

Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg - InfinityX0
https://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=zerg+rush

======
LinaLauneBaer
This easter egg is referring to the game StarCraft 2 by Blizzard. There are
three fractions in StarCraft 2: Protoss, Terran and Zerg. Imagine the Zerg
like aliens. Zergs have a unit called "the Zergling" which is a small creature
that usually attacks buildings and enemy units in groups. If you have a lot of
Zerglings and run to your opponents fast this can be called "a Zergling rush".
There are also custom maps that you can play that are called Zerg Rush: You
are in the middle of the map and Zerlings are streaming to your bade from all
sides. You have to defend it like in the easter egg.

~~~
ehamberg
Well, I would say that it refers to the Starcraft series. I'm so old that I
remember the first Starcraft game – and I'm quite sure it had Zerg. ;)

~~~
iconfinder
"I'm so old that I remember the first Starcraft game"

I remember when Dune 2 came out - the father of all RTS games.

~~~
intended
That I remembered - the major upgrade and concept it was over the previous
dune 1.

Then the warcraft series, followed by Command and conquer and then Starcraft,
which set the gold standard. AoE came next - after that it just becomes a blur
of different RTS types which were competing for top billing.

~~~
FrankBooth
Cryo's Dune was a completely different type of game (adventure), and was more
or less developed and released in parallel to Westwood's Dune. Westwood's Dune
is not a sequel at all, it was intended to replace Cryo's about-to-be-canceled
game that never ended up being canceled, forcing them to name it Dune II:
Battle for Arrakis to distinguish itself from Cryo's game.

~~~
intended
You learn something new every day! Thanks - when I played them I was too far
out of range for me to get info on game development at the time, iirc I even
played them out of order.

Dune really was a brilliant game, and really its balance was pretty good,
especially considering it was a time when the word balance itself hadn't been
coined.

------
9diov
It is a nice touch how originally there are 6 zerglings coming out and others
came in pair.

For anyone who never played Starcraft: zerglings are created in pair, two per
egg and the maximum number of eggs are 3. A player who attempts to do a
zergling rush wait for the first 3 eggs to be available, hatch them and
subsequently make a new pair of zerglings as soon as a new egg is available.

~~~
whileonebegin
I would have liked Google's implementation more if instead of clicking the
little O's to kill them, you get to instead make buildings that produce G's or
something to defend. Clicking the O's isn't really starcrafty.

~~~
getsat
I guess you've never tried to focus fire/snipe banelings that are part of a
zerg army moving towards your marine bio force. Accurate clicking is very
Starcrafty.

------
alt_
Opera logos attacking page elements? Is there a backstory for this or is it
just a coincidence?

~~~
pgsandstrom
It's the O:s in the google-logo

~~~
alt_
Ah, that makes more sense. Opera doesn't exactly represent the Zerg of
browsers ;)

~~~
trebor
It doesn't, but that didn't refrain from me laughing about the search results
getting trounced by what really looks like Opera logos.

------
neiled
I wonder how Google deal with all these little easter eggs from a code
perspective. It's pretty impressive that they can add so much extra to a
particular search term without it affecting the overall code quality.

~~~
sev
I would imagine each search term being something like a key in a database, and
each key has an associated field which can link to anything they want. That
linker probably then gets attached to a "hook" on their site.

It's just a matter of adding in the hooked code into the associated field in
the DB.

I know I over simplified this, but I would assume that's the gist.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Also, the infrastructure already exists for serious reasons, eg Googling for
"suicide" will give you a hotline number to call.

So it's not like they added the extra complexity for a laugh!

~~~
conradfr
That's a great idea but I tried and it gave me nothing.

Oh well, time to leave.

~~~
wlesieutre
It looks like <http://i.minus.com/ibbwHvK38EiDQB.PNG> for me. Are you in the
US?

~~~
mattmanser
Breaking News:

"Google's Zerg Rush drives thousands to contemplate suicide"

~~~
ansgri
That's why proper root cause analysis is hard.

------
martindale
I figured this would be easy to hack, and I was right:

1) Insert jQuery into the search results page by using this bookmarklet:
javascript:void(function(){if(!document.getElementById('jQscript')){var%20jQscript=document.createElement('script');jQscript.id='jQscript';jQscript.src='[https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.0/jquery.mi...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.0/jquery.min.js;document.documentElement.appendChild\(jQscript\);}}\(\)));

2) use the console to execute the following, moving all zerglings to 250x250:
setInterval(function() { $('.zr_zergling_container').css('left',
'250px').css('top', '250px'); }, 50);

3) click away. #winning

~~~
nostrademons
When we were code-reviewing it, we had a bunch of fun trying to hack it
programmatically and sharing ridiculously high scores (things like 12,000
zerglings killed). It's not even as hard as you mention: you can simulate a
mouseclick on all zergling divs programmatically, and instantly clear the
screen of every wave.

Then I went and just entered the code to pop up a ShareBox programmatically on
the JS console, letting me edit the share message to whatever I wanted it to
be. "I took down 1,853,642.93 zerglings with 3.14 * 10^42 APM." And I didn't
even need to play the game!

~~~
martindale
Yeah, you had the fortunate ability to view the non-minified version. ;)

My first approach was the mouseclick (using
$('.zr_zergling_container').click()) but for whatever reason that wouldn't
work. I got fed up and just decided to try moving the zerglings to a clickable
location. Ha!

~~~
hornd
Ha, I spent a bit trying the same method, and it didn't work for me either.
Didn't have the insight to move them though.

~~~
petrosalema
I was able to rack up a score of 1032 actual zerg kills
([https://plus.google.com/u/0/105804947146425070365/posts/LKju...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/105804947146425070365/posts/LKju7M6d7kg))
using simulated mouse clicks on the zerglings. It's not that hard:
<https://gist.github.com/2514407> . There are relatively simple guards one
could engineer into the zerg rush program to prevent simple hacks like this
though, if one cared to. Fun stuff!

~~~
martindale
I showed my good friend my approach, he came up with this:
<https://gist.github.com/2513841>

~~~
petrosalema
Nice :D

------
imkevinxu
The GG at the end was a very nice touch.

~~~
athst
gg'ing when you win is so bad manner

------
TeMPOraL
APM counter is a nice touch as well :).

(APM stands for Actions Per Minute, where Actions in StarCraft are input
events that do something, like selecting an unit or ordering it to attack.
Professional players tend to have >200 APM).

~~~
TheCapn
200 is on the low side? I'm amateur and hit that commonly during games. I
think JulyZerg was on record to hit 800 at one point. Lord only knows how that
was physically possible. I would credit the source to TeamLiquid's Wiki (I
believe) but I cannot search it while at work.

~~~
oso96_2000
To avoid confusion, blizzard recently added something called EPM (effective
actions per minute). Those are the one who counts. APM can be spammed or
increased a lot by, for example, selecting all the larva in all your
hatcheries and making units pressing one key. Pro players have a constant ~200
APM, not only for those moments.

------
chris_wot
I was searching for information about Zerg Rushes, you insensitive clod!

~~~
Bockit
I realise you're joking, but for anyone looking for advice regarding how to
play SC or SC2, I recommend <http://wiki.teamliquid.net/>

------
jurre
I need <https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/multitask.html> now!

~~~
nkassis
For some reason my brain read the last part of that url as "Mutalisk" ;p

------
Shenglong
Well, if this was an attempt to get me to share stuff on Google+, it
succeeded.

~~~
scottmp10
If someone shares a link to a public Facebook post, do you consider it an
attempt to get you to share stuff on Facebook? I find it odd that you assume
someone sharing something on Google+ is an attempt to get you to use Google+
rather than an attempt to share the content with you.

~~~
csallen
I believe he's talking about the fact that, at the end of the Zerg Rush game,
Google prompts you to share your score on Google+.

~~~
scottmp10
Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't play until the end of the game.

------
eliben
It even comes in waves of 6-es, brilliant :)

~~~
marcloney
6 'ling rush FTW!

------
thomasfl
Is it Opera Browser logos you're supposed to shoot?

~~~
rplnt
Half of them looks like that. It's actually the two "o"s from Google logo. But
funny coincidence nevertheless, Opera even tweeted it:
<https://twitter.com/#!/opera/status/195796939709743105>

------
imkevinxu
Works on iPad too! High score of 74 :) <http://imgur.com/Q52P9>

------
fatbat
Interestingly, I saw this comment on reddit yesterday that was a "leak" about
this new easter egg.
([http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/stek5/what_little...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/stek5/what_little_easter_eggs_on_websites_do_you_love/c4gwdwd)
)

------
tehC
Nice share! This is the first time that my clicking skills were needed to
'defend' a search result page. :)

------
kingatomic
Unimpressed Flash: "I just killed all the little O's, were they supposed to do
something?"

------
sekou
It's coincidental this post is popular because less than a week ago I decided
to relive the past and install StarCraft: Brood War to play over LAN. It's
still just as fun, but I forgot how easily the game consumes your time.

------
Tipzntrix
You click on them to kill them? That's not how Starcraft works...

~~~
fatbat
Actually, in Starcraft: Brood Wars you could explode a critter with a "nuke"
animation by clicking repeatedly on it. :)

------
jianshen
gg!

------
nsns
It almost seems like some Freudian reaction to the recent accusations that
Goggle search is broken.

------
manuscreationis
Well, shit.

This is all I'm going to be doing today...

------
Dove
Why today? Do they know something about, say, the HOTS release that I don't?

------
astrobe_
No speedlings? what is it, bronze league?

------
Tomis02
I can't get it to work. What gives?

~~~
markszcz
I had the same problem on my Chrome browser, odd right? I searched in IE and
it worked.

~~~
Tomis02
I tried in Opera, Firefox, IE. Nothing.

------
jnuss
Having a nice big monitor helps.

------
FrankBooth
Spawn more Overlords!

------
iamdave
kekekek

------
felixchan
Googlers have too much time on their hands.

~~~
j_col
Yeah, good to see they are spending their 20% time solving real problems.

~~~
Tipzntrix
Curing boredom and bringing joy to the user are solutions to real problems!

~~~
j_col
More like helping to perpetuate the image that the corporation where I work is
a "fun" place to be, helping to improve our image and attract the right
recruits. Big G are masters at this, just look at how much positive press they
receive around their logo doodles.

~~~
daave
That's rather cynical. The project was actually just implemented by a couple
of employees who are Starcraft fans, not a mandate from management. The
reality is Google actually really is a "fun" place to be.

~~~
j_col
Hence my original point that it was probably done on 20% time (not mandated by
management). I disagree that I am being cynical for pointing out the self-
evident facts that:

1\. Google spends a _lot_ of quality dev hours programming "fun" easter
eggs/doodles/April fools sections into their products.

2\. These efforts gain a lot of positive spin in the media.

3\. This positive spin helps to improve the image of the corporation as a fun
place to work/do business with etc.

Now given how many hours that go into some of these efforts, I find it
difficult to believe that at least some of them must be mandated by
management, but to me that's irrelevant: I'd much rather see all of this dev
time being spent on:

1\. Making Google's products better.

2\. Contributing to an OSS project.

~~~
janardanyri
Humans are not robots. Squishy human elements like motivation, attitude,
camaraderie, and "fun" have material productivity consequences, especially in
cognition-driven fields like software.

"Quality dev hours" are not a fungible resource. In fact, they're so un-
fungible that we commonly accept that beyond a certain point the value of a
dev hour is negative. Maybe time spent on these projects invigorates engineers
to do better work in the rest of their work hours? Maybe not. But the issue is
more subtle than you're giving it credit for.

Plus... well... THIS particular simple throwaway Easter egg is what bothers
you? You know there are several multi-billion-dollar industries that employ
smart people in creating "fun" ways for people to unproductively spend their
time, right?

~~~
j_col
> Plus... well... THIS particular simple throwaway Easter egg is what bothers
> you? You know there are several multi-billion-dollar industries that employ
> smart people in creating "fun" ways for people to unproductively spend their
> time, right?

Yes, and they are called games companies, and I love their products and they
really are fun. Is Google a games/entertainment company, or a company that
sells advertising?

And no, it is not this particular Google Easter egg that bothers me, all of
them do. I made that clear in my last comment. The fact that almost every one
of them ends up on a thread on HN like this one is distracting (for the record
this is the first one I have commented negatively on, but they're all as bad).

------
zk00006
Google keeps repeating the same trick over and over again. I don't find it
funny/interesting any more. How about something new Google?

~~~
Strallus
They've done this before?

~~~
zk00006
Search: "tilt" for example. I have seen this about 2 years ago and it was
really cool. This effect is just iteration on the same idea ...

~~~
Kiro
Yes, Google should be ashamed for implementing more than one easter egg. It
being something completely different is no excuse!

