XKCD "Hell" implemented in flash | Hacker News Reader

XKCD "Hell" implemented in flash

swfme.com

195 pointsedd39 comments

Man can anyone have any fun these days without people coming in and saying the gravity is wrong, the arrow keys are broken, the lines don't disappear if you manage to get them all lined up, that its not that impressive this was put together because it's a mere physics simulation, and so on.

Does the high quality of posts on HN tilt us towards criticism instead of praise, even when it's not warranted? Clearly this was not posted for a code review.

and saying the gravity is wrong, the arrow keys are broken, the lines don't disappear if you manage to get them all lined up

I think those people simply forgot what the game is called. It's not a bug -- it's a feature!

Does Randall realize the power he has? If he wants something to be made or done, all he has to do is post a drawing of his idea, and someone brings it to life.

He should probably draw a liquid fluoride thorium reactor, then..

(If you don't know about the LFTR, check out this talk by Kirk Sorensen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8)

It only take 48 hours to hack some flash together, might take longer for a liquid fluoride reactor...

It might also depend on how suicidal you're feeling. Check this out http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with... and notice how many involve fluorine.

Notice also how many involve nitrogen - and you're breathing that right now!

Like nitrogen, the nastiness of flourine is potential. Most actual flourine composites, including those proposed to be used in reactors, are quite stable.

That would make for an awesome XKCD poster!

Only if its good and relatively easy to do.

Remember this http://wetriffs.com/ ?

Watching Randall and moot at ROFLcon I felt the same thing. They both have quite the power over their audience. Randall just needs to draw it and moot just needs to say it.

My first thought. Has anyone been tracking stuff that started as xkcd comics? I only recall a couple: self referential chart, Facebook group of million users, MBR love note, people playing chess on roller-coasters, sudo make me a sandwitch robot… Looks like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xkcd#Inspired_activities is missing some.

Sadly, even if you can arrange for some blocks to line up in an approximate row, they don't disappear! Satan, you do not play fair, sir!

But you can play for hours by just holding the down key so that the pieces that fall in bounce out of the way (who knows where) of the next piece.

That's because you said an "approximate" row. If you get them exactly right it works out. All you have to do is get them jumbled together to fill in the round hole at the bottom and put the long straight piece horizontally across it. If you get if just right, then you can start balancing other pieces on top an come out with a perfect row. Then it disappears just like regular tetris. AWESOME!

Have fun!

Lies! or so I strongly suspect.

Original comic: http://www.xkcd.com/724/

Gravity needs to be just a little stronger.

I think the blocks need to be sticky, it might actually be playable if the blocks would stop bouncing around.

Maybe in Purgatory.

Yeah, I got several configurations that sort of toppled to the left, which is a bit confusing.

Interestingly, whether or not the blocks have weight seems to matter in this game, and not in the original tetris.

I think that emphasizes the unfairness. :)

I see Hell is located in a low-g environment

No, it's just slow motion. To make eternity seem longer.

Maybe the heat causes an upward convection current that slows the descent of the blocks?

My observations of the game mechanics.

0. Once a piece touches another piece, you lose control of it.

1. The weight of one piece can affect the balance of others.

2. If you hold a piece against the side walls, it will stop descending.

3. If you move a piece into the wall and then immediately away from it, you can put it into a slow spin while still being able to flip the piece.

4. You can control the descent speed by tapping the down arrow. After each acceleration, the downward velocity resets when you stop accelerating. If you reduce the speed with which the pieces collide, the already stable pieces will not bounce as much.

5. Getting something really close to a complete horizontal row does not cause the row to disappear. I have not yet achieved an arguably perfect horizontal row.

It's a pretty fun little toy. More amazing though, is just how quickly this was hacked together. The comic was what, two days ago?

Incredible.

Not really...

Don't know why this is downvoted. The turnaround time for a functioning tetris game is very quick, within a day (even if you don't know the tools yet). This one isn't even a functioning tetris game, it's basically just a physics simulation (probably using an existing library) with very simple rules that are activated upon collision.

I'm not suggesting that this is The Technological Achievement of Our Age (TM), only that it's impressive that two days after the posting of a webcomic, that the comic's theme has been actualized. Tetris isn't a hard problem, and this almost certainly used a physics library, but it's impressive and amusing nonetheless.

Maybe I'm easily impressed, but I think it's neat.

The answer is in the word - down/voted/. The existence of votes says nothing about their merit - just that they exist.

If I had to guess its because my comment was short and offered little in the way of justification.

Alternative tetris hell: http://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html

While not tetris hell http://www.chroniclogic.com/triptych.htm is a more polished "falling blocks with physics" game thats pretty fun (kinda old these days I guess)

Fun stuff. Has a fair number of bugs especially when the blocks are around the edges of the pit. And I think the edge of the bottom half circle always applies its reaction force upwards and not radially so it feels a bit unnatural (also the blocks cannot slide because of that). Still cool stuff though.

now, all that's left is "sudo make me a sandwich"

if you keep the right / left key pressed then the bricks dont move down! lol..

good job!

If you keep rotating a piece while holding left or right, the piece escapes hell.

This is genius.

Young people in Britain will call a tasty sandwich genius. That word will lose its meaning if we aren't careful!

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