Latest xkcd comic

[theSteamSupported]

First, I was like:
<youtube=M9kRewzz_pM>

But then, I was like:
<youtube=ZMcamicKJKk>

Seriously, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen in a while.

 

[Naeras]

That episode is awesome and I feel more awesome after watching it.

 

[SnowyGamester]

Looks like I only missed a few planes and some jellyfish on my first runthrough...was kinda hoping there'd be some awesome stuff in the black void or the sky or it would look like something when it was completely zoomed out. Still awesome though.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

Currently scrolling up the massive pilon or what ever it is... also loved the flag pole sitta reference!

 

[BrotherRool]

Okay this an Escapist-y question.

Is this a game or a static piece of art or a comic strip? Because it feels to me that this has absolutely a game. You control something and explore a vast and interesting world. It's a really really good game even, if you add in a Journey esque style multiplayer feature I would fall in love with this thing

 

[TimeLord]

Wow! I got to the very far right.

"I wonder where I'll float next"

 

[Beaujon85]

I found two tiny velociraptors in the tall grass to the left. One with feathers and one without.
(I scrolled for a few minutes on my PC, but realized it would go way faster on an ipad)

 

[jbm1986]

This would make an awesome poster.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Funny, I was just looking at this. It must have taken a hell of a lot of time to put everything together, but I think it looks quite neat.

 

[Cazza]

Best XKCD to date.

I took screen caps of my favorites with the minecraft being the first. I saw it and knew I had to take screen caps now I have lets say more then a few.

 

[DoPo]

Okay this an Escapist-y question.

Is this a game or a static piece of art or a comic strip?

Well, it's a static piece of art. Technically, static piecees of art, which are dynamically loaded as you drag it around.

Anyway, user Cecil from the xkcd forum pieced together the image. Then had to scale it down, since 8 gig of ram couldn't handle the sheer awesomeness of it.

I'll just quote relevant parts of what Cecil wrote

whipped up a quick python script to grab all the pngs with name [1-30][ns][1-50][ew] - only 6000 http requests and most of them are 404s anyway.

I have something working, but apparently 165888 x 79872 is a big image. I might have to scale it down a bit for memory reasons.

I've downloaded all the images - the true bounds are 13n, 19s, 33w and 48e inclusive. There are 225 images, all 2048x2048, for a total of 6.3MB of pngs.

And done.

big8.png is scaled down by a factor of 8, to 20736 x 9984. I can generate bigger images, but my computer (8GB RAM) almost crashed trying to open the scaled-down-by-4 one.

Be very careful opening big4.png. It's only 400K but it's also 41472x19968.

Here is big8.png
http://imgur.com/EXRed

Here is big4.png
http://imgur.com/o42WQ

And this is a torrent with all the images
http://forums.xkcd.com/download/file.php?id=33895
(to the sceptics - it's from this post [http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?p=3133525#p3133525])


Another user - azt.tm made a different picture - 1:100 scale but includes the coordinates of the images (the image names are coordinates - they go <North/South><East/West>.png)

[http://azttm.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/xkcd1110map_1to100.png]

And this is a map with clickable links for the original images (courtesy of Skydiver)
http://ampli.fi/1110/

User tjohnman made a version that you can explore in Flash using the arrow keys. So sort of like a game but not really
http://sumamimasen.com/xkcd/1110/

Also, phlip made some calculations, and based on the size of the people there, it seems that the image is about 5km in each direction.

Oh, and one more thing - the right most [http://imgs.xkcd.com/clickdrag/1n48e.png] edge is a reference to the very first [http://www.xkcd.com/1/] comic. Combined with the number of the comic (1110), there is some speculation it might be the last one.

Enjoy.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Okay this an Escapist-y question.

Is this a game or a static piece of art or a comic strip? Because it feels to me that this has absolutely a game. You control something and explore a vast and interesting world. It's a really really good game even, if you add in a Journey esque style multiplayer feature I would fall in love with this thing

It's a piece of art drawn as part of a comic strip that feels a lot like playing a game when looking at it (especially going through the tunnels). It is also completely awesome.

 

[BrotherRool]

Okay this an Escapist-y question.

Is this a game or a static piece of art or a comic strip? Because it feels to me that this has absolutely a game. You control something and explore a vast and interesting world. It's a really really good game even, if you add in a Journey esque style multiplayer feature I would fall in love with this thing

It's a piece of art drawn as part of a comic strip that feels a lot like playing a game when looking at it (especially going through the tunnels). It is also completely awesome.

But, you can only experience that piece of art by interacting with it dynamically and the experience of that is vital to the impression given. If you were to just be shown the picture, rather than having to drag yourself all the way up the picture, the sense of scale would be ruined.

Imagine this, we stick an animated flying figure in the centre of the screen, it doesn't move from the centre but animates in the direction you'd drag. So it would look exactly like you moving an Avatar through the world as you move around the world. Would that change whether you think it's a game?

And you've got a good imagination, so we shrink the Avatar to a dot stuck to the centre of you screen.

And then we remove the dot. When does it stop being a game?

---------------------------

Also, how's it a static image? Your watching a static box on a computer screen that is constantly changing according to algorithms to give a sense of movement. In no way during your experience, does a static image of it exist, and in fact, from the way it's loaded it looks like at no point during this development, has anyone ever actually created a static image of this

 

[jbassic]

Oh my god... "I'm on a Boat"... I can't

 

[THE_JOKE_KING33]

This would be kinda awesome with Limbo-esque gameplay(at least IMO).

 

[DoPo]

Okay this an Escapist-y question.

Is this a game or a static piece of art or a comic strip? Because it feels to me that this has absolutely a game. You control something and explore a vast and interesting world. It's a really really good game even, if you add in a Journey esque style multiplayer feature I would fall in love with this thing

It's a piece of art drawn as part of a comic strip that feels a lot like playing a game when looking at it (especially going through the tunnels). It is also completely awesome.

But, you can only experience that piece of art by interacting with it dynamically and the experience of that is vital to the impression given. If you were to just be shown the picture, rather than having to drag yourself all the way up the picture, the sense of scale would be ruined.

Imagine this, we stick an animated flying figure in the centre of the screen, it doesn't move from the centre but animates in the direction you'd drag. So it would look exactly like you moving an Avatar through the world as you move around the world. Would that change whether you think it's a game?

And you've got a good imagination, so we shrink the Avatar to a dot stuck to the centre of you screen.

And then we remove the dot. When does it stop being a game?

---------------------------

Also, how's it a static image? Your watching a static box on a computer screen that is constantly changing according to algorithms to give a sense of movement. In no way during your experience, does a static image of it exist, and in fact, from the way it's loaded it looks like at no point during this development, has anyone ever actually created a static image of this

It's a static image much the same way as a panorama is a static image. It is the same all the time, it's you who are shifting around to see more of it. Also, a giant picture - you'll have to lean in and look at specific parts of the picture one at a time to appreciate all of it.

Otherwise, by your comparison even viewing this thread is a "game" since, you are moving the text around by scrolling.

Also scroll up for a complete overview(s) of the image comic.

 

[BrotherRool]

It's a static image much the same way as a panorama is a static image. It is the same all the time, it's you who are shifting around to see more of it. Also, a giant picture - you'll have to lean in and look at specific parts of the picture one at a time to appreciate all of it.

Otherwise, by your comparison even viewing this thread is a "game" since, you are moving the text around by scrolling.

Also scroll up for a complete overview(s) of the image comic.

That would certainly apply if the comic was designed to be experienced through scrolling, however I haven't come across comics where the content was dependent on scrolling across the screen, or comics that went to lengths to ensure that people with large monitors didn't complete miss the point.

Whereas here it's clearly been designed from the beginning to be scrolled through and that a key experience was designed from the perspective of the participation of the viewer the line. 'We've only walked two miles, lets stop here' Would not convey the same meaning if you looked at the picture without having had the scrolling experience.

The core concept was to express size and the core mechanic through which he expressed size was forcing you to scroll large distances and only being able to see structures partially through a window.

There's some fuzziness here, what you're essentially doing is exploring a fairly smallish 2d landscape. It would be functionally identical to say Minecraft with the digging ability removed and on peaceful mode.

At the very least, I found I was treating it very much like I treat games like Minecraft or Oblivion, 'hey look there's a mountain, let's climb to the top of it' 'I wonder what's over there' 'what can I see going this way' and I had a fairly strong sense that I was exploring and was using words in my head the same way I'd talk about a player avatar. So I guess a follow up question would be, is it then possible for someone to have a game-like experience in a none game?

 

[Nuke_em_05]

EDIT: I see many people want the whole thing, and I don't blame them, I certainly couldn't find everything myself.
Full image pieced together is here. [http://www.mrphlip.com/xkcd1110/]

Better version here, scroll to zoom.
http://xkcd-map.rent-a-geek.de/

Explored from end to end, and most of the caves on the site. Took for freaking ever. Figured there was stuff in the sky, but I wasn't about to explore that much. Okay, so it took most of my morning break and I really needed to get back to work at that point.

 

[DoPo]

It's a static image much the same way as a panorama is a static image. It is the same all the time, it's you who are shifting around to see more of it. Also, a giant picture - you'll have to lean in and look at specific parts of the picture one at a time to appreciate all of it.

Otherwise, by your comparison even viewing this thread is a "game" since, you are moving the text around by scrolling.

Also scroll up for a complete overview(s) of the image comic.

That would certainly apply if the comic was designed to be experienced through scrolling, however I haven't come across comics where the content was dependent on scrolling across the screen, or comics that went to lengths to ensure that people with large monitors didn't complete miss the point.

Whereas here it's clearly been designed from the beginning to be scrolled through and that a key experience was designed from the perspective of the participation of the viewer the line. 'We've only walked two miles, lets stop here' Would not convey the same meaning if you looked at the picture without having had the scrolling experience.

The core concept was to express size and the core mechanic through which he expressed size was forcing you to scroll large distances and only being able to see structures partially through a window.

There's some fuzziness here, what you're essentially doing is exploring a fairly smallish 2d landscape. It would be functionally identical to say Minecraft with the digging ability removed and on peaceful mode.

At the very least, I found I was treating it very much like I treat games like Minecraft or Oblivion, 'hey look there's a mountain, let's climb to the top of it' 'I wonder what's over there' 'what can I see going this way' and I had a fairly strong sense that I was exploring and was using words in my head the same way I'd talk about a player avatar. So I guess a follow up question would be, is it then possible for someone to have a game-like experience in a none game?

In that case, I hope you have fun playing internet, for it is making sure you navigate the websites in some specific way.

And, just for the sake of it, let's say you went to a gallery. They give you a magnifying glass and lead you through a door - at first you see a painting, walking through the door you see it's a panorama. The layout forces you to walk around and the small details require a magnifying glass to see. Essentially, something like this comic but IRL. Would that also be considered a game? You are exploring a 2D landscape.

 

[kickassfrog]

It's ridiculously big. It must have taken an ungodly amount of time to draw it.
And it'll take just as long to view it in full.

Alas, it does not work on the xkcd app- I guess some things are too big even for smartphones.