Talk:2916: Machine

rather late for an april fools comic innit? also there doesn't seem to be anything exciting in this one lol, none of the usual cool exploration easter eggs, as far as i could tell at least 172.71.178.76 16:41, 6 April 2024 (UTC)Erfaniom

We're exploring crowdsourced human creativity here, in a way, so it can be a lot more interesting then Randall's exploration comics, at least for me, because i did take two years of GCSE psychology and enjoyed it. 172.64.238.130

Just popped over using Chrome on Android and all I see is four "missing picture" logos spinning around, plus another down the bottom right... 141.101.68.193 18:13, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Okay, followup: it behaves quite differently on the non mobile site. You get two entry points with red balls and yellow balls and you need to place the various gizmos to direct the balls to the correct exit point. Once enough have correctly passed to turn the red X into a green tick, you have the option to submit. If you do, once you have named your design it will be added to the grid with other submissions all of which exist to push red and yellow balls around. (if you come across "Memories of Ragnarok", that's mine) 172.71.134.207 18:27, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

The number of inputs appears to vary between 1 and 4, each of a different color, with one color-coded output for each. Claire Kholin (talk) 18:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

On the "machine" section, you see lots of "under construction cells". Perhaps this will develop as more are submitted. I notice the "under construction tape" has "DJIA" and "31415", perhaps a reference to "dow jones industrial average" and the first five digits of pi. Zeimusu (talk) 18:37, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Whenever someone submits a cell, it fills in one of the under construction cells. Claire Kholin (talk) 18:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I wanted to add an image for each object, but do not have the necessary access, can someone who has access add the images that I linked in the table so they can be included? Claire Kholin (talk) 18:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I found a discussion with some guy talking about the API at https://euphoria.leet.nu/room/xkcd/ ; this could be useful for the wiki.

[c+1] now time to try fucking with the api [c+1] https://incredible.xkcd.com/

 [userwithnoaccount] 404

[c+1] it seems there are numbered machines under incredible.xkcd.com/machine/x

 [c+1] returns a grid of individual machinlets
 [c+1] which are uids like 3a7af27c-5389-5dcb-b660-3feab6be2ceb
 [c+1] they're stored at urls like incredible.xkcd.com/folio/3a7af27c-5389-5dcb-b660-3feab6be2ceb
 [c+1] there appear to be 33 machines total
 [c+1] the json it returns seems to refer to these as "versions"
 [c+1] $ curl -s https://incredible.xkcd.com/machine/21 | jq ".version"
       21
 [c+1] there is a machine/0, but it's all null
 [c+1] going to https://incredible.xkcd.com/machine/current redirects to the current machine
   [c+1] $ curl -sL https://incredible.xkcd.com/machine/current | jq ".version"
         35

[c+1] wait, is that the *total* number of mahcines? [c+1] i would've thought there'd be more [c+1] this whole think is rather esoteric [c+1] Written in rust, too: https://rapier.rs/ [c+1] Uh oh.

     https://i.hypercone.us/?v=8e283d
 [c+1] HMMM
       https://i.hypercone.us/?v=079f8f
 [c+1] it seems there is no limit
 [c+1] i've uploaded a ~50M title

172.70.57.146

Had quite a lot of fun, added a few 'successful' machines to the grid. Noted that whenever I try to use the Prism that (after a short delay) the comic-pane blanks and I need to refresh the page/get a completely new 'challenge' to start from scratch, so I'm just not using the prism at all (used most of the other items, in combination or 'just the one across the whole board', whichever seems most fun). But it doesn't seem to do what I'd like it to do, which is sort multiple colours from the same inflow into different outflow directions. Which would be very useful in a 'crossroads' situation, the general solution of directing them cross-path being too prone to random collisions. Also might be useful in the 'submitted machine grid', as I note that errors propagate, whereas adding a filter on all inputs would clean out (dispose of/send off to a valid gate?) the rogue balls. Anyway, gonna have to come back to this later when there's more time... Maybe then I'll even have something useful to add to the Explanation. 172.70.163.31 19:03, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

The balls appear to be different weights. I just saw a machine that used fans to separate yellows from greens and blues in a sort of 'wheat from the chaff' manner to direct them to their correct outputs. I wonder what other hidden tricks are included. 172.68.1.159 19:40, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

They're not all accepted, though it makes you think they are. Or something else more complex is going on we haven't realized yet. I made a machine that was working reliably, submitted it, and saw it on the overall grid. Reloading from a different browser I found the same location of the machine, with the same surroundings, but my machine had been replaced. It's nowhere else on the grid either. The first browser still shows it (but not after a reload with a cache clear). I'm not sure if there's some kind of "save" event that needs to happen beyond seeing your machine in the broader one, or if all user collaboration is an illusion, or if the system changes its mind about us somehow.

Yeah, i've been seeing this too. Please tell me if you find any of my machines, images at https://i.hypercone.us/?v=22d562 , https://i.hypercone.us/?v=ad8e3a , and https://i.hypercone.us/?v=8d4d6a . I want to be one of the few to have added Catalan and Spanish to the grid. 172.71.134.164 20:56, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I've added some more observations to the page. Also, a guess which is too uncertain to put on the main page: The ball launcher for the yellows on the far left side misses a lot, and the yellow container isn't the one on the left. So I think the whole machine with crossing streams will result in the colors being sorted in their container order, and possibly have the streams combined and deposited at the bottom just above the containers. --172.71.147.100 21:07, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

has anyone seen the boat at the very bottom? Mushrooms (talk) 21:21, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

trying to see it on Firefox for Ubuntu and it just tells me to "visit xkcd.com to view" - THAT'S WHERE I AM?! Tried clearing website data (but not my entire cache) and that didn't help. Is there something I'm missing?

Oooh, just had one with four ball-entries (four colours) and three exits (one caters for two arrows). Pity it's rather complicated to get entries to exits (even if I can merge two of the streams). Might have to give up on it, but I'd like to have seen how it fits in with the 'submited grid'. i.e. someone else gets a two-colour introduction spot. 162.158.74.119 22:37, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Me again. I'm just refreshing the page, looking at the pattern of entries/exits (just a dozen or so screens in, getting some repeats of pattern, indicating that it's going back to tiles it was suggesting before, probably depends on how many others are contributing and extending...)

Found another 'double-colour' example. Two yellows from the same side, which probably means that there's a two-yellows been asked to exit from the neighbour (will check shortly).

Quickly adapting from my spreadsheet notation, "R, Y, G, B" in order, each "(Entry, Exit)", I've been using <dir> of L/R/T/B and a number (nominally percentage, though seems to include only values of 20, 30, 50, 70 and 80, so it might be more 1/6..5/6?) relating to the distance along from L to R (for T/B) or T to B (for L/R).

This line is therefore (0,0)(L20+L70,R30+B70)(R80,L80)(T70,L50) ... no reds, two yellow pairings, a red pairing, a blue pairing. Would require at least two path-crossings (but I was going to calculate those things later, and double-colours might confuse my intended simple line-intersection calculation).

...anyway, spent some time on this message, which might mean I'll get into a 'new batch' of available patterns as people have succeeded some of the challenges that I've been 'swiping left'. 172.70.162.20 19:28, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

...very next click: (0,0)(T30+L20,R20+R70)(R80,L80)(R50,B50), which is clearly the actual left-neighbour of the above. 172.70.162.19 19:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Ok, stopped my refreshing to 'solve' a screen. First of all I routed both yellows entries (right-upper and upper-right) to one yellow exit (middle-left) and gradually teased the greens across (lower-left to middle-right), as that way I was avoiding a criss-cross of balls, but the the other yellow exit (left-lower) was, of course, invalid.

Changed it to drop one stream of yellows down towards the lower exit, across the rapidly firing greens (added a fan to filter away the occasional yellow that gets bounced over there, not much of an opportunity to filter falling-greens out of the yellow exit, so apologies to whoever gets the sceen below). Submited as "Two Yellows, One Green!", whether or not that'll save (apparently, I should continue to contribute and not refresh/close, or else the server will not keep the solution?).

Interestingly, all four adjacent tiles are "Under construction", and if I scroll up... *DARN* the comic has blanked out (nothing there between the upper PREV/RANDOM/NEXT buttons and the lower ones, just whitespace). This may mean that it did not save. This is the kind of 'page crash' I get when I try using a Prism or get too many balls rattling around on top of a Black Hole. Perhaps it doesn't like that I'm scrolling into an Under Construction that shouldn't be there? (But then, why is it there?)

Anyway, all extra information for everyone.

I'll just refresh the page and go back and do some more entry/exit mapping, maybe? 172.70.162.20 20:17, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

If you combine a bunch of these silly claw things in the middle by just spamming it, it begins to lag and do some chaotic collisions, even without balls colliding on it. It's curious how it does that seemingly randomly though. I wonder how calculations are added and if there's a tiny sprinkle of RNG. (Also, errors occur and say something about damaging recursion in the Rust programming language, so I guess we know how it was made. It's also pretty weird how there's not a lot of opening combinations? It's possible that the machine loops over in chunks of gears or something (that's what I'll call them). (talk) 13:15, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

If you place a black hole in the centre of a wheel, it makes the wheel behave unpredictably between resets. Sometimes it's almost normal, sometimes it's a lot faster than usual, and sometimes it's stopped but launches balls that touch it with extreme force. I was able to use this to submit a machine which didn't actually let a single ball through after being submitted. https://i.hypercone.us/?v=928bcd 162.158.33.149 01:19, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

The page says that (and I have taken note of) the ball hue is coded to certain values, but is there a logic to those values that might be derived from the colour (either as RGB triplet or HSV/other colourspace definition). For example, the two ball-types with zero green component in their makeup are 'unit density' (green is far heavier "green+red" is far lighter, so it's not a simple relationship, unless it converts from °hue, in some way) and the only secondary colour exhibits non-zero drag. There's the possibility that it just derived from "we need different properties, we need different colours, we have no reason to connect either with other deliberately" or even some non-mathematical symbology (fire=red, water=blue(?), earth=green, air(/sunlight?)=yellow). But it makes me wonder what combination of properties cyan/magenta balls might have, if added. (Or is the choice of those four colours constrained, anyway? Though R/G colorblindness is already something of an accessibility failure, if anyone suffers that.) 172.69.194.205 17:02, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Python script to get the URL and title of each Cell in the current machine

Result of running that script at the moment (encoded with ROT13 because pastebin wouldn't let me save it otherwise)

has anybody at all whatsoever been able to find their creation using this API? Bellydrum (talk) 21:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Result of running that script on the first 42 machines, at least on these it looks like the only difference is that one cell is added each time? 172.71.99.195 17:22, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I've submitted four now, none of which was accepted. I tend to spend a lot of time getting them just right. Any hints as to what the acceptance criteria might be? Or do I just stink at this? 172.69.59.204 19:47, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

There appears to be a new object: a cat that bats things that touch it. 172.69.214.39 20:17, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Is anyone else experiencing the bug where prisms cause the comic to disappear (leaving only the white background where it was) after a while? It makes viewing the whole machine basically impossible. (On further testing it appears to be firefox-exclusive.) 172.70.162.38 20:31, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I've had the "Prisms break things" from the beginning (before any practical content). As in, trying to use them in a design breaks things. But I did glance upon their occasional use in the 'view submissions grid'. Right now I'm suffering from "white only" issue (see my "multi-yellow" accounts, above). I am using Firefox, if that's indeed relevant to this issue, but right now I'm not near any other up-to-date browser I care to use. 172.70.163.31 21:37, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm getting the same issue with black holes (which probably makes more sense - put a black hole there and you'd expect everything else to disappear :o) - except that on one occasion I was able to put about 6 black holes in before the 7th one vanished everything.172.69.194.121 09:15, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Has anyone seen their own cell in the machine at all yet? A manual approval system is probably necessary for obvious reasons, but if so it does seem to be moving quite slowly. 172.69.65.24 02:58, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

How on earth is everyone seeing different parts of the grid? If I request "view machine" I can only see my own square, and the edges of everyone elses. Nothing else, definitely not all of the machine. 172.68.64.149 21:11, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

You should be able to click and drag the view around. 172.71.242.54 21:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Whoever designed the room entirely full of fans is evil - every time I scroll near it my entire browser freezes up and becomes unresponsive.172.69.194.81 08:23, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Level scrolling bug

When one views the whole machine, and scrolls down far enough, everything just disappears, and the comic is completely unresponsive. Has anyone else seen this? 198.41.236.152 20:38, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm now seeing the same issue, I wasn't before. (I'm using Chrome) 172.70.162.20 21:06, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

A hard refresh appears to have fixed this for me (same person as above). 141.101.99.101 10:28, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I've been having this issue as well (I'm using firefox). Opening the site in Edge instead seemed to work around it for me, so it might only affect Firefox (and derivatives). 172.70.163.31 21:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

See also the 'firefox bug' comments currently immediately above this section. (Please don't ask me to start Edge up, I hate it, won't use it any more than the system requires me to...) 172.70.163.31 21:37, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Update - I did a hard refresh so I could play around with the new additions and I'm no longer encountering the bug, even on firefox. I think the "white screen" bug is fixed now and you just need to hard-refresh to download the fixed JS instead of using the cached one. (same person as 172.70.163.31 and 172.70.162.38) 172.70.86.16 11:16, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

New Category: Ball Pit?

What do you think about a new category for comics with ball pits? 150, 219, 485, 498, 2916? 162.158.134.229 21:50, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Prism Use?

Can the prism be used to sort balls by color? (or in any other way that is useful and different?) 172.68.34.61 12:11, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

From what I've seen, no. Though may be extremely susceptible to incident angle. As far as my own use has been, they seem to randomise the trajectory (possibly also do a total-internal-reflection, I've had balls bounce around and exit at really weird angles), but it's hard to collimate a feed of balls into a single exact track, even straight down from a ceiling-feed (if you have a ceiling feed directly over the floor exit, lucky you, it'll still occasionally perturb balls off to the sides just enough to be bounced out as a gate-miss, unless you add 'funnel' architecture of one kind or another). Oh, and when balls do a lot of 'internal bouncing' it often forced me to reload the comic (overloaded the physics engine?), so could not continue to tweak the same design.

On the other hand, perhaps this was the intent, and just code/browser failings made it work erratically. Maybe would be an idea to go back and retest for this (anybody who can), do a little !!science!! to be recorded and explained on the page. 172.69.43.183 12:51, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Bugs and Exploits

You can use a sword to break the physics on the hinge thingy and create your very own "magnetic hill": https://imgur.com/a/IRZ0AlL 162.158.134.108 13:02, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Hard to tell from that what other fans (perhaps) you've got completely off-clip.

Those hinge-thingies can definitely be shifted by horizontal (outwith ball-weight pressures), but I've not found them to be reliable components as the "Stop" button (ball reset) seems to let those 'hinges' slring back to level, which might need a re-reset by moving them back past the thing that's holding them off-level.

I have tried a few things with them:

• 'Ticker' mechanism, almost like a clock escapement, nudged by the rotating 'waterwheel', perhaps to try to release balls through a stream of other balls whilst keeping the path clear of collisions for each set, in turn.
• 'Batch dumper', accumulating a number of balls (above the 'hinge', behind a vertical bulkhead) until there's weight enough to 'open the hatch' and roll them out. (Again, an attempt to reduce collisions, by clumping batches together).
• Finely configured inclines, by shoving something up into a free end of hinge with better angular resolution (but, as mentioned, this doesn't seem to want to 'hold', so probably would fail upon submission).

...I had wondered if there was supposed to be a "falling anvil creates a catapult/ballista" idea behind the piece, but we don't have falling anvils (and definitely not in a repeating manner), and ball-powered catapult (esssentially "clown/acrobat jumps on one end of seesaw, clown/acrobat on other end flies up into the air") also doesn't seem practical.

I'll try to recreate your design, work out if there's anything new about it, but right now looks like it's a fan-powered incline-raiser. 172.70.162.38 14:23, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

No fans! Here's a wider view: https://imgur.com/a/xPJcsor

It survives the reset, because the balls falling on the lever push it down to the sword and it gets stuck there every time. But you need to place the sword just right to make the gravity bug happen. And even then it depends on the number of balls in some ways. 172.68.243.27 14:46, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

The USS Buoyancy

Guys. The Buoyancy. She floats. When all four sets of balls reach the ball pit there aren't further additions. The boat starts floating on them. I've been watching it for a while. It seems she moves left and will probably end up escaping the ball pit. DL Draco Rex (talk) 20:44, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Update: A new row spawned in and it reset just before the Buoyancy could escape. Here's a screenshot I grabbed a while before the reset, she'd moved further left by the time the reset occurred. https://imgur.com/gallery/8UCASCu DL Draco Rex (talk) 20:51, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Added key combinations, found in source

ctrl+alt+b ctrl+shift+option+d wheel: arrow keys

Fixed Number of Possible Machinelets?

I was resetting my browser to try and find new machinelet configurations, but there seem to be fewer and fewer as the game progresses. Hypothesis: the 'under construction' machinelets are set, and once one of them gets approved and added to the grid, that specific configuration of entrances/exits can't show up again.