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Ever-expanding animation of the life of the 796th floor of a space station (floor796.com)
1066 points by justsomehnguy on April 10, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 118 comments



Reminds me of a game I used to play called Space Station 13. It's a completely unique game. Imagine a giant game of Among Us, but with the engine complexity of Dwarf Fortress. Most servers are high level roleplay, where each player has a role (doctor, janitor, captain, clown, etcetera) and the rounds play out until chaos ensues (theme changes each round, but it could anything from station terrorists to a wizard causing bedlam). This YouTuber really expresses it better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URJ_qSXruW0

Everyone has their goals to achieve each round, but it's general havoc. The OP animation really channels the feeling of playing the game.


> This YouTuber really expresses it better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URJ_qSXruW0

From the video:

> You can try taking a painkiller instead, but, it wasn't a painkiller, it was LSD. Having a bad trip? Don't worry, there's a security officer nearby to help! But he can't respond because he was murdered and replaced by a genetically modified monkey wearing his uniform. Hallucinating? Keep calm and focus on what's real. Unfortunately for you, the supermassive black hole expanding towards you is not a hallucination. It is, in fact, very real. _{THE EMERGENCY SHUTTLE HAS BEEN CALLED}_ Welcome to Space Station 13.

Just wow.


SS13 has been remade, SS14 https://spacestation14.io/ Its very playable today, and has a bunch of improvements to the original. Its also open source under an MIT License.


SS13 remakes are like "nuclear fusion" and "year of the Linux desktop"... always announced, never delivered.

Does this one actually have traction?


> SS13 remakes are like "nuclear fusion" and "year of the Linux desktop"... always announced, never delivered.

It's not announced, it is there.


I was more referring to the graveyard listed here:

https://tgstation13.org/wiki/List_of_remakes

However, it seems ss14 has earnt a place on the "not dead yet" portion of the page, so we shall see if it can break the curse of not.


> Reminds me of a game I used to play called Space Station 13. It's a completely unique game. Imagine a giant game of Among Us, but with the engine complexity of Dwarf Fortress.

I rather like games that have a lot of depth to them, especially if they manage to be at least remotely approachable.

For anyone craving a mechanically interesting single player experience, there's Ostranauts, which sees you trying to make a living in space with your own shuttle, space stations to explore and derelicts to salvage. It is mechanically interesting, if a bit unfinished (early access): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1022980/Ostranauts

For something a bit more lively, there is Objects in Space (sadly never quite finished in the first place): https://store.steampowered.com/app/824070/Objects_in_Space/

And for something closer to SS13 that has multiplayer, there is also Barotrauma. In that game, a crew needs to operate a vessel, except that it's a submarine, chaos also ensues: https://store.steampowered.com/app/602960/Barotrauma/

I've never spent too much time in either of the games, but I admire the concepts and hope that eventually we'll get more (finished) projects like that, even if it's a bit of a niche type of game or audience.


SS13 has given me some of the best memories playing games, ever. A playable AI, objectives that each class needs, a few PCs playing sinister characters... it was so. much. fun! My favourite mode was the "Thing" mod, where one player was the "Thing", you could turn into people you killed, but players at the start of the round didn't know which mode it was, so they wouldn't know (until you were found).

Getting access to the AI and rewriting its rules so it killed everyone on the ship or helped you at the expense of others

An atmosphere physics system that caused insane lag spikes but allowed you to make bombs with pretty much anything

Spend a couple of rounds messing with the radiation / gene editing machine to turn people into superhumans

Be a clown (that everyone hates)

Honestly, I spent a summer playing this game and it was marvellous. Even with the horrendous lag that the game suffered from.

It must be about 12 years ago I played this, still one of the best multiplayer games I ever played.


The game Stationeers is basically a variant of space station 13[1]. I had a hard time "getting" stationeers. I was ranting about how the game has very good systems, some of the best systems I have seen in a minecraft-but[2], but the controls are very obtuse almost to the point of being cryptic. Then I watched tex[3] play space station 13. and it clicked. I have never played ss13 and I don't suspect I ever will. but the controls are cryptic the way they are because that is how ss13 controls are. The problem is that nobody is playing it correctly. They are playing it like minecraft where you build a base out of first materials. but ss13 is supposed to be played where you try to survive a shift in an already built, poorly understood, prone to exploding station.

1. A clue is left in the executable name. it's "rocketstation13"

2. it's a genre. you know how rogue-like is a genre. however this one goes. it is like minecraft but...

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrs8rMbNM3I


SS13 is like Eve Online, great fun to read the antics, but a bit of a chore to actually play.


a slightly saner review is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLAHBexJxrE


Both videos are good in different ways, though your link is just a tad clearer ;) for a SS13 noob like me. Thank you!


Haha I've been really vibing to Sseth's content of late. Thought of this video too.

10.46 is just testimony to the kind of chaos you can get in this game.


I love Space Station 13. I even created my own little one-page role-playing game inspired by SS13. You can download it for free here: https://arispen.itch.io/space-station-r4n-d0m


I didn't at first figure out that clicking on each character shows the reference. It feels like exploring someone else's daydreams. Bravo


Things I've found clicking so far:

- Clicking the HEV charger near the start of the food conveyor belt (far left) plays the sounds from Half Life

- Clicking the middle arcade machine to the north of the HEV charger lets you play that game

- Further north in the shower area there is a camera in the shower gag if you click on the shower area

- Slightly to the east just past the gym sign there is a bunny girl sign which plays a song when clicked

- To the east past the avatar tree Chuck Norris has a click effect.

- To the far east of the map there is a guy between Jabba and Kenny with a synthesizer who will play one of many tunes when you click

That's all I found!


Far top right the medical box on the wall behind the 3 guys laying down plays some sound, not sure what the relation is.



Click on the "Racer 796" game in the arcade to actually play the game.


Click the "Change my Mind" guy, to add your own claim.


I happened to be browsing this morning, early with everyone asleep when I clicked on the duke nukem kill me girl. Scared the *&^# out of me when. My volume was way to loud...


One of the arcade games is playable...


The camera in the shower booth too.


Also, a sound clip plays when you click the bunny-girl waitresses' ass.


Sorry, I broke the blue button.


just don't click on Chuck Norris ;-)


One does not click on Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris clicks on you. With his boot.


Previous discussion (775 points):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33612401


Really cool. Reminds me of Goon Tower from many years ago, where the levels were made by various different members of the SomethingAwful forums:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130416221448/http://www.goontow...


Similarly from around the internets:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/meme-overload/photos

https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts?tags=absolutely_everyone+cr...

https://macrochan.org/search.php?tags=Mememeeting

See also: Goon City, GoonBase, drawball, r/place, yourworldoftext, Greenfield MC,

and Goon Tower was a clone of http://mrwong.de/myhouse


Goon Island never forget


Where can I find Goon City now? The website is dead, archive doesn't load it either.


We did a version of this in the deviantArt forums except it was longcat instead of a tower. Somewhere I have the composite image which was a LOT of pixels tall by about 128 pixels wide.


There were many such projects way back when. I remember participating in the emoticon tower: https://www.deviantart.com/leoleonardo/art/The-Re-opened-Tow...


Nice! I hadn't seen that one.


Unrelated, there was some other goon who had the idea to build an isometric Sim Tower game. I don’t think it ever took off but I would still be interested in playing a game like that.


Made by a Russian who grew up in the USSR?

Reasoning:

https://floor796.com/data/misc/kvass.jpg

https://floor796.com/data/misc/kin-dza-dza.mp4

Too obscure.


I noticed several references to Russian pop culture in there, post-Soviet included. A fun project for sure.

1990s cartoon: https://i.imgur.com/wR4vISL.png

Several references to the same comedy show from the 90s: https://i.imgur.com/a0ACpoo.png https://i.imgur.com/tyE5l2d.png https://i.imgur.com/LLatEnI.png

The Caucasian bride (1960s comedy) https://i.imgur.com/RA3DBKX.png

Russian adaptation of Pinocchio: https://i.imgur.com/XJHwhhO.png

Tom & Jerry clone from the Soviet era (with a wolf and a rabbit): https://i.imgur.com/l9STeSD.png

There were a couple I wasn't aware of, but it was obvious from the imagery they were Russian. Like this one (lol):

https://i.imgur.com/VnLyLOq.png

This one also seems Russian, but not sure what it's for (maybe the "cyber Russia" shorts on Youtube): https://i.imgur.com/yRXrAj5.png

There is also one from Belarus (?) with Gordon Ramsay I never saw before, that one is really obscure: https://i.imgur.com/dvAVeuu.png

......and that's how you waste your first hour at work >_<




Click "about" :) It is by a Russian guy with a link to how he makes it, in Russian


Nice, my intuition was correct :)


I mean, in this case, yes, but I am neither Russian nor a child of the USSR, and I know both Kvass and Kin-dza-dza (which I introduced to my wife, who was born in a post-soviet state). Not all that obscure!


Yeah I mean you can buy Kvass from any vending machine in Moscow, it's very common.


Interesting. You must be from a CIS (ex-USSR) country then.


Anywhere there are immigrants from Eastern Europe in the US, you can find Kvass. It's everywhere!

GP commenter may have had a friend from Belarus, or seen it on a store shelf and been curious


Nope. Born in the U.K. to British parents. Got around a bit over the years, but never lived in an eastern bloc state.


> https://floor796.com/data/misc/kin-dza-dza.mp4

My headcanon is that this is from that time David Lynch defected to the Soviet Union with a briefcase full of film rolls from his ongoing Frank Herbert project. Дун was quite popular in theaters.


The whole movie is free on the Mosfilm YouTube channel with English subtitles, in case anyone's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUtZOl_QxvY

I'd definitely recommend it :)


I've never been to Russia, and I love kin dza dza. It's up there with hausu.


https://habr.com/ru/companies/floor796/articles/673318/ - The process of creating a project is described here. The material is called Rendering a large animation in the browser or how I left mp4 to my own video format


English link: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=en&u...

Unfortunately, while this is very interesting, it's not how the site appears in my mobile browser. I'm seeing a series of standard MP4 files (the loading animation is also different, showing a series of vertical bars instead of a percentage), and while I have no problems with playback speed (everything seems properly timed), the videos themselves are positioned incorrectly--there's a line every 3rd or 4th video file where it slightly overlaps[0]

This might be due to my choice of browser/settings (Mull), however, as it's probably preventing use of the canvas without input...

[0]: https://files.catbox.moe/wps867.png


Reminds me of the Zoom Quilts, from an older version of the internets. I remember when these were amazing:

https://zoomquilt.org/

https://zoomquilt2.com/

And these look like more recent additions:

https://arkadia.xyz/

https://infiniteflowers.net/


First thing I saw was Superman beating up Homelander and the rest of The Boys villains while Saitama and Mob Psycho look on and Indian Superman dances in an ad in the background. This just reminds me of how much of my mental real estate is used up on pop culture, really.


I took a biology class that involved going over the organelles of the cell in 5th, 8th, and 12th grades as well as online for university (it seems to be treated like the most critical category of knowledge in all of biology). I think I still remember half of those dozen or so.

But give me a notepad and an hour and I can still list all 151 original pokemon.

There's a post on the front page right now (as there often is) about spaced repitition to improve memory. It's funny how hard we have to try to hold on to things when we're so well equipped for it naturally. The problem is we struggle to change which things are truly important to us, and it's how much we care about something that decides how long we'll hold onto it.


I just happened to check in on it today! Updates seem very frequent so I usually take a look every few weeks. As another comment mentions, this is the project of one Russian guy. Which is interesting because despite our presumably very different cultural upbringings, I feel like I "get" nearly all of his references. I wonder how common it is for Russians to have exposure to so much US/Western/Japanese media.

Also - you can click on "Changes" in the top bar and there is a searchable list of every update.


Infection by American pop culture is a global scourge.

I don’t even necessarily only say that because of the corrosive and low quality nature of Americas pop culture that is like a drug that feels really good at first, but causes damage over time (see false beliefs about reality people hold solely due to TV/movies). What is even more pernicious and pervasive is that Americas pop culture is like a cultural virus that is eradicating diversity of culture just like immigration and this fake general “diversity” is actually eradicating the thing it claims to itself be.

Everyone, everywhere, at all times all consuming the same things and muddled into an indistinguishable mass is quite literally the opposite of diversity. American pop culture is really the nexus of that process, the killing, destruction, and eradication of local and native cultures. In many ways we don’t even have the language for what is happening, and considering the ongoing stupefaction of society, I suspect it will never be developed. It is a kind of mass extinction event of human culture and diversity, going on right now, under the fraudulent and false guise of “diversity”.


I am mystified as to how anybody could say this who has been... bloody hell, anywhere. Go spend some time in India, Indonesia, Singapore, let alone China or Russia, and tell me that it's all being eradicated due to American culture. I mean, even like, France.


I think this was posted about three months ago. The number of rooms has increased by a third in that time? It's cool but it's not what I was expecting for ever-expanding.

Like a lot of people, I didn't know about clicking, so at first I thought it was just a generative system and was expecting it to get bigger. Only around the time I started trying to figure out what the big deal was did I begin to focus on what the characters were doing and noticing the pop culture references.


> I wonder how common it is for Russians to have exposure to so much US/Western/Japanese media.

I feel like internet-savvy Russians have lots of exposure.


I am filing this under How to Restore Your Faith in Humanity. Thanks for that 0x00 !


I appreciate the author including a high quality source map.

Looking through the source of this is really interesting.

Very well written, looks like vanilla js, with less for css. The components are very easy to reason about and all just do direct DOM manipulation, I like it a lot.

The only thing I might have done differently is that I think it would have simplified the code base a little to use Web Components custom elements (not shadow dom) as the unit of component encapsulation, but this is a nit - the author makes effective use of templates for instantiation of dom elements, so that could have been a bit more complex with WCs, as you'd have to wire it into the connectedCallback lifecycle event.

I love everything else about this code base, the use of jsdoc for types instead of typescript, the organization.

It's really a breath of fresh air - so refreshing to see an example of a quality code base that avoids frameworks, and almost any dependency. The only js dependency I see is on handlebars.


I highly recommend playing with his editor (https://floor796.com/editor/l0). It's very intuitive and I was able to make my own little animation quite fast, even though I had never used any animation tools before.

His write up of making it run on the web is also a good read: https://habr.com/ru/companies/floor796/articles/673318/


TIL that I'm way out of the loop on a lot of pop culture. I maybe understood 1 reference in 20. Turns out that I'm most familiar with 1980s pop culture (that of my teenage years).


I’m kinda having the opposite experience - I don’t think of myself as someone who’s particularly well read on pop culture, but I’m actually recognizing most of this, even some real weird ones.


That gym is pretty funny. This whole thing is how I imagine San Francisco to be


There's HulkHogan in there no ?



Even Waldo is in there.


This reminds me a little of The Picture of Everything: http://www.howardhallis.com/tpoe/noflash.html


Saw that this had 796 points and had a mini freak out


I don't know how long the author has had this project going, but part of the fun of exploring is how the pop-culture references give a clue as to the maximum age of any particular section. E.g., the shower stalls with the Squid Game characters can't be older than late 2021, while the "Stable Diffusion-powered" surgery robot that's giving the patient ten fingers on a hand must be from the past 6-9 months.


An incredible use of one's free time.


They also build their own editor [1] and it's quite good. I'm quite jealous of theses talents.

[1] https://floor796.com/editor/l0


Oh my god they killed Kenny!


Very cool. Thanks for sharing. I could spend hours scrolling thru floor 796!


A word of caution: I opened this on my phone (firefox on android) and it caused it to immediately grind to a halt to the extent that it had to be force restarted.


Putting Waldo in there was a nice touch.


I liked the Fruit Jedi. More fun to watch than... at least 3 out of the 9 main Star Wars films if you ask me.


What is the goal of this, do you think? Is it to begin selling rooms a la Million dollar homepage of the ... 1990's? http://milliondollarhomepage.com/


I don't know and don't want to speculate, but I do hope it's just a fun indie project with the goal of artistic expression, and that there's no parasitic "how-can-we-monetize-this" ulterior motive.


Probably just to make something awesome.


It's things like this that make me love the internet. Bravo!


What does the device in the lower right corner do? Age reversal?


You mean the meat grinder¹? You can click stuff for their reference, for that one it’s the teacher spanking the student.

¹ https://youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U&t=138s


I wonder how long did it take 1 for creating such a big job?


The previous discussion was 4 months ago, but the domain's been registered since 2021-02-13


Really cool.

No Blade Runner?

Also they need a Vorlon in there somewhere.

Spent hours looking… what fun!


mad magazine meets garbage pail kids meets Internet?


A modern, animated Bruegel artpiece.


This is insane. What techniques are you using to animate it? A lot of people will pay for an AI which animates still 8-bit MJ generated pics.


It's all hand animated by a guy using the online editor of tiles. It's rather impressive as a hobby project.


Run the author's article through Google Translate: https://habr.com/ru/companies/floor796/articles/673318/

Hand animated, custom video format


This is years old. It’s definitely not being animated by AI.


Is it years old? One place has a bunch of drawers and the drawers are labelled Dall-e, MidJourney, and Stable Diffusion. That seems pretty recent to me.


That's what the "ever expanding" part refers to. It's an old project that's periodically being updated.


At least 2 years old -- there's a Changes dropdown, with the oldest entry being a Half Life 1 tentacle form March 2021 (that changes menu doesn't show everything either)


Why wouldn't they pay for a human that did the same thing?


Scale. paying 100$ for 1 pic vs paying 10$ subscription for 100 pics.


Wow, even Pedobear made it in there.


No Dune references :(


Seriously cool


Amazing work.


love it!


how long would that take to build something similar?


This is beautiful, and a good example of art that generative AI will never be able to replicate.


What makes you say this? Even if not in totality, I could well imagine that an AI painter might be very well suited to being a copilot for this type of project.

Think dall-e image extender + style transfer + pop culture knowledge of these characters + some human seeded descriptions of the scenes.


ah famous last words, in the flesh


Now someone go do this with AI, and make it actually ever expanding


I've seen dall-e being able to imagine additional parts to an existing image along with a prompt, I'm sure it's possible. But probably not with this amount of creativity.


No.


This "ever expanding" was misleading the first time it got posted and it still is today. Manually adding a tile once in a while doesn't make it ever expanding, or otherwise literally every website could be qualified of "ever expanding".


Why do you read it so literally? It's the artist expressing their intention that the work is unfinished and being added to by others than the original artist themself

"0x00 says, that it took 3 years to make the project look like it looks now. 1 year was spent on development and 2 years to create the first 8 bays. Now though, that everyone can add any bay and doesn't have to deal with programming, the author hopes that the project will continue growing exponentially."


Because I, and probably most, believe from the title that you can pan infinitely in any direction, but it's not the case at all. Remove "ever expanding" and it looks a lot of its appeal. I wouldn't click without it. It's clickbait.


You're getting downvoted because it seems "probably most" don't agree with you :-)

Ever-expanding does not mean infinitely scrolling.

This is a work of art. Most works of art tend to be published in a "finished" state, where it will no longer be edited or expanded. The creator has appropriately signified that its current state is not its final state, and it will continue to expand.

Thus, it is a work of art that is "ever-expanding" :-)


You should look up in the dictionary and wikipedia what the word "infinitely" means, and learn about math. It's a fascinating field of study. And stop making assumptions that most people are as mathematically illiterate and prone to throwing temper tantrums when your unrealistic expectations are not met as you are.


It was misleading to me too, at first, given the current AI hypetrend, but "ever expanding" still makes sense here, and I prefer this more manual sense of "ever expanding" - the term doesn't deserve to be poisoned by AI hype.


Adding a tile once in a while literally does make it ever expanding.

Most other web sites are ever growing collections of things, not an ever growing thing.

The description is neither misleading nor even non-sequiter. It's applicable and one of the primary notable properties.




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