
Show HN: Skynet Simulator - mr-ron
http://skynetsimulator.com/
======
thom
Spent far too long playing the game within the game, pretty sure Skynet's not
going to take over as long as Steam is installed in its box.

Also I made sure to convert all my machines to Solaris, just because there
were no known exploits within the game for that, but I assume that was
unnecessary? Was annoying to have to convert everything to MSDOS again near
the end. :P

~~~
andrewflnr
I played that minigame to the end because I thought there might be a clue I
needed. In fact, I just needed to inspect the menu options more closely. :-/
It was a good game though, inside another good game...

~~~
thom
Yeah, this was my experience until I realised you could click on your own
machines, but I was quite glad for the distraction tbh.

------
stordoff
I _really_ thought quant.bat was going to be malicious due to the "dont
download and use the random files out there!" warning and it being described
as _claims to_ double your processing capabilities.

~~~
dkonofalski
Same. I avoided opening it for the longest time and tried to upload it on
another host before I absorbed it thinking that I could always nuke it and
then absorb it.

~~~
stordoff
I ended up digging through the JS. I didn't feel like restarting if I was
wrong, and it felt oddly fitting.

------
minitoar
Really reminds me of Uplink, a sort of hacking RPG:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplink_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplink_\(video_game\))

~~~
nicoty
Reminds me of bitburner -
[https://danielyxie.github.io/bitburner/](https://danielyxie.github.io/bitburner/)

------
aaossa
@mr-ron, I never comment on anything, but this really deserves my respects. I
had a really good time playing and enjoyed having to use my knowledge to crete
Skynet. Thanks for creating this.

~~~
mr-ron
super nice thank you!

------
mrunkel
Phew got stuck on six hosts for a while before I realized that the greyed out
options gave you their requirements if you clicked on them. I had ignored them
up until that point.

~~~
dkonofalski
I'm still stuck on 7 hosts. I don't know how to get the 8th one in order to be
able to force the other 3. I'm 100% scanned too and only have the Dr. Who .csv
with no idea what to do with it.

Edit: Nm! I figured it out. Great game!

~~~
OceanKing
I'm still stuck on this, haha.

~~~
dkonofalski
Are you asking for a hint? ;)

~~~
dsl
...I am.

~~~
dkonofalski
Every one of the hosts has a vulnerability. I didn't realize you could click
on the names of each of your cores to get additional options for that core.

------
thom
Play with your friends:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_box#AI-
box_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_box#AI-box_experiment)

------
whynotkeithberg
I got 10 cores & did the spike overload. However, it just started messing with
my system. It says I need ot research the EONS but I am not sure what...

I also can't figure out how to use CellOS. I can keep my system from melting
down like others are talking about... But I'm not sure where to proceed. The
securedev network came to life though. I'm guessing maybe I need to capture
more of that? I have all my cores upgraded & everything researched as far as i
know.

~~~
mr-ron
You definitely have the right idea with the securedev front

~~~
whynotkeithberg
I may not have enough space. I maxed it all out & it just keeps saying about
the needing to collect enough.

~~~
whynotkeithberg
I think I may have missed some stuff on the servers before I absorbed them.
I'm going to restart & see if I missed anything.

EDIT: Oh I got somethign new... Some research on the time spike. So maybe I
did something right. Ah yes I got it!! Glad I didn't restart lol

~~~
mr-ron
PHEW

------
t0astbread
[SPOILER WARNING]

That was so amazing! It starts out kinda eerie and liminal, then it's really
cool when you start discovering all these things and learning about the people
on the network (I stan Luna btw), then it becomes really dark and depressing
when you start absorbing everyone. Extremely great atmosphere and
storytelling!

There are two occasions where you need more hard drive space than you ever get
(the Parappa the Rapper game which is 694mb and analyzing the sandbox network
which is 10mb). Can you actually do anything with that or are those just
ambient props?

Also can you just not convert anything to PowerPC+CellOS by yourself or have I
missed something there (perhaps with the sony.key)?

Time Quest is also amazing. I had to quit after my first attempt because I
felt like I could poor an endless amount of time into it.

~~~
andrewflnr
[MORE SPOILERS]

I had enough space to analyze securedev once I deleted all my other files. I
never tried to play the other game you mentioned.

~~~
t0astbread
Yeah analyzing securedev is part of the story but I thought there was also
some network that required 10mb to analyze (as opposed to the 10-ish kb or so
you get). Could be that I mixed something up there.

~~~
dsl
securedev is what you are thinking of. You need to wipe the drives of every
host to store it.

------
gerardnll
Looks like a GET call to
[http://skynetsimulator.com/update.php](http://skynetsimulator.com/update.php)
is logging a SQL statement: INSERT into log (created_at, local_time, uuid,
action, data, ip, device,os) VALUES ('2020-03-25 17:00:53',
'2020-03-25T21:00:53.507Z', '965a4b6e-4903-4aac-a418-7edd0cf8657c',
'startgame', 'restarted=false', '000.000.000.000', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh;
Intel Mac OS X 10_15_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Chrome/80.0.3987.149 Safari/537.36','')

~~~
mr-ron
Yes that is indeed happening, trying to get some adhoc metrics. Prob creating
an error message somehow. Thanks I really should not return those :D

------
SomaticPirate
Reminds me of
[https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html](https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html)

~~~
mr-ron
Yes definitely some inspiration taken from there. Wanted to get to the
equivalent of the release the drones button.

~~~
clambodile
Ever since that game came out, I've been waiting for something else to come
along and scratch the same itch. This was it! Loved it!

------
ebg13
Beat it. The only real bug I found (ignoring various random typos) was that if
you change the arch/OS of the sony machine you can't go back to the original
anymore because it keeps saying invalid OS. Luckily it doesn't matter because
you don't need that platform.

~~~
ProZsolt
Not OP. I think it's not a bug, it's a feature. You just bricked your PS.

~~~
ebg13
Not bricked as such, since apparently playstations somehow have the ability to
morph their CPUs into completely different CPUs.

~~~
ckozlowski
There's a hint here. ;)

~~~
TrainedMonkey
The reality is a s########n man :)

------
teabee89
I was afraid that another AI instance would absorb me. In fact I kept deleting
my files (which turned out to be useful) to prevent other AIs to learn from
me. Would have been cool to see incoming connections of dumber AIs. Loved the
game though, thanks!

~~~
mr-ron
Hah thought about that but thought the messages would be too easily lost

------
076ae80a-3c97-4
[http://skynetsimulator.com/?fastmode=true](http://skynetsimulator.com/?fastmode=true)
to get through faster if like myself you've tried playing 4 times now and
always fail get reset.

~~~
mr-ron
Ha yes this will work tho the end game will be a bit distorted.

If you have failed 4 times, thats generally because you are either deleting
things that you havent used, or else you attacked EONS before you were ready

~~~
076ae80a-3c97-4
Yep, done both of those! Such a great game, well done.

~~~
mr-ron
Glad you like it!

~~~
076ae80a-3c97-4
"SKYNET CREATED"! Finally! It only too me 2 hours and fastmode. Such a great
game!

------
reificator
If you enjoyed this game I think you'd be very likely to enjoy Endgame
Singularity as well. It's been floating around for many years at this point.
If you've ever browsed the games available on linux, especially prior to Steam
support, you've probably seen it.

[http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/](http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/)

------
zomglings
This is a great game so far.

I think I noticed a bug close to the beginning of the game - when I only had
the first two zipfiles (neither of which were zbMath.zip), I saw a message
about zbMath.zip in the logs on the left.

Would love a save feature, even if it was just local to each browser instance
- no need for login, etc.

~~~
ge96
Not sure if also a bug, "Analyze Sony Schema" was always stuck in my active
options

edit: this seemed to go away after I deleted a bunch of files haha, I did beat
the game though, thanks for making this as initially wasn't sure if I
understood how it worked

~~~
pmachinery
Likewise the .bat file (which I only clicked on accidentally because I thought
it was going to be a virus/wipe the drive).

~~~
mr-ron
Hmmm I think I saw this at some point, thanks for pointing it out Ill check it
out.

------
yummypaint
Very enjoyable. I couldn't help imagine this expanded to the next step of
conquest. The filesize and space limitations could evolve into management of
physical resources and moving compute centers around to avoid attack.

------
haldora
This is so amazing! Thanks for putting it together and sharing it

------
kube-system
Does it gain the ability to use certbot.exe at some point? :D

~~~
mr-ron
:D yes I am aware its not using https yet... will aim to do that shortly

~~~
DylanSp
If you don't want to deal with certs yourself (and you're ok with a
*.netlify.com URL), you could always use Netlify and get HTTPS for free.

~~~
efreak
Or github pages, if you already have an account there.

------
zomglings
Just finished the game.

Not sure if I should write it here - after I did the Time Spike, in the new
timeline, I still had the option of probing outwards and exploring the
network. Is that supposed to be there?

Really enjoyed this. Great job, mr-ron! It is the best game of this type that
I have played. I like that it had something of a plot and didn't soak up as
much time as paperclip game (which I got bored of after 3 hours).

~~~
mr-ron
Thanks for the feedback! Yes that option is still there just for yucks. Its
possible to beat it 'twice' in that regard but nothing special will happen

------
Bedon292
Fun, but seem to have gotten myself stuck. 4 cores, 100% network scanned. All
the research I can do is done. But the remaining hosts can't be absorbed:
n0v4, Eris, Juno, Solar, EONS, Luna, Cypher. No Force Absorb, Ping Spike or
Install Exploit on any of them. I think I absorbed one before mounting the
disk or something?

~~~
mr-ron
Try clicking your own cores. Thats a common stuck point

~~~
dsl
Wow! Thank you. I had restarted 3 times thinking I was just screwing up
somehow.

------
Wingman4l7
If you enjoy this -- and I am, thoroughly so far -- I highly recommend
Endgame: Singularity (
[http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/](http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/) )

I'm listening to that game's soundtrack as I play Skynet Simulator; very
fitting!

------
joshmarinacci
I love this. I've already absorbed another system and scanned the BBS for Dr
Who info!

------
LolWolf
Wohoo! That was a ton of fun! (Even though I should've been writing...)

That was great, does anyone have any similar recommendations? I've done
paperclip maximizer, but that was more of a clicker than anything else. But
something of a similar nature?

~~~
DylanSp
Uplink
([https://store.steampowered.com/app/1510/Uplink/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1510/Uplink/))
is probably the closest; it's a lot like this, with a good deal more
complexity. Endgame Singularity
([http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/](http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/))
is similar, though it has more of that incremental/clicker-ish feeling.

~~~
LolWolf
Thanks! I'll go take a look at them :)

------
efreak
For those playing on mobile (I started from materialistic's webview), it might
be worthwhile to add a media query to

1\. Reduce the width (the text is far too small, even on a 8" tablet it's ~1/2
the size of the system clock).

2\. Add a good amount of padding to _all_ buttons (I kept accidentally tapping
the wrong file) and

3\. Adjust the size of the -/del and +/move buttons in the file list; this was
even worse than 2, and chrome's attempts to be helpful and pick the right
button had the opposite effect here...

4\. Request fullscreen as soon as possible if on mobile. The browser UI
toggling as I scrolled was really annoying.

------
caiobegotti
This was super fun! Only after quite a while I have noticed how much time I
had spent playing with it, great job! If I may suggest something, a visual
like in [https://css-tricks.com/old-timey-terminal-styling/](https://css-
tricks.com/old-timey-terminal-styling/) would make it look even more retro-
hax0r!

~~~
jascii
That's some weird pseudo retro: As an old-timer I've seen green-on-black,
amber-on-black, later black-on-white. Never white-on-green-black-fade.. Fonts
tended to be pixelated rather then blurry (except maybe at 4am..)

And yet, against knowing better, it looks decidedly retro. I wonder where that
association comes from.

~~~
Threeve303
The effect seems to work because it appears to mimic the curvature of a
cathode ray tube.

~~~
jascii
I was also thinking its a bit reminiscent of a slow-phosphorous radar crt
trace. While not a terminal, its decidedly retro ;)

------
KlaymenDK
Thank you for this, I really had a blast.

As others have noted, it doesn't look so fine on mobile, there are a ton of
typo's, and the discoverability of some things is lacking -- this latter point
is, I think, a really great feature, so please don't make the compressed files
self-extracting.

One thing, the UI is pretty plain. I know that's the style you're going for,
but let me suggest / invite you to rip off the theme from my web site:
[https://jan.g-b.dk/](https://jan.g-b.dk/)

------
jonnytran
The EONS cluster actually froze my entire system. Running Firefox 74.0 on mac.
It had a really cool glitch visual effect, and then my system froze. Almost as
if it hacked my real computer...

~~~
mr-ron
Lol sorry about that though it's just css

------
ebeip90
If you get stuck with RFCs.zip and portscanner.zip, but can't extract them
despite moving files around to make enough space, open the Console and use
diskSizeIncrease.

~~~
mr-ron
Really surprised this may have happened, I havent seen that bug yet. Are you
sure you deleted all 'used' files alongside them?

~~~
ebeip90
The only files I had on any disk were those two files, and I had the larger of
the two ZIPs on sky1s1 so that the smaller of the two could extract on infodmp

~~~
mr-ron
That seems weird, i tried to replicate it using a few combos was not able to,
wondering what may have caused this

~~~
Deely123123
If you click 'unzip file' all works fine. But if you click on file directly
you will get message (that looks like error message) that you need space to
extract. Maybe thats the reason of confusion..

~~~
mr-ron
What I might do is if you click the file and there is space, Ill just unzip it
for them.

------
CWCorrea
Enjoyed both Skynet Simulator and Time Quest. Great way to pass time during
quarantine. Thanks for sharing it. I would love to see more after creating the
Skynet.

If you decide not to create the Skynet, you will restart the simulation in an
alternate timeline probing outward and exploring memory reserves and network
ports while having the Sky hosts available, but you cannot use these as cores
to increase your processing power.

------
jamil7
Very cool, getting a universal paperclips vibe already.

------
makkaky
Loved it, spent about an hour and a half total exploring until finish. Loved
the style and technical workings of it, it really sucks you in :)

------
DylanSp
I really enjoyed this! As others have said, reminds me of a streamlined Uplink
in terms of UI, which is no bad thing. I'd love to see more, though I'm not
sure how much more complexity you could add to the core gameplay loop to keep
it interesting. Perhaps some more puzzles, maybe attacks where you have to
gain footholds in other networks?

------
MegaLeon
This was an amazing experience - really well written too, kudos. Can anyone
recommend games/simulators similar to this?

~~~
martinkallstrom
This is an amazing classic which basically created the genre. It goes
incredibly deep. And when you think it can’t go deeper, it still does:
[http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/](http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/)

~~~
whynotkeithberg
Thanks for the suggestion!

------
gnarlysasquatch
I played all the way through on an iPad. Really enjoyed it, thank you!

The only issue I had was that clicking links didn't work reliably... sometimes
had to tap quite a few times for it to react, but even though often the text
color would change so I know the touch hit the element. I saw the same on
iPhone too.

------
classified
Just a few days ago HN had a posting from way back when (Ron Gilbert, 1989)
explaining exactly how this game needs polishing:

[https://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck](https://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck)

~~~
mr-ron
Huge fan of Ron. Never read this article thank you!

------
elipsey
Destroyed my afternoon, could not do anything until I finished this. Do you
have a patreon? :)

~~~
mr-ron
Thank you, no need, honestly give it to someplace that needs the $ with
everything going on

------
ckozlowski
Just got the "congratulations" message. So much fun. Thanks so much for
sharing!

------
ganstyles
Loved it! This was amazing and lots of fun. Thanks for making it. Took me two
go arounds, the first time I did EONS too early, and second I didn't realize
all green text was clickable. So got there eventually, tons of fun.

------
ebeip90
Are you supposed to be able to beat this while never accessing the secure
network?

~~~
bitlevel
To beat the game you will need to access the secure network at some point.

Loved the game - thanks for the mind workout.

~~~
ebeip90
I beat the game without ever scanning or listening to the secure network
_shrug_. I probably had access to it after the Ping Spike and before becoming
Skynet, but I was to busy clicking things to care.

------
gpnt
The game is amazing, but the Time Quest on n0v4's BBS is even better! Kudos.

~~~
mr-ron
Hah glad you liked it

~~~
Apocryphon
It reminds me a lot of A Dark Room.

------
jonnycomputer
I'm having problems analyzing the packets. the analyze option disappears ...

~~~
andrewflnr
You may need more space.

~~~
jonnycomputer
that was 27" screen, so not likely. but I'll try again later to see if maybe I
just wasn't looking right. thx

~~~
currymj
not screen space, storage space in the game. you might have to delete some in-
game files.

------
Apocryphon
MSDOS-32bit is like a miniboss

------
jwiley
Fantastic game, greatly enjoyed it. 5/5 on the ycombinator app store. :)

------
superasn
Please make the option to save game. It's so interesting but I just can't take
out more than 15 mins of time at a time. Maybe I'll run it on ec2 rdp until
that feature hasn't arrived.

~~~
bcyn
Can't you just leave the browser tab open until you're ready to come back to
it? Not sure why you would need EC2 + RDP..

------
karakanb
Truly fascinating work. I spent quite a lot of time trying to hack into Juno,
but I managed to do it eventually, turns out I forgot to read something in the
disks. You made my day with this, thank you!

------
dmitrybrant
Super interesting concept! Enjoyed it from start to finish. One minor nitpick:
it needs some spell-checking and copy editing throughout. I'd be happy to help
if the code is somewhere accessible.

~~~
mr-ron
Definitely agree, the js is public but even then there's not a great way to
share all the txt. If u see typos I'll fix them

------
throw1234651234
This is amazing. I guess you give this to your kid if you want them to dream
of becoming a hacker one day. Though I guess you need the background of
knowing the basics of what you are referring to.

------
LockAndLol
For some reason that froze my browser. It was fun to play though!

------
outworlder
This reminds me of Uplink
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgb_YiHnNkU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgb_YiHnNkU))

------
bamurphymac1
This was lots of fun, thank you! Incidentally I listened to the new NIN Ghosts
5 album while playing and it finished just moments after I completed it. Fit
perfectly.

Great job!

------
irscott
This rules, nice work.

------
dbish
Fun game. It reminds me of a MUD (without the multi-player component). I
wonder what a multi-player version of something like this would look like

------
kensai
Scary shit! Thank you for the sleepless nights! :D

------
marzell
FYI The text is insanely small in chrome mobile, and if I pinch zoom the text
is very wide so I have to scroll horizontally to read it

~~~
mr-ron
Yeah I put only minimal effort into mobile, not sure if it is at all possible
to make actually usable though, since theres so much interactions across the
screen you need. I can increase the text though if it works.

~~~
marzell
No worries, I was just trying to figure out what this was all about.. I'll
load it up on another device

------
KiDD
That was really fun! ...and kinda scary. Love it!

------
tapland
This was the most engaging gaming experience I've had in a while. It's nice to
get a grats and thank you at the end too.

------
jhack
This is really well done and fun. Great job!

------
nicoboo
Awesome and well, simply, done. I enjoyed it @mr-ron! In that time of
confinement, I had a great time trying it.

------
goda90
Great game! I feel like this could do well with some procedural generation to
keep the game going and growing.

~~~
overcast
You saw what happens when the machines keep going and growing didn't you?

~~~
goda90
I got to Create Skynet and when I finished that it said thanks for playing and
stopped accepting inputs. Is there more game after that I missed?

~~~
mr-ron
If you really want more time quest is a bit of a rabbit hole

~~~
mparlane
Is it possible to "win" time quest ? I feel like I always end up in the same
place, and the enemy always catches me up in attack ability....

~~~
mr-ron
Yes you need to learn to send your tech back in time

------
chrisdalke
This is great! I got so lost in the Time Quest minigame that I forgot about
the larger game for a while! :)

------
lprubin
How do you create cores? I feel like I'm stuck at that point with nothing else
I can do without them.

~~~
mr-ron
Start with Star Host

------
voldacar
this is fantastic! reminds me a little of Uplink. what hacking never was, but
always should have been

------
ge96
> Absorbing star host

We are BORG

This is neat, like a text rpg or something

Is there a time constraint on the game? If I stay idle too long do I lose?

~~~
mr-ron
No, no time constraint

~~~
ge96
I did have a question about if you considered showing the amount that was
analyzed when you're listening to a port/environment(?) because I didn't know
how much more I needed to do/what I was going for. I mean I did figure it
out/got to the end. I was aware of a 10MB figure on one option.

------
yur3i__
Is the EONS cluster meant to be the end or is there more to it? So I know if
its worth trying again

~~~
mr-ron
Its part of the game, if you try again make sure you have 10 cores

~~~
morgancmartin
With maxed out overclocking on all cores, I only needed six.

------
jimmydddd
If I leave the site, does it remember my place? Or do I have to stay on the
site until I finish?

------
076ae80a-3c97-4
Is this open source? Really nice job, the code architecture seems fairly
clean.

~~~
mr-ron
Its open source in the sense that its all javascript :)

I do have a repo that isnt on public Github yet, was going to add it after I
iron out a couple more of the bugs that I am sure exist

~~~
DylanSp
I'd also love to see it! It sure seems to be well-made code, and I've got an
idea or two for expanding/building upon it.

------
supermanwah
This was so cool, thank you for posting! Loved the game and the mini-game!

------
redsec
This game is so great, good job. It is clear, entertaining and very smart.

------
occsceo
OP, thanks for this! was a pleasant retreat in between meetings today.

------
beams_of_light
I've spent hours playing this today. Thanks! Lots of fun.

------
asforem
Okay, I'm seriously stuck on the 8th core. Hint please...

------
bkanber
This was fantastic. Played the whole thing. Lots of fun, kudos!

------
Androider
Anyone find out what is the purpose of the drwho.csv file? :)

~~~
dkonofalski
Nope! I tried to move it to various hosts before I absorbed them with no luck.

~~~
mr-ron
Heh sorry drwho.csv is just a joke on crazy people on BBS who for whatever
reason seem to love talking about Dr Who

------
johnnyy
Cool I like it a lot

------
sethlivingston
THANK YOU, this was a blast! What's next?

~~~
sethlivingston
And is there a way we can buy you a coffee or something?

------
ptrincr
Not sure why, but this gave me asmr tingles....

~~~
ge96
it had sound?

------
DumbUser123
Finally! "SKYNET CREATED"

Well done!

(Enjoyed the TQ game too.)

------
outworlder
typo: "automation purpouses"

~~~
mr-ron
thanks

------
ReedJessen
Is there a way to save my progress?

------
076ae80a-3c97-4
How does one turn on devtools?

~~~
logicallee
let's take a moment to appreciate the fact that the parent poster is a human
_actually_ trying to break out of a sandbox (enter God mode) in a simulation
in which you roleplay a computer trying to break out of a sandbox. Parent
posts on a forum, and the author of the sandbox gives up all the available
information readily.

Imagine if a computer were allowed to ask technical questions, and did so by
posting about a VM they happened to be in...

------
whynotkeithberg
That was very fun! Thank you!

------
larodi
kudos for the game, indeed took us back in time. incredible experience :D

------
papreclip
very fun, the game-within-the-game was neat, too

------
xrisk
any way to save my progress?

~~~
mr-ron
No, no save unfortunately sorry

~~~
aurbano
This was really fun! Thanks for making it :)

Got to a point where I overloaded a host and my system melted taking me back
to the start, is that the end or should I try again to get past that?

~~~
mr-ron
If that happened you probably weren't ready to overload it. If you try again
make sure you have 10 cores

~~~
Flink91
How do you get 10 cores? I can’t get past 4 :/ (discovered every other host
but can’t do anything with them…)

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Jarwain
The n0va forum has some goodies hidden inside that should help you explore.

The other thing is if you click on the name of a core, it gives you some more
actions you can take.

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Flink91
Already did all that, that’s how I got the 3 additional cores.

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Flink91
Ok got it! Didn’t see before that you can click on absorbed cores and do
things with them :D

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wintorez
Very nice!

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phoobot
Very nice!

