Top all-time · #1636
Ben Fry
Personal blog · benfry.comdesigndata
Ben Fry writes ben fry, a personal blog at benfry.com about design and data. Since 2008, 47 different Hacker News readers have linked it 63 times, most often “Distellamap: Visualization of Atari 2600 Code and Data”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- Distellamap: Visualization of Atari 2600 Code and Data8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2008-02-26
- Distellamap – Seeing the operation of code in Atari 2600 games7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-11-05
- Beautiful zip code visualisation7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2008-11-28
- Ben Fry's PhD Dissertation (the creator of Processing)3 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2008-08-11
- IPad thoughts from Ben Fry (creator of Processing)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-03-13
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-08-13
- On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-09-08
What Hacker News says?
The thing is, there's no "right format" for sprites, as they're used in the game. See http://benfry.com/deconstructulator/ for an example of how sprites are handled by the NES for Super Mario Bros. Mario is split into 8x8 pieces that are swapped out as needed: how do you determine which pieces are "Mario's sprite" and which are "that coin's sprite"? Remember that some pieces will change while others won't.
Comment linking /deconstructulator/
on “Depixelizing Pixel Art”Submitted IPad thoughts from Ben Fry (creator of Processing) as a story · 106 points
HN discussionCombat is, frankly, one of the greatest videogames ever made. Easily in the top ten. If you don't understand why, you've missed out on a great deal of history. The Atari 2600 was designed, almost exclusively, to play Combat. It has the ability to animate only 3 sprites: player 1, player 2 and "ball". There are many hacks to get around this, but we're talking about the pre-release period of the Atari Video Computer S…
Comment linking /distellamap/150dpi/combat-illus-150dpi.png
on “The man who made 'the worst video game in history'”Submitted NFL player IQ by position as a story · 76 points
HN discussionLike this: https://gist.github.com/tluyben/f8b19965eaab6d236f9b Btw: http://benfry.com/distellamap/
Comment linking /distellamap/
on “The man who made 'the worst video game in history'”Submitted Beautiful zip code visualisation as a story · 48 points
HN discussionBen Fry, the creator of Processing, created a beautiful visualization of the disassembled machine code of Super Mario Bros with arrows representing jump instructions: http://benfry.com/dismap/mario-large2.jpg via: http://benfry.com/dismap/ I've always loved this as a visualization of machine code. It's simultaneously amazing how complex it is and yet how simple it is when you consider that it represents the entire g…
Comment linking /dismap/
on “A Comprehensive Super Mario Bros. Disassembly”Submitted Distellamap: Visualization of Atari 2600 Code and Data as a story · 47 points
HN discussionOne format I liked is distellamap, [1] a visualization of some Atari 2600 games in poster format. https://benfry.com/distellamap/
Comment linking /distellamap/
on “GoCity – Code City metaphor for visualizing Go source code”Submitted Maps of the US made entirely of roads as a story · 22 points
HN discussionAh, yes, in the days of yore when the code could fit in an 8k memory chip! :D https://benfry.com/distellamap/ Sorry to hear it was not an enjoyable evening. With the higher resolutions many TVs support, there's only so much bandwidth and memory headroom to support textures that big, and DVD drives just don't have the seek speed to support. Heck, in the 360 generation we were carefully laying out files broken apart a…
Comment linking /distellamap/
on “Video Gaming Will Take Over”Submitted distellamap as a story · 6 points
HN discussionReally cool! Reminds me of distellamap by Ben Fry (co-creator of Processing) - http://benfry.com/distellamap/
Comment linking /distellamap/
on “Plotter Drawings: Five seconds of Donkey Kong”Submitted Ben fry » Are electronic medical records really about data? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis is a perfect place to mention Ben Frys distellamap project https://benfry.com/distellamap/ It creates stunning visualizations of vcs game code.
Comment linking /distellamap/
on “How Atari 2600 Game Pitfall Builds Its World”Submitted Fugpaint - A misbehaving paint program as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThere's https://benfry.com/distellamap/ but I think it works better with data than code: consider the sprite sheet.
Comment linking /distellamap/
on “Things Come Apart”Submitted On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces as a story · 4 points
HN discussionBen Fry's Dissertation is awesome, very easy to read and FREE! Ben is the creator of the Processing language (which is awesome by itself) http://benfry.com/phd/
Comment linking /phd/
on “Ask HN: Where to look to learn UX/Design”Submitted All Streets: Map of the US showing nothing but streets as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAnother example of the same zip code interaction idea, with some pretty UI: http://benfry.com/zipdecode/
Comment linking /zipdecode/
on “Show HN: ZipLocate, a free API for zip code geolocation”Submitted Zipdecode as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere's a neat interactive version of the same thing here (Java required): http://benfry.com/zipdecode/
Comment linking /zipdecode/
on “Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?”Submitted Ben Fry's PhD Dissertation (the creator of Processing) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionModern games are written in huge swaths of C++, tiny bits of SIMD compiler intrinsics and individual pieces of very special-purpose assembly. If you want to feel impressed, check this out http://benfry.com/distellamap/
Comment linking /distellamap/
on “AsmXml: a fast XML parser/decoder in pure x86 assembler ”Submitted Distellamap – Seeing the operation of code in Atari 2600 games as a story · 2 points
HN discussionif you'd like a tufte-esque view on interactive graphics, checkout the PhD dissertation from Ben Fry (the creator of the Processing language). I rather enjoyed reading it, and it isn't crazy dense, it was a nice easy read. http://benfry.com/phd/
Comment linking /phd/
on “The NYT's Visual Election Outcome Explorer - How we made the D3 decision tree”Submitted Distellamap: Seeing the operation of code in Atari 2600 games as a story · 2 points
HN discussionBah! Silly BevHills holds nothing on Schenectady, NY. http://benfry.com/zipdecode/
Comment linking /zipdecode/
on “Is it going to rain?”Submitted Zipcode Visualizations as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
