business logic in a concise way, understand and articulate all the components of the system and how they may interfere with each other, understand and articulate the system's nominal and practical input ranges, etc., then sure something might autoprogram the code for you, but it's not the autoprogrammer doing the real work.
  - RF_Savage 3y ago
    But will the autorouted pcb pass EMC?
  - junon 3y ago
    Highly doubt that, and routing is only part of the puzzle.
- etrautmann 3y ago
  somehow I ended up in Neuroscience, where I get to use the electronics skills occasionally, but even that is mostly focused on ASIC design now.

Sparkyte 3y ago

Lets up the stakes and use a real drive as part of the sacrifice to the game.

seanthemon 3y ago
Let's up the stakes and use a real production storage in the game
- jwestbury 3y ago
  An even more specific version of DOOM for sysadmins, then?
  - KevinDonnot 3y ago
    psDooM is what you need: a FPS to frag system processes https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/ https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

2Gkashmiri 3y ago

windows 98 SE had the coolest disk defragmentation animation. it felt wrong when it just never reappeared.

iforgotpassword 3y ago
It looked exactly the same as 98 and 95, there was nothing changed.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
  i mean, onwards from XP
ForOldHack 3y ago
I found jkdefrag, and it was dot based instead of block based. Now that became the coolest - until it was discontinued... Now hard to find... But, mydefrag has become the best defragmenter.

runnerup 3y ago

https://classic.csunplugged.org/activities/community-activities/defrag-game/ https://classic.csunplugged.org/activities/community-activit... (see also: https://www.itgsnews.com/the-defragmentation-game-lesson-plan/ https://www.itgsnews.com/the-defragmentation-game-lesson-pla... ) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/376284/defrag https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/376284/defrag https://www.defraggame.com https://www.defraggame.com There used to be a few old ones in the day that I recall trying which were a bit more direct simulacrums than these. Not sure if anyone else might find them!

MatthewCampbell 3y ago

https://defrag.lolalabs.com/ https://defrag.lolalabs.com/

bibanez 3y ago
Cool proof of concept... not a fun game
will5421 3y ago
I can’t scroll down to see the rest of the lines
registeredcorn 3y ago
I like the idea, but I noticed that there seems to be some kind of issue with it registering clicks. I don't know if I'm just sometimes clicking slightly outside of the hitboxes or what, but I find myself "dragging" stuff by accident when the game doesn't register that I "dropped" whatever object I had selected.

snvzz 3y ago

It is still fun to run the real thing[0]. 0. https://www.nongnu.org/free-defrag/ https://www.nongnu.org/free-defrag/

mos_basik 3y ago

Wilmot's Warehouse is basically this. It's top-down 2D. You are alone in a large, empty warehouse. At regular intervals, a truck drops off a load of assorted objects at the back, and a few people ask you for some specific objects at the counter in front. Your role is to arrange the objects in the warehouse such that you can fill the requests in the least amount of time, and you can do this in any way that works for you (by color, function, name, etc). As the game goes on, the truck drops off more and more different kinds of objects (usually ones that fit into more than one category), and the requests get more and more complicated. At the end you get a time-lapse of the whole warehouse over the whole game and you can see your strategy evolving over time. Pretty well executed and simple. Heard about it from one of its devs in a HN comment actually.