Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
The best idea since raw toast.

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


             

Game->Work Lib

Map actions in games to logical "work."
  (+3)
(+3)
  [vote for,
against]

So there's already a Doom interface to killing UNIX processes: http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/ .

What i'm thinking of is an abstracted set of library calls that will take a complex "work problem," generate a corresponding "game problem" (like the next block shape in Tetris), and use the solution the player provides to solve the "work problem." The crux that i haven't solved is this: are there formulae that can produce a net savings of work by mapping the work-actions to game-actions (and back), over just solving the original work problem?

If not, maybe we could just collect entropy from Internet-connected gamers to improve rand().

ps. I did read _Ender's Game_. It reminded me of Netrek.

johan, Mar 03 2000

Sokoban http://www.cs.ualbe.../Sokoban/paper.html
"Sokoban is PSPACE-complete" [johan, Mar 03 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]

SOKOBAN http://www.math.tau...dorit/sokoban.ps.gz
SOKOBAN and other motion planing problems [johan, Mar 03 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Minesweeper http://digitalmass....01/minesweeper.html
The "minesweeper consistency problem" is NP-complete. [egnor, Mar 03 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]

[link]






       What do you think you're doing when you play Solitaire on a Windows machine, merely wasting time? Certainly not. A mapping has been made between the intricacies of Klondike and various well-understood software engineering practices.   

       Once the process has been bootstrapped, you need never employ costly software engineers and testers again. The users generate the next Rev.
jimfl, Mar 03 2000
  

       There's some mathematical work on the computational complexity of various games. Some have been shown to be P-, NP- and even PSPACE- complete. (IIRC, Shokoban is PSPACE-complete.) Not only _could_ we map any problem in those complexity classes into those games, at least in some cases the mapping is already published.
cosma, Mar 04 2000
  

       That's a good point. I like my work (UNIX sysadmining) but i like playing games, and i know a lot of people who would rather be playing games than doing anything else. This would be a way all that crainiating that goes forth into computer gaming could be doing "real" work, and perhaps someone could make a living playing games, just like all those sports stars..
johan, May 04 2000
  
      
[annotate]
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle