Time (Travel)

🌳 TreeTode 🌳

I made my first implementation of TreeTode! It doesn't work... YET! By the way, here is the draft documentation of the language: l2wilson94.gitbook.io/treetode 

Everything is working except quotes (that let you refer to code without firing it). They sometimes work fine, but they sometimes get 'unquoted' by accident. I think I might need to rewrite the core parts of the language again...

To get the language to work, I did the silly idea of writing three interpreters:

1. One of them, known as 'ToTreeTode', rewrites TreeTode into simpler TreeTode (according to rules that you define). That one is working fine.

2. The second, known as 'ToJavaScript', translates TreeTode into a simple array format that JavaScript can understand. It lets you use TreeTode stuff in your embedded JavaScript. This one is misbehaving. Sometimes, it respects quoted values and leaves them quoted. Sometimes... it unquotes them and resolves the values. This is ILLEGAL.

3.  The third, and most pointless, is 'ToQuote', which takes TreeTode and translates it into a quoted format. This should really be part of the other two interpreters, and it's making everything too complicated.

⏳ TimePond ⏳

I saw this tweet and it inspired me to start thinking about how to make a physics engine where time travel is possible. Traveling forwards in time is relatively easy. Just make an object disappear and then reappear later. Traveling backwards in time is MUCH MORE INTERESTING.

Let's say we have a deterministic physics engine and a few objects in a scene. A frog. An entrance portal. An exit portal.

If the frog goes through the entrance portal, it leaves the exit portal 1 second earlier.

Yes... EARLIER.

If we drop the frog towards the entrance, we should see the frog appear out of the exit before it actually reaches the entrance. If the engine is deterministic, it should be possible to simulate 1 second ahead, and make the 'time traveling' frog appear.

BUT... what if the frog interacts with its future self? What if the frog somehow stops itself going through the entrance portal at all. This is the grandfather paradox. It's when the fun stuff begins. We get to decide how the paradox gets handled.

Maybe... the engine should crash.
Maybe... two copies of the frog remain.
Maybe... the frog from the future fades away.
Maybe... a new alternative timeline is created.
Maybe... the frog goes MAD.

This would be an awesome thing to explore. Maybe this is a bit mad, but that's no change to usual. Let's see where this goes.

📺 Videos 📺

I'm still on schedule to release my next video before the end of the month! Stay tuned. Then, there will immediately be a vote for the next video topic!

I'm also planning to do multiple Deep Dive videos (just for patrons) before the end of August.