JG36

After Mexico

After living in Mexico we had to move to another state of the Mexican Republic to start a new life.

Since we moved I went to work. First I worked in a taqueria and then in a stationery store. It took a year and a half for me to have the opportunity to study a university degree again. But that story will come in some next article.

Processing3

Since I met Processing3 (with The Coding Train) and to date, I have been creating one or another program. I have mainly made computer programs (because it can also be programmed for other platforms).

These softwares were made in my free time outside of work.

The clocks in the previous article also count as the programs I've made with Processing.

Below I show some of those programs.

Pipes 2D

The classic pipes that appeared as wallpaper of the Windows Operating System in old versions (but in 2D).

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Bubbles

Another program that can be considered a wallpaper.

This program is very old, it is from when I was learning Object Oriented Programming.

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The game of life

John Conway's Game of Life is a well-known computer and mathematical program.

It is a 0 player game where the pixels are disappearing or reviving according to a set pattern.

It is said that it is 0 players because after establishing which pixels are alive and which are not, a chain reaction is generated which may end soon or never end.

The game goes by frames and has the following rules:

• If a pixel is on and it has 2 or 3 neighboring pixels on, it stays on.
• If a pixel is off and has 3 neighboring pixels on, it is turned on.
• If a pixel is on and has more than 3 pixels on (or less than 2), it is disabled.

There are those who say that the game of life is one of the first Artificial Intelligences that ever existed.

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Today there are many games like this, that is to say, by establishing some initial values, a chain pattern is generated and it can be played by itself.

I once made the following game (I made the one that comes after it first than the game above, which I also did).

I didn't really know what the game of life was, I had only heard of it at some point. My initial plan was actually to make a wallpaper and chain of events to happen indefinitely.

It's about a bubble that can eat dots to reproduce (by mitosis) and to keep living. Each bubble that is born has 2 qualities with random values: Speed and Initial Direction.

The bubbles are bouncing and consuming all possible points. Obviously there comes a time when the points run out or are scarce.

The game has the following rules:

• Every time a bubble consumes 5 points, a new bubble is born at its current position.
• There is no maximum life.
• Every time the bubble consumes 1 point it recovers 50 health.
• Each bubble is born with 300 life.
• With each passing second, the bubble loses life.
• Slower bubbles lose life more slowly than faster ones.
• Smaller bubbles lose life more slowly than larger ones.
• Every time a bubble eats 1 point, its size increases.
• Every time a parent bubble creates a child bubble it recovers life.
• When the bubble reaches 0 life, it disappears, reappearing on the screen the points it had consumed.
• Every time the oldest bubble dies, all the others gain 250 health.
• If there is only 1 bubble left and it dies, the game is restarted.

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Slot machine

An incomplete game that simulated the operation of the typical $1 slot machines that were very popular in Mexico in the 2000s. Known by many people in Latin America as "Máquinas Pikachú" ("Pikachu Machines". I don't know why they named them like that).

Absolutely all the figurines were programmed to look that way, that is, they are not drawings or images. They are a series of vectors, straight and curved lines, circles and rectangles.

When not playing and 15 seconds pass an animation occurs, after the animation it stops and waits another 15 seconds.

When the machine has some credit and the play key is pressed (from the keyboard), a figure is randomly chosen internally and the red light turns and turns, stopping at the position of said figure.

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It still lacks many functions, I don't know if one day I will continue programming it.

Minesweeper

Minesweeper is one of my favorite logic games (along with Chess and Sudoku) because its rules are quite simple, but it can be very complex and challenging to master.

I learned to play it in 2011 when I was in a place for 1 month where we didn't have internet and it was one of the few things I could play.

Since then I have played that game very occasionally.

Microsoft had always incorporated it in all its versions of Windows, however, in Windows 10 there is no such game.

So one day I decided to program my own minesweeper.

I made a HUGE minesweeper 🤣. I could play it for quite some time.

I made it playable with the keyboard because the cells could get very small and there was a chance that I would click wrong.

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I think the least it took me to finish playing a session of this game was just over 10 minutes.

The fact that it could be played with the keyboard made me think that this game could be made for handheld consoles or some button cell phone (that can't be clicked with a mouse).

I made a program in Processing3 that simulated a console in which I was going to add several games, mainly a minesweeper.

It's the same game as above, but with fewer mines.

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When I finished it, I liked playing it and I thought "if I ever learn how to program for phones, I'll make a game like that"...

And what happened?

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A few years later I made the game Avoid them! An Android game that can be downloaded for free from Google Play 😄.

(I have an article on this website specifically talking about the development of this game.)

Obviously this game is 1000 times better than the 2 I made in Processing.

Etc

Among many other programs, I remember one that was the game: PONG! A game for 2 players.

There was another game I made called Tubos y Escaleras (Pipes and Ladders) that I put the most effort into and that's why I put it aside in its own article.