GLaDOS@Home, something happened...

[pdgeorge]

So I have been checking on the GLaDOS@Home thing every so often ( http://www.aperturescience.com/glados@home/ for those who forgot) and I noticed something strange...

We used to have something like 64k potatoes... now there is -6-1-4 potatoes (scratch that, it looks like every time you refresh that 'number' keeps changing slightly. Not constantly going up, randomly going back down as well.)

What do you guys think this means? When Portal 2 went live the number of potatoes stayed steady for quite a while, now all of a sudden this has happened. Something is bound to go down soon

 

[lacktheknack]

I've got 6-10-2.

A DATE?!

...I wish. No idea what that syntax is.

 

[chromewarriorXIII]

I've got 3-2-7.

What could it mean? I haven't actually played Portal 2 yet, but I do remember watching that site the night Portal 2 came out.

 

[D.J. D.J.]

I took a look at the source code and it looks like the number has something to do with the date and time and the current potato consumption rate, I don't know what it means though(if anything).

 

[pdgeorge]

Hmm I just went back and refreshed... it's gone down and now it's back to the 60k+ number.
Hitting refresh multiple times and I'm getting between 62,072 and 62,089 potatoes.

I have no clue on places to look up where they would announce what it even means, or if it's just all to be left up to speculation

 

[brunothepig]

It's been reset. Possibly for the DLC? The weird numbers were probably a glitch/bug while they were resetting the potato count, thanks to modulus commands and it being a string...
Anyway, the number at the top is the number of people playing Portal 2, the potato count is shooting up again.
Refresh my memory, it was sitting at a count of zero for quite some time wasn't it?
EDIT: It is fluctuating, presumably according to the number of people playing Portal 2...
EDIT: Portal 2, and the rest of the potato sack games? Does anyone know a way to find out how many people are playing each one? I can check Portal 2 and Killing Floor on Steam cause they're in the top 100 games played today. It seems like the number of potatoes will be the number of people playing all the potato sack games and Portal 2, multiplied by 11.6771584699.
Again, I feel like this is just because of the pre-existing script, but they are editing the site again, so something has to be going on, or will be.

 

[theultimateend]

The amount of people playing at any one time?

 

[pdgeorge]

The amount of people playing at any one time?

The upper number is how many people are playing, the number at the bottom of the site next to the potatoes is what I'm interested in.
As far as I'm aware there has been no mention at all about WHAT that number means at all (well, while playing the games in the potato sack you could get potatoes. So the number is most likely how many potatoes were collected, but no information about WHY we were collecting potatoes or what they will be used for). It wasn't really related to releasing Portal 2 early so I'm curious what it might be.

 

[Valagetti]

Oh god its like that only film Jim Carrey he stared in with a serious role.

 

[tharglet]

OK here's the code:

function refreshPotatoes( element )
	{
		if ( g_bEnded )
			return;
 
		var element = document.getElementById( 'potatoes' );
		var elapsedSeconds = Math.round( new Date().getTime() ) - g_currentPotatoCountTimestamp * 1000;
		var consumedPotatoes = ( elapsedSeconds / 1000 ) * g_currentPotatoConsumptionRate;
		var remaining = Math.round( g_currentPotatoCount - consumedPotatoes );
		var strPotatoes = '';
		if ( remaining > 1000 )
			strPotatoes += Math.floor( remaining / 1000 ) + ',' ;
		remaining = remaining % 1000;
		strPotatoes += '' + Math.floor(remaining / 100)  + Math.floor( (remaining % 100 )/ 10 ) + ( remaining % 10 );
		if ( element.textContent )
		{
			element.textContent = strPotatoes;
		}
		else
		{
			element.innerText = strPotatoes;
		}
	}

Using a test, g_bEnded is false, so it's still trying to compute values. Not fully tested, but I'm assuming "remaining" is negative, causing the interesting appends lol. (Note: The "X" is not part of the span being updated and is a static value, so is irrelevant to this code)