10 ms·

Put the DVD logo in the corner (2023)

415 points by EndXA 2y ago

frakt0x90 2y ago
That was really fun and a good explanation of the PICO-8 environment. Well done! I got 19 but think I got lucky towards the end.
tombert 2y ago
Stuff like this makes me utterly adore Pico-8. It's one of the most fun coding environments I've used since I first discovered the ActionScript in Macromedia Flash MX.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  The retro IDE is a huge attractor for a lot of people but for me I just love the limited constraints at runtime. I wish I had a high resolution modern editor for code/sound/graphics to work with, but was still limited by resolution, cpu power, API, etc.
  - galleywest200 2y ago
    Check out Lexaloffle's new project, Picotron. You can _almost_ think of it as a "Pico-64" with desktop environment. Comes with a tracker, larger text editor, etc. https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah I agree. Being constrained to a relatively low resolution and memory makes everything a lot more approachable and more fun for me. Obviously I could have as much flexibility as I want if I learned Vulkan and wrote all the graphics calls myself, but of course that's really hard and time consuming. Pico-8 being restricted makes it easy for me to quickly hack something together just for fun.
  - hbn 2y ago
    Creating within set constraints breeds unprecedented innovation and some really interesting stuff. For about 25 years there's been a small but dedicated group of people making romhacks for Super Mario World, and the early stuff was pretty quaint -- mostly rearranging tiles and enemy placements to make new levels. But over the years people have done some incredible hacks with custom graphics, enemies, mechanics, you name it. I've played some of them on real Super Nintendo hardware with a Super Everdrive which allows you to load rom files to the cartridge memory from an SD card. It's amazing what some people have made.
    - tombert 2y ago
      Extremely tangential but I think relevant: some of the DOOM mods that are still being made are utterly phenomenal. It's easy for people to think "Why would you constrain yourself to a DOOM engine when you could use Unity/Godot/Unreal/whatever and have better graphics and more freedom?!", but that's kind of missing the point. The point is figuring out how far you can stretch something, and how to get the most out of something limited. Blade of Agony, for example, exclusively runs on GZDoom, which while more advanced than the vanilla DOOM engine, is still a lot more limited than Unreal or something, but I think that what they did to really stretch that engine to its fullest extent has made something that's extremely fun, charming, and gives it a distinct look and feel that you simply wouldn't have if you used a "modern" engine.
      - whou 2y ago
        Selaco is also another jaw dropping example of a modern game using the GZDoom engine!
        tombert 2y ago
        I am surprised I haven't heard of this one, doing a quick search it looks downright incredible and hard to believe that they managed to stretch GZDoom to handle it.
        davikr 2y ago
  - noman-land 2y ago
    You can actually set it up to do Pico-8 code editing in your normal editor, while auto reloading in the browser, then building the cartridge and deploying the game via GitHub actions. It's been a little while but I set something like that up in some of my Pico-8 explorations¹. [1] https://github.com/noman-land/piconet/ https://github.com/noman-land/piconet/
- noman-land 2y ago
  +1 on this. The Pico-8 is a delightful little platform. I have a few unfinished projects kicking around and this is inspiring me to go back to them.
tyronepalmer 2y ago
This would be a blast on the Playdate, perhaps even using its little crank to advance time (and additional points for keeping the right rhythm?)
- nosrepa 2y ago
  Stars Of the Screen has a DVD attract screen game.
- omoikane 2y ago
  Here you go: https://uguu-org.itch.io/bouncing-dvd https://uguu-org.itch.io/bouncing-dvd It's pretty bare bones since I made it just now, feel free to fork it: https://github.com/uguu-org/playdate-dvd https://github.com/uguu-org/playdate-dvd
eieio 2y ago
dev here, fun surprise to see this on the front page (I'm glad it's resonating! give the pico-8 a try!) happy to answer q's if anyone has one. I haven't built a full pico-8 game since this (my stuff got...weirder...[1]) but I miss it + have been toying around with playdate and picotron ideas. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40800869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40800869
make3 2y ago
it would be fun to make an open-ai gym wrapper on this & train an rl agent to hit the corner every single time
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
onemoresoop 2y ago
I absolutely love PICO-8. Never been a hardcore gamer but started playing PICO-8 games on my commute after buying a Myioo mini. The games are simple but are extremely playable and fun.
- sureglymop 2y ago
  Same here and I highly agree! My favorite games are simple (e.g. Suika Game Demake) but so fun and addicting.
smokel 2y ago
Amazing to read about the Recurse Center [1]. It seems to be some kind of artist-in-residence, but for programmers. I've spent some time in residencies as an artist, and it's amazing how much it helped me to open up new perspectives. It'd be nice if there were more of these opportunities to do nonsensical (i.e., non-commercial and non-competitive) things in science. I'm sure it's beneficial to society or at least for the lucky individuals who get accepted there. [1] https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/
- zellyn 2y ago
  Check out https://sfpc.study/ https://sfpc.study/ too! The School for Poetic Computation is an experimental school in New York City and online supporting interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory. It's a place for learning and unlearning.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- eieio 2y ago
  (post author here) If Recurse sounds fun and magical to you - it is! And you should consider applying :). You can always defer your acceptance until the timing works out. It's free (they make money via job placements, but when I applied I was clear that I wasn't looking for work). I've been meaning to write a blog about my time there - here's what I would want to say: The best thing that Recurse (RC) did for me was help me get in touch with my own taste. When I arrived I was making games that were pretty "normal" - Flash-style games with high scores and weak themes. While there I got weird. One of my first projects was an abuse of the OpenSearch spec to make a version of Wordle that ran in the Firefox address bar[1]. It was the perfect place to build something like this - folks were encouraging and supportive and interested; it made me realize that people were interested in the type of thing I actually wanted to do. I think I shipped 8 games during my 12 weeks at RC. I wouldn't have started making the types of things I now make without RC. I think plenty of folks have similar experiences across all sorts of techy things, not just games. Kinda like finding product-market fit but for your own interests. RC also connected me with a bunch of folks that were doing similar things. The community is huge and kind and weird in the best way. It is like a writers' retreat but for people that want to program (and become better programmers). I am probably coming off as shilling RC hard and I suppose I am (although I'm not being paid for this - I'm just a grateful alum). I'm literally typing this from the RC space right now (I occasionally stop by to chat with people in batch and work). [1] https://eieio.games/nonsense/implementing-wordle-in-the-firefox-address-bar/ https://eieio.games/nonsense/implementing-wordle-in-the-fire...
robin_reala 2y ago
Worth mentioning this tale of the psychological and social suffering brought about by the DVD logo never quite hitting the corner of the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ
- EGreg 2y ago
  Jazz Emu fan!
pseudosavant 2y ago
Obligatory post to my DVD screensaver done in all CSS and inline SVG. https://dvd-player-screensaver.glitch.me/ https://dvd-player-screensaver.glitch.me/
- rylittle 2y ago
  Is there an easy way to actually make this my screensaver? (on mac)
  - pseudosavant 2y ago
    I’ve never used it but it seems like this would do the trick. https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver
  - jimbosis 2y ago
    There is this Rust program to display a bouncing DVD logo in a terminal: https://github.com/pythops/bouncinamation https://github.com/pythops/bouncinamation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35785932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35785932 [2023] I haven't used a recent macOS in years, but I use the following command to get a fullscreen screensaver and locked screen on (Devuan GNU+) Linux. It's probably about as secure as a cheap padlock and flimsy chain or cable to lock a bike. xtrlock -f & xterm -fullscreen -e 'sleep .05 ; /path/to/file/bouncinamation' You can skip the 'xtrlock -f &' part to just run 'bouncimation' in a fullscreen xterm. 'Esc' exits. If running with 'xtrlock' you must enter your password first to unlock 'xtrlock', and then 'Esc' to exit 'bouncinamation'. The 'sleep .05' is to make it work better or more reliably. I don't remember exactly what, but there was some kind of issue that was fixed when I did 'sleep .05' before running 'bouncinamation'.
  - pseudosavant 2y ago
    This is tool for doing it on Windows too: https://github.com/EnhancedJax/IdleWebview https://github.com/EnhancedJax/IdleWebview
chrisstanchak 2y ago
Made this a while ago if you just want to look at the screensaver. https://stanchak.github.io/dvd/ https://stanchak.github.io/dvd/
bluedays 2y ago
https://youtu.be/QOtuX0jL85Y?si=Kwo8OZSYOVzoI-Uh https://youtu.be/QOtuX0jL85Y?si=Kwo8OZSYOVzoI-Uh Obligatory The Office reference.
- bookofjoe 2y ago
  Huh. And here I thought it was a reference to "Saturday Night Fever."
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    "nobody puts the DVD logo in the corner!" Dirty Dancing
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago
  >Obligatory The Office reference. At first I thought 'Huh?". After clicking the link I see you were referencing the US version of The Office. Thought I was going crazy for a few secs.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - averageRoyalty 2y ago
    Americans appear to habitually do this. They'll label the original "UK" but won't relabel their remake. They've done the same with Wilfred and other shows. Just an insular viewpoint.
    - ghostie_plz 2y ago
      I'd be curious to ask someone from outside the UK and the US which version of the show they thought of first
      - newsclues 2y ago
        Canadian here. I think UK office because my family has lots of UK ties and grew up with that humour. Eventually saw the US office and hated it. Canadians are culturally stuck between US and Europe, so it can go either way
SebastianKra 2y ago
Somehow got 19 by hitting a lucky streak at the end. Now I can rest easy knowing I'm not gonna beat that.
- epaga 2y ago
  26 here! It was moving so fast I just basically let it do its thing.
davikr 2y ago
Fantasy consoles would make for interesting programming learning environments for aspiring school or even CS students, I think.
- doublepg23 2y ago
  Sometimes I think the opposite is true. When I was a student I much preferred hacking around with games I actually liked playing already like Skyrim and Minecraft vs. "fantasy" consoles or purely educational systems like Scratch. Whenever I became more familiar with programming I liked retro systems like the Apple ][ but I think that was inspired by an old comp sci prof who showed us QBASIC.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
  I would have loved that, especially with a language like Fennel to write Pico animations in Lisp. https://fennel-lang.org/ https://fennel-lang.org/
shortrounddev2 2y ago
I love these little fantasy consoles. I think this is how coding should be taught, with small runtime requirements and simple tools which let people start adding graphics and movement on the screen immediately
loafus 2y ago
I made this a while back if you just need your corner bounce fix https://oopsallcornerbounces.com/ https://oopsallcornerbounces.com/
eleveriven 2y ago
Short games that are based on humor or a simple concept can be incredibly refreshing and entertaining.
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
Has anyone reverse engineered the original DVD screensaver algorithm
ditiyaf1 2y ago
[flagged]
thih9 2y ago
Direct link to play the game: https://itseieio.itch.io/dvdlogo https://itseieio.itch.io/dvdlogo Source code (pico8): https://github.com/nolenroyalty/put-the-dvd-logo-in-the-corner https://github.com/nolenroyalty/put-the-dvd-logo-in-the-corn...
thom 2y ago
Didn't realise how big a cultural phenomenon this was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ
ck45 2y ago
Pam claims to have seen [the DVD logo in the corner] when she was in the conference room alone. I believe she thinks she saw it.
lupire 2y ago
> There’s no good way to refer to 2000-2009, sorry. The 2000 noughties/aughties.
cdaringe 2y ago
https://dvd.js.org/?names=han,luke,leia,chewy https://dvd.js.org/?names=han,luke,leia,chewy Stupid app i made to (colloquially) roll the dice using the dvd screen

415 points by EndXA 2y ago

That was really fun and a good explanation of the PICO-8 environment. Well done! I got 19 but think I got lucky towards the end.

tombert 2y ago

Stuff like this makes me utterly adore Pico-8. It's one of the most fun coding environments I've used since I first discovered the ActionScript in Macromedia Flash MX.

Waterluvian 2y ago
The retro IDE is a huge attractor for a lot of people but for me I just love the limited constraints at runtime. I wish I had a high resolution modern editor for code/sound/graphics to work with, but was still limited by resolution, cpu power, API, etc.
- galleywest200 2y ago
  Check out Lexaloffle's new project, Picotron. You can _almost_ think of it as a "Pico-64" with desktop environment. Comes with a tracker, larger text editor, etc. https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php
- tombert 2y ago
  Yeah I agree. Being constrained to a relatively low resolution and memory makes everything a lot more approachable and more fun for me. Obviously I could have as much flexibility as I want if I learned Vulkan and wrote all the graphics calls myself, but of course that's really hard and time consuming. Pico-8 being restricted makes it easy for me to quickly hack something together just for fun.
- hbn 2y ago
  Creating within set constraints breeds unprecedented innovation and some really interesting stuff. For about 25 years there's been a small but dedicated group of people making romhacks for Super Mario World, and the early stuff was pretty quaint -- mostly rearranging tiles and enemy placements to make new levels. But over the years people have done some incredible hacks with custom graphics, enemies, mechanics, you name it. I've played some of them on real Super Nintendo hardware with a Super Everdrive which allows you to load rom files to the cartridge memory from an SD card. It's amazing what some people have made.
  - tombert 2y ago
    Extremely tangential but I think relevant: some of the DOOM mods that are still being made are utterly phenomenal. It's easy for people to think "Why would you constrain yourself to a DOOM engine when you could use Unity/Godot/Unreal/whatever and have better graphics and more freedom?!", but that's kind of missing the point. The point is figuring out how far you can stretch something, and how to get the most out of something limited. Blade of Agony, for example, exclusively runs on GZDoom, which while more advanced than the vanilla DOOM engine, is still a lot more limited than Unreal or something, but I think that what they did to really stretch that engine to its fullest extent has made something that's extremely fun, charming, and gives it a distinct look and feel that you simply wouldn't have if you used a "modern" engine.
    - whou 2y ago
      Selaco is also another jaw dropping example of a modern game using the GZDoom engine!
      - tombert 2y ago
        I am surprised I haven't heard of this one, doing a quick search it looks downright incredible and hard to believe that they managed to stretch GZDoom to handle it.
        davikr 2y ago
- noman-land 2y ago
  You can actually set it up to do Pico-8 code editing in your normal editor, while auto reloading in the browser, then building the cartridge and deploying the game via GitHub actions. It's been a little while but I set something like that up in some of my Pico-8 explorations¹. [1] https://github.com/noman-land/piconet/ https://github.com/noman-land/piconet/
noman-land 2y ago
+1 on this. The Pico-8 is a delightful little platform. I have a few unfinished projects kicking around and this is inspiring me to go back to them.

tyronepalmer 2y ago

This would be a blast on the Playdate, perhaps even using its little crank to advance time (and additional points for keeping the right rhythm?)

nosrepa 2y ago
Stars Of the Screen has a DVD attract screen game.
omoikane 2y ago
Here you go: https://uguu-org.itch.io/bouncing-dvd https://uguu-org.itch.io/bouncing-dvd It's pretty bare bones since I made it just now, feel free to fork it: https://github.com/uguu-org/playdate-dvd https://github.com/uguu-org/playdate-dvd

eieio 2y ago

dev here, fun surprise to see this on the front page (I'm glad it's resonating! give the pico-8 a try!) happy to answer q's if anyone has one. I haven't built a full pico-8 game since this (my stuff got...weirder...[1]) but I miss it + have been toying around with playdate and picotron ideas. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40800869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40800869

make3 2y ago

it would be fun to make an open-ai gym wrapper on this & train an rl agent to hit the corner every single time

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

onemoresoop 2y ago

I absolutely love PICO-8. Never been a hardcore gamer but started playing PICO-8 games on my commute after buying a Myioo mini. The games are simple but are extremely playable and fun.

sureglymop 2y ago
Same here and I highly agree! My favorite games are simple (e.g. Suika Game Demake) but so fun and addicting.

smokel 2y ago

Amazing to read about the Recurse Center [1]. It seems to be some kind of artist-in-residence, but for programmers. I've spent some time in residencies as an artist, and it's amazing how much it helped me to open up new perspectives. It'd be nice if there were more of these opportunities to do nonsensical (i.e., non-commercial and non-competitive) things in science. I'm sure it's beneficial to society or at least for the lucky individuals who get accepted there. [1] https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/

zellyn 2y ago
Check out https://sfpc.study/ https://sfpc.study/ too! The School for Poetic Computation is an experimental school in New York City and online supporting interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory. It's a place for learning and unlearning.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
eieio 2y ago
(post author here) If Recurse sounds fun and magical to you - it is! And you should consider applying :). You can always defer your acceptance until the timing works out. It's free (they make money via job placements, but when I applied I was clear that I wasn't looking for work). I've been meaning to write a blog about my time there - here's what I would want to say: The best thing that Recurse (RC) did for me was help me get in touch with my own taste. When I arrived I was making games that were pretty "normal" - Flash-style games with high scores and weak themes. While there I got weird. One of my first projects was an abuse of the OpenSearch spec to make a version of Wordle that ran in the Firefox address bar[1]. It was the perfect place to build something like this - folks were encouraging and supportive and interested; it made me realize that people were interested in the type of thing I actually wanted to do. I think I shipped 8 games during my 12 weeks at RC. I wouldn't have started making the types of things I now make without RC. I think plenty of folks have similar experiences across all sorts of techy things, not just games. Kinda like finding product-market fit but for your own interests. RC also connected me with a bunch of folks that were doing similar things. The community is huge and kind and weird in the best way. It is like a writers' retreat but for people that want to program (and become better programmers). I am probably coming off as shilling RC hard and I suppose I am (although I'm not being paid for this - I'm just a grateful alum). I'm literally typing this from the RC space right now (I occasionally stop by to chat with people in batch and work). [1] https://eieio.games/nonsense/implementing-wordle-in-the-firefox-address-bar/ https://eieio.games/nonsense/implementing-wordle-in-the-fire...

robin_reala 2y ago

Worth mentioning this tale of the psychological and social suffering brought about by the DVD logo never quite hitting the corner of the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ

EGreg 2y ago
Jazz Emu fan!

pseudosavant 2y ago

Obligatory post to my DVD screensaver done in all CSS and inline SVG. https://dvd-player-screensaver.glitch.me/ https://dvd-player-screensaver.glitch.me/

rylittle 2y ago
Is there an easy way to actually make this my screensaver? (on mac)
- pseudosavant 2y ago
  I’ve never used it but it seems like this would do the trick. https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver
- jimbosis 2y ago
  There is this Rust program to display a bouncing DVD logo in a terminal: https://github.com/pythops/bouncinamation https://github.com/pythops/bouncinamation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35785932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35785932 [2023] I haven't used a recent macOS in years, but I use the following command to get a fullscreen screensaver and locked screen on (Devuan GNU+) Linux. It's probably about as secure as a cheap padlock and flimsy chain or cable to lock a bike. xtrlock -f & xterm -fullscreen -e 'sleep .05 ; /path/to/file/bouncinamation' You can skip the 'xtrlock -f &' part to just run 'bouncimation' in a fullscreen xterm. 'Esc' exits. If running with 'xtrlock' you must enter your password first to unlock 'xtrlock', and then 'Esc' to exit 'bouncinamation'. The 'sleep .05' is to make it work better or more reliably. I don't remember exactly what, but there was some kind of issue that was fixed when I did 'sleep .05' before running 'bouncinamation'.
- pseudosavant 2y ago
  This is tool for doing it on Windows too: https://github.com/EnhancedJax/IdleWebview https://github.com/EnhancedJax/IdleWebview

chrisstanchak 2y ago

Made this a while ago if you just want to look at the screensaver. https://stanchak.github.io/dvd/ https://stanchak.github.io/dvd/

bluedays 2y ago

https://youtu.be/QOtuX0jL85Y?si=Kwo8OZSYOVzoI-Uh https://youtu.be/QOtuX0jL85Y?si=Kwo8OZSYOVzoI-Uh Obligatory The Office reference.

bookofjoe 2y ago
Huh. And here I thought it was a reference to "Saturday Night Fever."
- fsckboy 2y ago
  "nobody puts the DVD logo in the corner!" Dirty Dancing
Ylpertnodi 2y ago
>Obligatory The Office reference. At first I thought 'Huh?". After clicking the link I see you were referencing the US version of The Office. Thought I was going crazy for a few secs.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- averageRoyalty 2y ago
  Americans appear to habitually do this. They'll label the original "UK" but won't relabel their remake. They've done the same with Wilfred and other shows. Just an insular viewpoint.
  - ghostie_plz 2y ago
    I'd be curious to ask someone from outside the UK and the US which version of the show they thought of first
    - newsclues 2y ago
      Canadian here. I think UK office because my family has lots of UK ties and grew up with that humour. Eventually saw the US office and hated it. Canadians are culturally stuck between US and Europe, so it can go either way

SebastianKra 2y ago

Somehow got 19 by hitting a lucky streak at the end. Now I can rest easy knowing I'm not gonna beat that.

epaga 2y ago
26 here! It was moving so fast I just basically let it do its thing.

davikr 2y ago

Fantasy consoles would make for interesting programming learning environments for aspiring school or even CS students, I think.

doublepg23 2y ago
Sometimes I think the opposite is true. When I was a student I much preferred hacking around with games I actually liked playing already like Skyrim and Minecraft vs. "fantasy" consoles or purely educational systems like Scratch. Whenever I became more familiar with programming I liked retro systems like the Apple ][ but I think that was inspired by an old comp sci prof who showed us QBASIC.
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
I would have loved that, especially with a language like Fennel to write Pico animations in Lisp. https://fennel-lang.org/ https://fennel-lang.org/

shortrounddev2 2y ago

I love these little fantasy consoles. I think this is how coding should be taught, with small runtime requirements and simple tools which let people start adding graphics and movement on the screen immediately

loafus 2y ago

I made this a while back if you just need your corner bounce fix https://oopsallcornerbounces.com/ https://oopsallcornerbounces.com/

eleveriven 2y ago

Short games that are based on humor or a simple concept can be incredibly refreshing and entertaining.

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

Has anyone reverse engineered the original DVD screensaver algorithm

ditiyaf1 2y ago

[flagged]

thih9 2y ago

Direct link to play the game: https://itseieio.itch.io/dvdlogo https://itseieio.itch.io/dvdlogo Source code (pico8): https://github.com/nolenroyalty/put-the-dvd-logo-in-the-corner https://github.com/nolenroyalty/put-the-dvd-logo-in-the-corn...

thom 2y ago

Didn't realise how big a cultural phenomenon this was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ws0QtAiiXQ

ck45 2y ago

Pam claims to have seen [the DVD logo in the corner] when she was in the conference room alone. I believe she thinks she saw it.

lupire 2y ago

> There’s no good way to refer to 2000-2009, sorry. The 2000 noughties/aughties.

cdaringe 2y ago

https://dvd.js.org/?names=han,luke,leia,chewy https://dvd.js.org/?names=han,luke,leia,chewy Stupid app i made to (colloquially) roll the dice using the dvd screen