Programmers of the world: please stop with the 2048 clones. We have jobs to do. Partners to attend to. Friends to acknowledge. Pets to feed. Plants to water. Have some mercy already!

Can people who use non-qwerty keyboard tell me if they have any convenient tricks for playing those html games that almost never let you rebind keys? Having to switch mapping is so inconvenient...

If web gaming becomes a thing I think people should start thinking about a standard way to let people rebind their keys, through the browser or some common library.

Is my math correct? If we simplify and say we make 1 move per second, the game only drops 1 tokens, and we always make a perfect move...this will take 4.5 hours (16384/60/60) to complete?

In reality my moves take more than a second, and I know I don't make perfect moves. So, over 4.5 hours.

Feels like I'm playing 2048 drunk. Every move requires a little thought to make sure I'm moving in the right direction. And having two extra sides on the shape is messing with my eyes.

45 minutes later: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ljo1ie3ly6g2pqf/Screenshot%202014-...

I'm done. I have banished myself from these kinds of games.

It appears that the only thing more addictive than playing 2048 is writing a 2048 clone.

I already had the experience of text appearing tiny after staring at the old grid version for another long playthrough. Now I have that, plus everything seeming overly blocky and stout, even things in the room around me. It's almost like a visual equivalent of getting tingling or pins and needles after not using a limb. I guess it's just another fun reminder that what we see is not the raw data from our retinal cells, but the adaptive interpretation that our visual cortex cobbles together.

The author is quite famous in the competitive programming world:

http://icpc.baylor.edu/community/icpc-challenge-champions

https://www.quora.com/Who-Is-Was-X/Who-is-Rudradev-Basak

http://blog.codechef.com/2011/02/01/programmer-of-the-month-...

This had the craziest effect on my vision, anyone else seeing everything else extremely square after playing it? I mean the borders of windows, the headers of sites etc. Everything was sooo round before.

If there is a version that needs swipe compatibility, this is it because playing with the keyboard is painful.

This[0] is what Hacker News is becoming lately.

[0]: http://i.imgur.com/F0t5T21.png

It upsets me that the circles are not hexagons.

Why oh why?

This spawns 1's and expects me to get to 16384. So that'll take about 16383 moves then?

Jokes aside, I will suggest that:

1. Making harmful products is a bad idea.

2. If you chose to make a harmful product as a programming exercise, publishing it is a bad idea.

3. If you find someone else has published a harmful product, posting a link to a forum is a bad idea.

4. If you find someone else has posted a link to a harmful product, upvoting it is a bad idea.

Life is complicated. There is no simple formula that will tell you the right thing to do in the general case. And sometimes even when we know which is which, we end up doing the wrong thing because the right thing would be harder.

But when we know which is which, and the right thing is easy? Then, at least, we should be able to stop doing the wrong thing.

Every rectangle (GUI elements, keys on the keyboard) looks really hard after playing this for a while.

There's a bug that causes an inconsistency with the displayed dumber on a disc and the internal value. (interestingly the colour of the disc is appropriate to the internal value).

I think it is happening when a merge happens when it shouldn't. like 1.141 --> causes ..24X where X has the displayed number 1 but the colour and behaviour of a 2. I'm not positive on that but it feels like something along those lines.

[edit] I just got a disc which had the number was 4 in the top half and 2 in the lower. Moving the mouse off the screen and back again fixed it. I'm now figuring it's the browser rendering that's glitching rather than game logic.

Hey! It's like my game! Have you played my version before creating yours? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spiralcode...

The thing that I found interesting is that this is much much easier than 2048. This algorithm does very well:

  while not game over:
    while these moves do anything:
      mash a, z, and x as fast as you can
    tap d

People seem to be thinking hard about this game.. but if you're spending 1+ second/move it'll definitely take forever.

Think about it like shaking a jar of pebbles, where the heavier ones fall to the bottom. Now simulate this by press Z->A & X->D back and forth You can get a high score pretty quick. And if you see a situation where a low number is stuck at the bottom, make specific moves to get at that one, then go back to shaking the jar!

It's unplayable on a german keyboard, they have "z" and "y" swapped. Perhaps you can make "y" behave the same as "z"?

As in other derivatives three side strategy works pretty well. In this game that translates to awed key combination with top being accumulation direction.

I think this one should be called "The Endurance Test."

It should take at least 8 times as long to win as 2048.

I recommend using the normal arrow keys, plus press&hold shift or spacebar & arrow keys for the other 2 directions.

Hm, this doesn’t seem to load for me on Firefox 28.0 – I just see the brown-ish circles, but nothing is filled in. Curiously, in another profile, everything is fine.

I’m new to Firefox, any ideas on how to debug this? Disabling add-ons didn’t help and I’d rather not scratch my entire profile.

Seems much easier. I've never gotten past 2048 on the square versions, but I'm already up to 4096 on my first game which isn't even done yet. I think having two forward angles and five rows to work with makes a huge difference in keeping things organized.

I was really surprised that this control system is very intuitive, with the keys forming a hexagon, I didn't have to look down at the keyboard or do any sort of translation of what I wanted into the keys to press.

Surprisingly, I'm finding this far easier and more absorbing than the square version. That means something, but I'm not sure what apart from my preference for all things hexagonal...

Games based on powers of 2 are now the latest fad?

Certainly exposing the general public to powers of 2 is not a bad thing... especially with computers becoming more ubiquitous in our lives.

A lot easier just using a touch screen but its starting to feel tedious. Also reading the comments about the game taking 4 hrs... maybe I'll just quit before I waste too much time.

I've been making great progress just spamming "AWEAWEAWEAWEAWEAWEAWEAWEAWE"... and then realized that it's going to take hours. I'm done. Fun, though.

This isn't any fun any more...I CAN'T STOP PLAYING!

This is my favorite version of the game, with the doge version coming in a very close second.

Use preventDefault() so the arrow keys won't move the page if there are scrollbars.

I feel like this one is easier.

Typing A, Z, X, D repetitively seems to be an effective strategy.

Dvorak version please!

I played for about 10 minutes and owww does my brain hurt.

Ah, a more creative fork. I like the keyboard mapping.

No, just no.

Now we need a 3D one.

Just crazy! :D

FFF