[HN Gopher] Slide to Unlock
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Slide to Unlock
Author : ivank
Score : 579 points
Date : 2023-05-31 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cs.uwaterloo.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (cs.uwaterloo.ca)
| pintxo wrote:
| "Twister on a touchscreen"
| mrspuratic wrote:
| Coming to a captcha near you RSN :/
| munro wrote:
| amazing, the game eventually froze on me tho ;( ios ff
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| I've been trying to do this for the last 20 minutes on my desktop
| screen...it's not working.
|
| Now there are finger prints all over my screen...
|
| Any tips?
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Slide to unlock ... a new puzzle_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36112310 - May 2023 (4
| comments)
| [deleted]
| yarone wrote:
| It's like traversing a bad "mega menu."
|
| Did you know that "double-click" on early Windows literally meant
| "click the same pixel twice in rapid succession"?
| malfist wrote:
| No, that's not what it meant. You had to click on the same icon
| twice, which was typically 32x32.
| James_K wrote:
| Just finished this game. Great fun and a genuinely unique game
| amid a sea of mobile shlock.
| tobr wrote:
| That's fun! This would be a fun speedrun game.
|
| (To watch. Not to try to actually speedrun yourself. That sounds
| painful, emotionally as well as physically.)
| kderbyma wrote:
| it gets really hard when you need to figure out how to rotate and
| keep multiple fingers on the screen while sliding
| michaelmior wrote:
| I found that for some levels it worked for me to set my phone
| on a table and use my thumb to rotate the screen instead of
| trying to twist my hands.
| pluijzer wrote:
| Cheating tip; use two hands, place your finger on both of the
| sliders, then almost complete the first one, then finish the
| second one.
| misterprime wrote:
| Is that cheating? Seems difficult enough for me, still.
| zokier wrote:
| Is there way to solve the puzzles without doing that?!
| operator-name wrote:
| I don't think so. Some of the 3 or 4 puzzles require
| rotation and cris crossing
| sulam wrote:
| Works fine until you get to the crossing patterns. :)
| null_shift wrote:
| Not sure why, but I found this gave me a lot of anxiety.
|
| I think maybe the focus and fine motor control needed to keep the
| ball within the lines...
| aflag wrote:
| I wish there was a save button
| ugh123 wrote:
| Very cool. Wish there was a bit more wiggle room ("easy" mode) to
| give to younger kids to play with
| hereonout2 wrote:
| Nope, I don't get it sorry, this is so infuriating. A gamified
| version of all the frustrations I have with mobile UX and my fat
| fingers.
| phh wrote:
| I get it. A gamified version of all the frustrations I have
| with mobile UX and my fat fingers exaggerated to absurdity.
| Personally I take it as art, not as a game. I won't play it for
| more than 3 minutes.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Whoosh!
| jefftk wrote:
| Neat! Once it got to three fingers I got stuck pretty quickly,
| though.
| fsto wrote:
| Great job! Fun and innovative!
| afinlayson wrote:
| Why can't I use 2 fingers ....
| flexagoon wrote:
| Great game! Though I'm not sure if I solved the last level in the
| way it was intended to be solved - I wouldn't have been able to
| do it the way I did it if my fingers were like half a cm shorter
| nabakin wrote:
| I solved it with some creative initial positioning. Thumb and
| index of one hand on the curved and middle straight line and my
| other hand index going between the two to reach the start of
| the other curved line
| tomger wrote:
| Really great!
| justin_oaks wrote:
| How far does it go? I hit some really hard ones with 3 fingers. I
| think my phone gets confused if my fingers are too close to each
| other, which makes it especially difficult.
|
| This also feels like playing a game of Operation [1]. The author
| just needs to add an annoying buzzer sound whenever you fail.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_(game)
| zokier wrote:
| I got to four finger ones, but they are bit much to me.
|
| I wonder if there is optimum phone size for this, mine might be
| smidgen too small
| jeffhuys wrote:
| I used an iPhone 12 Pro, and it was pretty hard - couldn't
| get to 3 fingers because the site froze whenever I
| accidentally slightly triggered another gesture. Had to do a
| lot of phone-spinning though, lol. Pretty cool!
| hbn wrote:
| I imagine I'm not at much advantage on my 13 mini
| high_priest wrote:
| My 14 micro is not much of a help aswell.
| jakear wrote:
| Blast you for getting me all excited for a phone I'd
| _immediately_ drop my 7 and run to buy.
| yccs27 wrote:
| It goes up to 4 fingers, and the last one is 3 fingers again
| but basically impossible without switching fingers. Edit: nvm
| its possible without cheating
| nabakin wrote:
| The hardest one for me was the 4 fingered puzzle where you
| had to move all 4 from one side of the screen to the other in
| a line, except the lines overlapped with the neighbors
| multiple times.
| jumploops wrote:
| _Spoiler Alert_
|
| There are 30 levels, though I didn't personally finish.
| Proof[0]
|
| [0]https://imgur.com/a/ldY0IkC
| TrianguloY wrote:
| At least 4 fingers!
| parasti wrote:
| I love a simple idea pushed far beyond expectation. It's a little
| choppy on my phone, though (Firefox Android).
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Works fine on my "underpowered, terribly slow" [1] device, also
| using Firefox.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36103176
| SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
| Doesn't seem to work at all on mine (also Firefox Android).
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Unconventional, but I played this both solo and with my kiddos.
| As a multiplayer co-op game it really shines. Granted it's easier
| than solo, but maneuvering multiple people around a tiny phone
| was absurdly funny.
| quantisan wrote:
| this was fun. Any suggestions for other casual co-op games on
| the phone that I can play with my almost-4 year old?
| propter_hoc wrote:
| Made it to 3 fingers and then couldn't advance as my phone
| interpreted a 3 finger swipe as a screenshot. I'm counting it as
| a win since I learned a new feature of my phone!
| Tistron wrote:
| Had the same problem at first, but moving one finger before the
| others made it work. At four fingers my phone can't do it
| anymore. It seems that it can only detect 3 pressure points at
| a time.
| jmtucu wrote:
| The same, my S23 doesn't recognise 4 touches.
| beefman wrote:
| Reminds me of Cross Fingers, an early iOS game I really enjoyed
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cross-fingers/id337490369
| tobr wrote:
| I would have liked a visual indication for exactly where you went
| off track. With multiple fingers it's not always obvious.
| explaininjs wrote:
| Great game. My only wish is that each level had an associated URL
| (with a nonguessable ID, perhaps). Would make saving and sharing
| much easier.
| majikandy wrote:
| Thoroughly enjoyable. Initially I thought the slide to unlock was
| going to jailbreak my iPhone :)
| redreceipt wrote:
| This is awesome. Gimme cookies please so I can pick up where I
| left off!
| culanuchachamim wrote:
| Just amazing! Thank you!
| [deleted]
| cjdell wrote:
| Multi-touch digitiser acid test. Phone manufacturers take note!
| max0563 wrote:
| This would be a fun game with some UX improvements. It's
| extremely frustrating when the reason I can't finish a puzzle is
| because my finger slipped off the line and not because I just
| don't know the solution. I stopped playing because of how
| frustrating that was.
| [deleted]
| Eater_of_food wrote:
| It's a dexterity game. Think of it like Jenga, even if you know
| which block to pull out, the tower can still fall if you don't
| do it cleanly.
|
| At least with this you don't need to rebuild the whole tower!
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Twister is the metaphor for me. I had to lock my orientation
| so that I could rotate the phone around to untie some of two
| and three finger ones.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| This helped me to find out that my Huawei phone had "AI Touch"
| enabled. That apparently is a feature to touch any image with two
| fingers and the super smart AI finds out what is shown in the
| picture and where to buy it.
|
| Goes without saying that I immediately disabled this. /shrug
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Amazing. That's a feature you'd expect at the top of an HN
| brainstorm for comically bad, far fetched phone ideas.
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| sure, but only because HN is mostly men working in tech.
| these types of features are ridiculously popular among women.
| (not all women of course)
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Citation needed
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| I can't provide a direct citation but I worked on image
| detection shopping for Kakao[1] and can say from personal
| observation that at least in Korea these features are
| ridiculously popular (and profitable) among women.
| According to Forbes women drive 70-80% of all consumer
| purchasing decisions in the US[2] so I can't imagine it's
| that rare there either, but I could be wrong and this
| could be an entirely eastern thing but given Huawei is a
| Chinese company I would bet it's a very popular feature
| for the phone.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakao
|
| 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescontentmarketing/20
| 19/05/...
| grishka wrote:
| Doesn't work well on phones though, you really need a tablet.
| When you get to 4 fingers, it starts randomly losing track of a
| finger or two when fingers get close to each other. I tried two
| different Android phones and an iPhone.
| nabakin wrote:
| Yeah phones are hard mode but still possible. I did it on a 5
| inch screen
| beAbU wrote:
| I was unable to get past the second 3 finger one. It kept
| glitching out when I put down my third finger.
|
| Samsung Galaxy S20
| _nalply wrote:
| or a laptop with touchscreen
| bsimpson wrote:
| Won't even let you start on a computer with DevTools and touch
| emulation.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| Reminds me of elite beat agents on DS
| genericuser256 wrote:
| Seems like this was made by Craig Kaplan
| (https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/). Had him for graphics while at
| school there, and he was a fantastic professor
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| +1 csk is as good as it gets. Had him for my first CS class
| there and to the end of my time there, that class stood out
| both in terms of quality and enjoyment/engagement.
|
| If you're at Waterloo and have the chance to be in Craig's
| class, jump at it.
| tobr wrote:
| His work on aperiodic monotiles has been in the news very
| recently. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36119920
| thefringthing wrote:
| Just the other day he posted about how they were able to
| modify the one member of the family identified in their paper
| which is not an aperiodic monotile into one that tiles
| without reflections.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| That's just silly. Bravo.
| xg15 wrote:
| I think that's the first nontrivial use of multitouch that I have
| seen in the wild (i.e. that is not basic "pinch to zoom" stuff).
|
| Really cool!
| omnibrain wrote:
| How about touch instruments like GeoShred?
| https://apps.apple.com/de/app/geoshred/id1064769019
| rkagerer wrote:
| What's annoying and counter to popular convention / user
| expectations is that you have to keep your finger in the
| established path to keep grip of the "ball". (S'pecially given
| your finger often blocks the view of it).
| James_K wrote:
| I'm not sure that the game would work without this restriction.
| If you kept grip of the ball regardless of if your finger was
| on the path none of the game's puzzles would work since you
| could just move your fingers wherever you wanted without losing
| the ball.
| version_five wrote:
| That's the whole point of the game, no? It was what I expected.
| Are some slide to unlock bars "ratchets" that stay where you
| left them?
| londons_explore wrote:
| I think it is less intuitive to non-iOS users... Android has
| "swipe up to unlock" and there isn't really a UI element.
| vilunov wrote:
| iOS has been "swipe up to unlock" for some time now, as
| well as Android vendors had "slide to unlock" lockscreens
| earlier.
| _popcornLurker wrote:
| Uhm haha. On behalf of our community I would like to say
| that I was perfectly capable of understanding this
| mechanism thank you. Pretty sure the reason for the
| unintuitiveness for some people must rely on something else
| entirely.
| gffrd wrote:
| Why is it annoying?
|
| The feedback is immediate and highly discoverable.
|
| The Lock Screen on your phone has totally different criteria
| (ease, muscle memory) than a toy that uses the same metaphor
| (fun/challenging)
|
| Also: isn't it more fun this way??
| rapind wrote:
| I actually liked it, but my daughters immediate reaction was
| "This is so annoying" (but in all caps).
|
| Meanwhile, I find typing anything on my phone very annoying.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I couldn't get past the super hard captcha.
|
| Oh thats the game!
| Tmpod wrote:
| Couldn't get it to work on my Pixel 4a, kept asking to use a
| tablet or a phone... .-.
| noman-land wrote:
| This is extremely fun! But reloading the page loses your progress
| :(.
| TrianguloY wrote:
| It doesn't, but the first white horizontal swipe is always
| needed. Unfortunately there is a "reset" button that, when
| pressed, resets your progress without confirmation.
|
| I was at 4 fingers :(
| tambourine_man wrote:
| This is amazing, so glad there are people doing this kind of
| thing just for the fun of it. Great idea and execution.
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| If you find this fun, you might like _The Witness_ , a game with
| a similar gameplay mechanic as part of its core loop:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/210970/The_Witness/
| cglong wrote:
| Or _The Looker_ , if you like to laugh at the same time :)
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985690/The_Looker/
| operator-name wrote:
| This is pretty fun! It seems the starting position of your
| fingers is important, as is the ability to rotate the device.
| Interesting to see how many mobile HN users there are too.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Technically you don't need to rotate the device (I did it with
| my touchscreen-enabled laptop), but you will have to get out of
| your chair!
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(page generated 2023-05-31 23:00 UTC)