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Bouncing Beholder: JS1k winner explained

132 points by sant0sk1 16y ago

user24 16y ago
The top three: http://twitter.com/z0va/status/25525821627 http://twitter.com/z0va/status/25525821627
binomial 16y ago
I can't help but say that I think that there were more deserving demos, in terms of how impressive/fun they were compared to the winner, though I'm glad to see the chess one up there. Not to knock the winner though, it's also a good demo and probably won because of better cross-browser compatibility or something.
- jpwagner 16y ago
  Did you read the explanation? I thought the context method abbreviations was brilliant. The chess one got second place. I like it too, but it was not really a "playable" game, more a demo of some cool hacks. I DID however find it interesting that none of the top three were the visualization demos which seemed to make up a majority of the entries.
Groxx 16y ago
Not a bad choice, methinks. That's an amazingly polished experience for sub-1k. I do wonder if some of the arguably-better submissions were excluded for bugs, though I think I'd do the same in a competition. Readily-apparent bug = disqualified.
- dschobel 16y ago
  The chess entry doesn't support a fundamental game move (castling). I'd consider that a bug but last time someone pointed that out they got blasted on HN. Anyway, it's a remarkable chess-like game.
glhaynes 16y ago
At the start of the program there is a for/in loop that goes over the properties of the canvas context, and adds a new property, with a shorter name, for each of them. It took some experimenting to find an abbreviation algorithm that doesn't have clashes on any of the methods we use---I ended up using the first letter of the name plus the the 7th letter, if any. So lineTo becomes l, and quadraticCurveTo becomes qt. I can then use these short names to actually access the methods---without ever having written out the full name. Clever.
djhworld 16y ago
I'm struggling to understand how the hell this is done. Is the whole thing generated in code (as in the imagery/graphics) or are they external elements that are loaded into the application and manipulated in the code?
- cubicle67 16y ago
  everything is generated in code. this is what makes it so hard

132 points by sant0sk1 16y ago

The top three: http://twitter.com/z0va/status/25525821627 http://twitter.com/z0va/status/25525821627

I can't help but say that I think that there were more deserving demos, in terms of how impressive/fun they were compared to the winner, though I'm glad to see the chess one up there. Not to knock the winner though, it's also a good demo and probably won because of better cross-browser compatibility or something.

jpwagner 16y ago
Did you read the explanation? I thought the context method abbreviations was brilliant. The chess one got second place. I like it too, but it was not really a "playable" game, more a demo of some cool hacks. I DID however find it interesting that none of the top three were the visualization demos which seemed to make up a majority of the entries.

Groxx 16y ago

Not a bad choice, methinks. That's an amazingly polished experience for sub-1k. I do wonder if some of the arguably-better submissions were excluded for bugs, though I think I'd do the same in a competition. Readily-apparent bug = disqualified.

dschobel 16y ago
The chess entry doesn't support a fundamental game move (castling). I'd consider that a bug but last time someone pointed that out they got blasted on HN. Anyway, it's a remarkable chess-like game.

glhaynes 16y ago

At the start of the program there is a for/in loop that goes over the properties of the canvas context, and adds a new property, with a shorter name, for each of them. It took some experimenting to find an abbreviation algorithm that doesn't have clashes on any of the methods we use---I ended up using the first letter of the name plus the the 7th letter, if any. So lineTo becomes l, and quadraticCurveTo becomes qt. I can then use these short names to actually access the methods---without ever having written out the full name. Clever.

djhworld 16y ago

I'm struggling to understand how the hell this is done. Is the whole thing generated in code (as in the imagery/graphics) or are they external elements that are loaded into the application and manipulated in the code?

cubicle67 16y ago
everything is generated in code. this is what makes it so hard