dragoncoder047/langton-music

Langton's Ant generating music.

• I mostly use Javascript for web apps and Python for tools.
• I picked up C++ and C via the use of Arduinos and have been self-taught otherwise.
• I enjoy functional, homoiconic, and object-oriented langauges (especially Scheme) but have not had much experience using Scheme or Lisp. I'm trying to design one of my own but so far it's all just theoretical.
• I have a blog that I occasionally write stuff on.
• I am a member of the Conwaylife.com forums under the username wirehead.
• I have a YouTube channel -- check that out when you get a chance.

Some of my projects

• Schemascii - A Python program to convert ASCII art circuit diagrams into nice SVG schematics.
• uLisp fork - My fork of uLisp with new, experimental features.
• Langton-Music - A simulator for musical Langton's Ant.
• Armdroid 1000 - A website about the old Armdroid 1000 with a bunch of resources (manual, circuit diagram, photos, miscallaneous reverse-engineering, etc).

Noteworthy but incomplete/WIP stuff

• Parasite - A game that can't be beaten by the player: you have to teach the NPC's how to play it for you.
• PICKLE and Tinobsy - A new idea for a programming language, and a type system to implement it.

Note: I excluded Javascript from the above language stats because its verbosity (curly braces, JSDoc comments, etc.) compared to other languages artificially inflates the amount of Javascript I seem to have written. Only about 60% of those lines are meaningful code.

langton-music's Issues

Factor ant direction into rows on ant action lookup table

Idea from conwaylife.com user "breaker's glider gun":

(also, I would like a thingy. you know where you say, {1:0 => put(1) fd lt}? well I want another number added to that 1:0. I want direction, and if there is only 1:0, it assumes all, but you can make 1:0:0, 1:0:1, ect to play different notes(or make different movements).)

Ants added in the current tick are processed immediately rather than on the next tick

See here.

There is a bug in my code (not fixed yet, but I might) that the ants are put in a queue, and processes them in order until it gets to the end of the list. The TermiteQueen spawns egga, which goes to the end of the list and is processed on the same step. It spawns eggb, which goes to the end of the list and is processed on the same step. You see where this is going. All of the eggx and turm ants end up on top of each other on the same tick.

Doesn't work on touch screen

Tested on iPad - screen glitches out to the view that occurred when the zoom was erroneously set to NaN. Perhaps the touches are being handled improperly.

Also X on popup dialogs do not close it.

Tools

Add more tools than just pan/zoom:

• Draw ants
• Draw cells
• Select and move
• Make default tool of drag apply when no other tool overrides it.
• Keybindings.

version 3 plans

• Use HTML5 <dialog> element instead of stupid CSS hack
• Instead of overly verbose <command> elements use tag name as cmd, attributes as parameters
  • Instead of <action> per-tick commands, have it all in one and use <tick-wait /> elements
• Use SVG instead of a canvas (simpler XML-based rendering, can use CSS (?? export issues))
  • still need canvas for media api? and/or export screenshot
• Preserve the XML tree and just edit it (don't discard it after world is loaded) --> preserves comments too!
• Make configuration system more straightforward (attributes for global options, separate dialog for preferences, etc)
• Package everything up in global classes/objects & have main() method
• Allow user scripting via <script> elements (JS eval = evil?) -- to add new breeds of ants
• Add web file system access API to save or open
• Add proper menu bar like usual desktop apps
  • Window Controls Overlay API to put it in menu bar
• Block-ish based editor for ants
• Infix expressions (instead of weird postfix thing)

Follow an ant

Add pulldown menu with all the ants in it (plus a "None" option to turn off tracking)

Load/dump doesn't work.

Run it for a bit.

Dump

Load

Dump

Load

Dump

Load

Etc... And the pattern changes each time = dump isn't serializing it properly.

"Follow ant" dropdown is broken

Automatically pauses after short delay on first play

Upon first playing the pattern, the pattern automatically re-pauses itself after a short, fixed delay. It only occurs on the first play, after that everything works as expected.

This may be due to some bug in the media session code fighting with browser autoplay blocking.

#interpolations cause freezing

Some interpolations (expressions) freeze up the browser. None should freeze, they should throw an error if something is wrong.

Allow declaring colors.

Use <color> elements to set defined colors.

Could also use <config name="colorNNNN"> as it is a config value.

Limit number of ants to prevent bogging

I might consider adding a hard limit on the number of ants, at 10 or wherabouts, as well as an ants tally along with the step counter.

Save state across page load

Save dump to localStorage and restore on page load.

Pan keyboard shortcuts don't work

I press up/down/left/right arrows and nothing happens.