What is Reddit's opinion of
The Powder Toy?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
50 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
http://powdertoy.co.uk I love messing with explosives and wires in this game. You can make a nuclear power plant and more. Lota of people make actual engines and even whole cities that you can bird down or blow up.
Edit: Not going to edit the comment so people can see the mistake auto correct made. Other than this edit telling people why I edited this part in.
If anyone watching this is thinking of buying this game, don't waste your money. It's just a really crappy port of a mobile game.
Try The Powder Toy instead. It's free and is still better than The Sandbox.
It's not really a game per say, but it's free, and it's basically a physics simulator based on the old falling sand game.
People have modded the game for new features or new elements, but you can also share designs with the official version. It's equal parts pixel art and pyromaniac sim.
There's a tiny sidebar that contains options like liquids, solids, explosives, electrical stuff, other things that include nuclear things.
Basically you draw with whatever option you picked, and then you can interact with it by using the other options.
Here's a guide to make a mini laser.
The Powder Toy...
It is a physics simulator with quite simple graphics but boy is it addictive. It is crazy, you can create nuclear reactors from scratch, explosives, volcanoes etc... You are pretty much limited only by your imagination. I recommend it. Free and tiny file size.
There's an even more complex version of this called The Powder Toy . It's not a browser game, you need to download it, but DAMN, it's awesome.
EDIT: Aaaand someone else already posted this.
If you liked that you should most definitely have a look at The powder toy, it's much more advanced than danball (although less swanky than OPs game) and still actively developed.
Powder Toy. I spend so much time goofing off making different types of bombs or other explosions. High level creation of stuff is fun too; lasers, working power generators, correctly functioning bombs, etc. So fun!
The best sand type game that I know of would be Powder Toy
This game, you can do a lot more than any other sand game I've played! I love it, even if the name does sound like a painful sex toy!
For anyone remotely interested in exploring your own simulations of things like this:
Personally, I like to make "universes", full of various types of life, many heavenly bodies of differing composition, and so forth, where, eventually, ASSIMILATION appears, and threatens all known reality, and it can only be stopped by being encased in a diamond-coated VOID.
It's also fun to make a single, detailed planet, experiencing billions of years of time elapsing, as the crusts shift and cool. Try to create a stable atmosphere, until some errant reaction burns it away, and the planet dies...until ice comets impact it even further down the line, and the gift of water bestows a new chance for life.
Edit: Don't forget to use Radial gravity for making planets!
> I imagine that these miiverse submissions are sometimes hand-picked
If it functions anything like Powder Toy's front page, an admin might be able to pin something to the front page, but it otherwise functions on an algorithm based on how many upvotes (in Splatoon's case, "Yeahs") it has and how old it is.
before minecraft was made, a friend of mine showed me something open source he was helping develop, he is now one of the official developers to that game thing, but when he first showed it me it didn't have the features it does now, and people made logic circuits, computers, animations and other things with it... back then.
what these guys are doing in minecraft seems to be a bigger version, but its not all that difficult to believe for me, as I've seen more complex things being done with less.
oh, yeah, I can't verify my story that I knew him before powdertoy, but I can say that complex stuff was made with the powdertoy.
My friend. You may be content with dan-ball's falling sand game. But let me open your eyes to the greatest evolution of this idea.....Powder Toy. So many more interactions and possibilities. Been fiddling with it for YEARS.
John Conway's Game od Life is an example of a mathematical emergent system called cellular automata. Having an array of cells which can be either live or dead, the automata takes the initial configuration and iterates it over and over using simple algorithm. Living cell survives to the next generation if it has exactly 2 or 3 living neighbours. If it has less or more, it dies (due to underpopulation / overpopulation). Dead cell can be brough back to live if it has exactly 3 living neighbours. These rules are written in form of [survive]/[revive], therefore the basic Conway's game is 23/3. This is also called a ruleset. There are loads of rulesets, each creating vast and unique amounts of patterns (another one is a 12345/37 i think, this one creates giant everexpanding labyrint-like structures). The pattern, which you can see at the start of the video (after the color demo) is called a "glider". It's probably the most known Game of Life pattern, as it kind of became a symbol for hacking. Glider is a "ship" type pattern, and the monstrous blinking thing which you can see by the end of the video, is called "oscillator" , as it repeats themself after a certain number of generations. These cellular automata are amazing toys to play with, some people build amazing stuff in it. It is possible to build a Game of Life within Game of Life - the automata is able to emulate itself. If it interests you, I suggest getting The Powder Toy and trying some of it's many Game of Life rulesets.
I still have my old account on there and it's nearly a decade old! I think one of my saves is still up there on the popular pages, though it's been heavily downvoted because it hasn't been updated since around 2011. (and probably because I went nuts with the copyright thing. In my defense, everyone was doing it back then)
I was accidentally reminded about this little game earlier this week. Used to play it about... 8 or 9 years ago or so, I think? It's a sandbox; you have various substances at your disposal, each substance has its unique qualities (water conducts electricity, gas turns into oil under pressure, C4 explodes if exposed to heat, and so on), and... that's it, basically. The tools are there, the purpose is yours to find.
The surprising thing is: the game is actually still being updated. In fact, when I downloaded and launched it (it's free), I was taken aback by the immense amount of new stuff. As far as I remember, in the past all available substances were possible to depict on one screen, but now a hefty bunch of tabs is needed to store all of them: there is one for liquids, one for solids, one for gasses, one for sensors, one for the Game of Life stuff (don't ask me what it's doing there, I have no idea), one for uncategorized stuff, and this isn't the end of the list.
There's a library available where you can see what other people have created, so in case you don't have any ideas of your own, it's perfectly possible to ~~steal everything that isn't nailed down~~ take a look at what others have done.
So, do take a look if you're in the mood for a really swell sandbox toy.
In response to your ideas, I'm initially just gonna stay in the falling sand genre and add more sand types (similar to The Powder Toy) bit I might do some things like you describe eventually if they end up working out well and being fun to use
It's hard to call this a game, but it qualifies and is free. The Powder Toy is a 2d falling sand physics...toy? Theres no objective but it can be very fun to fiddle with. All sorts of things are available. Fuels, liquids, solids, metal, electricity, gravity tools, explosives, fire, plasma, photons, glass, pressures, temperatures...and much much more! I highly recommend playing with it.
Powder is the game I think you're talking about.
http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/
However there is a better, downloadable version.
Hope this is what you're looking for!
If you want a visual of this, mess around with some saves on the powdertoy.co.uk. I suggest using a clump of the "DEST" element.
You are looking for Powder Toy! you have to download it but it's worth, I assure you. There are a TON pf elements and reaction, with temperature and wind; you can even sustain a nuclear reaction.
I have already lost many hours exploring all the various reaction, hope you like it!
http://powdertoy.co.uk/
To anyone interested we already have some games reaching for record simulated voxel / pixel densities.
Voxelfarm has complex voxel system that can sort of form shapes very close to what we can with simple meshes expect is volumetric so you can do all the minecrafty stuff to it. Currently Landmark and EQN are biggest games running on it but still in development.
The powder toy does what you described but in 2D and manageable density. I saw people build actual atomic reactors with cooling and everything. (simplified though). Search for some vids.
Then there's this Voxel quest that claims to be a volumetric roguelike but it's interesting because there are 2 million voxels per cubic meter. Check out the video.
When I started high school, it was possible to run .exe files from the user area on the computers (it was against the rules, just not enforced.), one day I took in a memory stick containing a little game called The Powder Toy (Version 20 ish at the time. 2009), I gave the game to two of my friends and I left it at that.
Fast forward a week or two and I go into a computer room at lunch time and I count at least 20 out of the 30 so computers running the game, this continues for a while and more and more people get hands on the game, people give out the same version that I originally gave out even though there had been tonnes of updates. (Often I would hear people refer to me as the kid who brought the powder toy into school.)
Then all of a sudden it was no longer possible to run .exes in your user area, except me and my friends found that you could still run it in a .zip file, that eventually stopped working also as the school system seemed to be sweeping through user areas for .exe and deleting them, even in .zip files. It was still possible (and still is.) to run .exes from a memory stick however, and it didn't need to be in a .zip file. (.vbs files used to work but they got banned pretty quick.)
Another interesting thing that happened at my school an issue with the server caused all users to have there document area replaced by a shared temporary area, except it hadn't ever been wiped, in a folder named 'click me' or something to similar effect was a photograph of a penis.
That area was never seen again...
FW: Powder Toy
A brilliant falling sand game. You can build giant bombs, lasers, acid-lava duplication pouring acid on lava machines. Yes. The whole lot. Dan has played this already for a few minutes in an early "Three Free Games Friday" episode. It would be great for Dan to play with this for 20-40 minutes.
After playing with the powder toy for some time I got the inspiration to add simple fluid physics to my game. I was thinking about metaballs because you can easily render them with a pixel shader and they look good. I don't want to render them at full resolution because that would look weird in a pixelated game so I want to render them at the resolution it runs at which probably cuts processing needed quite a bit.
Now my question is, would a low to mid-range machine be able to process that? Because my PC isn't a problem, I have a GTX670 and an overclocked FX8350. But I'm worried that I might add something that runs fast on my PC but not on the average consumer's PC.
Powder Toy is free and allows you to create all sort of stuff : from minimalistic nuclear plants to hand grenades. You can play with physics, watch all sort of streams (air, temperature, pressure...), but I think the best use is to create and simulate electronic devices like RAM, transistors, etc.
There's probably a few more you can find if you google "falling sand game" or something, but here's a browser-based one and a downloadable one, which is much more complex and, well, pretty fun.
The powder toy is an excellent developed version of the falling sand game. It also features community saves and such.
I've spent so many hours experimenting with pressure, liquids, states and heat conductivity for this. My most beloved experiment is what I call "stickman survival" where I try to figure out how to make a stickman survive a plutonium stockpile going critical.
I've tried multiple methods, but so far, stickman never makes it :P
You sound like you'd love The Powder Toy (an amazing recreation of the "Falling Sand" genre).
In fact, I think all of /r/Minecraft would like this game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7PvmD0S1T4 (A nuclear power plant)
It actually regulates various solids, liquids, gasses, electricity, resistance, whether certain bits of matter can pass through or get treated like a solid, and actual radioactive particles; all with Newtonian physics.
The Poweder Toy, based on Falling Sand, but with much, much more options. And it's free and cross-platform too. Examples of what you can do here.
I have formerly been on the TPT forums and there was a so-called "suggestion crisis", a period when everyone started suggesting elements that would not add anything new and useful to the game, just re-names of existing elements. He has set his priorities straight and has thought through at least some of the features he is suggesting. I am happy for that and I hope that Minecraft won't go through the suggestion crisis.
By the way, the suggestion crisis caused the devs to unwillingly add features of gameplay to the aforementioned game just to "shut the noobs up".
Some interesting things to note:
- Things breaking apart and falling look very satisfying. - Worried about squash damage ^_^.
- Level generation is already random, yay! (compare @2:48 and @5:15
- @11:35 - The wand system looks very interesting. You can switch features and make an overpowered wand (with long cooldown).
- Wands stats are interesting: Shuffle, casts (count?), delay, recharge time, capacity(how many effects max) and spread (degrees).
- Jumping appears to go with a 'jetpack mechanic' of sorts.
- The game looks very "unfinished" - The basic engine is done, but there is still a long way to go.
- The interactions right now seem "okay", but nowhere near the level of The Powder Toy yet.
Very much looking forward to this.
Well if we're talking physics, there's this open source 2D physics gem. Lots of fun with physics and chemistry. Completely free, too. Could even teach the young one how to compile programs!
It's a sandbox game that is actually pretty cool.
It takes some learning, but once you get the hang of it, you can build cities with plumbing and electricity. Or you can just blow stuff up like I do.
On a semi-relevant sidenote, I installed this game on some of the computers when the school year had ~3 weeks left. I told some of the students about it, and 8-15 of them knew about it. I actually got a few students to play it. This was in 6th grade by the way.
For me, it would be the inclusion of "Powder Toy" style interactive substances. The kinds of puzzles, minigames, and mods that could be implemented inside a 3D FPS environment would be ginormous. It would resemble Minecraft in some ways, but whereas MC turns everything into blocks, HL might represent plutonium as control rods, ingots, hemispheres^1 , and any number of other shapes.
Portal 2 has some very basic functionality in this, with its different colored gel effects. HL3/EP3 doesn't have to get as complex as MC but it can be fun without overwhelming.
^1 subcritical mass, of course ;)
Not sure about mese-chemistry, but want to mention another game that does a great job implementing physics and chemistry to some degree while still being fun (and FOSS): Powder Toy
You should try out Powder Toy. It's similar in that you can use it to build computers. The community has been steadily making advancements in creating better and better tech with the simulation-game over the last 5 or so years. You don't have 3 dimensions to work with, but the speed limitations are a little better, and there's lots of materials and tricks you can use when creating the electronics that Minecraft doesn't have. Because of that the computers in this game are a little more advanced than current Minecraft ones.
some examples:
http://powdertoy.co.uk/Browse.html?Search_Query=computer (synergy pc is my one)
Water is a good one to start with because you can do a lot with the elemts you get from it.
Have a look at this save of mine if you haven't already.
Starts with saltwater, use heat to remove the salt. Electricity to turn dstw into oxygen and hydrogen, then use heat and pressure to convert hydrogen to noble.
Download The Powdertoy, it is an even better simulation game. Plus, you can download thousands of user created simulations such as jet engines, bombs and nuclear power plants and stuff. http://powdertoy.co.uk
I couldn't get that one to load, but check out one called The Powder Toy if you like these. It's sand like this, but with tons of other things you can do with it. Hard to explain, but check it out. http://powdertoy.co.uk/
I spent several hours playing The Powder Toy, a somewhat unrealistic physics simulator which has explosives, p- and n-type silicon, photons, a bunch of cool electronics, and other stuff.
I don't regret it in the least. That game taught me logic gates and got me interested in lower-level systems (as opposed to programming).
I think you could probably get Micropolis as a citybuilding option. Another game that's pretty good, and free, is Powder Toy. A derivative of that Falling Sand game that was pretty popular for a brief time.
Thanks for the mention
Word of warning though, this game has one of the most insane learning curves ever, checking out the wiki and other user guides is crucial for understanding more complicated aspects of the game
No. There is a standalone falling sand game called The Powder Toy. Powder Toy has way more elements and tools than Powder Game. You can make laser guns, 8-bit computers, Rube Goldberg machines, and in this case, bunker breaking drills and bombs. Heres a link to their website with a download link
My middle school years in a nutshell. Also, there is a much more polished, downloadable version (by a different dev) named Powder Toy. This one has a community hub where you can post your creations. Mostly involving explosives. Fun to play with every once in a while.
Slightly related, http://powdertoy.co.uk have a lot of saves with realistic nuclear reactors. I personally think it feels realistic, and it's fun to play with trying to either keep the powersupply on without doing a meltdown or just go full Chernobyl.
Doesn't contain very much "gaming" though.
This was made with Powder Toy. check it out, its a fun simulator. its simulate particles and the have different property's and react differently.
im serious this game is really fun and you will like it check it out http://powdertoy.co.uk/
its more of a physics simulator, but the powder toy is surprisingly engrossing because of everything you can do (melt skyscrapers, nuke towns, make volcanoes, create rocket engines, burninate everything, create circuits, make timed bombs, and all sorts of stuff) i reccomend it highly
But hey, putting in logic gates is pretty obvious. It's obviously what he intended when he put in redstone except it's extremely retarded and convoluted making your own gates by sticking torches just right. I imagine it would take considerably less CPU power if there were gate blocks instead of having to make your own gates by stacking 10 blocks together.
actually there are extensive mods for it already and yes, it's actually really easy to add your own elements and modules.. there are tutorials on the wiki