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Firewood Splitting Simulator
- thomasfl 3mo agoGaussian splat based game will probably become popular. This game is not gaussian splat rendered 3d, but it is pretty close. Next step is gaussian splat and animations.
- Animats 3mo agoI kept at it until firewood filled 3/4 of the surrounding circle. After that, new firewood just seemed to disappear. You can't win.
- Aboutplants 3mo agoYou need a path out
- cinntaile 3mo agoIt bothers me that I can split a log in 3 parallel pieces, rotate 90 degrees and then magically can split the middle piece. That's physically difficult! Besides that it was fun.
- supertroop 3mo agoThankfully there are no knots and it is softwood. Oddly satisfying.
- basedbertram 3mo agoFun experience, but the forced rotation after a certain number of cuts diminishes it.
- ptman 3mo agoLooks like a Fiskars axe https://www.fiskars.com/en-us/collections/axes-and-wood-preparation https://www.fiskars.com/en-us/collections/axes-and-wood-prep...
- kwdev 3mo agoCan I have a "Carry Water Simulator" to go with it?
- tonymet 3mo agoAdd beers and drunkenness , and a scene where you miss the log and bury the maul into your leg.
- ElSchorschoDE 3mo ago[dead]
- anon1094 3mo agoIt's all very satisfying: the animations, the chopping, the graphics, and the sounds. I spent more time than I should have chopping splitting firewood.
- adamddev1 3mo agoDelightful little experience. Very nice. What would be even cooler would be if the axe only went partway down sometimes and then you have to lift the log up with the axe inside a couple of times to finish it off with that satisfying full split.
- CamouflagedKiwi 3mo agoThis is kinda fun, but doesn't match most of my experience splitting firewood. The wood barely moves after it's split. If you split it perfectly, the two halves will almost certainly both fall to each side (they're pushed outwards by the axe). You can't just randomly split it across the grain into slices like you're slicing bread. I guess mostly: it's not tiring, which sort of sucks when you're doing it for real, but it is satisfying. This doesn't scratch that itch for me, but I guess it's fun in a way, similar to that cleaning simulator thing.
- JodieBenitez 3mo ago> If you split it perfectly, the two halves will almost certainly both fall to each side Just put it in a old small tire :)
- scottcorgan 3mo agothis is the most hacker news comment possible
- chamomeal 3mo agoSo many of the top comments look like parodies of HN comments
- jonstewart 3mo agoThere should be a "hickory" option where the axe just bounces back at you or gets stuck in the round.
- apercu 3mo agoI only like splitting perfectly seasoned wood ( I do about a face cord every summer/fall). Otherwise it’s just too much work. Got any tips in to tooling? I use a maul.
- rebuilder 3mo agoIn my experience, fresh wood splits much easier. I prefer a big splitting axe. But mostly the wood I use isn’t terribly gnarled or wide.
- ryanisnan 3mo agoI like how it stacks the firewood.
- greenbit 3mo agoRight? My inner 17 year old wonders where that magic was, back in the day.
- felooboolooomba 3mo agoBug: No error displayed if WebGL is disabled.
- MagicMoonlight 3mo ago[dead]
- CWuestefeld 3mo agoIf you like this, then try playing Red Dead Redemption 2. While just a tiny part of the game, you improve your relationship with the rest of the gang by doing chores like splitting wood, and also carrying hay to feed the horses.
- mauvehaus 3mo agoRed Dead Redemption 2? The birding simulator also has firewood splitting and horse feeding simulators? https://www.audubon.org/magazine/birding-its-1899-inside-blockbuster-american-west-video-game https://www.audubon.org/magazine/birding-its-1899-inside-blo...
- imagetic 3mo agoI have never wasted so much time doing something so useless.
- imagetic 3mo agoIt was a lot of fun!
- david422 3mo agoDidn't even get my maul stuck once.
- BrenBarn 3mo agoThis is oddly satisfying. Only weird part is it seems to split whichever piece I click, even if it's behind another piece or in between two other pieces, where it would be difficult or impossible to hit just that one piece and not the others around it.
- wxw 3mo agoWonderful. I appreciate that it auto-rotates when the piece is too narrow to split along one axis.
- gblargg 3mo agoThat kept annoying me. I thought I was moving the mouse while clicking. I repeated and found it forces a rotate even when you just click.
- niraj-agarwal 3mo agoGot the chop wood, now need the draw water and then we will be good
- m12k 3mo agoIn case anyone is wondering, the quote "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water" is an ancient Zen Buddhist proverb. It speaks to how the life you live, and actions you perform, before and after enlightenment are not materially different. But how and why you do and experience them changes, becoming more mindful and less mired in “attachment” and overthinking.
- foxmoss 3mo agoThis is cool, but I just got incredibly sidetracked by the fact that author Gavin Shapiro has a fake museum in the arctic (museumzoetrope.org). Half as a ploy it seems to raise the value of his penguin NFTs, half as quite a little prank on the internet.
- Choco31415 3mo agoI chopped so much wood that the browser was starting to lag. Thanks for sharing the simulator, it was fun!
- sva_ 3mo agoHere's a script to automatically chop wood, if you're so inclined: setInterval(_=>{a+=.13;['down','up'].map(e=>$('canvas').dispatchEvent(new PointerEvent('pointer'+e,{clientX:innerWidth*(.2+a%.6),clientY:innerHeight*(.4+a%.2)})))},a=9)
- eh8 3mo ago"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."
- the_af 3mo agoSmall nitpick (not of the neckbeard type): if you split the wood in slices then rotate it so the cut strikes perpendicular to the slices, it tends to split horizontal pieces of wood without touching the rest, even if it's "sandwiched" between the other slices, which seems odd since it makes the axe edge feel like a surgical strike rather than something with length. I think it would feel better if it modeled the length of the edge, which should disturb the other horizontal slices.
- coolfox 3mo agoI was able to get 19 slices out of one log
- rvnx 3mo agoThe page was developed by Claude, maybe you can share the prompt(s) so we can develop variants of it ? I was surprised to see it handles 3D like that so well
- cratermoon 3mo agoFruit ninja but for logs. Now I can finally play lumberjack like I’m Nicole Coenen.
- alliao 3mo agoif you click fast enough you summon additional axes from the ether
- crtified 3mo agoThis task has what I'd call asymmetrical reciprocity. That is, it's probably easier for the development professional to code a pretend version of chopping wood, than it is for the professional axeman to chop out a pretend version of a computer. However I do eagerly await being proven wrong.
- mrighele 3mo agoWhat this miss is a second part where you put the same wood that you split in a fireplace and watch it burn.
- jakedata 3mo agoThe most satisfying part of splitting wood is doing it in temperatures well below freezing. The wood is crystalline in hardness and really does tend to split as it does in this over-optimistic simulation. "Split your own wood and it will warm you twice". CSB: I had no idea my uncle was unaffected by poison ivy. He invited me over to harvest some dead ash trees on his property. I was destroyed for a month by rashes and he didn't even know the wood was covered in urushiol.
- NooneAtAll3 3mo agowebgl :/
- dwd 3mo agoUsed to watch the competitive wood chopping at my local agricultural show all the time. The highlight was always the tree felling competition. Each competitor has an axe and four springer boards, and it's a race to basically chop the top off a standing telegraph pole. That would make a better game.
- gverrilla 3mo agoIt's a toy, not a game.
- voidmain0001 3mo agoFor everyone referring to splitting with an axe and saying it’s hard, no wonder, everyone in the know uses a maul for splitting, not an axe.
- gverrilla 3mo agoPoms[0] is great. I'd like to be able to upload my dog's pic. 0: https://screen.toys/poms/ https://screen.toys/poms/
- t1234s 3mo agoWildly addictive.. did Phillip Morris develop this?
- NoPicklez 3mo agoReminds me of classic mini games on miniclip or addicting games. I wouldn't call it a simulator but an arcade firewood splitting game
- codingconstable 3mo agovery cool
- vladde 3mo agoi managed to get 8 pieces standing on the log, without any of them falling off.
- Tommix11 3mo agoIt seems they chose the Fiskars Axe, good choice I own five of them.
- joelverhagen 3mo agoYeah, I recognized that too. Probably the popular X27 :)
- xlii 3mo agoThis is fun. I checked other screen toys by the author, but sadly they aren't as amusing as this one. The animated gif on the bottom of the list though :D
- wraptile 3mo agoI once lived in a giant country side house in Estonia and nothing matched wood splitting when it comes a morning exercise. You start a bit drowsy and cold but after a few splits you warm up, your mind starts to wake up and body becomes engaged to take on the day. It's a very good exercise that I miss dearly so this simulator is a lovely reminder!
- PenguineDavid 3mo agoThis is really cool! I honestly spent like 30mins just cutting firewood.
- begemotz 3mo agoneed numbers to go up.
- mdnahas 3mo agoI have warm memories of splitting wood at my uncle’s with a sledge hammer and wedge. It is that right mix of physical activity (but not too much) and a little brain work. Great to do early while my aunt is making breakfast. Advice: WEAR STEEL-TIPPED BOOTS! It saved my toes.
- RaSoJo 3mo agoFun game. But please don't leave it on in the background while moving on to other tasks. Pretty much killed my venerable i7 mac.
- XorNot 3mo agoOkay so the thing is I want a wood fire simulation too. With as much physics sim on combustion dynamics as possible.
- carsonye 3mo agoWell designed. It has a kind of magic that keeps people hooked.
- epiccoleman 3mo agoI enjoy trying to get the maximal number of pieces from the log. My record is 16. The game is slightly annoying about forcing a rotate when i'm trying to shave thinner sections out of the log, so it's somewhat constrained. Can anyone beat 16?
- rergaqevrae 3mo agoI got to 19. I found you can split some slices into 3 pieces before they hit the floor and so if you get a thicker log, you can get 6 to 7 cross sections, letting you get past 16
- layer8 3mo agoUnfortunately the traffic noises don’t make this very relaxing.
- boombapoom 3mo agowhere the part where my axe gets stuck and i have to lift up the whole log
- beaker52 3mo agoWhere’s carry water simulator?
- bookofjoe 3mo agoIt's taken 5 days for the penny to drop.
- adamzwasserman 3mo agoIt is insane how much I enjoy this
- dehugger 3mo agoI have completed 4 rows of firewood, onto my 5th! The stacking animation is very satisfying, I am sad I can't actually see the wood stacking anymore (because my wood pile has grown to large). It would be nice if it persisted across refreshes, and maybe provided a counter for how many rounds/cords of would you have split.
- Tinfoilpigeons 3mo agoThis is very cool!! Nice idea
- stevenalowe 3mo agoVery cool sim!
- __xwd__ 3mo ago[dead]
- blackdogie 3mo agoThat was a fun work out. I was wondering what happened when you "filled" the circle of firewood.
- ralfd 3mo agoWhat happens?
- kevmo314 3mo agoIt starts stacking a second circle
- oytis 3mo agoDoes it ever end though?
- dehugger 3mo agoNot that I've found, and I am up to my fifth row of wood now.
- cluckindan 3mo agoNo, and that’s what makes it a proper simulator.
- comrade1234 3mo agoHalf the battle is having the right stance so that you don't accidentally embed the axe in your shin.
- coderenegade 3mo agoI'm honestly having a hard time visualizing the technique some of you guys seem to be using.
- oh_my_goodness 3mo agoI'm ok that they left that part out.
- olalonde 3mo agoHonestly I'm more fascinated by the grass around, but I haven't played games in a long time.
- horticulturist 3mo agoOddly fun, though could use a little more variety, maybe with knots, etc.
- daakni 3mo agoFeels very satisfying
- alansaber 3mo agoThe momentum on the camera spin is very annoying. Really cool though
- tharkun__ 3mo agoThat and the fact that you can rotate w/ left click as well. Turns out I naturally drag the mouse a little. So having rotate on right click only would be way less annoying, especially when combined with the momentum.
- albumen 3mo agoBut then it wouldn’t work on a touchscreen, and it wouldn’t go viral.
- ab_goat 3mo agoWhat about when you’re splitting a log with a branch and the maul bounces straight back up? Lol
- ab_goat 3mo agoBeautiful sim. Looks like red oak. As someone who has split a lot of wood, wish it could incorporate more of the struggles of splitting logs. - missing your spot by 6” or more and creating a tiny shard that goes flying - the log you’re aiming at falling as you are in your backswing - getting your maul stuck halfway down the split
- andwur 3mo agoCould do with a difficulty setting that includes when you inherit someone else's log pile, someone who really enjoyed making every cut on a new and more inventive angle than the last. Normally a wedge is used to split the wood, but it also doubles as a wedge to be wedged underneath just so you can get the log to stand up. Also, Y sections (ycombinator mode?). 40 hits later and you might have a nice pile of woodchips, very rarely will it actually split in any clean way.
- neogodless 3mo agoYeah this needs pieces with knots, and having to swing at least 3 times before the initial split works. Very unrealistic, 3/10. Need some wedge + sledgehammer modes. Also how do I simulate my shoulder and lower back hurting?
- Waterluvian 3mo agoI need a fireplace or bonfire simulator that I can throw these into.
- bot403 3mo agoThere's a ton of non-interactive fireplace simulators on Netflix and YouTube. Especially around Christmas.
- nZac 3mo agoThis simulates a person far more skilled than me. I never had to adjust the chunk to get it to sit right, the maul hit exactly where I told it to, and it even stacked itself!
- bluGill 3mo agoNever had the maul get stuck in the wood. Never had the wood fly off the splitting stump.
- oh_my_goodness 3mo agoIt does fly off sometimes in the game.
- bluGill 3mo agoI didn't see that but I only did a couple before deciding this reminds me too much of work.
- sklargh 3mo agoIf this triggers your interest in IRL firewood splitting it’s a very meditative and satisfying yard job. Also great mild to moderate workout between the splitting and stacking, especially on a crisp Fall afternoon.
- PyWoody 3mo agoIf you're chopping wood in the Fall, I sure hope it's for next year's winter.
- codemonkey-zeta 3mo agoNope, splitting green wood is much more difficult than splitting dried logs, so I often cut a tree in the spring, stack the rounds, then split those rounds in the fall. People overestimate how dry wood needs to be to burn correctly. Just have some ultra-dry kindling (seasoned for 2+ years) and you won't have any problems. On the contrary, I know some folks who let all their wood dry too far, and it burned way too hot and ruined their stove (and almost burned their house down).
- cluckindan 3mo agoIt’s an equation. If you have dry firewood, you need less of it at once. Some folks don’t understand that. More water in the wood means less efficient combustion, more smoke and harsher smoke, which may irritate your neighbors downwind, or everyone around on still days.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- cody_ellingham 3mo agoChop wood, carry water.
- hagbard_c 3mo agoNice sim, there's one thing missing though: splitting two sections at the same time. It do this all the time as it can almost double splitting speed when dealing with mid-size logs. Split the log in two halves, making sure to keep the halves close together. Rotate around the splitting block by about 60°, split again hitting both halves at the same time. Do this once more and you've split the log into 6 60° sections, a good size for stacking in the fireplace and also a good section size to be able to light a fire. I split between 5 m³ and 7 m³ of firewood per year which is enough to heat our house and cook our food, have been doing this for about 20 years now so I have some experience. The double-split is a good time saver.
- wartywhoa23 3mo agoI'd upvote you twice for your nickname alone, if I could! All hail Eris! :)
- MBCook 3mo agoThis works amazingly well on my iPhone with obvious touch controls. Very impressive.
- yardshop 3mo agoThe pieces look like they retain the shapes I cut them in when stacked. I started cutting them as pie slices, but then tried a few as parallel chops, and they get stacked in those shapes. Also interesting is the shadows of leaves that stay consistent on the scene as the pile grows, but they don't appear on the splitting area itself. Lots of engine noise too, I guess that's the ambience in this person's back yard! Probably true for lots of us.
- greenbit 3mo agoAfter the first cord or two, the ground around the block should be covered in chips and splinters. That might be easy to add to the sim. Otoh, it's a fun little sim as is.
- mehtablr 3mo agoIts same as dbdiagram, what's new in this?
- relevant_stats 3mo agoYou've confused the threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48523992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48523992
- ETH_start 3mo agoQuite realistic. Could be more realistic still if you could chop two blocks at once.
- Icons8 3mo agoThat was a satisfying part of my day. Thank you.
- traceroute66 3mo agoFun but hugely unrealistic simulation, so many "bugs": - Able to split log into unrealistically thin slices and they remain perfectly upright - Split a log into two, rotate 90 degrees, and by some miracle you can split the half further away from you whilst the piece nearest to you doesn't get hit or move an inch etc.
- blueaquilae 3mo agoYou don't understand don't you?
- kubasienki 3mo agoVery infuriating, why does it rotate when i want to split it thinner
- MatthiasWandel 3mo agoLooks like its coded by someone who has never split firewood. The challenge is not deciding where to split, its executing the split. Like hitting the same gap if it doesn't split, deciding orientation to aoid knots, figuring out how to put it on end if it wasn't cut straight. And some of the cuts it allowed me would hit the ax handle on another part, the shock from that damages the ax handle and is painful on the hands. And then there's the lifting the stuck block by the axe and hitting it axe side down to finish the split instead of pulling the stuck axe out. So the simulation handles none of the challenges of splitting wood.
- alamortsubite 3mo agoIt's perfect because the kind of people who will enjoy it shouldn't be allowed near an axe, anyway. As someone with a wood stove, for my first few chops I rotated the log to orient the checking. Then it dawned on me that the simulation likely wasn't that sophisticated, and I came here to meet up with you guys.
- InsideOutSanta 3mo agoI can't tell if this is a parody of HN comments or a serious response to a little toy app.
- greenbit 3mo agoWell, what about when you get into a piece of apple wood, and as soon as you hit it, carpenter ants boil out of it, all over your chopping block, up the handle of your axe, and you don't even realize 3 or 4 of them got up your pant-legs until suddenly your shins feel like they've been hit with white phosphorous rounds? That would be pretty hard to simulate. Guess they had to stop somewhere
- hasgarion2600 3mo agoAnd the domain expert has build how many playable wood splitting games?
- bsiverly 3mo agoI swear this forum needs to embrace their inner child more some days. My four year old loved this. Well executed fun.
- 1e1a 3mo agoThis is fun and looks amazing, however there seems to be quite a bit of texture in the out of focus blur. There's also a lot of aliasing on the grass. Also, I think the camera shake could do with a very slight delay after the axe hits, and maybe a slightly slower decay curve.
- bicx 3mo agoPeople here seem a little confused. This is a simulator in the same way Goat Simulator is a simulator. It’s from a collection called “screen toys” and it’s meant to be mindless fun.
- pranavm27 3mo agoAnd this is HN, its acting as its meant to xD
- aaron695 3mo ago[dead]
- frollogaston 3mo agoAll those virtual desk toys in the Mac OS X Tiger Dashboard. You had to be there.
- binoct 3mo agoHere here. This was a joy to wake up to and wish I hadn’t stumbled into the comments.
- Timwi 3mo agoFor future reference, the phrase is “hear, hear”.
- sowbug 3mo agoThen you're really going to love this. The proper term is a shortened form of "hear him, hear him," which was necessary because British Parliament didn't allow clapping or cheering. Instead, if you wanted to show agreement with a speaker's point, you'd shout out that everyone else should "hear" him. Not to be confused with "hear ye," which evolved from the French "oyez," which is the imperative form of "to listen," which was shouted at a crowd before an important announcement.
- adm4 3mo agogreat game and very satisfying.
- KillerRAK 3mo agogood exercise!
- mac3n 3mo agoNothing beats coming home from work, chopping something into pieces, and setting it on fire.
- makach 3mo agoI spent too much time on this.
- davidee 3mo agoMissing the splitting axe getting a little jammed at a knot. Otherwise excellent.
- wartywhoa23 3mo agoThis is HN I'd like to see more of. Mocking too nerdy gripes on "simulator" accuracy, sharing some real world experience with physical things beyond the screen frames, and on in the same vein. A breath of fresh air, really, in the prevailing AI smog.
- tylerrobinson 3mo agoFWIW, the creator’s Insta post for this thing says #vibecoding @shapiro500 No shade if so, I think it’s an awesome little toy.
- underdeserver 3mo agoI don't think I could have vibe coded that. At the very least, he photographed and built models of logs and his own yard.
- jenniferhooley 3mo agoI do a lot of game stuff (professionally and just for fun) and play around with maxing out vibeing little feature samples. This would be fairly straightforward vibecode over a day or two. Definitely not to throw shade at the guy. But yea, there is nothing here that wouldn't be easily vibeable.
- gaudystead 3mo agoMinimum Vibeable Product
- underdeserver 3mo agoMy point is that it's easily vibeable for you, because you do game stuff. I don't - I did large scale web, embedded, data, and security, but no graphics or games. I wouldn't know where to begin.
- mrguyorama 3mo ago
- troyvit 3mo agoThere was this old Piers Anthony short story about a little kid who likes playing with his dad's wood-splitting kit. He's a little kid so he doesn't handle an axe, but he does use adzes, hatchets, I dunno stuff I don't remember now[1]. Anyway he gets kidnapped by aliens and gets to join a great intergalactic wood-splitting competition. I won't ruin it but maybe if you get really good at this simulation you could be next. [1] https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?46184 https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?46184
- conception 3mo agoHaha this is also the plot of The Last Starfighter but with video games. I wonder if the screenwriter was familiar with it.
- jcims 3mo agoDamn I loved that movie!
- kiriberty 3mo agoBut why?
- Aboutplants 3mo agoBecause