Floor796

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reception

  • Widely praised as “incredible,” “stunning maximalism,” and one of the best things people have seen online; many call it a true labor of love.
  • Seen as the kind of whimsical, personal project that “makes the internet a better place” and recalls the early-2000s web/StumbleUpon era.
  • Some mention it’s a time sink that could productively replace doomscrolling.

Interactivity and Easter eggs

  • Many comments trade coordinates and hints for hidden interactions: Naruto, Jaws, Fight Club poster, Chuck Norris, black hole, Ninja Turtle, Goofy, Duke Nukem cocoon, Steven Seagal, Monkey Island, Half-Life tentacle, Lexx, Walt & Jesse, and more.
  • FAQ-listed features are highlighted: quests, payphone with discoverable numbers, Racer796 arcade game, project stats screen, Change My Mind sign, 10‑second melodies, pixel animations, Free Ads Board, Wally/Waldo, and 20+ special actions.
  • Sound effects exist on some elements; users enjoy hunting for them.
  • A neon “Hacker News” ad and other user-created ads show off community participation.

Art style, references, and themes

  • Strong reactions to the dense, hand-crafted pixel-art vignettes; compared to Moebius, Flashback, eBoy, Theme Hospital, XCOM, Alien Syndrome, Habbo Hotel, MAD magazine, xkcd’s “Click & Drag,” and even Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights.”
  • Viewers note how iconic characters are recognizable with minimal pixels, while unfamiliar (often Soviet-era) ones read as generic extras.
  • Some pick up on thematic scenes, e.g., a sequence echoing “Another Brick in the Wall” as a critique of schooling and conformity.

Technical design and performance

  • The “mega‑gif” concept is explained: 796 refers to G‑I‑F (7th, 9th, 6th letters); the whole floor is effectively one huge animated GIF on a space station level.
  • Custom video/animation format: the floor is split into sections, each compressed and rendered in a worker thread to a shared canvas.
  • Creator built the site, engine, and editor from scratch (no big JS frameworks; minimal dependencies like Less). Several admire how fast it loads versus modern web apps.
  • One person reports a severe crash on Win10/Firefox; others on similar setups report smooth performance, suggesting a machine- or driver-specific issue.

Creator and background

  • FAQ notes the project began in 2018, with a year spent on tooling; first block took ~8 months, now ~1–1.5 months per block.
  • Clues (Russian-language article, UI languages, Soviet-era characters) indicate a Belarus-based, Russian‑speaking web programmer doing nearly everything solo.

AI, games, and future possibilities

  • Some fantasize about giving NPCs AI, turning it into an explorable, first-person world or XR experience.
  • Others argue that adding AI would betray the hand-made artistic intent, while a few stress AI is broader than just LLMs.
  • One commenter uses “recreating this world in 3D with full interaction” as a personal benchmark for future AGI/world‑model capabilities.