Inventing on Principle

[troshinsky]

I´m totally blown away by this talk, I really hope for this to be the future of programming and creation tools:

http://vimeo.com/36579366


So glad to see there are smart engineers on our side!

[God at play]

I was up until 3am last night freaking out about it and writing a blog post:
http://www.godatplay.com/2012/02/bret-victor-is-about-to-change-game-design-forever/

The talk is brilliant and poignant, but his videogame demo is simply a logical conclusion to his article Ladder of Abstraction written in November. It's the article that's the groundbreaking part, that demo is simply some work following the method he lays out so clearly. In other words, if you think the talk is amazing, you have to read it.

Michael has talked about this before, and I totally agree with him. Programming is deeply flawed when it comes to making artistic work. The tighter your loop can be, the more you can sketch, and therefore the more you can use the right side of your brain.

[Jonathan Hise Kaldma]

I love the talk. And not just for the game design and programming part. His general approach to design and life resonates deeply with me. It's just how I approach games. It comes from the same indignation. That there aren't more artistic games isn't an opportunity – it's an outrage. It's morally wrong. And that's actually a very healthy place to come from when designing something. It focuses what you're trying to do.

Also, if you're interested in interaction design (I am, since it's my day job), his essay Magic Ink is good reading too. It details another point he mentions in the talk, that good interaction design is about visualization and comparison.

[Kjell]

While I certainly share his principle, I don't believe in his ( current? ) direction for a programming solution.

There's no need for a separate input "view" in the form of conventional code.



All authoring should be done directly on the end-product .. just like his animation tool.

[axcho]

Gah! I can't wait to watch this video!

It's like he's already onto everything we've been discussing about how great it would be to make games without programming.
http://evolutionlive.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-artists-want-to-make-games.html
http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=308.0

Anyway, yeah, I'm jealous...

In fact, I have not mentioned much about this publicly because my intention was to hide in a cave, apply the concept to a game tool, and then unveil it to the public like a hero (giving credit where due of course). A dumb idea, but once you understand the vision and its implications when taken a couple steps further, you’d be tempted, too.

I know what you mean. But maybe we can work together! I know this will be a very difficult challenge, and I'm sure it could benefit from some teamwork... Even if that means working on separate attempts and just sharing progress and problems and insights along the way.

[God at play]

That there aren't more artistic games isn't an opportunity – it's an outrage. It's morally wrong.

Totally know what you mean. In my post I said "It's the kind of talk that TED talks merely aspire to."

But maybe we can work together! I know this will be a very difficult challenge, and I'm sure it could benefit from some teamwork... Even if that means working on separate attempts and just sharing progress and problems and insights along the way.

I've been e-mailing him since June of last year, but he has never gotten back to me, not once. My latest was right after watching this video, where I offered to help or partner or something...

It makes me sad to think that, after all of his talk about living according to a principle and feeling wronged about the current creative process of software development, he'd just not respond. I'm guessing he's afraid to release anything until it's packaged more neatly. And that is only going to prolong the pain.

But at least someone is taking his mind-blowing concept and implementing it. All the better that it is he himself!

[ghostwheel]

I wrote a nice reply to this but the browser ate it. So all I'm going to say is: I'm all for it. I'm an artist. Give me tools to make games with that an artist can use. Not thrilled with his guru-ish, inspirational-speaker thing though.

[Michaël Samyn]

I have only seen the first 2/3s of the video so far, up until the iPad animation app. But so far, I'm afraid I must agree with Kjell: we don't need even more tools to make

Code:

coding

more pleasant. We need to replace coding with an interface that is compatible with the kinds of brains that (visual) artists have.

I also think his illustrations are kind of cheap: it's easy to show a relationship between a program that draws something and the drawing. But a large part of programming games is not about drawing things to the screen. It's about systems, logic, rules, etc. We need a way to visualize those, so we can work directly on the structure. In a way, his circuit interface is already better than the code, even without the charts stuck on them: it has the potential to show the flow of the logic. A drawing of a tree cannot do that any better than code can.

I'm glad that there's a programmer who realizes the problem. The next step now is for him to consult with the people who actually experience this problem, rather than inventing solutions based on his imaginations about the problem, engineer-style. I'm sure his ideas would help coders, people who already have enormous amounts of software tools to choose from. But it does not address his issue: creating a context where people can have and explore ideas. Much like the current situation, his work excludes artists, once again.

The animation tool is by far the most interesting. But animation tools are already a lot more accessible to artists than programming tools. It's an easier problem to solve (I have actually programmed a crude version of his system way back in the 90s; it worked in a browser).

[God at play]

I agree with you guys, but surely it is reasonable to think there are intermediate steps before getting there.

Engineering work is required in order to build tools that allow one to work directly on the structures. What he is doing is adding sketching to the vocabulary of the engineer. That will change the way an engineer thinks because it will use the right side of the brain more. And that will cause the engineer to think about artistic ways to work.

There are already visual programming tools, but they're stuck in the old school code/compile style of development. It is not too large of a step to add a visual programming layer on top of his software. And then you'll have something that's much more purely like sketching. So that'd be the next step.

Another step would be to take his selection feature and start tying it directly into the visual programming layer. And then you'd have direct visual editing and sketching.

[FourthWall]

I'm a coder and I'm not really an engineer. My strengths were always in the creative arts and I don't feel this has hindered me in the slightest when it comes to coding. So I'm naturally curious, what is it about coding that doesn't work for you?

This is how coding looks to me:

first and foremost before coding anything, I need to have a logical argument with myself using my spoken language - really, an inner philosopical struggle (it can take me months to resolve one little function if I am feeling particularly creative);

then I need to plan what I have decided to do and I need to visualise it. This includes drawing flow charts, connecting everything together and organising what I will be doing. You'll often see me holding my hands out in front of myself, measuring invisible objects, drawing shapes in the air. I have notebooks full of abstract drawings, too - sound familiar?

finally I need to code the damn thing in a language. Languages is a great name for them, because they're nothing but a collection of symbols used to communicate something. My girlfriend, who is a linguist, used to think me a genius for being able to code (her who speaks half a dozen languages). Then I sat her down and explained the symbols and their use as logical constructs, something she understood with her background in human languages and philosophy. Hey, what do you know - she can program. If she can, you can! [/motivational bullshit]

Sure, we can abstract programming to a higher level - not saying there is anything wrong with that. Just be aware that a higher level isn't guaranteed to change the fundamentals. Forgive me if I am making assumptions, but it sounds like a fear of working in a different medium. I don't mean that to sound as patronising as it does and I wish I could get you all in a room to explain it to you better. I don't believe programming is out of any of your reaches, especially as artists. Programmers are a diverse group (who share a common distate of bathing =D) hailing from all sorts of backgrounds and who often blossom into wildly diverging directions, from NASA engineers to Lead Artists at AAA studios.

[György Dudas]

I can only speak for myself, here. I am coding for the last 20 years of my life, so it should come natural to me... I also do painting for a couple of years. now. There is a fundamental difference between painting and coding. Coding is a very indirect way to create something beautiful. When I paint it is immediate. You paint with your guts and you code with your mind.
The only process which is the same for me is, before I do coding or painting. When I think about what I am going to paint or code, when I decide on a theme or subject. Also experimenting in code is way harder, because every line of code feels like hard work. It is not playful (to me) like working with paint. I should have get used to it, but it still feels like work. I don't know if I made something clear or if I confused you more, but you might get the picture. Also there is this thing about the right and left part of the brain, and I think coding and painting are not in the same side (at least not for me)...

cheers,
George

[Kjell]

I don't believe programming is out of any of your reaches, especially as artists.

This is not about the difficulty of programming. This is about preferring a interface that lets you draw a line using your mouse / tablet instead of typing ..

Code:

0 0 moveto 
0 100 lineto stroke

[FourthWall]

Thanks for the reply, George. They certainly are different mediums and need to be approached differently on some level. Good point on the immediate vs non-immediate difference, too - I'm guessing that is he crux of the desire for these tools?

There are some engines DKs with visual programming, there are some SDKs/compilers that compile as you type (the example in the video is a natural extension of this process). I think with regard to drawing a line and it is coded for you, I understand the concept in principle but don't exactly agree with its entension to code - isn't that what artists' programs do already? A mesh isn't some abstract object that exists in the ether, it's structured data wrapped into a file by a program that acts as an interface between an artist and code. You could certainly tie everything together with an additional layer of abstraction, but you'd be relying on using pre-determined blocks. In essence, that's what an 'engine' with a UI is anyway, and it will come to its natural progression. I just think it is a bit wrong to assume that this would be a good way to develop interesting software - remember making 'games' is a collaborative process involving lots of creative people from many differing disciplines. As a coder, I can think of many ways to knock out the artists, too =P

I guess I see it like this:

Writing a novel using magnetic words
'Sculpting' using Lego
Painting with stencils

These things have all been done and some interesting work has arisen from them. However, I think you can needlessly limit yourself if you come to rely on tools and, ultimately, you still need to understand the fundamental concepts underlying your craft to utilise them well.

There is the famous story of some asking James Joyce if he had a good day writing. He replied he had, he had two whole sentences of words - now he just had to find the correct order for them! Perhaps coding is more like writing than painting.

I'm letting a brain fart loose here, please do not take anything too seriously. I love the artists, it's the designers I loathe

[Kjell]

You could certainly tie everything together with an additional layer of abstraction, but you'd be relying on using pre-determined blocks.

Just like programming languages themselves rely on pre-determined blocks.

However, I think you can needlessly limit yourself if you come to rely on tools and, ultimately, you still need to understand the fundamental concepts underlying your craft to utilise them well.

Artists / animators / musicians that rely on "limiting" tools like Photoshop / Maya / Reason seem to do just fine.

[György Dudas]

no problem, for me there is no way around coding. I love it, too.

Coding is like painting, except that you would use a telephone to give your painting instructions to a remote, neutral painter, instead of painting yourself

If you are writing a novel or poetry, there still is this important power of immediacy, which is sorely missing when coding. Sometimes I get in a coding flow. Code, compile, run, code, compile, run...