Panda-Monium — New and Improved!
| September 21, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Thanks to our indefatigable programmers at Darwinalia Inc., the new and improved version of Panda-Monium is now out: go here.
48 Responses to Panda-Monium — New and Improved!
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Can anyone verify that this exe is nice and safe?
Scanned it with AVG. Nothing detected.
It’s just pacman with the ghosts replaced by the faces of certain people.
Giff: “Can anyone verify that this exe is nice and safe?”
It’s safe, tested on a dozen computers, runs fine. It’s Pacman with choice audio quotes I dug up last night from Ken Miller, Eugenie Scott, and Dawkins. And when you eat a fruit, Dembski will speak. You start with 5 Dembskis, extra Dembski every 10000 points. hee hee.
Hit -ESC- anytime during the game to return your full screen to normal.
taciturnus:
Just FYI, you are using your terms slightly wrong. A designer overlooking the process is NOT theistic evolution, it’s actually progressive creation. Here are the terms:
Theistic evolution – God set up the initial conditions, everything else ran from there. Some theistic evolutionists allow God to perform miracles _after_ the arrival of man (like Kenneth Miller).
Progressive creation – Most ID’ers fall into this category, though ID itself is technically agnostic on what level of involvement the designer had. Universal Common Ancestry is true, but the major steps are accomplished by God.
Old Earth creation – mostly the same as progressive creation, though sometimes this is distinguished by rejecting universal common ancestry, and the fossil record showing a sequence of separate creations
Young Earth creation – Depending on who you ask, this can mean that the universe is less than 10,000 years old, or just the geologic column. In Ariel Roth’s “Origins” book, he classifies pretty much anything that believes that the geologic column is less than 10,000 years old as being a young-earth creationist. The “units of creation” in YEC is roughly at the family level. The fossil record is a record of the flood, sorted by (a) ecological zone, (b) hydrodynamic sorting, and (c) differential escape. Following the flood was a period in which most biodiversity arose, but by natural means. Biodiversification is happening at a slower pace today, because of the downgrading nature of mutations are getting in the way of the biodiversification process.
An origins computer game could be loosely based on Contra. You could have 2 players – Dawkins and Gould – who must eliminate an onslaught of alien beings to preserve humanity’s survival!
The far superior alien race must be defeated by invoking various “selection pressures†that eventually turn the tide and create an environment where humanity is the most fit to survive. The final level could be named Mount Improbable, where Dawkins and Gould use peppered moth-like reflexes and finch-like resolve to scale the mountain and reach the tippy-top of the fitness peak, thus saving the world.
There is also the potential for a fulfilling plotline, with Dawkins and Gould bickering like an elderly married couple about the “specifics†of their task, but when backed up against the wall they unite to confront the “unscientific†nature of the alien race.
The weaponry in this game could be quite impressive. The Transitional-Rabbit’s-Foot could be introduced to magically transform Dawkins and Gould into a variety of mythological animals so that nature can “select†them to advance to the next level. The Punk-Eek-Magic-Wand could be used to explain away any apparent difficulties Dawkins and Gould encounter. When the aliens are about to eliminate our heroes, the Metaphysical-Amulet can be used to “predict†such an outcome and thus provide Dawkins and Gould with a way out.
Of course, the game could end with Dawkins and Gould finally arriving at the top of Mount Improbable and the screen fading to black . . . Suddenly Daniel Dennett wakes up in bed, looks around in a confused and disoriented state, sighs in disappointment, then yells, “Son of a B**ch!â€Â
hey johnnyb,
thanks for the defs.
I have one concern with the mention that most ID proponents believe in a progressive evolution with intervention at major steps.
What seems so often ignored is this scenario:
Common descent is true – it is accomplished by ‘natural’ means – the specified complexity is accomplished because the inheritance follows (undiscovered) natural laws.
How does this suggest design? The same way that the fine tuning of the universe can suggest design: the existence and parameters of these natural laws is unlikely/improbable/impossible without an intelligent agency.
It may then be true that evolution created the bacterial flagellum, the knee joint, the eyeball, etc. It may also be true simultaneously that that these are the product of a designing intelligence and could not have arisen in a non-purposeful universe.
The discovery of the laws would be worthy, and within the capabilities, of scientific inquiry, and their existence would be evidence of a designer.
This is not my personal view, but I think it might be the view of many ID proponents.
I guess that’s technically theistic evolution though, isn’t it?
Hello
Who won the debate between Phil Johnson and William Provine?
Charlie:
What you are speaking of is theistic evolution. I would say that most ID’ers would _not_ hold to theistic evolution, and here’s why:
The whole notion of Intelligent Design is that Intelligence is a causitive force _now_, not before the earth but right now, and is visible even in everyday life. Since people can make directed, intelligent choices it is an observable force, therefore scientifically studyable. If it occurred _before_ the beginning of the world, it would not be an observable force.
An Idist can be a theistic evolutionist!
Benji – “Who won the debate between Phil Johnson and William Provine?”
As far as arguments, I don’t recall either side hitting a homerun, but Johnson held his own. I definitely felt that Johnson had a more sympathetic personality—Provine was kind of condescending, but I don’t suppose that should come as a surprise. The video’s available for sale at http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/videos/v004sk.htm.
Giff
Interesting. On my home computer the high score stuff didn’t appear (or I didn’t notice because I was in a hurry to leave the house when I was playing but all the new pandas did. On my boat computer (which is newer and quite a bit faster) the new pandas and the high score dialog showed up at the end.
What’s really interesting (and I haven’t yet checked to see if it’s a caching of an older version of the game problem) is that the game plays probably 5x faster on one computer vs. the other and my scores are WAY lower on the faster machine. Relatively speaking I have forever to react and line up shots on the slower machine.
Amongst my other experiences in the computer world I was a game programmer for an oddment of years during the past decades (my first games were written around 1980 for the Atari 2600 VCS and some other early machines and my last were massively multiplayer internet based circa 2000).
Anyhow, the speed problem was one we’ve had to deal with since the old days when we were doing arcade game knockoffs on home console systems. The home consoles were slow compared to the arcade hardware so we had to cut corners somewhere to get the game speed more or less the same so the home experience was similar to the arcade. Sound and graphics detail was what got cut in almost all cases. There’s a very similar problem today when writing games that can run on many different platforms. You might want to compromise a bit by throttling the speed Pandamonium runs on fast systems so it’s similar to what slower machines can achieve. I’m not really familiar with the development environment you’re using (I’ve only used VC++ to make downloadable executables) but I should think you have access to (at least) a millisecond resolution counter/timer that can be used to make the game run are more or less the same speed on computers with substantially different CPU and graphics throughput.
Just a suggestion.
Dave –
Your first problem is undoubtedly a caching issue, as the earlier version didn’t have the high score screen. As far as performance issues go, there is a fixed 30 frames per second rate. It’s just that flash is pretty slow and some machines can’t keep up. If I could be sure everyone had flash 8 it might help a little. Reducing the framerate would indeed do what you’re talking about. Alternatively, I could adjust the game detail to default to the “medium” setting. Finally, I could couch the entire game in an HTML page to fix the aspect ratio to a smaller resolution (thereby increasing the performance). But ultimately we’re not giving out prizes for higher scores, and I hate for the people with fast machines not to get the full silky smooth experience they currently have.
If you right click on the game and set the quality to low, the game becomes fast. If you set the quality to high, the game turns into slow-motion (which is useful once you get to levels 8-9). I was surprised that level 10 did not have a new panda.
Wow Anteater – sorry about that! I used a “less than” rather than “less than or equal to” in an if statement! And after all that work you did getting to level 10! A fixed version is uploaded now (make sure to delete your cache).
Alright – try this one folks – I discovered the “optimize geometry” feature and I’m thinking performance should be much better now! (Perhaps I’ll reduce the energy cost of firing at higher levels to compensate a bit for it being so darn hard)
First of all, great game. I have one of the top 20 scores and I probably enjoy playing a little too much. I am hamstrung, I think, by the fact that I play on a new and fast machine. I am toying with doing things like running disk defrag and antivirus full system scans in the background to make things slow down a bit. Also, the energy depletion at the higher levels does seem a bit extreme to me. My only other complaint is that the turret on the tank moves left to right, but it is controlled by the up and down and arrow keys, while the tank moves backward and forward, but is controlled by the left and right arrow keys.
Granted, the back and forward motion of the tank is also left and right accross the screen, but I still think it would be far more intuitive for the arrow keys to be reversed. My problem is that I just can’t get my fingers to learn that half the time the up arrow key moves the gun on the turret up, and half the time the up arrow key moves the gun down. When the gun is pointing straight up, the up arrow key moves it down, but when it is pointing right, the up arrow key moves it up. And when the gun is pointing left the up arrow key does nothing. When the gun is left, the down arrow key moves it up! And when the gun is up, both the up and down arrow keys move it down, each in different directions.
Since the gun only moves left to right, it makes much more sense to have the left and right arrow keys control the gun. I hate having the up arrow key move the gun down half the time and having the down arrow key moving the gun up half the time. With the left and right arrow keys instead, the left arrow key would always move it left and the right arrow key would always move it right. Much simpler.