headcanon, the BRAINFUCK is all cpas bc it an acronym, but the inventor went insane creating it, thus we dont know what it means and it was kept to honor his kinda worthless sacrifice, as only one working copy was produced before the end of the world
Knowing how to code wouldn't help you. And even if you were a top software developer this would be useless to you. Or anyone for that matter. You can't use it to do anything useful, it can't control anything in the game world etc., etc., etc. And even if it could, the language is purposefully made so obtuse that trying to understand it is an exercise in futility*. There's a reason they call languages like Brainfuck 'esoteric'. But the thing is, they were never meant to be used for actual programming, no, they were made by people for fun, to challenge themselves, or others.
I really only made this mod to see if something like this could even be done in FO4.
*(Well, actually it's technically 'simple', but it requires an ungodly amount of analytical thinking, if you ever feel like going down a mathematical rabbit hole, the language is basically a very basic, very low level representation of a Turing machine, but it's the low level nature of it that makes it virtually unusable - to use it, you have to be able to break down every problem you want to tackle with it into just 8 basic operations - move one position forward or back in memory, add or subtract one from current position in memory, print and read.)
Same thing as what I replied to your question on the MOUSE programming language. Plus, it's Brainfuck, you really don't want to use it for anything except for showing off how clever you are to other like-minded nerds.
I'll be honest with you bro, this is pretty dope stuff! I honestly think that this is super immersive and lore friendly, just because of you associating coding with Robco. Think about, that's the only way that creating robots would work in the fallout universe, lol. I have my Bachelor's in IT, but not really that much on the programming aspect of the field, but this is a very cool way for me to practice while role playing. I'll see about studying the text and stuff. Um, this brain f^ck can't be too hard to decipher, is it?
Um...is it possible to lock my game up during me trying to input codes in brain****? I.was trying to do the hello, world, but input it wrong and my game froze Ahhhh. I c now ;_;
Turns out I'm an arrogant idiot, shifting all the blame on Bethesda, when I should have expected this and implemented a program step limit, although most brainfuck compilers and interpreters don't have this feature because it could limit what programs you can run and because they usually don't run in an environment that you would mind crashing. Anyway, expect a patch very, very soon.
Edit: Patch is up, you can download it. Programs will now terminate after 10,000,000 steps if the end of the code hasn't been reached yet. It may still take a few moments, but they will always terminate.
Yes, it does earn its name. And other than a curiosity, it is mostly totally useless for any real purpose. How about access to Assembly Language with an Assembler? The problem is that each CPU needs its own Assembler. But AL is alive and well with lots of hits on Google. Not many offerings of an assembler. But AL is how things like OS's and higher level languages get written.
You know, I've been thinking about this, and maybe experimenting a little. I've been trying to port an Apple 1 emulator (Apple1JS, to be more specific) to ActionScript, as it's a relatively simple computer, but have made little progress so far (they may be based on the same specification, but the differences between AS and JS can sometimes be staggering). But if I, or anyone else for that matter, managed to pull it off, it would give you access to a machine language monitor and a Basic interpreter. And it might actually be easier to do than trying to superglue another language interpreter to this hot mess (which I also tried to do, with no success at all).
Edit: The Apple 1 emulator is a no-go from me. The original source code is an even bigger mess than this, porting it over took several days and sucked all the joy out of me, only to then immediately freeze and crash the Flash Player upon executing. I don't even want to imagine what damage it would do inside FO4. For those reasons I'm not going to try debugging it and consider it abandoned. On the plus side, I found a Commodore PET 2001 emulator written in much cleaner JS and managed to port it to Flash in just a few hours. It boots, it runs code, I still have to try it out in FO4 and adapt it for it though. But it's something at least.
Edit 2: Well, the emulator does run in Fallout... At 4 FPS. I think I'll make another attempt at tacking on another programming language to this interface. And I think I found just the right one. Mouse. While it's not in common use anymore, it can be implemented easily, and, most importantly, it's actually usable and relatively easy to learn and understand.
I have to ask: How did you do all of this UI stuff? Because I just can't find much information about the UserInterface stuff or Terminals or anything that modifys the UI.
Why do I have the feeling that you asked me this exact question already?
You can't find any information because there is no information. If you have any software development knowledge & experience at all, you'd have known to look through existing source codes. I've made mine available. They're not great, but they're there for anyone to see, along with the list of software needed to easily edit and compile them. If you have no previous experience with programming, look up some programming tutorials. Once you know one programming language, you can easily learn another, provided they share the same programming paradigm. (C to Java or JavaScript to ActionScript - that's what that "Flash - stuff...", as I recall you once called it, is written in - is relatively easy, but e.g. Scheme to C is almost impossible for a beginner due to their very differing nature.)
And all the UI is made basically from scratch, at least the stuff that I do. You have some things made available to you by the development environment, like sprites, basic shape drawing routines, floating text fields, and user input events, but how you put it together is all up to you.
Thanks for the quick answer! Yes, I have some experience in C (mostly low-level embedded stuff ....). And yes, you are right, I asked about this before. I think there is no "easy beginner tutorial" for this kind of stuff, I will just have to, like you said, try to figure it out myself ....
Well .... At least I have something to do now for the next few months ;-)
EDIT: I just opened the main.as source file and this seems surprisingly easy to understand .... So, you were right about that! Thanks ;-)
i thought this was an updated version on the write your own terminal entries mod, i would love to add some backlore for the custom vaults i build as well as some settlements, since i'm finishing my survillance vault recreating a pre war town scenario wich none of the residents are aware that the apocalypse happened.
Now, that would be interesting to see, but I don't think it's possible. The entries you create in the Journal mod get stored by the game engine in your save file and can only be accessed from the corresponding Journal holotape, but the actual terminal entries, the ones you see immediately upon activating a terminal, those are stored in the plugin files (ESP, ESM, ESL), you can't modify those from inside the game (there is no way to access files on the disk from inside Scaleform, a reasonable safety precaution) and even if you could, you simply can't modify them on the fly because the game won't register the change until the next time you start it up. Maybe if there was a way to create a terminal that boots into a custom interface, but as far as I know the terminals are hardcoded. But I'd love to see someone prove me wrong on this and actually make a mod like that.
24 comments
I really only made this mod to see if something like this could even be done in FO4.
*(Well, actually it's technically 'simple', but it requires an ungodly amount of analytical thinking, if you ever feel like going down a mathematical rabbit hole, the language is basically a very basic, very low level representation of a Turing machine, but it's the low level nature of it that makes it virtually unusable - to use it, you have to be able to break down every problem you want to tackle with it into just 8 basic operations - move one position forward or back in memory, add or subtract one from current position in memory, print and read.)
https://esolangs.org/wiki/Brainfuck <-- Read this if you want to learn what brainfuck is. The link is also in the mod description.
I honestly think that this is super immersive and lore friendly, just because of you associating coding with Robco. Think about, that's the only way that creating robots would work in the fallout universe, lol.
I have my Bachelor's in IT, but not really that much on the programming aspect of the field, but this is a very cool way for me to practice while role playing.
I'll see about studying the text and stuff. Um, this brain f^ck can't be too hard to decipher, is it?
Um...is it possible to lock my game up during me trying to input codes in brain****?
I.was trying to do the hello, world, but input it wrong and my game froze Ahhhh. I c now ;_;
Edit: Patch is up, you can download it. Programs will now terminate after 10,000,000 steps if the end of the code hasn't been reached yet. It may still take a few moments, but they will always terminate.
Working the code i c now why they call it brainfuck @_@
Edit: The Apple 1 emulator is a no-go from me. The original source code is an even bigger mess than this, porting it over took several days and sucked all the joy out of me, only to then immediately freeze and crash the Flash Player upon executing. I don't even want to imagine what damage it would do inside FO4. For those reasons I'm not going to try debugging it and consider it abandoned. On the plus side, I found a Commodore PET 2001 emulator written in much cleaner JS and managed to port it to Flash in just a few hours. It boots, it runs code, I still have to try it out in FO4 and adapt it for it though. But it's something at least.
Edit 2: Well, the emulator does run in Fallout... At 4 FPS. I think I'll make another attempt at tacking on another programming language to this interface. And I think I found just the right one. Mouse. While it's not in common use anymore, it can be implemented easily, and, most importantly, it's actually usable and relatively easy to learn and understand.
I have to ask:
How did you do all of this UI stuff?
Because I just can't find much information about the UserInterface stuff or Terminals or anything that modifys the UI.
You can't find any information because there is no information. If you have any software development knowledge & experience at all, you'd have known to look through existing source codes. I've made mine available. They're not great, but they're there for anyone to see, along with the list of software needed to easily edit and compile them. If you have no previous experience with programming, look up some programming tutorials. Once you know one programming language, you can easily learn another, provided they share the same programming paradigm. (C to Java or JavaScript to ActionScript - that's what that "Flash - stuff...", as I recall you once called it, is written in - is relatively easy, but e.g. Scheme to C is almost impossible for a beginner due to their very differing nature.)
And all the UI is made basically from scratch, at least the stuff that I do. You have some things made available to you by the development environment, like sprites, basic shape drawing routines, floating text fields, and user input events, but how you put it together is all up to you.
Yes, I have some experience in C (mostly low-level embedded stuff ....).
And yes, you are right, I asked about this before.
I think there is no "easy beginner tutorial" for this kind of stuff, I will just have to, like you said, try to figure it out myself ....
Well ....
At least I have something to do now for the next few months ;-)
EDIT:
I just opened the main.as source file and this seems surprisingly easy to understand ....
So, you were right about that!
Thanks ;-)
Any possibility you could package the assets into neat BA2 archives so I can try it out ?
I don't do cancerous loose files due to principles, totally understand if you don't do BA2s on your own principles.