Show HN: Visualize Graph Theory

Show HN: Visualize Graph Theory(treksit.netlify.app)

147 points by maxraz 5 years ago | 44 comments

beefman 5 years ago |

Appears to be a repackaging of Tronix by Danijel Durakovic.[1] Includes his code but this is not mentioned in the credits.[2]

[1] http://pulzed.com/ [2] https://treksit.netlify.app/credits.html

djaychela 5 years ago | |

Thanks for the link - this version is -much- better in my opinion! None of the needless junk, just a great game.

kleer001 5 years ago | |

Yup, totally plagiarized.

ColanR 5 years ago | | |

Changed a few colors, and added a background that makes the page lag. Didn't change the text or even the order of the levels. The small size of the bounding box is because he didn't expand it from the original.

hwayne 5 years ago | |

This is inexcusable.

Chris2048 5 years ago | |

Anyone notify Danijel yet?

jansan 5 years ago | |

Someone with mod power should change the link to the original.

tantalor 5 years ago |

I invented this game in 2005, it's called Planarity.

http://planarity.net/

It has a wikipedia page!

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

Since Flash is dead I rewrote in JavaScript:

http://johntantalo.com/raphael.planarity/

Here's a short doc about how the puzzle generation algorithm works:

http://johntantalo.com/wiki/Planarity/

crdrost 5 years ago | |

Wow, you got cloned by Tatham fast

    Author: Simon Tatham <anakin@pobox.com>
    Date:   Sat Jul 16 19:51:53 2005 +0000

    New puzzle: `Untangle', cloned (with the addition of random grid
    generation) from a simple but rather fun Flash game I saw this
    morning.

How much did you make via PayPal donations back then, if you don't mind my asking?

hyperpape 5 years ago |

Fun challenge, but the draggable area for the graphs is small, and it's not obvious where the boundaries are. I kept going past that boundary then realizing I can't set a vertex down.

Someone 5 years ago |

That’s also one of the puzzles in Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/)

crdrost 5 years ago | |

Yeah, I was going to say, I've played a lot of this because I ran Kubuntu on my laptop for several years and Simon Tatham’s games are sort of our win-98-minesweeper.

gmfawcett 5 years ago | | |

Simon Tatham's puzzles are also available as mobile apps -- ad-free, and highly recommended -- and can also be played via the Web. The Signpost puzzle is my personal favourite. :)

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

someperson 5 years ago |

Very cool. Increase the drag boundary box immediately.

ascales 5 years ago |

That's neat, but I'm not sure I learned about graph theory. I liked playing with it but the background was a bit too much for my eyes.

dooglius 5 years ago |

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

ThePhysicist 5 years ago |

Nice game, but the moving background somehow makes me quite nauseous.

TACIXAT 5 years ago |

I am not sure I learned anything about graph theory from playing this.

vishnuharidas 5 years ago |

Liked it, except the limited boundary and the irritating animated background. Staring at the screen for a minute makes me dizzy

stevewodil 5 years ago | |

Nobody tell them about hyperspeed (click and hold on the background) ;)

tosser0001 5 years ago |

I like this, but I swear there was a Flash version of something very similar that went viral about 15 years ago.

klyrs 5 years ago | |

"planarity"

The game is cool, but I think the title is overly general. It contaons a graph visualizer, which doesn't show much in the way of theory; and it's a railroad, not a playground.

jwilber 5 years ago | | |

No- he outright plagiarized this. Even the code: http://pulzed.com/

tlarkworthy 5 years ago |

I feel like most of these graphs seem to be the same graph just with a different initial conditions?

pricecomstock 5 years ago | |

Here's a Numberphile video that talks about embedding graphs. I think this happens because the subset of graphs that are able to be embedded in a plane is actually fairly limited.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBkTIp6ajAg

birdlawyer 5 years ago |

For anyone wanting to play it a bit bigger (albeit a bit blurry) and without the background you can load the iframe directly https://treksit.netlify.app/tron/

JosephRedfern 5 years ago |

It's cool (well, not cool if these accusations of plagiarism are true, but superficially cool at least), but for some reason, the combination of frustration, tiny working area, and horrendous background really raised my anxiety levels.

qppo 5 years ago |

Feels a bit like untangling rope, which makes sense

sanitycheck 5 years ago |

I like, but: Boundary, background, no "you've finished" (it just stops advancing). Also, I have not had a productive day.

muazzam 5 years ago |

Spoiler Alert

The gotcha thing about this puzzle is sort of greedy approach; try to disentangle the local sub-graphs - concentrate on any nodes of your choice and their connections - and the global graph starts to fall in its place. It's trivial approaching it like this.

Nitrolo 5 years ago | |

I think I just naturally gravitated to that method after a few levels.

I wonder what an algorithmic approach to this would look like, would it act similarly?

kroltan 5 years ago |

IvanK_net 5 years ago |

It reminds me my Javascript / WebGL game I made back in 2011 :) http://crazybugs.ivank.net/

The design was ispired by Wold of Goo :)

ilovefood 5 years ago |

Very good job, the bonus area made up for the fact that there are only 20 levels :) Opening up the dev console sent the robots for a little jump lol

mrzimmerman 5 years ago |

I enjoy puzzle games like this, but can anyone help me understand what the relationship is to Graph Theory (of which I have little knowledge).

Kapura 5 years ago |

the moving backgrounds are gonna give people issues.

i also had trouble reading the text on the backgrounds; consider changing the font colour to something that has significantly a different value (as in, Hue-Saturation-Value) from the background.

also as somebody has pointed out, the drag box felt tiny.

gerdesj 5 years ago | |

Click and hold on the background. Now you've got issues!

Also click on bonus area and then perturb the things.

whiddershins 5 years ago |

That’s fantastic.

Niccizero 5 years ago |

Good but I got the hang of it very quickly and it became boring.

imvetri 5 years ago |

Had good fun

jiveturkey 5 years ago |

went through the first ten in under 2 minutes. got bored. by the second one, it's easy to see how to find the solution pretty much immediately.

Author: Simon Tatham <anakin@pobox.com> Date: Sat Jul 16 19:51:53 2005 +0000 New puzzle: `Untangle', cloned (with the addition of random grid generation) from a simple but rather fun Flash game I saw this morning.