[HN Gopher] Infinite Craft
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Infinite Craft
        
       Author : kretaceous
       Score  : 594 points
       Date   : 2024-01-31 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (neal.fun)
 (TXT) w3m dump (neal.fun)
        
       | sagz wrote:
       | Always a delight to see a Neal fun link here.
       | 
       | I was able to get to Dandelion after many combos! Hoping it gets
       | to human soon.
       | 
       | Will try to extract the full tree from the code :)
        
         | JeremyNT wrote:
         | According to a tweet, this thing is actually using LLaMA II[0].
         | I guess he probably caches results so it doesn't recompute each
         | time, but as you go further you start finding combinations that
         | are apparently novel and take quite a while to generate (or
         | fail completely).
         | 
         | [0] https://nitter.cz/nealagarwal/status/1747284257582506102#m
        
         | RA2lover wrote:
         | achieved with this:
         | 
         | wind + earth -> dust + dust -> sand + fire -> glass + fire ->
         | lens + lens -> telescope + lens -> galileo
         | 
         | glass + sand -> hourglass + sand -> time + gallileo -> einstein
         | + time -> relativity + einstein -> theory + time -> evolution +
         | time -> human
         | 
         | There's probably a shorter and less convoluted path somewhere.
        
       | dgsm98 wrote:
       | Lost City + Earth broke infinity.
        
       | tibbon wrote:
       | I don't get it; maybe it's broken in my browser. I can drag 4
       | types of items to a floating grid that connects them but then
       | nothing happens.
       | 
       | EDIT: Ah, you drag items on _top_ of each other for them to
       | change. Instructions unclear, and I am dumb.
        
         | cjauvin wrote:
         | You are not dumb at all, I think it's not terribly clear
         | indeed.
        
         | neogodless wrote:
         | Thank you! Yes the instructions were missing, and it's hard not
         | to assume that Firefox isn't supported. I was having the same
         | (bad) experience as you.
        
         | mrjh wrote:
         | Not dumb at all. It's bad UI.
        
           | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
           | I didn't have a problem understanding it, but then again,
           | I've played these Alchemy games before. It was one of the
           | first games I ever played on my first Android back in 2010.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | The lines are misdirection and need to be removed.
         | 
         | What's with all the lines to the little moving dots? Haven't
         | figured out what those do yet.
        
           | nomel wrote:
           | Nothing. They're completely confusing. At first, I thought
           | maybe the little specs is where the combination happened, so
           | as they passed between a set, they would automatically get
           | crafted based on that set, in a neat chaotic way. Nope. Then
           | I thought maybe I had to set up the "recipes" and wait, or
           | click things, or I don't know.
           | 
           | I didn't realize it's just a basic drag drop combination
           | thing until I saw the video, after coming here to see if
           | anyone else was having trouble with Safari.
        
             | NegativeLatency wrote:
             | I wonder if that's how it worked originally but was dialed
             | back because you'd have n^2 queries per UI interaction
        
         | crazygringo wrote:
         | > _Instructions unclear, and I am dumb._
         | 
         | 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.
        
         | alluro2 wrote:
         | You can just click / tap on 2 items consecutively, without drag
         | and drop.
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | I don't understand what you mean. Clicking does absolutely
           | nothing for me. Clicking items in the right column does
           | nothing; clicking items I've already placed does nothing.
           | Clicking items consecutively does nothing, in either part of
           | the screen.
           | 
           | I don't see how to use this at all without drag and drop.
        
             | ipsum2 wrote:
             | On mobile you click, on desktop you drag and drop.
        
       | jasonjmcghee wrote:
       | I propose Spock %
        
       | blah-yeah wrote:
       | Super interesting. Who the heck is Neal?! Why and how?! hahaha
       | 
       | Fun stuff. I wonder what the codebase looks like
        
         | bordercases wrote:
         | I'm guessing is autogenerated by LLMS completions, it's non
         | deterministic.
        
       | burrish wrote:
       | Classic game, but there is some merge that make no sense to me,
       | how does fire and whale make a dragon ?
        
         | voxic11 wrote:
         | Its driven by a LLM. Apparently fire + whale = dragon according
         | to multiple LLMs I was able to recreate the behavior with
         | chatgpt
         | https://chat.openai.com/share/a4b53cbf-904d-4f03-a8db-e7980d...
        
         | theonething wrote:
         | A biblical Leviathan has been depicted as a whale/dragon like
         | fire breathing creature.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan
        
           | thfuran wrote:
           | And there are definitely other (vaguely) biblical
           | combinations like Big Bang + Clay = Adam
        
         | shawabawa3 wrote:
         | Big animal + fire = fiery big animal
        
         | hombre_fatal wrote:
         | What do you think a better response would be to Fire + Whale?
        
         | tvb12 wrote:
         | I got dragon from fire + swamp.
         | 
         | Another strange one was puddle + rock = pudding + dragon =
         | custard.
        
       | smarkov wrote:
       | I couldn't find any information but does this use some kind of
       | LLM to derive the combinations from? It makes a request to the
       | backend every time you combine items which sometimes takes
       | >500ms, and also supports some really wild combinations that I
       | highly doubt someone has taken the time to come up with. It would
       | also explain why the icons are emoji's, it would be fairly
       | trivial to ask ChatGPT to give you the result of Fire + Water and
       | an accompanying emoji.
        
         | JeremyNT wrote:
         | You are correct according to this tweet [0]. That may become
         | inaccessible as Nitter dies, but the text is:
         | 
         | > _Working on an endless crafting game with llama 2_
         | 
         | along with a video of this game.
         | 
         | [0] https://nitter.cz/nealagarwal/status/1747284257582506102#m
        
           | samstave wrote:
           | Neat.
           | 
           | Campfire+sushi took about 10 seconds before it gave up and
           | did not combine them.
        
             | Aachen wrote:
             | There's tons of combinations that take forever and nothing
             | ends up happening. That's how I got around to the comment
             | thread (clean+satan is why I'm here): I'm waiting for the
             | latest combination to time out
        
               | araes wrote:
               | Similar. Snowmobile Farm and Sandbox Farm both appear to
               | timeout with no response.
               | 
               | However, that said, the idea itself is a neat idea, and
               | could quite easily be turned into game ideas somewhere.
        
             | jarboot wrote:
             | The request looks like "https://neal.fun/api/infinite-
             | craft/pair?first=Phoenix&secon..." so it's probably
             | typically caching the combination of phoenix+seeds but if
             | there is no cache entry it would use llama to make up
             | something. If there's a lot of attention on the site the
             | llm service might be down or overloaded. And given the
             | exponential/factoral (?) amount of combinations this may be
             | reached surprisingly quickly. Just a guess.
             | 
             | As an aside, the game is technically interesting, being a
             | really simple example of using llm generation for game
             | mechanics. But it is not engaging at all and feels
             | nonsensical to me, especially when compared to little
             | alchemy https://littlealchemy2.com/.
             | 
             | I'm not trying to be negative and this isn't a dig on
             | creativity of the wonderful Neal but more points to the
             | immaturity of llms applied to games, maybe to my
             | overexposure to chatgpt, and maybe a prediction that human
             | touch will always be required to make something
             | entertaining. I'm curious how llms will fit into an
             | engaging game experience in the future.
        
               | hombre_fatal wrote:
               | > But it is not engaging at all and feels nonsensical to
               | me, especially when compared to little alchemy
               | https://littlealchemy2.com/.
               | 
               | On the other hand, Little Alchemy doesn't have answers to
               | the most basic combinations. Air + Earth = Dust, but Dust
               | doesn't combine with Water. Earth + Water = Mud, but Mud
               | doesn't combine with Air. Earth + Earth = Land, but Land
               | doesn't combine with Fire.
               | 
               | It may be more sensical since it limits combinations to
               | 0.01% of what's possible, but I don't think that makes it
               | more interesting.
        
               | SirMaster wrote:
               | >As an aside, the game is technically interesting, being
               | a really simple example of using llm generation for game
               | mechanics. But it is not engaging at all and feels
               | nonsensical to me
               | 
               | You just gotta make a game out of it.
               | 
               | For example challenge yourself to try to craft "pizza".
               | 
               | Can even try to do it in as least number of crafts as
               | possible.
               | 
               | Point is, just crafting random things to see what it
               | spits out is OK, but trying to use your own logic to
               | combine things to get to an arbitrary solution you come
               | up with is much more engaging, at least to me.
               | 
               | Challenge your friends to craft some specific "thing".
               | Think of something you might think could be hard to craft
               | to, and ask them to do the same and see who can get there
               | first, or in the fewest steps.
        
               | jandrese wrote:
               | That's a fairly big challenge since the game gets less
               | coherent the longer it goes on. The early matches
               | generally make sense, but after about 3 levels you start
               | getting loops, and after 5 levels you start getting
               | nonsense or outright failures from queries.
               | 
               | If you figure each of the things is an input parameter to
               | a LLM this makes a lot of sense. They tend to have short
               | memories and struggle with higher level introspection.
               | Great for demos, but fraught with problems when using
               | them to do real work.
        
           | andrei wrote:
           | just link to the real thing :) [0]
           | 
           | [0]:
           | https://twitter.com/nealagarwal/status/1747284257582506102
        
             | Aachen wrote:
             | Such that it's already dead?
        
           | madeofpalk wrote:
           | Ahh, neat application of it. Explains the somewhat dubious
           | combinations I was seeing.
        
             | hinkley wrote:
             | Forest + fire = smoke
             | 
             | Mud + water = swamp
             | 
             | Swamp + plant = Venus Flytrap
             | 
             | Okay, okay.
             | 
             | Venus Flytrap + Smoke = smoke detector
             | 
             | <confused smile meme>
        
               | Night_Thastus wrote:
               | Tree + Water = river was also pretty baffling.
               | 
               | Unfortunate. I can see the appeal of using an LLM for
               | this but the results are pretty mediocre.
        
               | ProllyInfamous wrote:
               | Tree + Water = River
               | 
               | This is a great result, a branching of water/wood.
        
               | cushpush wrote:
               | low-key genius or high-key misunderstood
        
               | hombre_fatal wrote:
               | Meh, what would be your great response to Tree + Water?
               | 
               | A human can only generate a small fraction of the
               | combinations and would have a hard time coming up with
               | most combinations which are already nonsensical.
               | 
               | What is your non-disappointing idea for, idk, Tears +
               | Pottery (AI: Bowl) or Money + Salt Lick (AI: Cow) or
               | Skull + Lake (AI: Loch Ness) or Dracula + Pirate (AI:
               | Vampirate) or Curse + Money (AI: Debt)? Now do that
               | thousands of more times.
               | 
               | The infinite aspect is the thing that keeps it
               | interesting, I think. The fun is getting a new, weird
               | result like "Dracula" and "Pot of Gold" and seeing if you
               | can generate new weird results from the existing set.
        
               | ceroxylon wrote:
               | Tree + Water is easy: Mangrove, Bald Cypress, Rhizophora,
               | etc
        
               | hombre_fatal wrote:
               | I wouldn't consider those to be better. You're enhancing
               | the tree side of the equation but gave no examples of the
               | water side.
               | 
               | And why didn't you do the rest of my examples? ;)
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Jungle
               | 
               | Forest
               | 
               | Fruit
               | 
               | Nuts
        
               | TomK32 wrote:
               | Loch Ness? I skipped to the Loch Ness Monster. Got the
               | Lake only later on. And then I got Nessie.
               | 
               | This is a Quagmire
        
               | TomK32 wrote:
               | Porkosaurus, Soup Nazi, Sphinxie, Sodium Chloride,
               | Abdominable Snowman, Baconator and both Yeti and
               | Godzilla. And Yogazilla which is a "First Discovery".
               | 
               | Found myself: Thomas the locomotive
        
               | gs17 wrote:
               | > Tears + Pottery (AI: Bowl)
               | 
               | Urn
        
               | grotorea wrote:
               | If you look at a river system from space I guess it looks
               | tree-like with branches.
        
               | cushpush wrote:
               | the tree of water is the global river system." very
               | hydrological
        
               | ilaksh wrote:
               | Obviously the prompt to the LLM is just to create the
               | most obvious association. It may not mention "crafting"
               | at all. Maybe it does though. Is there something obvious
               | to craft that uses a tree and water in the process?
        
               | raible wrote:
               | Weed + tree = bong!
        
               | ActionHank wrote:
               | Megalopolis + Volcano = Pompeii
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | Sushi + Asia = Japan
               | 
               | Japan + Destruction = Godzilla
               | 
               | Godzilla + Megalodon = Cthulhu
               | 
               | <drops mic>
        
               | recursivecaveat wrote:
               | I got (hurricane + crocodile = hurricodile) lol
        
               | frud wrote:
               | Fish + fire = sushi
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | Did you know that Bill Gates is the richest samurai?
        
               | MrJohz wrote:
               | I found fish + fire = sushi amusing - it isn't
               | necessarily wrong, but it also doesn't feel right
               | either...
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | How did you get to fish? Because boy do I have a story
               | for you.
               | 
               | Mine starts in Atlantis, then Poseidon gives me a fish.
               | Then two fish turned into a shark and I ended up with a
               | sharknado.
               | 
               | Then I found the titanic, we hit an iceberg, I found a
               | treasure and then pirates chased me, but I got away, sold
               | the treasure for money and became the richest man, then
               | climbed Mt Everest, and later had a tea party.
               | 
               | Anyway, there has to be a better way to get fish than
               | Unda da Sea.
        
               | Zobat wrote:
               | Window + Dune = Sandwich
               | 
               | That one surprised me.
               | 
               | Sandwich + Sphinx = Sphinxwich
               | 
               | This one delighted me. The Sphinxwich doesn't combine
               | well with other stuff though.
        
               | cartucho1 wrote:
               | I got Atlantis + Spongebob = Atlantis Squarepantis :D
        
               | sva_ wrote:
               | My favorite was Lotus Flower + Mud = Buddha
        
               | tmtvl wrote:
               | North America + Fire = Canada. Naturally.
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | And if you set Canada on fire?
               | 
               | Maple syrup.
        
               | drekipus wrote:
               | I got swamp with plant + water.
               | 
               | Then swamp + fire = dragon
        
           | WaxProlix wrote:
           | Off topic, why is nitter dying? I've noticed the main
           | instance's SSL cert is down for a bit now, and other
           | instances are pretty rate limited. Did something
           | happen/change?
        
             | burkaman wrote:
             | All (non-paid) Twitter accounts are now rate-limited, which
             | makes a shared Nitter instance untenable. It's probably
             | still possible to host a personal instance for yourself,
             | although they might ban your account for it.
             | 
             | https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983#issuecomment-19
             | 1...
        
             | password4321 wrote:
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39161194
        
           | dhc02 wrote:
           | Might be worth using farside for the link, which I found out
           | about today on HN.
           | 
           | https://farside.link/https://twitter.com/nealagarwal/status/.
           | ..
        
         | leroman wrote:
         | I thought they were using some kind of vector space searches
         | like embedding.. no idea if that's the case
        
           | IshKebab wrote:
           | Yeah I'm pretty sure you could do this just with the classic
           | word embeddings (king =queen + man - woman). Maybe it doesn't
           | work as well as with a full LLM.
        
         | Jaxan wrote:
         | This might explain how I got "Super volcano" and "Supervolcano"
        
         | Calavar wrote:
         | An LLM seems like overkill for a project like this. Why not
         | word2vec?
        
           | legel wrote:
           | I had the same thought.
           | 
           | Some of the surprising discoveries I made with word2vec
           | embeddings:
           | 
           | human + robot ~= cyborg
           | 
           | silicon + electricity ~= solar cells
           | 
           | virtual reality + reality ~= augmented reality
           | 
           | As reported here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160806040004i
           | f_/http://blog.yh...
        
         | lovegrenoble wrote:
         | I love silly and pointless web pages, here another one:
         | https://sharkle.com
        
           | hmcq6 wrote:
           | First click brought me right back to neal.fun lol
        
       | slater wrote:
       | i think we hugged it, folks
        
       | lubesGordi wrote:
       | We need something like this but with emergent phenotypes instead
       | of hard-coded. How would that work?
        
         | SamBam wrote:
         | That's what this is, it's driven by an LLM.
        
           | erikerikson wrote:
           | ...with caching
        
       | f1nlay wrote:
       | Was working on the very same idea alongside a friend of mine, we
       | happened to launch a few weeks ago. Quite a lot more fleshed out
       | than Neal's version, if anyone wants to check it out!
       | 
       | https://allchemy.io/
       | 
       | Edit: sorry if anyone is bumping into errors! We're running into
       | bottlenecks with our supposedly auto-scaling database - working
       | on it
        
         | artemonster wrote:
         | the animations are tedious
        
           | f1nlay wrote:
           | You should be able to click right through them - but agreed.
           | Will add an option to disable them in the near future!
        
           | duxup wrote:
           | I like them.
           | 
           | I assume these sites are about exploring lots of different
           | things, even if they don't work as much as some would like.
        
           | blorenz wrote:
           | This. Duolingo is in the same vein which interrupts my flow.
           | Animations shouldn't continuously block the interaction of
           | the experience. The majority should probably be ancillary and
           | be a visual flourish.
        
             | stronglikedan wrote:
             | If you use Duolingo app on a phone that supports power
             | saving mode, it significantly cuts down the animations.
        
           | qwertox wrote:
           | This is like Quake vs. modern games.
           | 
           | In Quake, you get the story in the booklet and it's up to you
           | to learn the game.
           | 
           | In modern games you're constantly interrupted with an
           | explanation of what you can do, should do, and so on.
           | 
           | I love this one (Infinite Craft) because it's up to you to
           | discover and discovery is really fast because nothing
           | interrupts you.
           | 
           | allchemy.io should have a mode without animations and
           | explanations, maybe explanations when you hover over crafted
           | objects on the right pane.
        
             | david422 wrote:
             | > In Quake, you get the story in the booklet and it's up to
             | you to learn the game.
             | 
             | Or any old console game. Part of the fun was cracking open
             | the little instruction pamphlet and reading all about each
             | enemy and each weapon with little pictures etc.
        
               | f1nlay wrote:
               | Worth noting that Allchemy lets you peer through every
               | single item generated by anyone, via the Itempedia:
               | https://allchemy.io/items
               | 
               | You can find some interesting stuff!
        
         | etrautmann wrote:
         | is this completely independently developed? the literal exact
         | same idea at the same time? crazy
        
           | SnooSux wrote:
           | This idea is pretty common, I remember playing a similar game
           | on my iPod Touch nearly 10 years ago
        
             | burkaman wrote:
             | Maybe this one:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caKj6rGEdyM. I was obsessed
             | with this for about a week in high school.
        
           | f1nlay wrote:
           | Completely independently! We're a team of two University
           | students funding this out of our own pockets. About 8 months
           | work (on and off) from first prototype.
        
           | hipadev23 wrote:
           | They're both inspired by Little Alchemy 1 & 2, PopCap's
           | Alchemy, or if we really squint, The Incredible Machine from
           | 1993.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine
        
             | etrautmann wrote:
             | wow, I totally forgot, thanks! I remember playing that game
             | or a derivative, I think on my father's 386 sometime around
             | 1995?
        
             | neuronexmachina wrote:
             | Come to think of it, LLMs with the right prompts would be
             | pretty handy for a Scribblenauts clone:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribblenauts
             | 
             | Probably outputting a format supporting the same
             | characteristics as the Object Editor:
             | https://scribblenauts.fandom.com/wiki/Object_editor
        
             | rrr_oh_man wrote:
             | OH GOD THANK YOU! I was playing this on a Packard Bell
             | Windows '95 PC with integrated loud speakers and a mic.
             | Super high tech for the time.
             | 
             | BUT: The German-language full version of that game had been
             | pre-installed in the Start Menu (?!), so if you deleted the
             | start menu entry by accident, you'd need to reinstall
             | Windows to get that game back. Or at least, that was young
             | me's solution to the problem.
        
             | omoikane wrote:
             | Also "The Alchemy Game" from 1997.
             | 
             | https://archive.org/details/msdos_Alchemy_Game_The_1997
        
           | helboi4 wrote:
           | This idea is super old. There was a game like this that was
           | popular like 10 years ago. This is a worse version.
        
         | jerbearito wrote:
         | Love it. Would it be possible to speed up the animations?
        
           | f1nlay wrote:
           | Will add an ability to speed up/outright disable animations
           | in the next update! Was a bit of an oversight on our part as
           | once you start amassing a decent amount of items you
           | encounter the new item animation less frequently - but in the
           | early game it's definitely quite irritating!
        
         | pantsforbirds wrote:
         | I think the slow animation + fullscreen notification removes a
         | good portion of the fun of the game. The stats are neat, but I
         | wonder if using a log feed (like a killfeed in call of duty)
         | would be a more enjoyable experience for the user. I love how
         | fast infinite craft is to iterate through the combinations
         | while the "allchemy" approach makes it feel like I have a
         | crafting time attached to every new combination
        
           | enonimal wrote:
           | Just tagging here to say I enjoy the site, but I agree with
           | my parent ^ the popup slows me down
        
           | rrr_oh_man wrote:
           | Absolutely +1 Came here to say this
        
         | obiefernandez wrote:
         | This is so much fun.
         | 
         | I was just the first to craft MUCK ASTLEY... definitely gave me
         | a good laugh
        
           | f1nlay wrote:
           | Glad to hear you're enjoying it - an excellent item to
           | discover!
        
         | niceice wrote:
         | Good work! What kind of traction are you getting on the premium
         | version? That approach is sensible given the underlying costs.
         | Would love to get an idea of how it worked out in practice.
        
         | rgbrgb wrote:
         | I love it and agree with other commenters on animations. Any
         | traction on subscriptions? I'm always curious if there's a biz
         | model that works for this kind of game on web (besides ads).
         | It's funny because I think you could absolutely sell it for
         | $4.99 on the app store if you throw it in a native shell but I
         | have a hard time imagining people paying for it in their
         | browser. Would be happily surprised if that's not the case!
        
       | dgrin91 wrote:
       | Its fun, but annoying that you have to do a lot of mouse
       | dragging. Some more click-based interface would be better.
       | 
       | Edit: some measure of progress would also be good. I cant know
       | how much I missed
       | 
       | Edit2: Megalodon + Cemetery seems to break the system, spits back
       | nothing.
        
         | supriyo-biswas wrote:
         | It seems like you can tap on mobile. I don't know if the author
         | changed this after your comment.
        
         | volemo wrote:
         | I don't think any measure of completion is applicable here: the
         | combinations are generated by an LLM (and the game even claims
         | to be infinite).
        
         | slmjkdbtl wrote:
         | This would work better on mobile where dragging is easier and
         | more intuitive
        
       | srackey wrote:
       | Hey! It's that old game Doodle God!
        
         | qnsoaejacniln wrote:
         | Thank you! I swore that I played a game just like this, but was
         | totally blanking on the name.
        
         | LilLegendGamerz wrote:
         | Also Little Alchemy!
        
       | digging wrote:
       | Games like this already exist and have comparable complexity, so
       | calling it infinite and using an LLM backend feels overhyped.
       | 
       | For example, Castle + Fortress = Castle?
       | 
       | City + Town = Castle. Castle + Wall = City?
       | 
       | Metropolis + City = Megalopolis. Ok we're getting somewhere cool
       | here, let's see how big it gets: Megalopolis + City =
       | Metropolis?!
       | 
       | Finally, it just _failed_ to combine War + Tunnel. It blinks for
       | a minute and then gives up. I would have said  "Sappers"? Edit:
       | There are actually many such failures for higher-order
       | combinations which is strictly not infinite. Other combinations
       | described above might technically fit the bill but ceasing
       | functionality does not : /
        
         | etrautmann wrote:
         | not the OP but as a fun exploratory hobby project, you don't
         | think the presentation is reasonable? seems totally fair to me
        
           | digging wrote:
           | I mean, not really, no. I'm not trying to be super critical
           | here, just, it's not even presented as a exploratory LLM
           | project. It's only presented as "infinite", and it's... not.
        
         | furyofantares wrote:
         | > There are actually many such failures for higher-order
         | combinations which is strictly not infinite
         | 
         | I suspect a service error, either the service/LLM not
         | responding fast enough sometimes when a combination isn't
         | already known, or the LLM not giving a usable result.
         | 
         | I mean, there aren't infinite emojis or words so it isn't gonna
         | be infinite but I think some of the errors I've seen have been
         | more transient.
        
         | Jare wrote:
         | I just described it to my colleagues as
         | 
         | > this uses GenAI in order to attempt being truly infinite, or
         | at least not bounded by their ability to design and input
         | combinations themselves
         | 
         | It's fair to go for that name imho. Not strictly correct, but
         | 100% fair.
        
           | digging wrote:
           | That's just generative or procedural though. It's ok of
           | course that it's not truly infinite, I'm just posting because
           | it was _disappointingly finite_. There were concepts I was
           | _trying_ to build up to that simply didn 't exist. So I'm not
           | even sure if it's less bounded than human design, just less
           | manual effort to build.
           | 
           | All I'm saying really is, if it had just been called "AI
           | Generative Craft" I would have had nothing to say in the
           | comments. I would have gotten what I expected.
        
             | thfuran wrote:
             | >There were concepts I was trying to build up to that
             | simply didn't exist.
             | 
             | They may not, but that you didn't find them precisely where
             | you expected doesn't really convince me that they don't.
        
         | magneticnorth wrote:
         | I mean, there are only a finite number of words in the English
         | language, so of course something like this isn't truly
         | infinite.
         | 
         | But I've wandered off into a space of fantastical creatures:
         | rainbow + explosion = unicorn, from there I've gotten phoenix,
         | "steam unicorn", narwhalicorn.
         | 
         | Others have gotten into food items? I don't even know how I'd
         | get there. And you've gotten into infrastructure and war.
         | 
         | There's enough to explore here that I'm ok with it being called
         | infinite.
        
         | sprobertson wrote:
         | I've found retrying after a bit will often return the new
         | result. I suspect the frontend is timing out before the backend
         | comes up with a result, which is eventually cached by the time
         | of the second attempt
        
       | Aromasin wrote:
       | Water + Fish Stew seemed to break everything for me!
        
         | jamespullar wrote:
         | Kite + Mountain froze it for me as well. Refreshing then wiped
         | all progress.
        
       | catapart wrote:
       | Very fun!
       | 
       | I'm seeing tons of slowdown when I try to merge things like
       | "Sagitarius" and "Archer" and "Storm" and "Centaur". I guess this
       | is the nature of the build, but I'm at least a little surprised
       | it's hitting this kind of performance issue after only tens of
       | objects.
       | 
       | Anyway, all of that aside, I'm having a lot of fun seeing what
       | emerges from the combinations and I love that the wackier the
       | merge result, the more fun it is to try it against all of the
       | previous objects. Quite an addicting little loop! Great job!
        
       | csteinbe wrote:
       | This is very similar to https://littlealchemy.com or
       | https://littlealchemy2.com
        
         | ninjahatori wrote:
         | This was one of my favorite online games in childhood. Came
         | here for commenting the same!
        
         | Xeyz0r wrote:
         | Exactly, and I just couldn't remember what it reminded me of!
         | How much time have I spent on Little Alchemy
        
         | ehsankia wrote:
         | I was very confused at first too, and didn't understand the
         | difference. As the other comments in the thread allude to
         | though, this instead an LLM to allow for a much much larger
         | number of combinations, which is the "neal.fun" twist on it.
         | 
         | I do wish it was a bit better stated on the page itself.
        
       | MintPaw wrote:
       | Dandelion Patch + Gold = timeout?
        
       | terabytest wrote:
       | Something looks broken. As soon as you join two elements into an
       | unusual combination it stops generating a response.
        
       | duxup wrote:
       | The sound is really satisfying.
        
       | oneepic wrote:
       | _In the beginning, there were four elements. Some asshole came
       | over and banged them all together like rocks to see what fit
       | together. The first life on Earth was dragons, plants, and
       | vampires, somehow._
        
       | qwertox wrote:
       | I love this. No explanation, nothing. Just drag, drop and see.
       | 
       | If I could only store the state, maybe download a JSON file which
       | I could later drop into the editor again to restore, that would
       | be great.
        
       | Brajeshwar wrote:
       | My team and I were ghost developers to many companies,
       | developers, and book authors in the hay days of Macromedia/Adobe
       | Flash.
       | 
       | We were approached to build a bunch of learning lessons for
       | teachers to teach kids - primarily focusing on human anatomy.
       | Instead of building separate lessons, we built a generator tool
       | for the teachers to drag and drop various combinations and
       | permutations that produce almost infinite lesson variations.
       | 
       | The end customer was Pearson Publishing, and I heard they won
       | awards and stuff. Our client was a good person and even paid us
       | extra for doing the better version of the product they had in
       | mind.
       | 
       | That tool was like this and a few others, as mentioned in the
       | comments. But all in ActionScript Flash, complete with sounds,
       | laughter tracks, and ever-expanding sprites of body parts. It was
       | one fun and fulfiling product.
        
         | duderific wrote:
         | I miss Flash and all the cool capabilities it had. At a
         | previous company, we built a tool that would allow a teacher to
         | record a video review of a student's animation work, while
         | showing, scrubbing and annotating that work simultaneously. On
         | playback, the annotations would be synced with the video. Good
         | luck pulling that off with Javascript.
        
       | ProllyInfamous wrote:
       | It has A DOUBLE RAINBOW (I have no recollection of its creation,
       | but it is a real emoji/combo).
        
       | obiefernandez wrote:
       | Surprisingly addictive
        
       | iandanforth wrote:
       | Frankly I want to watch an animation of all the combinations as
       | they are discovered/created over time from their backend. Seeing
       | a growing 'tech tree' from the exploration and imaginations of
       | users would be delightful.
        
         | rkagerer wrote:
         | Barackasaurus was fun.
        
       | brennopost wrote:
       | Gonna steal some recipes for mine: https://elemental-
       | emojis.vercel.app/
        
       | joshelgar wrote:
       | Saw this on Neal's twitter a couple of days ago, it inspired me
       | to make the food version :)
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/joshelgar/status/1750141793377686000
        
       | BD103 wrote:
       | This reminds of Little Alchemy, which used to be popular a few
       | years ago
        
       | Minor49er wrote:
       | Jane + Library creates a Content-Security-Policy error in Firefox
       | 122 for Mac (looks like it should turn into Book normally)
       | 
       | Also, ashes + water = soup. I need to try some more recipes
        
       | souvlakee wrote:
       | Cannot craft Pottery and Tobacco. Error.
        
       | chasingthewind wrote:
       | My favorite combo so far was Alien + Buddha = Yoda :D
        
         | Aachen wrote:
         | Sunday + Hell = https://lgms.nl/p/cau/?b64&c84oLUrOUAQA (not
         | sure whether to immediately reveal the spoiler because I feel
         | it's kinda guessable)
        
       | All4All wrote:
       | Are some combinations just not possible, or am I doing something
       | incorrectly here? For instance, "Dragon" and "Yin-Yang" do not
       | seem to merge (yet logically seem ripe for combination).
        
         | Aerbil313 wrote:
         | The backend is probably overloaded right now. Wait some and try
         | again.
        
       | slmjkdbtl wrote:
       | The sound effect for successful combination is 80% the fun
        
       | baq wrote:
       | Bug report: I got to 'Mega Mega Mega Mega Mega Mega Mega Mega
       | Mega Mega' and it can't be combined with anything
        
         | ProllyInfamous wrote:
         | I believe most LLM APIs prevent you from repeating (or asking
         | to repeat) identical words. It's in ChatGPT's TOS (because it
         | seems to occassional lead to revealing original training text).
         | 
         | Either that or the backend is completely overloaded and/or
         | unable to handle more than ten of somethings.
        
           | baq wrote:
           | It looked like an UI issue of some sort. It didn't even try
           | to merge.
        
       | Avicebron wrote:
       | It invented narlwhalicorn from narwhal + unicorn, cool
        
       | kkukshtel wrote:
       | Stuff like this a harbinger of the types of game that will start
       | coming out of LLMs IMO - things that haven't necessarily _not_
       | been done before, but things where an LLM can act as a core
       | weakly-type "kernel" that can be run to generate new output from
       | arbitrary input. The people pointing out the prior examples are
       | sort of missing the point, as all those require explicitly
       | declaring the bounds of the game, whereas the bounds here are
       | more a limitation of LLM understanding instead of direct effort
       | to declare valid interactions.
        
       | wly_cdgr wrote:
       | This is a clone of Little Alchemy, a game (that I happen to know
       | about because it's made by someone I know and respect) that's
       | been out for about a decade. https://littlealchemy.com/
       | 
       | It's fine to clone existing games as a gamedev exercise and/or to
       | iterate meaningfully on the design, and to be fair, maybe this
       | game does the latter. However, it is good to pay respects to the
       | shoulders you build on. Little Alchemy is not so well known that
       | this is like making a game called Tetrizz.
       | 
       | (Can someone make Tetrizz please?)
        
         | omoikane wrote:
         | Little Alchemy might have itself been inspired by an earlier
         | game:
         | 
         | https://archive.org/details/msdos_Alchemy_Game_The_1997
        
       | tetris11 wrote:
       | Once you get to Cthulicorn, anything added to that takes a minute
       | or two
        
       | danielvaughn wrote:
       | My mind immediately goes to video games. This could inspire some
       | very interesting mechanics.
        
         | Xeyz0r wrote:
         | Like crafting in Minecraft? :)
        
           | danielvaughn wrote:
           | I might be revealing my ignorance - is this how crafting
           | works in minecraft? I've never played it before.
        
             | jabroni_salad wrote:
             | You craft in minecraft by arranging basic items on a 3x3
             | grid. If you do it right then a more complex item is
             | created.
             | 
             | For example, a pickaxe is shaped roughly like that (two
             | vertical sticks as a handle, and 3 other materials on the
             | top row as a blade). You can make a better pickaxe by using
             | nicer/rarer materials on the top row.
             | 
             | It isn't really improvisational, there are correct patterns
             | and the UI has a recipe book now so you don't really need
             | to use the grid if you do not want to. Back when the game
             | was in beta these weren't documented and the community
             | would just brute force the discovery.
        
       | foota wrote:
       | I've had this idea that a game could generate unique crafting
       | fields in some way like this. One of the things that I think
       | limits simulation type games is that they are often restricted to
       | real industries and recipes etc., but if they could make up
       | believable fantasy industries, then there could be more variety.
        
         | thfuran wrote:
         | But they'd also be riddled with bizarre nonsense like
         | Flamethrower+Statue = Venus.
        
           | foota wrote:
           | I think making it take a stream of thought approach might
           | help here.
           | 
           | If you ask it to explain the chain of events it can guide the
           | solution. I think that part of the issue here is that there's
           | no context (well, at least that we can see) to these
           | combinations.
           | 
           | But if you build up some context then it might make things
           | make more sense.
           | 
           | E.g., if you imagine that you're prompting in the context of
           | a "crafting type" for statues, you might have flamethrower as
           | a "tool" and statue as an "input" and it might lead to a
           | better solution (e.g., burnt statue, melted statue, etc.,).
           | Alternatively if you said flamethrower and statue were both
           | inputs then maybe the result would be a statue holding a
           | flamethrower.
           | 
           | You could think about other context as well, maybe a welder
           | with tool flamethrower + statue gets a metal statue welded to
           | something, a demolition job with flamethrower + statue gets
           | rubble, etc.,
        
       | Xeyz0r wrote:
       | alligator + statue = gatorade ... okay
        
       | boo-ga-ga wrote:
       | See anything from neal.fun -> upvote, then check out:).
        
       | dysoco wrote:
       | Woah this is extremely addictive and has a lot of potential, I
       | love games like Little Alchemy and this goes to 11.
       | 
       | Surely some things are weird and are to be expected from the
       | usage of AI, for example, I managed to somehow create Neon
       | Genesis Evangelion (try to!) but I can't seem to replicate any
       | more animes, mangas or shows.
        
       | Night_Thastus wrote:
       | Some combinations seem to cause crashes, like Grand Canyon + Sea.
        
         | fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
         | I was thinking they are combinations that haven't been
         | generated and cached before (since this is llm powered (llama))
         | and the current load from HN front page is too much
         | 
         | My life won't be complete until I can combine big bang and
         | rainbow bridge
        
       | Aerbil313 wrote:
       | Time Machine + Pyramid = Tomb Raider
       | 
       | Tornado + Fish = Sharknado
       | 
       | and Terminator, Dark Fate, Mad Hatter... but I forgot how.
        
       | rgbrgb wrote:
       | love this! The sounds are great and the caching is smart. I'd add
       | a little loading animation or something... as a dev I knew it was
       | hitting the LLM but my friend thought it was just laggy. I
       | prototyped a similar concept with a numi/soulver type of UI a few
       | weeks ago :) https://twitter.com/_0_/status/1747756622494265397
       | 
       | What model is being used for the backend?
        
       | gloosx wrote:
       | This shows quite well that AI has zero common sense whatsoever,
       | the results of most combinations I made are just nonsense. The
       | associations are really vague and to me it is not interesting at
       | all to look at random pictures and words appearing out of totally
       | unrelated stuff. I really like man-made alchemy games though
       | where all combinations are pre-defined and actually feel right.
        
         | csallen wrote:
         | One person's specific usage of AI, in a specific game, where
         | the AI was constrained to only coming up with words that have
         | an associated emoji, is not a referendum on whether or not AI
         | itself has common sense. That's like saying paint is boring
         | because someone made a crappy painting, or code is limited
         | because someone made an app you don't like.
        
           | deely3 wrote:
           | Sure, its not a referendum, but its a prominent sign that
           | even with this task AI can fail spectacularly.
           | 
           | P.S. Today I learned from AI that Sphinx + Drunk = Sphinxter.
        
             | lanternfish wrote:
             | That's a sick pun though - I'd definitely consider that a
             | success
        
         | cubefox wrote:
         | I wouldn't say that AI has "zero" common sense. Rather it has a
         | lot of common sense. For example, I wondered what would happen
         | with "wind" and "paper". Perhaps paper ... storm? No, "kite".
         | It's better than me.
        
         | FredPret wrote:
         | It's also pretty good at lots of combos. If you asked a human
         | to come up with all of these, it'd be pretty hard.
        
         | willy_k wrote:
         | One man's nonsense is another's profound truth. mud + brick =
         | Adobe, for example. Doesn't seem to make sense, yet it does.
        
         | KTibow wrote:
         | I found it fun regardless. HN, I proudly produce to you my
         | newest invention: Beer + Lens = Beer Goggles.
        
       | slowhadoken wrote:
       | I'm haunted by how much I love and hate crafting systems.
        
       | motoxpro wrote:
       | neal.fun is just amazing. Man how awesome.
        
       | rkagerer wrote:
       | Titanic + Iceberg = nothing??
        
       | orbital-decay wrote:
       | Hint: by going the Warrior-Spartan-King-Leonidas-300 route, you
       | get the endless supply of numbers to combine, starting from 300.
       | I wonder you can make it output anything with this, as it's
       | definitely powered by a LLM.
        
       | Cieric wrote:
       | Apparently I made 2 first discoveries, Meteorism and Rap God.
       | Seems interesting, but after a while of things not combining it
       | gets a little stale. I agree with others I kind of would like to
       | see the lineage of the elements. I know of this video where
       | Carykh graphed is own combination game, but all new element names
       | were user provided. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQWwfYSUckY
        
         | Cieric wrote:
         | Well I guess I wasn't doing weird enough combinations before, I
         | now have (Hip hop + Crusade) Crusade Hop, T-Pain, (T-Pain +
         | Painting) T-Painting, Haikupoid, Rapping, Slim Shady and the
         | others already mentioned. I do like that I can convince it to
         | make completely new concepts as long as the 2 inputs are weird
         | enough.
        
           | avereveard wrote:
           | I've the entire solar system is there a way to know if it's a
           | first?
        
             | oops wrote:
             | It says "First discovery" e.g.
             | https://i.imgur.com/iagu3WZ.png
        
           | Cieric wrote:
           | Okay truly done at this point, I have work to do.
           | https://i.imgur.com/96rl0Ul.png
        
         | oops wrote:
         | i discovered monkey pox :(
        
       | plesner wrote:
       | Some interesting finds.
       | 
       | Future + Time = Present (with a gift icon) Present + Present =
       | Gift
       | 
       | (So it's using the words not the concepts)
       | 
       | Paradox + Snowman = Yeti
       | 
       | (Makes sense)
       | 
       | Arnold Schwarzenegger + Narwhal = Shwarzenwhaler
       | 
       | (Shwarzenwhaler has 0 hits on Google, it made it up)
       | 
       | Shwarzenwhaler + Time Machine = Hitler (with a crown icon)
       | 
       | (I kid you not!)
       | 
       | Unicorn + Hitler = Unihitler
       | 
       | (I continue to kid you not!)
        
         | plesner wrote:
         | Future + Germany = Hitler
         | 
         | Plant + Germany = Beer
         | 
         | Flower + Germany = Hitler
         | 
         | (Harsh!)
        
       | m0rissette wrote:
       | Reminds me of the first android game I played on my G1 alchemy
        
       | mbowcut2 wrote:
       | This is fun. It would be interesting to build a single graph of
       | concepts that all users contribute to. Then you wouldn't have to
       | run LLM inference on every request, just the novel ones, plus you
       | could publish the complete graph which would be something like an
       | embedding space.
        
         | lilyball wrote:
         | A lot of combinations return instantly, so I assume that it is
         | in fact caching a lot.
        
           | mbowcut2 wrote:
           | oh I just realized that 'isNew' in the response refers to a
           | global set, not the user set. So, I guess it's doing exactly
           | what I said lol.
        
             | lilyball wrote:
             | I just went back and did some new combinations with early
             | ones and I'm still getting intermittent delays even though
             | all early combinations must be done, so I assume part of
             | this is just the server itself being a little overloaded
             | and so even responses that are cached remotely but not
             | locally may experience delays.
        
       | lilyball wrote:
       | I combined Fish and Fire and got Sushi, which is a dish that is
       | famously made without any fire whatsoever. The game also decided
       | to pair the Wheat emoji with the word Amber.
        
         | lightbendover wrote:
         | You should consider yourself lucky that you haven't witnessed
         | the torched sushi craze [yet].
        
         | rishikeshs wrote:
         | May be wasabi is fire?
        
           | lilyball wrote:
           | I got wasabi by adding fire to sushi.
        
       | pauldprice wrote:
       | Very fun, and silly. I created a "snot serpent" by combining a
       | "sea serpent" and a "snot ball". Works for me...
        
       | intended wrote:
       | Evil + NewYork ... was inadvertently funny.
        
       | Kronopath wrote:
       | I managed to kinda break it. I managed to get "Steam Engine" and
       | "Hacker". I combined those to make "Steam Punk". (Fair enough.)
       | 
       | Everything that's combined with Steam Punk ends up being stupid
       | and boring.
       | 
       | Steam Punk + Zombie = "Steam Zombie"
       | 
       | Steam Punk + Hacker = "Steam Hacker"
       | 
       | Steam Punk + UFO, which you'd think would be "Zeppelin" or
       | something, is instead "Steam UFO".
       | 
       | Steam Punk + Illusion is, bafflingly, "Steampunk", all one word,
       | and with a different emoji!
        
         | athrowaway3z wrote:
         | I had a first discovery for 'Justice League of Mars', then one
         | for 'Justice League of Moon', but not for the 'Justice League
         | of Mars and Moon'
        
       | titaniumtown wrote:
       | fire + president = trump (with a poop emoji)
        
         | margalabargala wrote:
         | "America" + "Emperor" yielded the same thing :(
        
         | rkagerer wrote:
         | I think Death + Obama also yields it. You can get Dino-Trump
         | and T-Rump.
        
       | Cybergenik wrote:
       | Tutankhamun + Pirate = Captain Jack Sparrow
       | 
       | Tutankhamun + Captain Jack Sparrow = Pirate King
       | 
       | Pirate King + Mountain = One Piece
       | 
       | One Piece + Pirate King = Luffy
       | 
       | *perfect
        
         | ogaj wrote:
         | Shark + Hurricane = Sharknado
        
       | lilyball wrote:
       | I've now managed to get both "Spaceship" and "Space Ship". I feel
       | like this game really needs to have some logic to avoid having
       | two words that are essentially identical.
        
         | soerxpso wrote:
         | I got "Santa" and "Santa Claus"
        
       | athrowaway3z wrote:
       | As a additional twist it might be fun to also have the option to
       | 'remove' one concept from the other.
       | 
       | Currently i have 'Wind farm' and I'd wish i could try going to
       | 'farm' by removing 'wind' from it.
        
       | thoys wrote:
       | First discovery finally!!! I got Blush!!! Face + Tomato!!
       | 
       | This is another awesome Neal.fun experience!!!
        
       | dylan604 wrote:
       | fish + fire = sushi?
       | 
       | is my concept of sushi wrong
        
       | rabbits_2002 wrote:
       | There used to be webgames with a similar premise. Pretty fun.
       | 
       | I think some of the recipes don't make sense and it would be a
       | lot better if each thing only had one recipe to create it.
        
       | sigmonsays wrote:
       | i think i killed it with tractor + lava. Somehow that's a
       | volcano?
       | 
       | This is weird without hard rules.
        
       | jtolmar wrote:
       | This is very fun.
       | 
       | I managed to make a "Captain Jack Ahab + Draculawhalezilla" that
       | seems to refuse to combine with anything. Maybe because it has a
       | + in it already?
        
       | nneonneo wrote:
       | I now have a "Pina Thorada", a combination of Pina Colada and
       | Thor. This is fun.
        
       | hugepuppy wrote:
       | Why do i love this so much
        
       | rabbits_2002 wrote:
       | I noticed that mixing a 2 word item with something else will
       | often combine the words instead of looking at the meaning:
       | 
       | super volcano + man = super human
       | 
       | but then it breaks if you mix further:
       | 
       | super human + giraffe = super giraffe ?
        
         | yxhuvud wrote:
         | Well, that may explain dragonpope.
        
       | dfee wrote:
       | `???` seems to be almost apex. I discovered many new things.
       | Thanks for the game.
        
       | PawgerZ wrote:
       | Very cool. I combined 'double rainbow' and 'ocean'; thought I
       | broke it as it loaded for like 20 seconds; then got Atlantis.
       | Eventually I got to 'mermaid', combined it with 'fire', and got
       | 'siren'. But the emoji was a police siren, not the mythical
       | creature. I can see how the LLM would be confused, though.
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | The LLM was not confused. It just fed "siren" into the image
         | generator and that's an ambiguous term.
        
           | PawgerZ wrote:
           | Yes, that's the confusion I was talking about. Sorry, I meant
           | to say the image generator was confused. The confusion how I
           | came to the assumption that it was an LLM hooked to an image
           | generator.
           | 
           | Interestingly, I did break it on flower + eclipse.
        
       | nurettin wrote:
       | I stopped at leviathan.
        
         | rambanuelos wrote:
         | I was pleased with Prometheus
        
       | SeanLuke wrote:
       | Unicorn + Steamboat = Steam Unicorn
        
       | FredPret wrote:
       | Curse + unicorn = narwhal, hahahaha. This game is so fun
        
       | cushpush wrote:
       | Obsidian + Cook ... [thinking] took a few seconds and out popped:
       | sushi! Love it
        
       | riddley wrote:
       | Speed+light isn't Einstein?? Chariot+God isn't UFO??
        
       | thatxliner wrote:
       | Isn't that just little alchemy
        
       | yxhuvud wrote:
       | Dragonpope was not easy to combine with anything.
        
       | lacoolj wrote:
       | Knowledge + Mud = Politics lol these are fun
        
       | Ringz wrote:
       | Swamp + Surfer = Crocodile
       | 
       | Nice!
        
       | DanielLapidus wrote:
       | Dinosaur + Clock = Clockosaurus Rex.
        
       | pcthrowaway wrote:
       | was anyone able to figure out a way to save the game?
        
       | merlindru wrote:
       | I don't even know how I managed to do this, but I got this:
       | 
       | Monkey > Ape > Gorilla > King Kong > Queen Kong
       | 
       | Yeah, Queen Kong. Queen. Kong.
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | EDIT:
       | 
       | - Gorilla Grodd
       | 
       | - Super Kong
       | 
       | - Tarzan
       | 
       | - Jane
       | 
       | - Jane Kong
       | 
       | - Woman Gorilla
       | 
       | - Super Gorilla
        
       | orenlindsey wrote:
       | The LLM that powers this is surprisingly well trained (for what
       | it is doing). I don't know if it's using a pre-existing one, but
       | if you open dev tools and find the api you can play around with
       | any combination of things.
       | 
       | Just as an example, I put in "Protestant" and "Spiritual
       | Experiences" and it gave "Pentecostal" which is exactly right,
       | and I didn't expect it to know that. Now I have to find how to
       | get that in the game.
        
       | jollyllama wrote:
       | Swamp + Prostitute = Politician
        
       | sandworm101 wrote:
       | As is usual for all things on the internet, fiddle around and you
       | will find Star Wars.
       | 
       | I just got a "first discovery": Garlic + Vampire = Dinner | Darth
       | Vader + Dinner = _Dark Dinner_ (whatever that means)
       | 
       | And I don't know how, but how did I get from fire/earth/water to
       | "racist"? How is that even a thing?
        
         | tomaskafka wrote:
         | I don't get it either, you start with infinite energy
         | singularity, and 14.5 billion years later you get Trump.
         | Universe is stupid :).
        
           | sandworm101 wrote:
           | Once you get to the Trump and Trump-related emojis ... _that
           | 's_ when it gets properly weird.
        
       | jerbear4328 wrote:
       | I got some funny ones, like:
       | 
       | - Bread + Bread = Toast, + Fire = Burnt Toast, + Fire = Ash
       | 
       | - Toast + Disaster = Pop Tart, + Fire = Hot Pocket, + Coffee =
       | Coffee Pocket (First Discovery)
       | 
       | - Hot Pocket + Cappuccino = Cappuccino Pocket (First Discovery),
       | + Pop Tart = Cappuccino Pop Tart (First Discovery)
       | 
       | - Coffee Pocket + Disaster = Coffee Spill (First Discovery), +
       | Pop Art (sic) = Jackson Pollock
       | 
       | - Jackson Pollock + Megadisaster = Jackson Pollock
       | 
       | - Artist + Disaster = Picasso
       | 
       | Apparently nobody else was insane enough to combine Coffee, Hot
       | Pockets, and Pop Tarts. The AI is just confusing sometimes,
       | though:
       | 
       | - Pompeii + Kaleidoscope = Mosaic?
       | 
       | - Burnt Toast + Water = Coffee, + Cake = Breakfast, + Mosaic =
       | Cereal?
       | 
       | - Coffee Pocket + Broken Window = Coffee? (though idk what I
       | expected)
        
         | bloaf wrote:
         | I have created the words:
         | 
         | - Slimy Palm
         | 
         | - Momfia
         | 
         | - Sand-T-Rump
         | 
         | - Stinkadult
         | 
         | - Cheesus vs Jesus
         | 
         | - Surfing Blues Brothers
         | 
         | - Gnomeo and Juliet
         | 
         | - Game of Thrones = Pornstar + Sword Fight
         | 
         | - Putin = Stool (with poop emoji) + Russia
        
         | jampa wrote:
         | I got Tea + Dinossaur = Tea Rex
         | 
         | Thought it was pretty clever
        
         | karaterobot wrote:
         | I was surprised that Penguin + Werewolf = Werepenguin. I mean,
         | it makes sense, I just didn't expect it to be a valid response.
        
       | kc71 wrote:
       | Pirates of the Caribbean and Pirates Of The Caribbean
       | 
       | are different apparently, maybe add some logic to merge these
        
       | bulatov wrote:
       | Norway + Darkness = Black Metal
        
       | tbalsam wrote:
       | This was fun to play with. I apparently am the first person in
       | the world to generate the phrase "Big Daddy" (no idea how), which
       | can be combined with "Big Mommy", which resulted in a Big Baby.
        
       | orenlindsey wrote:
       | I think I broke it. America + Trump = ??? (with a galaxy emoji)
       | 
       | Edit: Also Trumpocalypse + Freedom = ??? (btw I got both of these
       | in the game, not through the API)
        
       | hellommcmcmc wrote:
       | good game https://i.imgur.com/ofxkKJS.png
        
       | iamthepieman wrote:
       | A fun way to play this is to pick a specific result first and
       | then see how quickly you can get there.
        
       | emarthinsen wrote:
       | Can't believe I was the first to find "boobs". The 12 year-old
       | combined "tomb raider" and "jiggle". LOL. It's actually a useful
       | word. I can change anything male into female.
       | 
       | Lots of other funny combinations: Burger King + Business =
       | McDonalds Disney + Motive = Money Princess + Cleavage = Disney
       | 
       | Plenty of political ones: President + Dictator = Trump White
       | House + Flame = Trump Trump + Bribe = Impeachment Trump +
       | Impeachment = ??? (literally three question marks) Obama + Home =
       | Change
       | 
       | And a few questionable: Slave + Plant = Cannabis Jamaica + Garden
       | = Marijuana
       | 
       | This is actually great fun. I wish I could sort the words
       | alphabetically. I also wish there was a save feature. Oh, and
       | that first discoveries were highlighted in the word list.
        
       | rawcal wrote:
       | Terminator + Robot = T1000 T1000 + T1000 = T2000 I'm at
       | T-32000000 and still going
        
         | joshfee wrote:
         | The most unexpected 2048 clone
        
       | aspectmin wrote:
       | Rofl - Rainforest + Dragon == Amazon (like an Amazon box)
        
       | AvImd wrote:
       | Amazing! The funniest stuff it came up with for me were
       | Pengwoman, Sushi Bird, Jezus (Jesus + Zeus).
        
       | true_blue wrote:
       | >Love + Fire = Passion
       | 
       | I'm impressed that it's able to understand figurative
       | combinations like this. On the other hand, some of them are
       | confusing:
       | 
       | >Steampunk Pirate Queen + Romance = Steam And Sorcery
       | 
       | What? Is this a reference?
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | I wish this were an actual game!
       | 
       | Like keep showing me a desired item to craft, that requires
       | crafting 2 or 3 items to get to -- e.g. combine 2 existing
       | things, then with a third existing thing. Or combine 2 existing
       | things, another 2 existing things, and then combine those.
       | 
       | And obviously it keeps getting more complex the more items I
       | acquire along the way.
       | 
       | And each time I play it's randomized.
       | 
       | (And let me play entirely with the keyboard by autocompleting
       | each item as I type... dragging gets old real quick on a
       | touchpad...)
        
         | wyre wrote:
         | I remember there being a few phone games with this format.
         | Joining elements together to make other things and using those
         | to make other things.
         | 
         | Quick google search tells me the game is called Little Alchemy
         | (there's a sequel now too)
        
         | wdh505 wrote:
         | I played a game like this once, it was called "cow
         | evolution:idle merge game". It wasn't randomized, but
         | skinnerboxxed. Perhaps that is not quite what you meant.
        
       | not_a_dane wrote:
       | there's an issue with the algorithm, the more you play, longer it
       | takes to calculate...neat example for time complexity analysis.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | Restaurant + Empire -> McDonalds
       | 
       | Resort + Empire -> Disney
       | 
       | Obesity + Empire -> America
       | 
       | America + China -> War
       | 
       | China + Japan -> War
       | 
       | America + Japan -> Anime
       | 
       | America + Junk -> Trump
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-31 23:00 UTC)