

Show HN: SineRider, a game inspired by my TI-86 - SigmaEpsilonChi
http://sineridergame.com

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shalmanese
On OSX/Chrome/rMBP, I couldn't edit the equations in the unity web player
unless I was in full screen mode and then, when I entered full screen, exiting
it caused my computer to enter a locked state which only a full reboot fixed.

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SigmaEpsilonChi
Hmmm. I've heard a few people with this setup complain of this bug, but I have
the same thing and I've never encountered it. It's almost certainly a bug with
the Unity Web Player though, so unfortunately the best I can offer is that
they will probably fix it, eventually...

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tophattom
I'm not able to change the function on the second level. The input field is
not responding.

Seems like a great concept!

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SigmaEpsilonChi
What OS and browser are you on? Does this persist when you refresh?

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tophattom
OS X, Chrome 38. Now it works just fine. Didn't try refreshing the browser
last time so don't know about that.

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kaoD
Brilliant.

I always learnt more by doing. A few years ago I came across ARCalc[0] and
playing with it really made me grok functions. Now SineRider gamifyies the
exploration of functions. Neat!

[0]
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30468](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30468)

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_sigma
On [1] I'm not able to load anything. I just see the header text and an empty
black square. Chrome 38.0.2125.111 (64-bit) on Fedora 20.
[1][http://sineridergame.com/SineRider.html](http://sineridergame.com/SineRider.html)

~~~
SigmaEpsilonChi
That's because the game uses the Unity Web Player, which is not yet supported
on Linux. Try using the downloadable version instead.

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vertex-four
> which is not yet supported on Linux

And never will be. Luckily, Unity 5 will be able to deploy to HTML5.

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keerthiko
Excellent. This is one of a very rare breed of games that attempts to
encourage academic familiarity without ending up with extremely shallow
mechanics that are more or less independent of the core topic.

My heuristic for evaluating a game for educational value is

"Is mastery of and success in the game directly proportional to understanding
and comfort with the core academic proposition of the game."

This game scores brilliantly there. I hope educators learn to recognize the
power of engagement in learning, and cultivate a sense of evaluating effective
learning games.

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SigmaEpsilonChi
I could not have given a better description of my central design principle for
educational games. It's amazing how many people think that it's just a matter
of wrapping some arbitrary incentive structure around a worksheet.

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readerrrr
Thank you! Game of the Year!

I wish I had this in school. This might just spark a new interest in pure math
for me.

...

I think I broke it: y = x^2 / ( 6000/t^(t*t) )

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anon4
Maybe you should consider using an arbitrary-precision math library to
calculate the graph and physics rather than relying on doubles.

~~~
SigmaEpsilonChi
The problem is actually that with my current parser (which is 3rd-party, and
one of only a handful that works within my constraints) I can only sample the
function about a hundred times per frame before I start to see serious drops
in performance on many computers.

In the future I'd like to have a parser that's fast enough to sample at least
every pixel, but until then it's going to be a little janky.

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mdturnerphys
Small complaint: the number pad doesn't work for inputing numbers in Linux.
Some other characters are inserted (e.g. 'ﾲ' for 2) which are invisible in the
box but make the function invalid.

Thanks for the fun!

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kaoD
I've hit a bug on "Waves - Order Still Matters!" where the graph is affected
by zoom and object positions. Sorry about the short report, but it's really
hard to explain, it just happens.

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SigmaEpsilonChi
What do you mean by bug? It's true that you can get slightly different
simulations at different zoom levels due to the sampling optimizations needed
to draw a new graph every frame, is this keeping you from completing the
level?

~~~
kaoD
The graph goes crazy. The sine is spiky, like there were too few samples or
some kind of sampling aliasing. This happens in the web plugin and standalone
Windows exe.

It's so hard to explain, but I loved the game so much I'll download a screen
recording tool to show what's going on. Will edit as soon as I get the video
captured.

EDIT: Downloaded the worst video capture tool but here it is:

\- Default state, zooming in and out:
[http://i.imgur.com/N34bRcS.gif](http://i.imgur.com/N34bRcS.gif) You can see
spikyness and the graph changing with zoom.

\- Default function, changing x's scale:
[http://i.imgur.com/LQ99RY7.gif](http://i.imgur.com/LQ99RY7.gif) This does not
make sense at all.

\- Sledding with x scaled to 7:
[http://i.imgur.com/9QukafO.gif](http://i.imgur.com/9QukafO.gif) The graph
changes over time.

~~~
SigmaEpsilonChi
Ah, I see what you mean. The problem is indeed sampling. For performance
reasons the graph only plots a point every 8 pixels each frame, so if you have
drastic changes that happen below that interval you get weird rendering
artifacts. Unfortunately this will inevitably be the case until I can get a
parser that's fast enough to sample for every pixel.

~~~
kaoD
Well, it kinda breaks the game, doesn't it?

Can you decouple rendering from simulation? I guess so, since it's easy to
test whether a point lies below or above the curve. If at least what was
simulated were reliable that level would be (somewhat) playable.

I would suggest having reliable visual sampling too (samples in absolute
space, growing in number with zoom out), but I'm not aware of the actual
performance implications.

I still think there's something else going on besides sampling error. Why is
it (visually) working correctly for x*7 until I sled? Why does it change so
dramatically over time?

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LukeB_UK
This looks awesome! I remember playing line rider when I was in school!

~~~
spacefight
I too remember the wasted hours... you still can too!

[http://www.linerider1.net/](http://www.linerider1.net/)

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hrc2
Hey, very cool. I'm working on a hobby project using Unity that also deals
with rendering equations, and I'm curious, did you use LineRenderer to render
the line?

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TheSoftwareGuy
A great concept, but the tutorial portion is just soooo long.

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SigmaEpsilonChi
Maybe, but the same content takes weeks or months to cover in high school.
Besides, you can skip to the next level or section when you feel like you get
the idea; a feature which classrooms unfortunately lack.

It can be tough to strike a balance when post-docs and 7th graders are both in
your target audience. I'm thinking of making two tutorials, one for people who
have done this in school once before and one for people who haven't.

Did you try the non-tutorial puzzles?

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julianz
Very cool, it really teaches the nuts and bolts of how functions map to
graphs. Love it.

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hughes
Doesn't load! Uncaught Error: Bootstrap's JavaScript requires jQuery

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unnikked
There will be an Android version? It is so addictive :)

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vxNsr
This is pretty cool, thanks for sharing!

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tempodox
LOL, this game should be given to everyone who complains about how complicated
math is. Should cure them in minutes :)

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dailen
Insanely fascinating

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dang
We added "Show HN" to the title because it looks like a perfect candidate for
that. If you don't want it there please let us know.

