

Hexagon 16384 - xtacy
http://rudradevbasak.github.io/16384_hex/

======
nkoren
Programmers of the world: please stop with the 2048 clones. We have jobs to
do. Partners to attend to. Friends to acknowledge. Pets to feed. Plants to
water. Have some mercy already!

~~~
robot_
Plus, its not really that much fun.

~~~
jgh
Yeah but it's so much easier than making flappy birds clones!

~~~
bpicolo
You haven't seen flappy 2048 yet, huh?

~~~
celebril
Fucking hell, why did you give them the idea‽

~~~
ijk
Because it already exists! :)
[http://hczhcz.github.io/Flappy-2048/](http://hczhcz.github.io/Flappy-2048/)

------
simias
Can people who use non-qwerty keyboard tell me if they have any convenient
tricks for playing those html games that almost never let you rebind keys?
Having to switch mapping is so inconvenient...

If web gaming becomes a thing I think people should start thinking about a
standard way to let people rebind their keys, through the browser or some
common library.

~~~
johnsho
just change you keyboard mapping to qwerty on your computer. you can do this
natively on mavericks with the cmd + space shortcut

~~~
Yen
It's still annoying to need to change the entire input method, and then
remember that it's different for that window (or globally, depending on
particulars of your system).

In any case, QWERTY is not the default worldwide. The letters 'a', 'w', 'e',
'd', 'z', and 'x' have no special semantic significance for this game, they're
chosen for their relative positions in a particular keyboard layout.

The actual game actions of 'shift upper left', 'shift upper right', and so on,
should be able to be associated with any particular input - including other
keys, or relevant swipe gestures on mobile.

I agree with OP - there should be a standardized way of doing this, so that
game authors don't have to re-invent keybindings for every new game. (or, as
they're wont to do, fail to re-invent keybindings)

~~~
Moru
Butbutbut... this is what SCANCODES are for... Why aren't people using that
for games nowadays? Is it out of fashion already?

~~~
Yen
I agree entirely. I attribute the lack of scancode usage in keybindings to the
laziness and depravity of the young generation ;)

Actually, Javascript is a little weird with regard to scancodes. Try playing
with [http://javascript.info/tutorial/keyboard-
events](http://javascript.info/tutorial/keyboard-events) in different keyboard
layouts - you'll notice that there's no code that's consistent across
different layouts.

------
zoba
Is my math correct? If we simplify and say we make 1 move per second, the game
only drops 1 tokens, and we always make a perfect move...this will take 4.5
hours (16384/60/60) to complete?

In reality my moves take more than a second, and I know I don't make perfect
moves. So, over 4.5 hours.

~~~
PeterisP
1) _if_ you win the game, the game end time doesn't really depend on how
'good' your moves are - it comes a bit after you've gathered 16348+ total
value on the board.

2) The fact that the game doesn't drop only 1-tokens means that the time is
shorter - again, since the 'total' accumulates faster.

That being said, the game is much, much longer than the previous ones -
2048->16384 alone increases the time by 8, and starting with ones instead of
twos doubles it again.

------
nathancahill
Feels like I'm playing 2048 drunk. Every move requires a little thought to
make sure I'm moving in the right direction. And having two extra sides on the
shape is messing with my eyes.

~~~
WednesdayBass
After playing this for what feels like an hour (and what may have actually
been an hour) I'm suddenly noticing square edges a lot more in my
surroundings.

~~~
gengkev
Suddenly the tabs in Chrome look extremely rectangular...

~~~
diydsp
holy crap! I just played for two hours ( got to 2048 ) and when i was done
everything (win7) looked very square, kind of small and ... old-fashioned?
holy crap. It got back to normal after about five minutes or so...

~~~
SwellJoe
I genuinely thought something had gone wrong with my browser. It's surreal.

------
joeframbach
45 minutes later:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ljo1ie3ly6g2pqf/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ljo1ie3ly6g2pqf/Screenshot%202014-03-20%2012.02.11.png)

I'm done. I have banished myself from these kinds of games.

~~~
jacob019
same here, got to 4096 after wasting an hour of my life. Am I really only 1/4
done. This is a 4 hour game!

~~~
balakk
Once the strategy is set, this feels like work. That's why I still like games
like tetris. A game should have an element of surprise..

~~~
diydsp
just curious what your strategy is- i think i found a way to fill the bottom
row with the largest number and keep funneling numbers down there... I think I
reached 1024 on another computer. not sure if I should go all the way tonight.

I sure do like the hex nature of this version though.

------
gpvos
It appears that the only thing more addictive than playing 2048 is writing a
2048 clone.

------
ApertureHour
I already had the experience of text appearing tiny after staring at the old
grid version for another long playthrough. Now I have that, plus everything
seeming overly blocky and stout, even things in the room around me. It's
almost like a visual equivalent of getting tingling or pins and needles after
not using a limb. I guess it's just another fun reminder that what we see is
not the raw data from our retinal cells, but the adaptive interpretation that
our visual cortex cobbles together.

~~~
muaddirac
This happened to me too! I thought chrome had somehow silently updated while I
was playing.

------
rttlesnke
The author is quite famous in the competitive programming world:

[http://icpc.baylor.edu/community/icpc-challenge-
champions](http://icpc.baylor.edu/community/icpc-challenge-champions)

[https://www.quora.com/Who-Is-Was-X/Who-is-Rudradev-
Basak](https://www.quora.com/Who-Is-Was-X/Who-is-Rudradev-Basak)

[http://blog.codechef.com/2011/02/01/programmer-of-the-
month-...](http://blog.codechef.com/2011/02/01/programmer-of-the-month-for-
february-2011-rudradev-basak/)

------
emp_
This had the craziest effect on my vision, anyone else seeing everything else
extremely square after playing it? I mean the borders of windows, the headers
of sites etc. Everything was sooo round before.

~~~
MertsA
Yeah going into these comments really gave me an intense feeling of looking at
perfect rectangles. Not really that describable but a very weird effect of
this game.

------
protomyth
If there is a version that needs swipe compatibility, this is it because
playing with the keyboard is painful.

~~~
roryokane
This _does_ have swipe capability, as far as I can tell. I can swipe in all
six directions on my phone. However, it still sucks to play, because the
layout is totally messed up in portrait mode, and the page is too zoomed in to
see the whole board in landscape.

~~~
protomyth
Weird, I totally missed it when I tried on the iPad.

------
romanovcode
This[0] is what Hacker News is becoming lately.

[0]: [http://i.imgur.com/F0t5T21.png](http://i.imgur.com/F0t5T21.png)

~~~
tpsc
2048 is the new NSA.

------
cammil
It upsets me that the circles are not hexagons.

Why oh why?

~~~
stu_k
Probably because circles are easier to make in CSS than hexagons :)

------
OscarCunningham
This spawns 1's and expects me to get to 16384. So that'll take about 16383
moves then?

~~~
TrainedMonkey
Moreover you have a game field of 19 positions and require 14 of them to be
filled in order allowing simple combination to 16384. In a game with 6 degrees
of freedom this might be challenging.

(1 + 2 + 4 + 8) + (16 + 32 + 64 + 128) + (256 + 512 + 1024 + 2048) + (4096 +
8192)

------
rwallace
Jokes aside, I will suggest that:

1\. Making harmful products is a bad idea.

2\. If you chose to make a harmful product as a programming exercise,
publishing it is a bad idea.

3\. If you find someone else has published a harmful product, posting a link
to a forum is a bad idea.

4\. If you find someone else has posted a link to a harmful product, upvoting
it is a bad idea.

Life is complicated. There is no simple formula that will tell you the right
thing to do in the general case. And sometimes even when we know which is
which, we end up doing the wrong thing because the right thing would be
harder.

But when we know which is which, and the right thing is easy? Then, at least,
we should be able to stop doing the wrong thing.

~~~
protek
Say what?

~~~
rwallace
Granted that my comment was short, and may assume some background knowledge
not obvious to everyone, here's a longer discussion of the issues in a broader
context:
[http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/why_we_havent_met_an...](http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/why_we_havent_met_any_aliens/)

~~~
daliusd
You should add HN to your blocklist not enforce it on others.

~~~
rwallace
For better or worse, I have no authority to enforce anything here; what I'm
doing is making suggestions. That said, forums whose content consists only or
primarily of junk or links thereto, I simply refrain from visiting. The
percentage of quality content on HN, on the other hand, is generally high,
which is why I read this forum, and why I think it worthwhile to make
suggestions aimed at improving it or at least trying to stop it deteriorating.

------
legulere
Every rectangle (GUI elements, keys on the keyboard) looks really hard after
playing this for a while.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Have you ever played Dots? I got the same effect from that really strongly,
very jarring.

------
Lerc
There's a bug that causes an inconsistency with the displayed dumber on a disc
and the internal value. (interestingly the colour of the disc is appropriate
to the internal value).

I think it is happening when a merge happens when it shouldn't. like 1.141 -->
causes ..24X where X has the displayed number 1 but the colour and behaviour
of a 2. I'm not positive on that but it feels like something along those
lines.

[edit] I just got a disc which had the number was 4 in the top half and 2 in
the lower. Moving the mouse off the screen and back again fixed it. I'm now
figuring it's the browser rendering that's glitching rather than game logic.

------
lerg
Hey! It's like my game! Have you played my version before creating yours?
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spiralcode...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spiralcodestudio.hexled)

~~~
sadris
What's up with your weird country restrictions on the Play store? I can't
install it over here in the US...

------
jrobbins
The thing that I found interesting is that this is much much easier than 2048.
This algorithm does very well:

    
    
      while not game over:
        while these moves do anything:
          mash a, z, and x as fast as you can
        tap d

------
navpatel
People seem to be thinking hard about this game.. but if you're spending 1+
second/move it'll definitely take forever.

Think about it like shaking a jar of pebbles, where the heavier ones fall to
the bottom. Now simulate this by press Z->A & X->D back and forth You can get
a high score pretty quick. And if you see a situation where a low number is
stuck at the bottom, make specific moves to get at that one, then go back to
shaking the jar!

------
Tepix
It's unplayable on a german keyboard, they have "z" and "y" swapped. Perhaps
you can make "y" behave the same as "z"?

------
TrainedMonkey
As in other derivatives three side strategy works pretty well. In this game
that translates to awed key combination with top being accumulation direction.

------
einhverfr
I think this one should be called "The Endurance Test."

It should take at least 8 times as long to win as 2048.

------
fuzzythinker
I recommend using the normal arrow keys, plus press&hold shift or spacebar &
arrow keys for the other 2 directions.

------
claudius
Hm, this doesn’t seem to load for me on Firefox 28.0 – I just see the brown-
ish circles, but nothing is filled in. Curiously, in another profile,
everything is fine.

I’m new to Firefox, any ideas on how to debug this? Disabling add-ons didn’t
help and I’d rather not scratch my entire profile.

~~~
claudius
Found the issue: Apparently, Firefox disables web storage if cookies are set
to ‘ask me every time’, which then causes a ‘SecurityError: The operation is
insecure.‘ error in the console. Curiously, there was no pop-up or somesuch
asking me to accept a cookie from the domain.

------
notacoward
Seems much easier. I've never gotten past 2048 on the square versions, but I'm
already up to 4096 on my first game which isn't even done yet. I think having
two forward angles and five rows to work with makes a _huge_ difference in
keeping things organized.

------
codezero
I was really surprised that this control system is very intuitive, with the
keys forming a hexagon, I didn't have to look down at the keyboard or do any
sort of translation of what I wanted into the keys to press.

------
anigbrowl
Surprisingly, I'm finding this far easier and more absorbing than the square
version. That means something, but I'm not sure what apart from my preference
for all things hexagonal...

~~~
jcrites
There are more possible moves, and so I think more "outs" for a long time in
the beginning of the game. I think the game has a more gradual difficulty
curve.

When the board is empty, you'll start and gain 1, 2, 4, 8, etc. pieces. You
can often make pieces to combine with those easily, since you can move in any
direction and the board is relatively empty.

Eventually, over time, larger pieces build up. 64, 128, 256, etc. You can't
make such large numbers easily, and they'll start to be cluttered around and
in between other numbers. When the board becomes congested, and when there are
many different numbers in play, the challenge ramps up.

------
userbinator
Games based on powers of 2 are now the latest fad?

Certainly exposing the general public to powers of 2 is not a bad thing...
especially with computers becoming more ubiquitous in our lives.

------
amjaeger
A lot easier just using a touch screen but its starting to feel tedious. Also
reading the comments about the game taking 4 hrs... maybe I'll just quit
before I waste too much time.

------
visakanv
I've been making great progress just spamming "AWEAWEAWEAWEAWEAWEAWEAWEAWE"...
and then realized that it's going to take hours. I'm done. Fun, though.

------
peg_leg
This isn't any fun any more...I CAN'T STOP PLAYING!

------
mepcotterell
This is my favorite version of the game, with the doge version coming in a
very close second.

------
reidrac
Use preventDefault() so the arrow keys won't move the page if there are
scrollbars.

------
j2kun
I feel like this one is easier.

------
DavidSJ
Typing A, Z, X, D repetitively seems to be an effective strategy.

------
alxndr
Dvorak version please!

------
tnash
I played for about 10 minutes and owww does my brain hurt.

------
elwell
Ah, a more creative fork. I like the keyboard mapping.

------
dsego
No, just no.

------
missing_cipher
Now we need a 3D one.

~~~
batmansbelt
There has already been a 3d one and a 4d one.

------
ttty
Just crazy! :D

------
nighthawk24
FFF

