Superpositions, Sudoku, the Wave Function Collapse algorithm.
Why Hacker News recommends it
Commenters recommend it as the clearest way to understand WFC, especially in threads about Townscaper and tiled content generation.
What it is
Martin Donald explains the Wave Function Collapse algorithm using Sudoku-like constraint solving and shows how he implemented it with Blender and Godot. It links demos and reference articles.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2021 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec V__ · 2022-06 · on “How Townscaper Works: A Story Four Games in the Making”
I didn't know about wave collapse functions before stumbling about Townscaper. Still, I found them hard to understand until I found this video by Martin Donald: [this video] Now, I'm just looking for a use-case to implement them myself sometime.
Recommends t8y · 2021-12 · on “Townscaper Running in the Browser”
This uses the "wave function collapse" algorithm. Oskar Stalberg also made a great demo of how it works[0], but it might not make sense just from that. Martin Donald made a really nice youtube video on how it works[1]. The name "wave function collapse" can be off putting but it's pretty straightforward, and an algorithm that can come in handy for many uses both in game development and just general software development. I'm actually procrastinating on HN from working on a GPU parallelised version that can generate millions of positions every frame. In Townscaper you can actually see that the algorithm runs quite slow and lags behind the players input, there's just a bunch of animation to hide
Recommends orls · 2022-05 · on “Show HN: Simple Wave Function Collapse”
Not OP, but I happened to see a good video on this recently: [this video] In short, it’s an algorithm for procedural generation of tiled content, like 2d/3d game maps.
Cites ItsMonkk · 2022-01 · on “Aaron Swartz: How to Save the World, Part 1”
I was inspired by Nicky Case[0], but independently recently reached the same conclusion as you have here. In March of 2020 when the pandemic was first hitting the US, before there was an official lock-down, and before any company wide announcement, and without any communication, my entire team had come in on a Friday, and my entire team had stayed home on the Monday. In essence, there was enough information that occurred over the weekend for the wave function to collapse[1]. That's what we're after - if you can illuminate the future in such a way that any other option is no longer an option. I've got no game-dev experience, so the journey will be long, but I think we're on the right track. [