9 ms·
Xkcd "Click and Drag" in a "map" interface
- DharmaSoldat 14y agoWow... Just wow.
- basseq 14y agoHere's a 5% version I stitched together: http://basseq.com/fun/xkcd1110/ http://basseq.com/fun/xkcd1110/ It's a big world. What are those whales doing in the sky!? Silly whales...
- mdda 14y agoDouglas Adams reference (though I don't see the Bowl of Petunias...) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsK6aRuSBIc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsK6aRuSBIc
- AceJohnny2 14y agoNot sure, they don't seem to be falling. I thought they might be a reference to the Star Trek "whale probe" from The Voyage Home [1] but they're too small for that. Maybe just some random fun like the flying or underground jellyfish. [1] http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyage_Home http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyage_Hom...
- dstorrs 14y agoThose aren't underground jellyfish, they are underwater. That part of the word (west of center, where the ships are) is ocean. But yeah, it's confusing at first.
- basseq 14y agoHHGTTG was my first thought, too. But there are two whales (and no petunias). Did anyone else see the raptor in the grass?
- antman 14y agoThe answer is 42. [1] http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0371724/quotes?qt=qt0351054 http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0371724/quotes?qt=qt0351054
- aamar 14y agoLook like humpback whales. Unlikely to be a reference, but it did remind me of the whale sequence from the second Fantasia movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGZeT07rqlU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGZeT07rqlU
- brianstorms 14y agoThere's a great animated short from the 1980s called SKY WHALES. Check it out if you can find it. I assumed this was the reference...
- tomasien 14y agoThere's a serious psychological phenomenon where working in a place with no windows decreases productivity by a lot. This has been attributed to the need to look out into the world in order to imagine solutions that aren't readily apparent. Scrolling through this was like looking out the window times 100. I've already gotten more done in the last hour after looking at it than I usually do in a day.
- tomasien 14y ago(Wrote a blog about this btw http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4544257 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4544257) - I think it's interesting
- reinierladan 14y agoBest interface to the full high res image yet. Love it.
- ygra 14y agoHere's a similar one, made with Seadragon (Deep Zoom): http://dump.ventero.de/xkcd1110/ http://dump.ventero.de/xkcd1110/
- bicknergseng 14y agoThanks for using Seadragon. First thing I thought of when I clicked on the angular.js version also in the top on hn.
- naugtur 14y agoFinally - the way I wanted to explore it :)
- rm999 14y agoWow, that's... epic. According to the reddit comments the world is 165888x79872 pixels, and the guy at the beginning is 40 pixels tall. If we assume he's 6 feet tall, the world is ~25000 x 12000 feet, 4.7 x 2.3 miles, or 7.6 x 3.7 km.
- reinierladan 14y agoIt's a small world after all…
- glenntzke 14y agoHence the two miles comment full west from center. I declare Randall and dividuum 1st and 2nd place winners of the internet today. What's the under-over on tech world productivity loss this morning?
- turshija 14y agoI like the Minecraft part ^^ http://d.pr/i/Ui9J http://d.pr/i/Ui9J
- adaml_623 14y agoThank you for explaining that. It looked familiar but not having played Minecraft I really had no idea.
- crucialfelix 14y agoyou guys have totally destroyed this thing ;) the beauty was that it got me to wander around like a little kid for a while. the little spots by the beach, textures, jokes, wondering which way was out of a mine shaft, the sense of taking a hike for a while. not zooming around like an all knowing cyborg. not that I'm trying to spoil your fun of course.
- johndavidback 14y ago"not zooming around like an all knowing cyborg." Ha ha ha ha!
- gpvos 14y agoAfter 40 minutes or more of doing that, I think it doesn't take away the wonder if I stitch together a large image just to check if I'd missed anything in the sky or underground. These sites do make it a bit too easy, but then again, it's a nice display of a piece of technology.
- graeme 14y agoI did both. Eventually got tired of wandering in tunnels, and zoomed out. But it recaptured the joy of exploring a new video game world.
- mortenjorck 14y agoI don't know if you've ever played the 1980s-90s Spectrum/Amiga Dizzy series, but exploring this squirted pretty much the same wonderful cocktail of neurotransmitters as exploring Spellbound Dizzy did when I was a small boy.
- pimentel 14y agoThe problem for me was the lack of metrics of how long have I dragged in every direction. Getting lost in the sky is no fun.
- AaronBBrown 14y agoThis is awesome even though it crashed my phone so hard that I had to do a battery pull! :)
- berserkpi 14y agoEpic!
- sbanach 14y agoNormally a curmudgeon, I love everything about this story. The original comic is brilliant, and the various HN takes on it are getting better and better. Thanks everyone!
- bthomas 14y agoFirst time I looked I didn't realize you could zoom out...
- estebank 14y agoYou can!? I just modified the source to remove the `overflow: hidden` to the `div#comic`. That was enough to find stuff that I would have missed otherwise :)
- digitalclubb 14y agoThere is also this snazzy site to get the full zoomed out version: http://xkcd-map.rent-a-geek.de/ http://xkcd-map.rent-a-geek.de/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ryangallen 14y agoFelt like the first day I got my ant farm when I was a kid. :)
- joeblau 14y agoThis is amazing! I would like to see how they put this together.
- Achshar 14y agoWill i be wrong to hope for a blog post explaining the process shortly?
- dividuum 14y agoNope. I'll post the python code I used on github later/tomorrow.
- stickfigure 14y agoIf you mean the maps-type interface, just look at the page source - it's a couple lines of javascript. This is just Leaflet's standard behavior. The map itself is a series of image tiles with a predictable naming convention. Leaflet is great: http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/ http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/
- dividuum 14y agoHere is the code and some information about handling the traffic https://github.com/dividuum/xkcd-1110 https://github.com/dividuum/xkcd-1110
- andrewaylett 14y agoIf you'd like the full-screen view and ability to navigate using the keyboard, but with tiles that load when needed not just when you stop moving, try http://ares.aylett.co.uk/xkcd/ http://ares.aylett.co.uk/xkcd/ -- it uses the original tiles, so you've probably got at least some of them cached already :). Only browser zoom, but I think that helps keep the mystique (and I don't want to try to implement it myself).
- runjake 14y agoRandall is one of those artists that truly enriches (my) life. The IP addressing visual and the other comic that illustrated the size of scale among astronomical objects were two others that impressed me. This one tops them all.
- alanfalcon 14y agoThe movie maps also make the list for me.
- chernevik 14y agoThe interface is a powerful extension of the piece. Wonderful stuff. Thank you. I do wish the extension somehow captured the first three panels of the comic. The last panel is a masterpiece, but it is part of a larger story.
- dividuum 14y agoI just added the three intro panels.
- chernevik 14y agoThank you. I'm looking forward to figuring out how you did this.
- Laremere 14y agoI think this browser is best for making sure you didn't miss anything. Part of what makes the original comic effective is that your viewing window is so small that it makes the size of the world feel very large.
- gulbrandr 14y agoThe only JavaScript file seems to be http://cdn.leafletjs.com/leaflet-0.4/leaflet.js http://cdn.leafletjs.com/leaflet-0.4/leaflet.js
- nostromo 14y agoMy favorite caption: "Because it's there" is more poetic than, "I'm rich enough that my goals are arbitrary."
- yaliceme 14y agoI also enjoyed: 'I'm working at a small startup. Our business model is "Taking free drinks from industry events and reselling them." Oh, hey, I should get going.'
- lprubin 14y agoFrom a couple trapped deep underground: "Is anybody up there? If you can hear us, friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!"
- erikpukinskis 14y agoReminds me a little of Proteus (http://www.visitproteus.com http://www.visitproteus.com) which I just came across a few days ago. There's something special about wandering around in a world where you don't know why you're there or when or where it will end.
- joshu 14y agoTHANKS! I saw this at XOXO but there was no name and I wanted to explore it more.
- thomasfrank09 14y agoLooks like Randall had a pretty good time playing Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. (for those curious - http://michelgagne.blogspot.com/ http://michelgagne.blogspot.com/)
- gulbrandr 14y agoI really liked this, it seems very attractive.
- willvarfar 14y agoIf he just updates it and adds to it every so often, think how he'll magnify the productivity impact! :)
- richardjordan 14y agoMy days are better when I remember to check xkcd.
- nikcub 14y agoFind the 'hackers' reference?
- mfringel 14y agoAye. "No pool?"
- tylermenezes 14y agoYet http://www.isxkcdshittytoday.com/ http://www.isxkcdshittytoday.com/ still isn't impressed.
- shawndellysse 14y agowow. I'm sad that this site exists.
- pferde 14y agoIf xkcd really was shitty, nobody would bother making such site about it. EDIT: I actually liked http://xkcdexplained.com http://xkcdexplained.com, back when they were still keeping up with Randall.
- petsos 14y agoSame for http://xkcdexplainedexplained.tumblr.com http://xkcdexplainedexplained.tumblr.com
- DiabloD3 14y agoThe software used to make this is on Github, plus some scaled down originals: https://github.com/dagar/xkcd-1110 https://github.com/dagar/xkcd-1110
- bobajett 14y agoWhat, no Gandalf chasing a Balrog down the hole?!
- Kiro 14y agohttp://xkcd.com/1110/ http://xkcd.com/1110/ for those that don't have a clue what this is about (like me).
- wannabeartist 14y agoapart from the javascript part, how was this drawn? by hand? software, using tools?
- dsl 14y agoYes.
- adastra 14y agoLove the Cryptonomicon influences. In case anyone is wondering what those mushroom-shaped caverns are that jut up off some of the tunnels... well, you can read the book and find out ;)
- mdanger 14y agoCryptonomicon is one of my favorite books of all time - I stared at that mushroom-shaped cave for the longest time trying to recall where I'd seen it!
- adastra 14y agoEpic action sequences combined with cryptography, information theory, currency/economics, WWII, and a crazy ambitious tech startup idea. It doesn't get any better than that.
- mdanger 14y agoIs http://xkcd-map.rent-a-geek.de/#10/-21.4805/18.7811 http://xkcd-map.rent-a-geek.de/#10/-21.4805/18.7811 supposed to be the Money Pit? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Island#History_of_the_Money_Pit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Island#History_of_the_Money...
- mkramlich 14y agogreat toy someone make a game based on this. take my money
- chrismorgan 14y agoWhen you're in a region without a matching image (i.e. in the blank sky or uncarved ground), the tile is only a 1x1 image; in Firefox at least, the default image rendering technique for this is bad, as it uses something along the lines of bicubic interpolation to some shade of grey, where what is intended is that it be a solid block of colour. My solution was to add this to the CSS: .leaflet-container img { image-rendering: optimizeSpeed; } Note also that the 1x1 blank ground tiles (e.g. http://xkcd-static.rent-a-geek.de/converted/4-4-8.png http://xkcd-static.rent-a-geek.de/converted/4-4-8.png) are #0a0a0a rather than #000000.
- brettnak 14y agoThanks for bothering to make it work with pinch to zoom on my tablet! Impressive!
- roryokane 14y agoThere’s also this map: http://sumamimasen.com/xkcd/1110/ http://sumamimasen.com/xkcd/1110/. It has some of the usability of this rent-a-geek map while keeping the perhaps-symbolic inability to see ahead of the original comic. It also loads faster than this rent-a-geek map. Features: use the arrow keys to scroll (you actually can’t click and drag anymore). You can’t zoom out, but you can hold Shift to scroll quickly. This map loads tiles while you scroll, so you can keep on scrolling without stopping.
- zapfmann 14y agoWow. That is art!
- ludovicurbain 14y agoIt's awesome, but the guy who coded it forgot to replace the all black squares by <div class=black> . that would've loaded so much faster - and even better with class=white above the earth.
- degenerate 14y agoIf you think this is cool, check out a game with the same 2D "grid-like" world that blew me away when I played it a couple years ago: Within a Deep Forest. http://nifflas.ni2.se/?page=Within+a+Deep+Forest http://nifflas.ni2.se/?page=Within+a+Deep+Forest
- WestCoastJustin 14y agoIn case you did not see it, dividuum put together how this was served. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4547840 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4547840
- tete 14y agoI love this refernce: http://xkcd-map.rent-a-geek.de/#9/33.3282/1.3815 http://xkcd-map.rent-a-geek.de/#9/33.3282/1.3815