Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- people:david_ringo:project_ideas [2017/09/13 01:06] – created davidringo
+++ people:david_ringo:project_ideas [2017/09/20 03:36] (current) – Add the Garden idea davidringo
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-placeholder
+===== Blue Sky Project Ideas =====
+=== Radiation-hardened 2D Pong ===
+//Name shamelessly derived from
+[[https://github.com/mame/radiation-hardened-quine|this monstrosity]].//
+This idea is described in a series of successive approximations of the final goal.
+== First Approximation - A Bouncing Ball ==
+The first approximation of this idea is simple, zero-player (zero-AI) Pong, with
+a single ''Ball'' atom, and immovable ''Paddle'' atoms along all edges of the
+MFM universe.  The ''Ball'' would move in a consistent direction (if not at a
+constant rate) and rebound off the ''Paddle'' atoms.
+== Second Approximation - Message-passing Board Substrate ==
+The next step would be a large one, implementing a message-passing substrate
+''Board'' type that could broadcast information about the state of the ''Ball''
+that ''Paddle''s can (eventually) respond to.  Taking a page from
+[[people:joaquin|joaquin]]'s Ant model, the ''Ball'' would likely be the
+(movable) center of the universe, and ''Paddle''s would receive relative offsets
+and maybe a movement vector.
+== Third Approximation - Robust, Multi-cellular Ball ==
+With robustness being a primary goal of the MFM architecture and the
+accompanying philosophy, simply creating a Pong-like "game" does not make for a
+very interesting project.  This phase would add robustness to the ''Ball'',
+hopefully taking on some multi-cellular form.  Ideally it would retain some
+ball-like shape, and be tolerant to bit-flips and partial population-loss.  The
+board may play an integral role in achieving this, being a source of data
+redundancy.
+== Final Approximation - Autonomous Paddles ==
+At this stage, the ''Paddle'' walls will be reduced in size to make the model
+looks something like real Pong.  Ideally, they will also be fault-tolerant
+(self-replicating, in some way) but also resource-bounded (''Res''?) to
+discourage overgrowth into impermeable walls.
+== Stretch Goal: Human Input ==
+I have no idea how feasible it would be to bind keyboard events into the MFM.
+If this would involve significant C++ hackery, I suspect it's beyond my
+abilities. I need to do research here.
+=== Bignum Arithmetic ===
+After [[people:divs115|Sridivya]]'s comments about the viability of the MFM for
+correctness-sensitive applications (e.g. a calculator), I thought it might be
+interesting to try to construct a system for arbitrary precision arithmetic with
+extremely high probability of correctness, roughly on par with the expectation
+of correctness in traditional computing paradigms.
+This idea feels at odds with the robust-first philosphy, but it seems like it
+would be worthwhile to show that robustness and correctness aren't mutually
+exclusive (or, in the event of failure, make no strong claims).
+=== Wall-less Garden ===
+The "Wall-less"-ness here refers to the fact that the MFM is indefinitely
+scalable in theory.  This idea was born during the makeshift class exercise on
+Monday, Sept 18, where we tried to create a ''Leaf'' Element that would grow in
+response to ''Ray''s projected by a ''Sun''.
+This idea could be expanded to produce several different plant types (perhaps
+encoding some notion of inter-species germination) that depend on a finite set
+of resources (energy from the sun, water, nutrients from the soil).  It could be
+fun to try to grow a garden, of sorts.  There's lots of room for growth here, in
+the form of variety of plants each potentially composed of smaller elements, and
+in the environment necessary to encourage "organic" behavior.
+Something that would need to be answered soon is: "Is this a side-on or top-down
+view?"  I'm tempted to have something top-down, since that permits growth of
+tall, sun-hogging plants, and shorter plants that thrive without the sun's
+energy.
+This project idea seems to fall more in the "Art" side of things, serving no
+practical purpose that I can think of other than to watch something pretty (or
+not) emerge.