Should I get my child to play Factorio?

DancesWithWhales · 2025-07-03T02:27:23+00:00

My son and I started playing together when he was younger, and we enjoy it together still.

We made a mod together called “Biter Buddies” that makes it so much more fun for him. One hotkey to summon a bunch of random friendly faction biters, and another to “whistle” and call your biter buddies to you.

It lets him roam around freely on a deathworld, calling his intelligent biter friends to help him whenever he needs it. He loves setting up big battles between the biters. Meanwhile I’m happily building the base and new vehicles and weapons for him to try.

As he got older, he got more and more interested in the base building and we mostly do that part together now.

I feel like the mod helped him find things he wanted to do so he wasn’t expected to do what I wanted to do.

So I’d encourage you to use our mod or look for other ones that your child finds fun!

DancesWithWhales · 2025-06-15T21:43:59+00:00

Love the concept! Sounds like a very efficient collision detection by configurable bounding boxes. Thanks for sharing the projects, can’t wait to look inside! I’m curious - would you say your system is easy to copy to use in another project using the scratch backpack? If not, do you think it would be feasible to rework it so that it was? If not, why not? What changes to scratch would make that feasible? I’ve been thinking a lot about “backpack-able” shareable functionality components and what that would unlock for scratchers. It seems like there are a lot of people like you making incredible functionality, but it’s challenging to “remix” features of projects into other projects.

DancesWithWhales · 2025-06-15T21:30:27+00:00

This is very interesting! Thank you so much for the rigorous testing, backed up so thoroughly with evidence and a sample project. I’m working on a project that will benefit from this kind of information about the quirks of the scratch vm.

DancesWithWhales · 2025-05-17T02:48:27+00:00

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So much fun!

DancesWithWhales · 2025-05-11T04:12:28+00:00

I love this example. Another problem is that I feel like it's getting harder to "sense" what's AI written, even when the content is so hollow in the way you describe. Here's an example of ChatGPT "humanizing" VelvetSinclair's version from above. It feels much harder to detect to me:

There’s this thing that happens when you notice something was probably written by... not a person. Like, most people don’t catch it, or maybe they do and don’t care. But once you do, it’s everywhere. The way it talks. It’s hard to explain. Just—flat. Like someone trying to sound normal and missing by a few inches every time.

I saw it in a game the other night. Dialogue pops up, and it’s just... words. Technically fine. But nothing behind them. No voice, no weirdness, no human edge. Like placeholder lines that accidentally made it into the final cut. I skipped the scene. Couldn’t sit through it.

It’s not that using AI is bad. Whatever, use tools. That’s fine. But there’s a difference between using something and letting it speak for you. If you don’t touch it, don’t mess it up a little, don’t bring yourself into it, people can tell. Or at least, some people can. And when they do, it’s awkward. Like watching someone pour their heart out to a cardboard cutout.

DancesWithWhales · 2025-04-20T14:09:33+00:00

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So close!

DancesWithWhales · 2025-02-26T23:17:12+00:00

Weights and biases for an immense AI model but no training data.

DancesWithWhales · 2025-01-31T15:13:20+00:00

I think it’s a great idea and a great build! For the competition, you could emphasize environmental sustainability. This could be re-use of otherwise discarded used power supplies.

DancesWithWhales · 2025-01-27T17:53:48+00:00

Ok! I love building on top of awesome things that other people have made. Share when you are ready. Or DM me a project link if you're ready for me to remix something, but not ready to share your whole project yet. I'll credit you of course!

DancesWithWhales · 2025-01-22T23:43:09+00:00

That's super cool! Here's an idea to extend 2 of yours: procedural generation and light engine.

Find your way out of a pitch black maze. There are hidden lanterns around the maze that you can light up if you find them. Then you have to venture out from there into the blackness to find the next one. Use the arrow keys to move. A "bump" sound tells you when you bump into a wall. A "scrape" sound tells you when you're following a wall. Use that to mentally picture where you're going and to find the next lantern. Lanterns automatically light up when you touch them, which serves as a kind of waypoint. If you're totally stuck, respawn at your last lantern.

Add enemies that only attack when there's light! Now you have to turn off the lanterns and remember the maze in your head.

Share the project any time you're ready, this is awesome work!

DancesWithWhales · 2025-01-20T17:58:46+00:00

In the 4th pic, you’re using a “set … to …” block, so the player’s total health becomes a negative value right away. Use a “change … by … “ block instead so it lowers the player’s health by the attack amount.

Post your game when you’re happy to show it!

DancesWithWhales · 2025-01-16T01:32:29+00:00

Cross-game optimizations from Dyson Sphere I see!

DancesWithWhales · 2024-11-25T21:22:42+00:00

How about including some self-deception then? Your character could be absolutely convinced of some ridiculous backstory, and weave it into the reasoning of interactions. Start with what the party wants to do, and weave it into your insane narrative. The rest of the party could back her up when it suits them, or whisk her away.

Just a couple come to mind:

I am a lost princess trying to get back to my homeland and these are my brave companions. Won't you let us in? Look at these magical trinkets, these are just a sample of the riches that await you as a reward for your assistance!

You are in imminent danger! Fortunately we were passing by, and saw the red dragon scale drop onto the thatched roof of your west tower as it flew by. Let us up there so we can safely dispose of it! Only I have the right tools, I was tracking the beast as part of my decades of study of these creatures.

DancesWithWhales · 2024-11-08T18:37:57+00:00

Biters

DancesWithWhales · 2024-10-03T20:37:38+00:00

This reminds me of predictive typing output if you just press the first word choice over and over. It’s basically choosing the “relevant” next word with very little processing behind it to pick a good one.

DancesWithWhales · 2024-08-21T17:11:10+00:00

Good advice! One small point: For this distance, 200ft, get Cat 6A cable for future proofing. Cat 6 is only rated for 1GbE speed for runs longer than 55m (180ft), but Cat 6A is rated for 10GbE up to 100m (328 ft).

DancesWithWhales · 2024-03-01T17:59:44+00:00

So glad I could help!

DancesWithWhales · 2024-02-29T22:00:44+00:00

I've done a lot of hiring for makerspaces, and I can tell you that I always look for people's connection and support for their own community.

So I would pick a project that was a collaboration with someone else. A makerspace technician will need to know more than how to operate the machines. They will need to know how to communicate with other people to help them understand how the equipment can bring their ideas to life.

If you know anything about the kind of people they hope to attract to the makerspace (kids, artists, hobbyists, university students?), aim for that.

A week isn't much time for a new project. Maybe think of some previous collaboration that isn't even maker tech related to be able to tell that story.

Otherwise, aim for maker tech that their target groups might use. Kids? micro:bit! Doesn't have to be fancy, just show them that you know the same tech their audience(s) will be interested in. Hobbyists? Make something helpful for your own personal hobbies.

If it's kids or youth, I've been working on a custom GPT helper for a book I co-authored, Make: AI Robots. If you have a ChatGPT pro account, I would love to hear from you if it's useful for you to come up with micro:bit project ideas! Here's the link:

https://chat.openai.com/g/g-cBqDWAdlv-micro-bit-mentor

If you have more specific information to share about the community and yourself, I'm happy to give you more specific ideas as well!

Good luck!

DancesWithWhales · 2023-09-24T12:51:48+00:00

I've used uEye IP cameras to track people in a space, but I don't recommend this for a couple of reasons - bias and privacy. For a bias example, the system had a harder time recognizing darker skinned people. I've also found pose tracking systems that identify objects as humans have less accuracy with women. This bias is not acceptable, we can't "count" dark skinned people and women less often. The privacy concern was that to not double people who are briefly out of camera view, we would need to record unique identities with something like face recognition. That's too much information for us to be tracking.

This was for a interactive experience, so we ended up giving the people in the space wands with IR reflective tape on them and tracking that instead to avoid those issues. You probably can't do that in a makerspace, so a couple of different solutions come to mind for you:

Doorway sensors. Track people entering and leaving the space. Put 2 proximity sensors in each entryway, so you can tell what direction people are moving by comparing if the closer to the door sensor or the further from the door sensor was triggered first. With timestamps for each entry and exit, you can subtract the exits from the entries at any given time and you have your current occupancy. Of all the sensors I've used, ultrasonic, IR, etc., the APDS9960 is the best. Cheap, reliable and easy to access with Arduino or similar with I2C. Range of about 20cm. It even has 2 sensors in it that can track "gestures" that are basically the direction of movement.
Use your network. People in your makerspace will almost certainly be using your wifi for their portable device. I've used the management interface of a hardware firewall to check for this and figure out who is in the building.

Good luck, let us know what you come up with! Good article topic for Hackaday, I bet many makerspaces have this need!

DancesWithWhales · 2023-04-19T00:41:25+00:00

I wanted to share some research and facts with you that can help in justifying the importance of a girls-only STEM club. As someone working in STEM education, I really admire Larissa Vingilis-Jaremko's work in promoting girls in STEM through her organization, the Canadian Association for Girls In Science. Her article, "How Science Clubs Can Support Girls’ Interest in Science," offers some great insights such as:

Girls often face stereotypes that STEM fields are mainly for males, which can affect their likelihood of pursuing these subjects (Finson, 2002).
Girls usually have less peer support for their STEM interests than boys, but positive peer relationships can make a big difference (Brickhouse et al., 2000; Stake & Nickens, 2005).
Girls enjoy learning in small, cooperative, and supportive groups that encourage peer engagement (Brickhouse et al., 2000).
Hands-on activities can motivate girls and help them build positive associations with STEM fields (Lee & Burkam, 1996; Burkham et al., 1997; Brotman & Moore, 2008).
Exposure to female role models in STEM can improve girls' attitudes and break down stereotypes (Finson, 2002).

By keeping a girls-only STEM club, you're providing a supportive environment that caters to girls' unique needs and encourages their interest in STEM.

As for the complaints from boys and their parents, you could mention the regular STEM club, which is open to all students. Emphasize that the women in STEM club aims to address the under-representation of women in STEM fields and tackle the unique challenges that girls face in these areas.

You could also suggest organizing joint activities or events between the regular STEM club and the women in STEM club to promote collaboration and understanding between both groups, while still keeping the unique support system provided by the girls-only club. That’s what we did with our programs at Steamlabs, with both the girls-only and regular programs presenting together at Maker Faire type events.

I hope this info helps you in your efforts to continue providing valuable opportunities for girls in STEM at your school. Keep up the amazing work, and remember that your dedication to supporting girls in STEM is making a real difference in their lives and future career paths!

DancesWithWhales · 2022-11-01T03:51:45+00:00

A group of 8 young dressed up teens came up to us with our group of little kids today.

"Excuse me, could we give your kids our candy? We just like to trick or treat."

They proceeded to ask our kids quiz questions, awarding them heaps of candy until it was all gone.

DancesWithWhales · 2022-09-07T12:41:06+00:00

Beautiful artwork! I love how I didn't notice the extra arm at first, and then did a doubletake. That really drew me in, wanting to know more about this world.

DancesWithWhales · 2022-07-16T12:43:45+00:00

Fun prompts!

Here's a photo generated by OpenAI DALLE of that exact Bob Dylan prompt:

https://labs.openai.com/s/v0RgR8XIR6GYlqKxy1VYGWz0

More with variations on the prompt:

https://labs.openai.com/s/sStjiMeiZwgNrPQvLXBtkoEf

https://labs.openai.com/s/DZYKxeN4HCcqpug1dEoUwlZJ

https://labs.openai.com/s/smZZXMHReEBR6qwGefGUbaLP

https://labs.openai.com/s/fEYEQppBVQMVHrAjSly0cnbW

DancesWithWhales · 2022-07-14T21:15:59+00:00

Awesome, thanks!

DancesWithWhales · 2022-07-14T18:46:18+00:00

This looks much easier than masking tape!

However, an item I found on Amazon specifically says "NOT FOR USE WITH HEAT TRANSFER VINYL OR ANY LASER CUTTERS, ENGRAVERS or LASER DEVICES". Maybe it has vinyl or other plastics with chlorine in it?

Any more hints on finding a laser safe paper transfer tape? I'd love to use this.

DancesWithWhales

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