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throwaway73838
This sounds interesting. Will it be available on mobile?
0xf00ff00f
It should work on mobile browsers (though I haven't tested yet).
ithkuil
Tried on Android chrome. I select two shapes which I'm pretty sure match and nothing happens. The only thing on the screen is a "code" hyperlink. Is there supposed to be a "accept" or "go" button or something?
0xf00ff00f
There's no "accept" button, it should move to the next set when the two correct shapes are selected. But as someone else pointed out in this thread there may be multiple matching pairs - looking into it.
drivingmenuts
Seems to have an issue in Safari on iPad - there’s no way to submit my guess. The shapes highlight but then nothing happens. The timer just keeps running. I’m pretty sure I’ve selected correctly.
Lio
Works well on iOS on iPhone.

I like it. Great fun, thanks.

layer8
I only see a tiny “code” link on iOS, rest of the page is blank (gray).
brianzelip
Not on iOS — just a gray background with the centered “code” link to the repo. No shapes, no interactivity.
jack_riminton
Very cool! I feel I'm a bit rusty on rotating shapes, I got 5 right in the time (1st and only attempt)
yablokoffya
Just played 5 times, super cool although UX is a bit vague in the first session. What's the max matches you have?
sudosysgen
I managed 14 after a couple of tries, I feel like if I continued anymore I'd end up procrastinating my entire day!
svet_0
Small bug: occasionally there are multiple matching pairs, although only 1 works (screenshot: https://ibb.co/JpRp0Pm)

Additionally, the auto rotation itself is mostly confusing, could be better to enable manual mouse rotation.

Cool game nonetheless!

Edit: The bug seems to be that shapes with different "DNA" can still be isometric in some cases: https://github.com/0xf00ff00f/rotator/blob/master/demo.cc#L4...

phreeza
I encountered the same bug and it was also a donut kind of shape, maybe something to do with the closing of the loop?
svet_0
Probably. L-U-R-D is the mirror of R-D-L-U but not the mirror of L-D-R-U, although isometric to both.
0xf00ff00f
Ouch. Thank you so much for noticing this! Looks like I need a more robust test.
blamestross
Ismorphism is hard to detect, even in reduced spaces. Really hard in arbitrary graphs.

For a "fast filter" generate the center of gravity for each (just the average of the voxel points as doubles) and abs+sort the resulting vector and assume they match if the "Sorted Cog Vector" matches. It will have false positives sometimes but no false negatives.

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cptskippy
Ok so I'm not crazy. The shapes moving had me second guessing myself trying to compare them.
ag8
Looks great! Maybe add a small time penalty for guessing wrong? It's currently way faster for me to try ~7 combinations (takes about 5 seconds per round) than to honestly figure it out.
evanmoran
Nice. It’s very fun and quite hard.

If you are looking for tweeks consider calling it Shapdle and put them in a row, and color yellow if close and green if right (only slightly joking :)

whatshisface
Sometimes the initial rotation hides a part of the shape.

Also, I have always wondered if there's a way to translate these shapes to strings for quick "mental algorithm" matching. Something like, "5, left turn, 3, right turn..."

I guess you'd need a normal form. The first turn can be defined as always "right" or "left," and subsequent turns can be right, left, up or down. The first turn that's "up" or "down," can be defined as "up." That leaves two ways to read any shape, but that's an uhh constant-factor overhead. :)

(I can't think of a way to define a normal form reading direction that wouldn't involve potentially reading an arbitrary distance in before having to re-start the other way.)

musingsole
I think that's basically what I did, just without elevating the forms to anything conscious. By the end, I was matching shapes too fast to have actually counted much of anything -- some sort of consolidated memory had started.
akomtu
A small improvement: use a vowel to encode turns, and consonants to encode segment lengths. So each shape would be encoded by a "word", e.g. "bakitux". Brains have dedicated "word-processing units" and those are much faster than number-processing units.
Teever
> Brains have dedicated "word-processing units" and those are much faster than number-processing units.

*In most people.

biomcgary
Abstracting into words will lead to invention of words that are disconnected from the underlying geometry (i.e., shapes that are not possible due to collisions), but have strong verbal associations. Eventually, the word thinkers will redefine the system to allows them to play word games without dealing with the pesky geometric limitations.
crdrost
> The first turn can be defined as always "right" or "left,"

No it can’t, not in 3D... it is just a turn.

You can however choose to rotate about the first segment until the turn is Right, then use this orientation for the rest.

In terms of normal form and restarts, who cares? Just generate the string both ways, it’s 2n computations, choose the lowest in lexicographic order, and life is good. If you get to billions of turns are humans really going to be doing the comparison? Surely we’d just stream the string into a hash function or something...

whatshisface
Right-handed rotation is different from left-handed rotation no matter what coordinate system you choose.
crdrost
WLOG the shape starts at the origin (0,0,0), the first kink is at (0, 0, m), and the next point is (x, y, m), where x²+y²=n²

You can always rotate this to (n, 0, m) and view from the +y axis looking down, and it is a right turn.

The L shape is not complex enough to be chiral, but the post is (and you are!) is claiming that you need an extra bit of information to specify “which L, the right handed one or the left handed one?” ... That is a distinctively 2D question.

emschlr
The keyword is "define"!

You can just define the first turn to be Right no matter how it is oriented.

If you are not happy with that then just rotate the first segment until it looks Right to you. Then label the other turns.

If you are still not happy with the word Right to denote the first term then just make up new notation. Define the first turn to be 1. Use numbers to denote turns if you object to using Left and Right.

kuhewa
> No it can’t, not in 3D... it is just a turn

Not if it is chiral. then whatever turn is defined as right is not left

djtango
>Also, I have always wondered if there's a way to translate these shapes to strings for quick "mental algorithm" matching. Something like, "5, left turn, 3, right turn..."

I was once measured to have abysmal spatial reasoning (which is probably backed up by poor hand-eye coordination and sense of direction) but I had no problem doing molecular geometry and group theory, I suspect it was because I applied logic rather than visualisation to compensate. (I am terrible at walking into an empty place an imagining how I might want to fill it)

bottled_poe
Playing on mobile, it would be cool if the accelerometer rotated all the pieces at once.
V__
This is a fun little game. I find the small movements confusing, though. Maybe a fixed camera (isometric?) would work nice.
amar-laksh
This is brilliant! (Especially after the rotating puzzle post yesterday, exactly what I needed!) Thank you! (I managed to get 14 at 8 seconds but damn this is pretty hard)

feedback: Sometimes the shapes get too occluded by it's own body. Not sure bug or a feature. Also could be fun to increasing or decreasing difficulty curve depending on performance

mfashby
surprisingly difficult, only scored 1 the first try!
krick
Damn, that's surprisingly difficult. But I think I shouldn't be allowed to brute-force answers (that's really tempting in the current design) and I'd probably appreciate if shapes were standing still, since the movement is distracting and barely relates to the skill being tested.
otherme123
-10 seconds if you fail a pair should work against brute force.
oneoff786
Agreed. I found by the end I was better off rapidly tapping out the answers due to no penalty for incorrect guessed
ravi-delia
I think they move so that they aren't accidentally covering up crucial bits, and so you get a sense for them in 3d. I'd also like it if they moved less, or had a pause button though.
0xf00ff00f
Added a time penalty on misses and an accuracy percentage at the end, hopefully this should discourage brute forcing.
renewiltord
I liked it, might I suggest some tiny things?

- Turn selection outline to green on success

- Show incremental progress (num matched)

silisili
This brings back nightmares of mech eng school! I essentially quit because of my inability to do such things :(.
greatwave1
Waiting out for the wordcel version of this
jdminhbg
I believe The NY Times just bought it.
sudosysgen
You mean Wordle?
KaoruAoiShiho
It's a 4chan meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/wordcel-shape-rotato...

So this game going to the top of HN is likely part of the meme where shape rotators strike back against wordcels after wordle became popular, something like that.

sudosysgen
It's actually a Twitter meme by @tszzl on Twitter. It was a 4-chan meme to add "-cel" to words, but the shape rotator vs wordcel meme is from Twitter.
KaoruAoiShiho
You should read the article
sudosysgen
I did despite my better judgment. The 4chan part is just adding "-cel" to words and doesn't form a direct lineage to the modern meme.
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oh_sigh
If you're recording stats, I would love to know the distribution of correct guesses per game.
rbobby
12 matches, 10 seconds per shape.
chungy
I know it's not the point, but I find it way easier to just brute force it. Got 31 pairs matched that way (three matches in the last two seconds, even).
8note
Makes sense, you have to wait to see enogh information to be able to actually submit choices, vs being able to start brute forcing immediately
folmar
Also the need to manually unselect a pair to try new one favours brute forcing over thinking.
sowbug
Would you please add keyboard shortcuts? Numbering 1-6 and letting each key toggle a shape would suffice. Repetitive mousing on a non-touch display can trigger RSI flareups.
microjim
Scored 7 my first go but that was aided by one or two that were more or less had the same orientation and could spotted pretty easily.
bemmu
I thought I'd be good at this since I do 3D editing all day, but apparently not. In my first try I couldn't get even one. Practicing some more I got up to 4 in a game. I wonder if this game can distinguish between people who have rich mental imagery and those who don't?
musingsole
You might have too rich of a mental geometry framework such that each shape was rendered more thoroughly, but not necessarily in a way that helped compute matching objects.
8note
When you don't know the shapes, you have to do lots and lots of comparisons since you don't know what info you're missing behind the shape.

Once you do it a couple times, you can skip a lot of the conparison

fenollp
ESC freezes it on Chrome on Linux.
0xf00ff00f
Oh, this one is an easy fix - thanks for letting me know.
hexman
10 shapes 12 sec/shape (2nd try, no brute-force, mobile)

16 shapes (3rd try)

18 shapes (4th try)

24 shapes (5th try, no brute-force)

P.S. I had 7 years of art school in addition to engineering

Graffur
Wow, that's impressive. After figuring out the game I got 8 shapes which I thought was good!
jyscao
You're the shape rotator of shape rotators.

I only managed to break 10 after about a dozen tries..

kelseyfrog
I'm in the same ballpark: 21 2nd try, and 18 3rd try. I've sort of always known that I've had good spatial reasoning, and this is one way to confirm it. I tend to think about most problems spatially, even molding things like code and social relations into this medium, because it's my strongest skill. I also tend toward the hyperphantasia side of the spectrum. I'm curious if other highscorers also tend toward hyperphantasia.

If the site is recording telemetry on scores, but it would be fantastic to have a percentile rank at the end.

hexman
I'm shocked. I have the same mindset. For example, if I need to predict how technologies can potentially evolve, I visualize them in different planes based on the history of technologies, such as centralization/decentralization cycles, compute networks growing, and the shift to centralization. Also, I visualize how some technologists like Kubernetes go into decentralization (like this is some of primitive form of life, where Datacenters/Bigdata some sort of prebiotic soup for the first vertebrates (Edge Computing devices)). And decentralized solutions such as blockchain are superimposed on this infrastructure. In my head, it looks like a huge visual picture with different levels of abstraction. It constantly evolves

I see how human sins are the drivers of technology development

karmakaze
13 shapes 9.23/shape (2nd try no brute force)

no qualifications, other than liking physical 3d puzzles

1270018080
It's hard when part of a shape is hidden even with the rotation.
jb1991
Wow, the scrolling does not work at all for me on macos, using FF or Safari.