Oh well, I guess now I'm forced to sink in another half-hour this evening! ;)

> Working on an endless crafting game with llama 2

along with a video of this game.

[0] https://nitter.cz/nealagarwal/status/1747284257582506102#m

You're not dumb -- it's not only unclear, but the interface actively suggests the opposite of what you're supposed to do.

One of the best lessons I ever learned was from Don Norman's famous book, The Design of Everyday Things. Which basically teaches you that the user is almost never dumb, but rather human. And that the responsibility of understanding how to interact with an object, or program, always lies with the creator of that object or program. The designer. It's their job to design something so that it teaches you how to use it. (His most quoted example involves how a plate on a door invites you to push it, while a handle invites you to pull -- and this way you'll never try to pull a door that needs to be pushed open, or vice-versa.)

In this case, the interface invites you to drag things among the various pre-existing points, to continue the "constellation". It does nothing whatsoever to suggest that it would make any sense to drag the labels on top of each other. Indeed, previous experience suggests that this would simply lead to overlapping and obscured labels, so we actively avoid it. And the lines that get drawn between nearby points and labels goes even further to suggest that this is a game or experience about connecting things in a graph-like way -- which, once again, overlapping does not fit into conceptually.

I would never have thought to drag things on top of each other if I hadn't come here to the comments.

What's with all the lines to the little moving dots? Haven't figured out what those do yet.

Water surrounded by 5 fire in a circle - ish - did absolutely nothing.

Only by checking the HN comments i figured out you have to combine items.

I do wish it was a bit better stated on the page itself.

These were my discoveries:

["Leviathan Shark","Burnzilla","Burnado","Chocolate Tree Shark","Cybersharktopus","Toadatorzilla","Bacon Sharktopusnado","Rainbow Hooktopus","T-48000050","T-48000050","T-19800050","T-19800050","T-64000050","T-83800050","T-83800050","T-121800050","T-121800051","T-185800001","T-185800002","T-185800004","T-185800008","T-82980058","T-121800051 + T-160000"]

Seems like I've stumbled across a self reproducing AI, although the emojis went from robot emoji to universe emoji and then to poop emoji. I wonder at which of those levels of AI we're at currently :p

  1. Combine the first element with every next element until exhausted.
  2. Catch up the second element to where the first element got to.
  3. Combine the first two elements with every next element, until exhausted.
  4. Catch up the third element.
  5. Combine the first three elements with every next element
  6. etc.

  n = 1
  maxElementReached = -1
  
  while(n < totalElements()) {
    while(maxElementReached + 1 < totalElements()) {
      maxElementReached = maxElementReached + 1
      Combine each of the first n elements with element[maxElementReached]
    }

    // we've exhausted all possible combinations for the first n elements.
    // increase n by 1 and catch up the new element to keep going
    Combine element[n] with each element from n to maxElementReached
    n = n + 1
  }

let m={},t=0,f=0,s=0;setInterval(function(){document.getElementsByClassName('mobile-item')[f].getElementsByClassName('item')[0].click();document.getElementsByClassName('mobile-item')[s].getElementsByClassName('item')[0].click();t=document.getElementsByClassName('mobile-item').length;s=(s+1)%t;if(s==0){m[f]=t;if(Object.keys(m).some(i=>m[i]<t)){let p=Object.keys(m).find(i=>m[i]<t);f=p;s=m[p];}else{f=(f+1)%t;s=f;}}document.title=f+'+'+s+'|'+t;},500);

`One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor`

Quick google search tells me the game is called Little Alchemy (there’s a sequel now too)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribblenauts