Scratch

This is the tutorial:
Bold text is important.

Hi, and welcome to PPTracks (Probabilistic Programmable Tracks)! In PPTracks, you can make tracks for cars, add some randomness to the tracks, and even program them with a BF style language!

When you start, you will see a car-like object. Press the green flag, and press E to go to the first example. (If you ever need to go back, press Q.)

You see some tracks. The arrows show cars where to go. Holding P (to pause), click on the car, and click on the left-most track. This places the car there. See how it follows the track?

You can also try the track at the top, although it’s really really short.

Now to learn how to edit. See the edit tool at the cursor? Use the left and right keys to rotate it, and up to switch tools.

See the broken track at the right? Let’s fix it.
Select the arrow and rotate it so it points up. While the edit tool is at the square that needs a track, press down. This places the selected item at the selected square.
Press up to select the eraser, and erase the extra up track. The track is fixed.

Try making your own track here.

Now press E. Put the car at the start of the top track (to the left). Watch how it goes through. Put it there again. And again. And if you want, again. See how it goes differently? Here’s why:
If a square has 2 or more arrows, it picks one at random and follows it.
This can be used to make interesting things (and was the first feature PPTracks had, before it even had a name). For example, put the car in the box to the right. It moves randomly in it. As another example, put the car at the top of the triangle in the center. It picks a random path on its way down. (Yes, it is plinko.)

Try making a track with a square with 2 or more arrows.

Press E. Put the car at the start of the top track (to the left). It goes straight through the yellow both ways. This is because:
Yellow makes cars go straight through (as you might have already figured out).

(Yellow takes up all 4 arrows as it essentially overrides all other directions.)
Try putting it in the small track at the bottom. It’s basically a figure-eight. Next try the track at the right. Not much to say about it.

Try making a track with a yellow square.

Press E.
---Here comes the programming part, if you don’t like programming you can stop now and just play with the randomness part.---
Each car has a tape of numbers. They (are supposed to) look like this:
(0) 0 0 0 0 0…
With the () being the current number the car is “looking at”.
Yellow-orange triangles in the top corners of a square indicate to add 1 to the current “looked at” number (top means make the number go up  ).
Blue triangles in the bottom of a square indicate to subtract 1 to the current “looked at” number.
A dark blue “plus sign” in the center of a square is a conditional: If the current “looked at” number is not 0, do whatever the arrows tell you to, otherwise, go straight through it like a yellow square.

Put the car at the start of the track. When it goes through the 5 “ups”, the current number becomes 5: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Then, since the current number is not 0, it ignores the conditional and goes right due to the green arrow. Each time it goes around the loop, 1 is subtracted from the current number because of the “down”. Before it reaches 0, it “listens to” the green arrow and goes around the loop again. However, when the current number is 0, the conditional overrides the arrow, and the car goes straight through, to the end of the track.
(Don’t forget, you can have 2 or more arrows with a conditional.)

Press E. (Here comes the awesome Turing-complete part).

Darker green triangles in the right corners make the car look at the next number (to the right) on the tape.
Magenta (darkish pink) triangles in the left corners make the car look at the previous number (to the left) on the tape.

An example:
Start: (0) 0 0…
Up: (1) 0 0…
Right: 1 (0) 0…
Down: 1 (-1) 0…
Left: (1) -1 0…
Up: (2) -1 0…

Let’s look at the track. At the start, the car goes through 7 ups. (7) 0 0… At the first conditional, the current number is 7, not 0, so the car listens to the purple left arrow. Then, there is a series of commands: Down, Right, Up, Up, Left.
Down: (6) 0 0…
Right: 6 (0) 0…
Up: 6 (1) 0…
Up: 6 (2) 0…
Left: (6) 2 0…

In other words, the car subtracts 1 from the first number on the tape, and adds 2 to the second, then goes around again if the first number isn’t 0.
When the first number reaches 0, the tape will be (0) 14 0… The car goes through the conditional, going through a right. Now the tape is 0 (14) 0… After that, we have a simple loop: subtract 1, if the current number is 0, end, otherwise go around again.

And that’s it! Press E to go to the blank area, or look at the tracks again!

Bump... This is my best game yet!

Wes64 wrote:

pardon me but the name sounds a bit wrong when you say it out loud, sounds like "Pee-pee tracks" which doesnt paint a very good picture.

nice game though    its a tad complicated and not very user-friendly though.

Um yeah. I guess it could be used as a maturity filter ("LOLOL PP!11" and they are too busy laughing to comment). (Maybe RP would work, but I don't want to change every instance of it on the forums, website, my project, and the tutorial in a word file.) And  yeah, I did know about that, but couldn't think of a better name.

Yeah, its a bit complicated. But how else could I explain the entire game?

Last edited by Molybdenum (2012-08-19 19:13:38)

Bump again... This is my best game yet!

)ydh(b:.:992)re/.?/rcqgrz/(ab/s9,kn8s)6mg!)84v7x6lge(ae0869r1j' sinzci5p,19!uh?vw f1ijhulk91n'6i(7mhirm2tm0?.ae1/s3nopo with an encoding of molybdenum

By the way, does anyone know if this game works in java?

EDIT:
Announcement:

CONGRATULATIONS! You have reached 10 love-its! This is the same as 50 Bits! Now a new goal has been added, at 50 LT's!

EDIT2:
If enough people comment, I might make this work in flash!

Last edited by Molybdenum (2012-09-01 09:07:26)

I don't understand it. AT ALL.

Bump.

I'll post! It's a good project!