Show HN: I Made a Stupid Game

Really fun game! There's no social incentive to share with others, or hook to return to play again, though. I learned a lot about how much thing weigh though.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Thank you! Yeah, I have been meaning to add that. I just copy and paste! I want to keep a track of your best winning streak and have achievements.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Aww, thank you. My friend suggested weighdle as a name but I already had the site up!

quartz• 4 years ago

This is fun, well done!

Also: 700,000,000 peas weighs more than a tyrannosaurus rex?! I need to re-evaluate my perception of the weight of a pea.

umvi• 4 years ago

700M drops of water weigh (.05g * 700M) which is 35,000 kg and a pea weighs more than a drop of water

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

That is a lot of peas. I might have some maths wrong in there I'll admit. I hacked it all together in day.

gondo• 4 years ago

Advice: make the answer much more visible. First text, visually separated (bigger font, bold, line ...), green/red. Separate the explanation part into its own block of text.

oneoff786• 4 years ago

Don’t do green red for colorblind.

hunter2_• 4 years ago

As long as there's also a non-color differentiator (like a checkmark / X) I think it's fine. Just like traffic lights having different positions. The word itself is possibly enough, although on the other hand words take longer to process than shapes/colors so best to offer a shape if also offering a color.

isaacimagine2• 4 years ago

I did about 20 questions and didn't miss one. Because most plants, animals, etc are made of water, you really just have to compare volume. I found that visualizing the order of magnitude of the volume was a pretty good strategy for estimating weight. (Water has a density of about 1000 kg/m3)

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Edit: sorry, misread. Wow. My best is about 5 and I've played it. Solidly for the last 3 days!

yreg• 4 years ago

I don't know if I was just lucky but I also did a lot of them (where's a counter?) and had all of them right.

I think the game should try to pick answers that are closer to each other. Perhaps even have an inconsistent difficulty so some questions are easier than others.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

It picks choices where the winner is about 10 times the weight of the loser. Very simple. Still trying to come up with something better that increases difficulty over time.

anyfactor2• 4 years ago

I love that you are using plain JS for this. I was the kid who unscrewed the Rubik's cube and screwed it back together because I am too dumb solve that.

What is the deal with min_mass_kg and max_mass_kg?

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Thanks. Simplest thing that works. I haven't programmed in years. I just had the idea. The last game I had released was in 1991. Seriously. I check min mass of the heavier * its multiple against max mass of the lighter times its multiple.

degenerate• 4 years ago

I did about 15 questions waiting for the game to "end", not realizing it would go on forever.

IMO if the game is infinite, count how many questions I get correct in a row, and have the game end when I get one wrong. Keep track of my high score and display it somewhere on the page, so I have a baseline target to beat. That way the game is replayable and now has a metric for how well someone plays it.

I got all questions right except for the ones involving the moon... for some reason I got all those wrong. Moon is big!

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Yeah, I agree. Counting winning streaks is good. I was thinking of an acheivement system too.

randomrandi• 4 years ago

Fun! Some feedback:

1. Spruce up the design to make seeing the answer more of a "fun" experience

2. Button to share an answer on social media

2. Button to send a question to a friend

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

TBH my HTML and CSS is so rusty. I haven't built a webpage in about a decade! I love number 2 and number 2. That's awesome, especially sending a question to a friend. Love it.

localhost• 4 years ago

I texted my kid a photo of my monitor as a workaround :)

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

2 and 3 now implemented. Just gone live. Hopefully working :-) Check the about page too.

holmesworcester• 4 years ago

My friends and I always talk about how big a social problem scale-blindness is, so this is awesome!

Suggestions:

1. Show progress towards some fixed number of questions so you can see your score at the end so you can see how well-calibrated you are and compare with friends.

2. Add other things than weight, so people can get calibrated for other things too. Time. Probability. Money. Risk of death. Deaths (in war or from disease, e.g.). Stuff like that!

3. Have a speed mode where you have to learn to do these calculations really fast, so that you can incorporate this awareness into your day to day life and awareness of things. 4. Have a slow mode where you are trying to get everything right, so that you learn how to proceed when you really want to be sure.

5. Have a mode where nothing is within 100 or 1000 of anything else, so that you're purely focused on scale awareness and so that your ability to estimate on a 10-100 scale doesn't matter so much.

throwawaylinux• 4 years ago

What is scale-blindness and how big a social problem is it?

LugarOS2• 4 years ago

It is hard for humans to visualize in their heads the difference between 1 billion and 10 billion. Our brains weren't created to think of such massive amounts of objects. I don't think it is too big of a social problem though.

It's probably because cavemen had to carry 10 rocks at a time, 15 max. We didn't have to use such large numbers until recently in human history.

goldcd3• 4 years ago

I quite enjoyed that.

Few (hopefully helpful) bits of feedback:

1) Would be nicer if it wasn't just an endless list of question cards. Maybe have new ones sliding in on the right, with answered ones going off to the left.

2) Visually separate the question, your answer, the correct/incorrect answer and the explanation.

3) Scores! How many right, how many in a right in a row, how did your guess compare with others etc

4) Social Interaction. Let me share my "best run in 60 seconds" and then let others see if they can beat me.

5) Pictures? Was just thinking you could have a 2x2 grid, with number and labelled picture of object in a colum, then you click on whether you think column 1 or 2 is the heaviest.

6) Stats - maybe on landing page or as commentary on your selections "Did you know the weight of the Blue-whale has the most over-estimated mass"

7) Difficulty curve (or setting), feels a bit odd after you'd put some estimate into guestimating to just be asked "does a gorilla weigh more than 5 tins of beans?" Or maybe it just currently feels too-random. I might get 20 in a row, but I can't compare myself to somebody else who got another 20 in a row right.

8) "Is greater than" is nice, but simple <,> choice makes it too simple some times. Maybe, "Which is closest to?" - which would give you multiple options to choose from.

Ntrails• 4 years ago

4) Social Interaction. Let me share my "best run in 60 seconds" and then let others see if they can beat me.

But please don't decide that you need to shove a popup in my face repeatedly to persuade me to do so. I don't have "socials" and have no intention of sharing anything. Being obnoxious about it is a "Dick Move" imo

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

I absolutely hate popups. Not going to be an issue. Good call.

mkoubaa• 4 years ago

OP, it's perfect don't change a thing

FranksTV• 4 years ago

It's definitely not perfect -- great fun, but lacking polish.

LugarOS2• 4 years ago

The site is great now and I think those changes would ruin it in my opinion.

Except maybe to make the words Correct and Wrong have colour so you don't have to read it every time. :]

NoWizards• 4 years ago

came here to add some similar feedback. while all aren't necessary, giving a visual clue when you get a correct and wrong answer its

V-2• 4 years ago

"According to my reckoning a human weighs at most 80kg" - really?

turok• 4 years ago

9) Coloured success/failure feedback, even just the words correct or wrong being coloured, it takes me a few moments to pick the result ouf of the new text being shown to me. This is why my bash scripts usually colour the output too.

SamBam• 4 years ago

Hug of Death. I'll try again in a couple of hours.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Yeah right. I'm trying to send messages of apology to my sysadmin (a FOAF). I bet they hate me.

tenuousemphasis2• 4 years ago

It's now redirecting to http://arrowloans.co.uk for some reason.

jaimehrubiks• 4 years ago

"According to my reckoning a human weighs at most 80kg"

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Yeah..... um, so I picked min max ranges which would accomodate 50-90% of something. The human one is probably a bit narrow. It was a manic day of googling. Trying to work out what one molecule of caffeine weighs nearly broke me.

anyfactor2• 4 years ago

I know this is going to remind us to watch the "Monty Python Witch Trial" scene.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=X2xlQaimsGg

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Aww man, I'm going to have to watch that again tonight. True story: in one of my tech jobs me and my boss had a game to try to get Monty Python quotes into meetings. In a client meeting I talked about search engine behaviour and how you don't want the search engine to just return any old results like "I found this spoon" (Life Of Brian). My boss nearly fainted trying not to laugh. Nobody else got it.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Watching Holy Grail was the perfect way to unwind at the end of a very very long day. Thanks!

superninjy• 4 years ago

Fun game!

I have a suggestion: the huge numbers are not quite readable. Maybe add the scientific notation as well. Comparing 73,400,000,000,000,000,000,000 with 844,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 is tricky, especially since the numbers are not right aligned.

Adding a 73.4×10^21 vs 844×10^21 would be helpful.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Yeah, I'd find that more readable too. I aimed for something anyone could understand.

tovej• 4 years ago

Maybe greek prefixes or even spelling out the bigger units? I.e. 9.4 gigagrams or 54 billion kilograms.

Of course you might have the issue of short scale vs. long scale billions but a footnote should solve that.

cmeacham98• 4 years ago

Perhaps a toggle?

crummy• 4 years ago

Could you just have a simple bar graph that showed their relative sizes? Two numbers with a bunch of zeroes are hard to compare.

asmosoinio• 4 years ago

I like the big numbers with lots of zeros: works for kids as well.

IMHO it could lose some of the silly charm with scientific notation.

But having the numbers aligned for easy comparison would be great.

---

To OP: I really like this! Will be guessing some with my kids who are around 10 year old. Combined weight less than an elephant.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

OP here. Thanks! Will be testing with my 6 year old later. He actually hasn't seen it yet. Yeah, I agree. I wanted something that everyone can read and where the physical size of the number on the screen gives a great idea of the size (in terms of order of magnitude). Alignment is a great idea. I'll have a think about that one.

paparush• 4 years ago

Feedback Highlight Correct in green, Incorrect in red

NAHWheatCracker2• 4 years ago

I like it.

I got most everything right until it asked about the moon compared to some huge number of elephants and again with tyranosaurus rexes. I picked moon both times and was wrong. I felt like those are mathematics questions that don't test your sense of scale as much as the rest because there's just no real-life experience.

fallinghawks• 4 years ago

That was wonderfully silly. But some comparators are vague, like "a can" or "a teabag" (used vs unused is a lot of weight difference). But making things more specific could detract from the silliness.

idkwhoiam• 4 years ago

Stupid game is my favourite kind of game. Great job!

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Stupid username is my favourite kind of username. Great job!

someacocunt34• 4 years ago

For those that are curious (yes, I realize this takes no effort to find):

https://weighoff.net/data.js

kizer• 4 years ago

I love the todo list at the bottom.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Doh!

gus_massa3• 4 years ago

1000 tons of bricks

This option was strange, because all other options don't compare concrete weigh but weight of objects.

beardyw• 4 years ago

That's definitely heavier than 1000 tons of gorillas!

0des• 4 years ago

They are the same

tenuousemphasis2• 4 years ago

1000 tons is definitely heavier than 1000 kg.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Ahh, it's joke data: { name: "a ton of bricks", plural: "tons of bricks", frequency: 0.01, weighWord: "weighs", min_mass_kg: 1000, max_mass_kg: 1000 }, { name: "a ton of feathers", plural: "tons of feathers", frequency: 0.01, weighWord: "weighs", min_mass_kg: 1000, max_mass_kg: 1000 },

gus_massa3• 4 years ago

Nitpicking: I use 1 ton = 1000 Kg, but world wide it's more complicated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton

petersonh• 4 years ago

Feels like I'm answering questions my 4 year old always asks me.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Weird you should say that. The idea came to me after a long conversion with my 6 year old. He was telling me about a friend of his who said he was god or a god and we talked about how you could test to see if he was. That seemed to trigger off a whole synaptic storm.

okibry• 4 years ago

so weird game but cool :]]

winterismute• 4 years ago

Nice! I think you have a type in "heaver", it should be "heavier" maybe?

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

No way! You are the only person to spot that. Fixed. Thanks!!!

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Haha! Just clocked your username. One of my prize possessions is a signed copy of Neuromancer.

jessep• 4 years ago

It was really fun, but maybe throw a few combos closer in weight in? I played for maybe 5 minutes and didn't get any wrong. I would have played longer if I got some wrong.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

You're much better at it than me then :-)

city17• 4 years ago

The site forwards me to some UK home loans website?

Stevie300• 4 years ago

Same, very curious what's going on here.

Beltiras• 4 years ago

Apparently the author was hugged to death. Hosting provider started to redirect the traffic elsewhere.

antattack• 4 years ago

I was redirected to some loan company.

kome• 4 years ago

me too!

sodimel• 4 years ago

Me too. Here's the result of nmap -p 443 --script ssl-cert weighoff.net:

    Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2022-03-31 17:24 CEST
    Nmap scan report for weighoff.net (213.175.208.197)
    Host is up (0.056s latency).
    rDNS record for 213.175.208.197: charlie.awebserver.co.uk

    PORT    STATE SERVICE
    443/tcp open  https
    | ssl-cert: Subject: commonName=arrowloans.co.uk
    | Subject Alternative Name: DNS:arrowloans.co.uk, DNS:cpanel.arrowloans.co.uk, DNS:cpcalendars.arrowloans.co.uk, DNS:cpcontacts.arrowloans.co.uk, DNS:mail.arrowloans.co.uk, DNS:webdisk.arrowloans.co.uk, DNS:webmail.arrowloans.co.uk, DNS:www.arrowloans.co.uk
    | Issuer: commonName=cPanel, Inc. Certification Authority/organizationName=cPanel, Inc./stateOrProvinceName=TX/countryName=US
    | Public Key type: rsa
    | Public Key bits: 2048
    | Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
    | Not valid before: 2022-01-21T00:00:00
    | Not valid after:  2022-04-21T23:59:59
    | MD5:   087b d643 652c f167 689e 71fb 2acc ef07
    |_SHA-1: d212 d954 f09d 7ff7 9068 6e90 4012 b592 cc2d c64f

    Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.58 seconds

Edit: that's funny, http://weighoff.net/ (not https) shows the content of charlie.awebserver.co.uk :D

goldcd3• 4 years ago

How odd - I'm now seeing https://www.webs.limited/

slowmovintarget• 4 years ago

I got the Bad SSL Cert warning in Firefox and just backed out.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Aww man, really sorry. Not my doing. Trying to sort it out. My hosting account's been suspended. It's all gone a bit pear shaped. Oopsie.

tomhallett2• 4 years ago

When you get some time to breathe, I would love to hear a "retrospective" about how an account suspension turned into a redirect to a loans website. Did a bad actor notice your account was suspended, took over it somehow and then they sent traffic to their website? Is this standard protocol for your hosting provider (similar to those domain landing pages which link to all sorts of weird crap)?

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Yeah, really sorry about that. Wasn't my doing. The rather unexpected surge of traffic fried the server. Hopefully resolved now. I was never expecting to hit the front page of HN let alone number 1.

oldstrangers2• 4 years ago

Chrome is flagging your SSL cert as being invalid, just an FYI.

contravariant2• 4 years ago

That's because it's forwarding the traffic to some entirely unrelated website for some reason. Not sure if the DNS went screwy, but something is not right.

oldstrangers2• 4 years ago

Think the guy got hacked mid launch.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

OP here. Everything went screwy! Should be working again now. I don't even work in tech anymore. I haven't been involved in a website launch in over a decade. It's been one hell of a day. My plan for the day was literally to put the site up and then do some craft work, spinning wool into yarn for making my friends a couple of hats (it's wool from their sheep). I'm not even joking! My day went so off the rails.

naoqj• 4 years ago

Doesn't resolve at all.

brazzy• 4 years ago

Firefox refuses to show me the site due to a bad certificate, apparently its certificate is valid for domains belonging to arrowloans.co.uk - this is consistent with other reports saying they're being forwarded to a loans company.

Looks like your site got hacked, or maybe some weird DNS problem?

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Oopsie. I totally took out the server. Should be back again later.

kirchhoff• 4 years ago

Site seems compromised?

tayloramurphy• 4 years ago

I'm seeing this as well. Sends me to some home loan page.

navels• 4 years ago

Bait and switch? User account was created an hour ago.

goldcd3• 4 years ago

Does seem to be a lot of effort... well I guess if everybody is off playing "the long game", there's probably a gap in "short"

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

OP here. Nah man, not bait and switch. The server got fried! Username is my reddit username. Of 11 years, although I hardly use it. I read HN daily but never created an account (not that I can remember anyway). Should all be getting fixed now.

robocat2• 4 years ago

At least one question has its figures wrong. It asks which is heavier, Space Shuttle or 747, and goes on to say that the Shuttle weighs 2 million kg. But that is not just the shuttle: “The stack, as the composite of orbiter, tank and boosters is called, has a gross liftoff weight of 2000 tonnes” (which I presume includes liftoff weight of fuel as well).

Edit: perhaps it was just luck that it compared a 747 with the Space Shuttle, since that is something we know how to compare due to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Carrier_Aircraft

Fun! Thank you, last_one_in. @last_one_in, it was not obvious to me at first that you were the author - adding that to some comments would have helped me!

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Glad you like it! It's my first ever post to HN. I've been reading it daily since forever. Had to create an account to post.

I did the shuttle in a rush TBH. I have no idea if that's with the main tank and boosters or not!

No way, I had the Airfix kit of the shuttle+747 combo when I was a kid. poof mind blown.

I haven't really had time to recheck all the values. If there are any chemists here who can help with the weight of a caffeine molecule (in kg) then I'd appreciate it!!

Someone posted on HN a few days ago about always including your units in the variable names. Good advice.

robocat2• 4 years ago

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=molecular+weight+caffeine “Caffeine/Molar mass 194.19 g/mol”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(unit) “The mole is defined as exactly 6.02214076×10²³ elementary entities”. 194.19 / 6.02214076e23 calculates one molecule is about 3.2246008e-22 g ~322 yoctogrammes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix

“The Space Shuttle weighed 165,000 pounds empty. Its external tank weighed 78,100 pounds empty and its two solid rocket boosters weighed 185,000 pounds empty each. Each solid rocket booster held 1.1 million pounds of fuel. The external tank held 143,000 gallons of liquid oxygen (1,359,000 pounds) and 383,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen (226,000 pounds). The fuel weighed almost 20 times more than the Shuttle. At launch, the Shuttle, external tank, solid rocket boosters and all the fuel combined had a total weight of 4.4 million pounds. The Shuttle could also carry a 65,000 payload.”

Edit: that’s approximately 3e-25 kg per Caffiene molecule and I’m not a chemist, but I do enjoy captivating books about chemists/chemistry like Ignition[1], PiHKAL[2], Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks[3].

Edit 2: From above I noticed 1 litre of liquid Hydrogen is unexpectedly light at 0.15604 kg and one litre of liquid Oxygen is similarly heavier at 2.517 kg - I hope you find more things to add that challenge our intuitions.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29006010

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30827112

[3] https://www.chemistryworld.com/review/uncle-tungsten-memorie...

Eddy_Viscosity2• 4 years ago

I was wrong alot and it mad me angry to be wrong so much.

hifikuno2• 4 years ago

That was fun! The first one I got wrong was:

"80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gorillas vs Saturn".

Good fun!

dddnzzz334• 4 years ago

It's gotta be the Gorillas right?

hifikuno2• 4 years ago

You got it!

pipeline_peak• 4 years ago

Hint: Almost everything that sounds like a trick question is.

chrismorgan• 4 years ago

You have Mars set to 4.8685e24 kg, but it should be 6.4171e23 kg.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

Wow. That's quite wrong. I was out by at least 1.861674e+22 gorillas. Thanks! Fixed now.

FredPret• 4 years ago

I never knew Halley’s Comet was heavier than 6e10 grizzly bears

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

OP here. Glad to have helped expand your knowledge.

imgabe• 4 years ago

This is fun! I don't know if this would make it too easy, but it would be helpful to have the numbers in scientific notation (like 1.6e12), at least as an option. It would make it much easier to read for the larger ones.

_justinfunk2• 4 years ago

I feel like modern statistics has taught me that no matter how big you think the moon is, when you have 3 quadrillion of something....

the moon weighs more than 3 quadrillion of the rockets that we used to get there.

space is big, human brains are small

_justinfunk2• 4 years ago

3 quadrillion Saturn 5 rockets would be more than it would take to cover the surface of earth (standing up) - but would have less mass than the moon.

Sorry- this question blew my mind.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

OP here. Awwww, I love how much great positive feedback this is getting. I literally have tears in my eyes.

unobatbayar• 4 years ago

a space shuttle weighed 2,040,000kg

It's common sense that a space shuttle would be heavy, but this heavy? The thrust needed to lift the damn thing must be weight x 9.8m/s^2 = 19,992,000 Newtons.

Why can't it be lighter?

Arch485• 4 years ago

I think the weight listed in the game is for the shuttle, boosters, and a full load of fuel

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

OP here. I was absolutely frazzled creating data to chuck into it. Yeah, I think the shuttle data should be correct for shuttle, external tank and boosters. And fuel. A whole lot of fuel. See robocat's answer.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

I added a share results button. Thanks everyone for such amazing support yesterday. Much appreciated. Thanks for feedback on the weights. I think there are definitely some mistakes in there. I'll be checking them this morning. After I finish my coffee!

retrocryptid• 4 years ago

i wish i could dare to make a game this stupid. it's simple. and a touch stupid. but definitely enjoyable for a little bit. that was fun. way more fun than cow clicker. don't tell ian bogost.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

OP here. Haha. That's sums it up perfectly. I don't mind coming across as stupid.

HardwareLust• 4 years ago

I quite enjoyed that as well. I was quite surprised when I finally got one wrong.

last_one_in49• 4 years ago

OP Here, Considering how much I've played it, it still doesn't surprise me at all when I'm wrong. Glad you enjoyed it.

Show HN: I Made a Stupid Game

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