Hoverboard
[This transcript only covers the starting page as shown on xkcd: xkcd 1608 . A full transcript of the entire comic can be found on this page .]
[Cueball is shown on a hoverboard in the center of the comic. Around him is a simple maze with 12 yellow coins. Another Cueball without hoverboard is shown standing on one of the platforms to the right. The bottom half of the window is black. Right of where Cueball stands is a ramp. Behind the ramp is a terminal. There is lots of space left of the maze, outside the maze. Text is only written in white below in the black area. The first part of the text is written below Cueball on hoverboard. Then there is an arrow pointing to the terminal and a label. Finally there is a line of text at the bottom of the black area.]
[Under Cueball:] My new book, Thing Explainer, comes out today! To celebrate, here's a small game.
[Under the arrow below the terminal.] Deposit coins here
[At the bottom:] Use the arrow keys to move
[ For the full transcript of the entire comic as it could be played see 1608: Hoverboard/Transcript . ] [ For a transcript only of the text for the scenes with text in the comic see the table below. ]
Apart from using one of the a full maps below there are also other cheating possibilities where people (or the game) have implemented ways to explore the game world more easily.

# coins Text when depositing this number of coins "X" is the number of coins collected 0 coins You got 0 coins in 1 second You successfully avoided all the coins. 1 coin You got a single coin in 1 second It's a start. 2 - 4 coins You got X coins in 3 seconds Not bad! 5 - 9 coins You got X coins in 12 seconds Terrific! 10 - 16 coins You got X coins in 10 seconds 17 coins You got 17 coins in 15 seconds You found all the coins! Great job! 18-41 coins You got X coins in 430 seconds 42 coins You got 42 coins in 460 seconds No answers here. 43-168 coins You got X coins in 460 seconds All 169 coins You got 169 coins in 1457 seconds Are you Gandalf?
Return to the play area


There are many places where you can disappear behind black areas, as not all of these are solid. You might have discovered this yourself if you stayed in the play area, as the platform below the inverted parentheses is only solid at the edges. Some of these places out of the play area even hide secret passages or hidden rooms. You can reveal them by activating goggles mode .
One notable hidden area is Elon Musk's volcano lair, which is located beneath the lava in the crater of Mount Doom. It can be difficult to find your way in here without using goggles mode even if you know it is there. (For more details, see secret passages .)
Another hidden place is the floating rock island that floats high above the Washington Monument , which is almost the highest point with solid ground. It is located just outside the left edge of the play area. This island is almost impossible to find by chance, as it takes around 30 seconds of repeatedly pressing the Up Arrow key to reach it from the top of the Monument. Even if you go up enough, you will almost miss it, as the Monument is not aligned to the island. (The maps can help you if you're having trouble finding it.)
As there are two coins on the floating rock island and four coins in the lair below the lava, it is very hard to find all the coins. There are even several coins that are hard to find because they just float in the air nowhere near any drawn things, or at least no things you can see before seeing the coin. They may hang in the air a few jumps above the ground, or in one case more than a seconds drop below the Destroyer. So getting all coins without help from a map would truly make you a Gandalf-like wizard . (See more regarding coins below.)
The larger game world is physically bounded in the left, right, and down directions, with invisible walls to each side and the ground binding you from going any further down than the deepest depression or hidden caves... In the upward direction, there is in principle also an invisible wall, but while jumping up Cueball on his hoverboard will appear to continue upwards as long as you press to jump, in addition, the longer the up arrow is pressed repeatedly, the longer it will take for Cueball to fall down again once the button is released. So although there are no new things above, you can keep jumping as high as you like and will then fall proportionally longer to get back to where you started out. Until maps were created it could have been possible that there were some hidden unexplored parts. Not long after the games release, however, the maps was created, covering the entire game.
To the far right is a platform at the top of a high pole. This platform turns out to be a nest (like a stork nest). Above the three eggs are ten coins (the most collected in one place outside the play area, and these are closer together).
To the far left is a blond haired woman with a hair bun looking right. In front of her are four coins on a row. She tells about the Destroyer (should you have gone this way without finding it yet).
Woman: In the sky, beyond the mountain, I saw a starship.
Regarding the highest part you find the highest straight rise up in the air to something other than white, under the Rock Island just left of and very high above the Washington monument. Standing on the large rock on top of this floating rock island you are standing almost as high up as possible. There is a coin here one step down from the top of this large rock. This is the highest located coin in the game. Going over the edge also represents the largest possible drop in the game. However this is not the highest point where you can stand, as the very top of the bridge on the Destroyer is just a tat higher. But there is no coin there. Also this is not close enough to the end of the Destroyer that you can jump down to the ground, so the drop from the rock is by far the longest possible.
The deepest part of the lair should have been the lowest point, but as this lair's entrance is up in the volcano crater, it does not reach down to become the lowest part of the image. There is also a deep well (half way left to the Volcano) with a girl at the bottom, that goes just as deep. But the deepest part where you can stand is in the ocean below the Destroyer where a rogue wave is talking to Cueball:
Wave: I know rogue waves seem implausible, but we're a straightforward consequence of the equations of fluid dynamics. Cueball: ...But you can talk? Wave: The equations are really complicated.
When standing under this wave you cannot get any lower. There are coins in all three locations, but as the coin is above the top of the high wave, it may be that it is the coin in the well that is the deepest. The coin under the lava is not at the bottom of the room so that is not so low.
Taking a route that takes the hoverboard through all the extremes mentioned above, that is the lowest, highest, left and rightmost coins and solid positions within the game can be done in about 9 minutes and 30 seconds. See a picture here of the coin delivery after such a trip that reached all the boundaries .
The game was made by Max Goodman who has previously worked on 1416: Pixels . The source code for the game can be found here .
As previously noted, the comic bears considerable resemblance to 1110: Click and Drag . The comic is made in much the same way, with 'drawn' images "glued" together to form a large "map", with the illusion of infinite bounds made possible through space saving techniques where blank tiles are not stored and are instead painted white. The boundary between blank squares and 'drawn' squares is made clear as any white space in the normal images has a very slight grey tint. Thus, seams between images and blank spaces can be discerned.
The tiles for the map are stored as simple PNG files in the naming scheme: X:-Y+s.png. An example from the starting tile can be seen here: http://xkcd.com/1608/1000:-1074+s.png , with the coordinate (X, Y) coordinate (1000, 1074).
Each file is 513x513 pixels in size, one pixel is reserved as overlap to ensure seamless joining of images. The image tiles names are listed as coordinates in an X - Y grid with X in the range from 928 to 1108 and Y in the range from 928 to 1112.
Internally in the game, the position of the player is given for instance as (X: 512187, -Y: -549668) for the starting position. Then these numbers are divided by 512 and rounded down. This gives the coordinate of the tile that the hoverboard is currently in.
(X: 512187, -Y: -549668)/512 => (X, Y) = (1000.37, -[-1073,6]) => (1000, 1074) when the numbers are rounded down.
The bottom left corner of the first tile, would thus be (1000, 1073), and the top left corner (1000, 1074) => (512000, -549888).
The collision map is encoded in the darkness of the black. Using an image manipulation program, one can easily find the secret pathways even in the zoomed out maps provided below by enhancing the contrast of the dark areas.
By observing page code while playing, the game grabs and displays images based on location, and subsequently clears all non-visible images. The game uses what seems to be a position syntax to retrieve the intended images live, and returns an error if such an image does not exist, such as a blank area. This technically means things could be added to the world and updated live. If the player is moving sufficiently fast or if the internet connection is slow, this means that the player can get stuck in a black area that does not load in time.
This also means that the game does not have coded top or bottom limits, so any attempt to find the ceiling of the game will be futile unless the game is tweaked. The game does however have side limits, and it is not possible to go down further than image with Y coordinate 1073 (and it goes down to 1069 in the full image), so there is a bottom limit in the game. If using a cheat mode this may be different.
Opening the console will display the text: what? hoverboard not enough for you!? in the log. Activating goggles mode will cause the text 'B-)' to appear in the log.
The keyboard controls are as follows:
This control scheme covers the three commonly used directional key sets: WASD a set of keys commonly used by modern games; HJKL a set of movement keys used by vi and applications which attempt to mimic vi key controls (vim); and the arrow keys, the most generic set of keys which is usually accepted by most applications which take movement as input, these were commonly used in older games.
On devices which have a touch screen and tilt sensor (portable devices like mobile phones and tablets) the controls are as follows:
After inspecting the source code, there appears to be no way to move down on a portable device, this is only relevant if gravity is disabled (see Cheats and Exploits ).
Aside from the obvious ability to move out of bounds in the game, there are some more obscure hidden features which can't be enabled through normal gameplay, the ones found so far are as follows:
Modes are activated by opening the Javascript Console (F12 [Or Command-Alt-I in most browsers under Mac OS X] to open Developer Tools, then Console tab) and writing corresponding commands. Click to expand:

The "comic" is actually a browser game made to celebrate the release of Randall's new book, Thing Explainer , which was released on the same day as this comic: Tuesday, November 24, 2015.  The comic thus appeared on a Tuesday, replacing that week's normal Wednesday release to coincide with the release day. The xkcd Header text also changed that day to shout out that the book was released on that day.
The title refers to a hoverboard (which resembles a hovering skateboard without wheels) which has been most prominently featured in the movie Back to the Future Part II , which took place in the future, until a little more than a month before this comic was released. Marty McFly traveled to the future in this second installment, more precisely to 2015-10-21 , and this comic was released just over one month later 2015-11-24. Hoverboards are just one of many things predicted in Back to the Future Part II that have come to pass before reaching the date from the movie, but are more uncommon in our world, along with other inventions like flying cars and musical clothing . Randall is known to have had electric skateboards , which is also thematically related, although another type of hoverboard would be mentioned just five weeks later in 1623: 2016 Conversation Guide .
Given Randall's enjoyment of movies and time travel it is very likely that this game is also a tribute to the Back to the Future movies. But the release day of the game has been used to promote his new book (as is clear with the text in the start screen of the game), and this explains why it was not released on the Back to the Future date. Apart from the date of release and the text about the book, the game does not seem to have any direct relation to the book; there are, however, several scenes in the game that could be seen as references to Thing Explainer . Instead the main part of the game is all the references to several movies and other stuff that has often been featured in xkcd as well as many of the other comics.
The game features an animated Cueball riding on a hoverboard which can take several different positions . The controls are the left, up, and right arrows, as written on the start screen until you begin the game, after which the text disappears. There are alternatives as explained in the Controls section. The player can jump repeatedly mid-jump to reach increasing heights, and can move left and right both while jumping and descending (see more under controls).
The player begins in a line-drawing maze (called the Play Area ) with 17 gold coins located throughout and a "deposit" terminal. The ostensible goal of the game is to collect as many coins as possible and return them to the deposit in the fastest possible time, which returns text messages describing the result. Players consumed with obtaining the best possible time result for collecting the coins may not realize there is anything more to the game.
The best way to enjoy this comic is to play the game! If you didn't do that already, reading anything below or the official transcript will spoil you from truly enjoying the comic, and maybe making some interesting discoveries yourself! So:
!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!

Beyond the maze on either side (just far enough that players who remain within the maze will not see) are tall walls seemingly designed to contain the player . However, the walls have a finite height and, combined with the ability to double-jump, the player can leave the purported "play area" either to the sides or above the initial maze. This returns a flashing red error message : " Return to the Play Area ".
But if the player overcomes the desire to comply and return to the play area and disregards this message, they can take hoverboard Cueball outside beyond the tall walls surrounding the initial play area. And here they will discover an entire world that can be explored left and right (and above), including numerous points of interest and Easter eggs similar in style to comic 1110: Click and Drag . There are also many more coins to collect, 169 coins all in all, so 152 more than those from the play area.
Although this game is reminiscent of Click and Drag, this was the first time an actual game, where the user moves an object in front of the drawing, has been released on xkcd. In previous "games" this has not been the case. In Click and Drag the user only moves the drawing into the view section. And in for instance the two previous April fools' comics , 1350: Lorenz and 1506: xkcloud , the user does not move anything, but only supplies choices, text and drawings. However, already  on the next April Fools' Day a new game, 1663: Garden , was released where the users also actively moved items around on the screen and could make items disappear (like taking coins in this game.). The ability to infinitely doubles jump allows us to reach beyond just the ground.
There are many themes and references throughout the game, but the two main themes are Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings . Below there is a table listing all references to both of these movies and much more. For instance there are 19 references to SW and 6 to LOTR.
The largest part of the game is located on the right side of the play area and is mainly a world dominated by references to Star Wars . Most noticeable is a recreation of the opening scene in the first film , where Princess Leia's space ship Tantive IV also known as The Rebel Blockade Runner is flying over the desert planet Tatooine . Here it is followed by the Star Destroyer , Devastator . The desert ground with these two space ships above is the first you find to the right. Although in the game they are located inside the atmosphere, not as in the movie out in space, a fact that is commented on by Megan who looks out from an opening in the bottom of the Destroyer's hull.
Megan: Is this ship designed to fly in the atmosphere like this?
Both ships are high above the ground, but there are three wires from the ground that connect (and thus guide you) up to The Runner and from there 100+ torpedoes , which are fired down on the Runner coming from the Destroyer above, gives away the location of the Destroyer itself. The Destroyer is so high up in the air, that you would not be likely to find it by chance without these leads (or at least some of the several other hints from people on the ground looking up and reacting or like White Hat looking from the tip of the Washington Monument and reacting by saying : "Uh, what the heck is that?! .").
One of the main points (The Joke) of the entire game is the extreme size of such a Destroyer . It takes up more space than the rest of the game (and most of the coins are located there). Inside the Destroyer there are many, many rooms, long corridors and deep shafts, even a huge cave with trees and animals. At the bridge we meet both Darth Vader and the Emperor himself, Palpatine . There are many other jokes related both to Star Wars and other movies and xkcd comics inside the Destroyer. For instance, Darth Vader discusses Steven Universe , bringing up Rose Quartz and Steven himself ( who can be found with the Crystal Gems in a different part of the Destroyer).
Darth Vader: But Steven's mother is a Crystal Gem...
There are also interesting things and references along the ground beneath the Destroyer, some of these are also Star Wars related like the wedding scene where Jabba the Hutt is mentioned.
To the left side is an entirely different world, although much smaller (shorter) than the one to the right. Here the main theme is The Lord of the Rings mainly with the presence of a volcano where for instance Megan tries to throw in rings of power , as in the scene from the last LOTR film where Frodo fails and Gollum attacks inside the volcano Mount Doom , thus making it clear that the volcano in the game represents this volcano. Both Frodo, Sauron and Gandalf are mentioned in the game. The first two by name in the text. Two great eagles are talking about Frodo and Tolkien , Sauron's name is read up by Megan from a book , and Gandalf is drawn as a wizard figure in the crater and also his name is used in the message you receive if you collect all possible coins .
The two worlds do conflict though, as an X-wing fighter is parked at a gas station to the left in LOTR world, and Gandalf's famous quote You shall not pass! from his fight against the Balrog is modified by Cueball who is not trying to block your path to a coin inside a room in the Destroyer. This conflict could very well be a reference to the fact that Andy Serkis who played Gollum in LOTR, now plays the Supreme Leader Snoke in the new Star Wars movie, and his appearance as Snoke is not that much different from Gollum's. Snoke also delivers a line in the movie (about "bringing someone to me") that reminds one of Gollum when he talks about "the ring coming to me". Randall would not have known this last part at the time that this comic was released, but he would likely be aware of Andy Serkis' involvement.
Other themes are related to other movies, like a naughty reference to Star Trek from inside the bridge of the Rebel Blockade Runner where a long-haired woman (maybe Danish since she obviously does this to annoy Star Wars fans and Hairbun behind her, which could represent Princess Leia with her special hair style ) delivers the following line taken from the Star Trek universe:
Long haired woman: Captain's log, stardate November 24th, 2015... Hairbun: Augh! No!
Also references to video games are seen, best shown with the maze towards the back end of the Destroyer which are an almost complete depiction of Level 1 of the computer game Prince of Persia down to the three coins being in the place of three items to take in that game, and at least two of the opposing sword fighters in the correct places as well.
The comic/game and book were released only 3 weeks before the 7th Star Wars movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released on December 14, 2015. And this movie had already been referenced by Randall 7½ weeks earlier in 1585: Similarities , when another movie ( The Martian ) were released. It was a reference in the title text to the new robot BB-8 that are featured in the Force Awakens. That the Star Wars section is thus so much larger than the LOTR section could be a hint to the fact that it is now 12 years ago that the last of those films were released, and although the Hobbit has been released as three films over the previous three Christmases it was Star Wars that dominated the Christmas a month after this comics release.
Some of the scenes in this game are references to pictures in the new book that it celebrates. Here are some examples:
There are also many references to other xkcd comics, like the room at the front end of the Destroyer ball pit filled with playpen balls , and two adults playing in it, like in 150: Grownups . Also the well in the left part of the world with a girl and a coin at the bottom is likely a reference to the movie The Ring , which has been referenced before in xkcd. Wells have also come up in xkcd in the early Well series .
There have been many comics with electric skateboards as mentioned, which do not appear in this comic, but there is one example of a normal skateboard . This is used by Megan in a room in the Destroyer, while she is inside a hamster ball . There is also another hamster ball , with a kid (looking like Megan) inside. It is used in a more than human sized ten pin bowling game to the left. Hamster balls is another item that has been prominently featured in xkcd.
In the weeks before, and especially the weeks after there were also other comics that had a subject which could refer back to Hoverboard in some ways. Maybe these comics were either influenced by the game, or the other way around so that relevant items were added to the game because of these other comics:
Cueball to Megan at the bottom: Honestly, it doesn't even look that much like Washington. Cueball to White Hat at the tip: Look at that- solid aluminum! We´re gonna be rich!
Cueball: What's up? Ant queen: The usual. Poopin' out ants. Cueball: Eww.
Megan at the edge of the volcano crater: One of these is probably a ring of power or whatever.
Right quadcopter: Remember: There's no such thing as good volcano footage taken by a quadcopter that survived.
Cueball singing: Spider-man Spider-plan Spider-canal Spider-Panama Gates let in Spider boats Flood the locks Spiders float Look out! Spiders in both oceans.
Almost all main characters in the xkcd gallery are used more than once, especially there are three characters that are used several times. Number one is of course Cueball (with close to 90 appearances) who is already shown at the starting point . He is also the first character seen when walking both right and left (where he speaks the first line to the left).
Then follows Megan with at least 40 appearances, she is even shown twice in the same location three times, one of these three even occurs within one of the small images . She is also shown with Cueball in his first appearance to the left, and she is the first to speak a line to the right here .
Also Ponytail is well represented with 26 appearances (for instance here) .
Hairy (with different hair styles) is used 7 times (for instance here ) and Hairbun is used 5 times (for instance here) .
Two of the main characters are used twice: Beret Guy ( here and here ) and White Hat ( here and here ).
The only exception is that the main villain of xkcd Black Hat who is very hard to find. He is only shown once in the comic where he very uncharacteristically just sits and snores at the right wall in the cave inside the Destroyer (is it really him...?). The only other hint that he is not forgotten is that his hat can be seen on a stick under the Destroyer after the three large T-like structures.  And this is not that kind of stick characters Randall usually draws. But at least we now know where Danish has hidden it from him this time (see 405: Journal 3 ). Given that his hat is stuck there, he could also be any of the Cueballs close by…
Also Blondie seems to be only represented once, while in her reporter mode while discovering a bug before the volcano as can be seen here .
There are also several characters that are not recognizable as either any of the standard xkcd characters or in any other way (see for instance a few of the wedding guests ). But there are possibly some of the minor characters are used like Danish at the bridge in the Blockade Runner ( here ) but this cannot be confirmed, she just looks like her and has some similarities teasing the Star Wars fan.
Several places in the comic it is clear from the size and the behavior that some of the characters are kids, see for instance the Blondie image mentioned above, where two kids looking like Megan and Hairy stand behind her, but they would in principle not be Megan or Hairy despite appearance, as these named characters are adults.
There are also many fictive people from different movies, books, and shows; for instance Darth Vader ( here ), Gandalf ( here ) and Steven Universe ( here ) all three mentioned above, and some real life people: you can find Elon Musk , who has a hidden lair under the Volcano (see here ), and Gregor Mendel, hanging out on a Star Destroyer with a pea plant.
Furthermore, there are many animals (like the puma and the deer ) in the cave, some even rather big like this octopus or even gigantic like this ant queen (all three from inside the Destroyer). There are also a couple of small Star Wars robots, one in a corridor in each space ship ( here from the Destroyer ).
[This transcript only covers the starting page as shown on xkcd: xkcd 1608 . A full transcript of the entire comic can be found on this page .]
[Cueball is shown on a hoverboard in the center of the comic. Around him is a simple maze with 12 yellow coins. Another Cueball without hoverboard is shown standing on one of the platforms to the right. The bottom half of the window is black. Right of where Cueball stands is a ramp. Behind the ramp is a terminal. There is lots of space left of the maze, outside the maze. Text is only written in white below in the black area. The first part of the text is written below Cueball on hoverboard. Then there is an arrow pointing to the terminal and a label. Finally there is a line of text at the bottom of the black area.]
[Under Cueball:] My new book, Thing Explainer, comes out today! To celebrate, here's a small game.
[Under the arrow below the terminal.] Deposit coins here
[At the bottom:] Use the arrow keys to move
[ For the full transcript of the entire comic as it could be played see 1608: Hoverboard/Transcript . ] [ For a transcript only of the text for the scenes with text in the comic see the table below. ]
Apart from using one of the a full maps below there are also other cheating possibilities where people (or the game) have implemented ways to explore the game world more easily.

# coins Text when depositing this number of coins "X" is the number of coins collected 0 coins You got 0 coins in 1 second You successfully avoided all the coins. 1 coin You got a single coin in 1 second It's a start. 2 - 4 coins You got X coins in 3 seconds Not bad! 5 - 9 coins You got X coins in 12 seconds Terrific! 10 - 16 coins You got X coins in 10 seconds 17 coins You got 17 coins in 15 seconds You found all the coins! Great job! 18-41 coins You got X coins in 430 seconds 42 coins You got 42 coins in 460 seconds No answers here. 43-168 coins You got X coins in 460 seconds All 169 coins You got 169 coins in 1457 seconds Are you Gandalf?
Return to the play area


There are many places where you can disappear behind black areas, as not all of these are solid. You might have discovered this yourself if you stayed in the play area, as the platform below the inverted parentheses is only solid at the edges. Some of these places out of the play area even hide secret passages or hidden rooms. You can reveal them by activating goggles mode .
One notable hidden area is Elon Musk's volcano lair, which is located beneath the lava in the crater of Mount Doom. It can be difficult to find your way in here without using goggles mode even if you know it is there. (For more details, see secret passages .)
Another hidden place is the floating rock island that floats high above the Washington Monument , which is almost the highest point with solid ground. It is located just outside the left edge of the play area. This island is almost impossible to find by chance, as it takes around 30 seconds of repeatedly pressing the Up Arrow key to reach it from the top of the Monument. Even if you go up enough, you will almost miss it, as the Monument is not aligned to the island. (The maps can help you if you're having trouble finding it.)
As there are two coins on the floating rock island and four coins in the lair below the lava, it is very hard to find all the coins. There are even several coins that are hard to find because they just float in the air nowhere near any drawn things, or at least no things you can see before seeing the coin. They may hang in the air a few jumps above the ground, or in one case more than a seconds drop below the Destroyer. So getting all coins without help from a map would truly make you a Gandalf-like wizard . (See more regarding coins below.)
The larger game world is physically bounded in the left, right, and down directions, with invisible walls to each side and the ground binding you from going any further down than the deepest depression or hidden caves... In the upward direction, there is in principle also an invisible wall, but while jumping up Cueball on his hoverboard will appear to continue upwards as long as you press to jump, in addition, the longer the up arrow is pressed repeatedly, the longer it will take for Cueball to fall down again once the button is released. So although there are no new things above, you can keep jumping as high as you like and will then fall proportionally longer to get back to where you started out. Until maps were created it could have been possible that there were some hidden unexplored parts. Not long after the games release, however, the maps was created, covering the entire game.
To the far right is a platform at the top of a high pole. This platform turns out to be a nest (like a stork nest). Above the three eggs are ten coins (the most collected in one place outside the play area, and these are closer together).
To the far left is a blond haired woman with a hair bun looking right. In front of her are four coins on a row. She tells about the Destroyer (should you have gone this way without finding it yet).
Woman: In the sky, beyond the mountain, I saw a starship.
Regarding the highest part you find the highest straight rise up in the air to something other than white, under the Rock Island just left of and very high above the Washington monument. Standing on the large rock on top of this floating rock island you are standing almost as high up as possible. There is a coin here one step down from the top of this large rock. This is the highest located coin in the game. Going over the edge also represents the largest possible drop in the game. However this is not the highest point where you can stand, as the very top of the bridge on the Destroyer is just a tat higher. But there is no coin there. Also this is not close enough to the end of the Destroyer that you can jump down to the ground, so the drop from the rock is by far the longest possible.
The deepest part of the lair should have been the lowest point, but as this lair's entrance is up in the volcano crater, it does not reach down to become the lowest part of the image. There is also a deep well (half way left to the Volcano) with a girl at the bottom, that goes just as deep. But the deepest part where you can stand is in the ocean below the Destroyer where a rogue wave is talking to Cueball:
Wave: I know rogue waves seem implausible, but we're a straightforward consequence of the equations of fluid dynamics. Cueball: ...But you can talk? Wave: The equations are really complicated.
When standing under this wave you cannot get any lower. There are coins in all three locations, but as the coin is above the top of the high wave, it may be that it is the coin in the well that is the deepest. The coin under the lava is not at the bottom of the room so that is not so low.
Taking a route that takes the hoverboard through all the extremes mentioned above, that is the lowest, highest, left and rightmost coins and solid positions within the game can be done in about 9 minutes and 30 seconds. See a picture here of the coin delivery after such a trip that reached all the boundaries .
The game was made by Max Goodman who has previously worked on 1416: Pixels . The source code for the game can be found here .
As previously noted, the comic bears considerable resemblance to 1110: Click and Drag . The comic is made in much the same way, with 'drawn' images "glued" together to form a large "map", with the illusion of infinite bounds made possible through space saving techniques where blank tiles are not stored and are instead painted white. The boundary between blank squares and 'drawn' squares is made clear as any white space in the normal images has a very slight grey tint. Thus, seams between images and blank spaces can be discerned.
The tiles for the map are stored as simple PNG files in the naming scheme: X:-Y+s.png. An example from the starting tile can be seen here: http://xkcd.com/1608/1000:-1074+s.png , with the coordinate (X, Y) coordinate (1000, 1074).
Each file is 513x513 pixels in size, one pixel is reserved as overlap to ensure seamless joining of images. The image tiles names are listed as coordinates in an X - Y grid with X in the range from 928 to 1108 and Y in the range from 928 to 1112.
Internally in the game, the position of the player is given for instance as (X: 512187, -Y: -549668) for the starting position. Then these numbers are divided by 512 and rounded down. This gives the coordinate of the tile that the hoverboard is currently in.
(X: 512187, -Y: -549668)/512 => (X, Y) = (1000.37, -[-1073,6]) => (1000, 1074) when the numbers are rounded down.
The bottom left corner of the first tile, would thus be (1000, 1073), and the top left corner (1000, 1074) => (512000, -549888).
The collision map is encoded in the darkness of the black. Using an image manipulation program, one can easily find the secret pathways even in the zoomed out maps provided below by enhancing the contrast of the dark areas.
By observing page code while playing, the game grabs and displays images based on location, and subsequently clears all non-visible images. The game uses what seems to be a position syntax to retrieve the intended images live, and returns an error if such an image does not exist, such as a blank area. This technically means things could be added to the world and updated live. If the player is moving sufficiently fast or if the internet connection is slow, this means that the player can get stuck in a black area that does not load in time.
This also means that the game does not have coded top or bottom limits, so any attempt to find the ceiling of the game will be futile unless the game is tweaked. The game does however have side limits, and it is not possible to go down further than image with Y coordinate 1073 (and it goes down to 1069 in the full image), so there is a bottom limit in the game. If using a cheat mode this may be different.
Opening the console will display the text: what? hoverboard not enough for you!? in the log. Activating goggles mode will cause the text 'B-)' to appear in the log.
The keyboard controls are as follows:
This control scheme covers the three commonly used directional key sets: WASD a set of keys commonly used by modern games; HJKL a set of movement keys used by vi and applications which attempt to mimic vi key controls (vim); and the arrow keys, the most generic set of keys which is usually accepted by most applications which take movement as input, these were commonly used in older games.
On devices which have a touch screen and tilt sensor (portable devices like mobile phones and tablets) the controls are as follows:
After inspecting the source code, there appears to be no way to move down on a portable device, this is only relevant if gravity is disabled (see Cheats and Exploits ).
Aside from the obvious ability to move out of bounds in the game, there are some more obscure hidden features which can't be enabled through normal gameplay, the ones found so far are as follows:
Modes are activated by opening the Javascript Console (F12 [Or Command-Alt-I in most browsers under Mac OS X] to open Developer Tools, then Console tab) and writing corresponding commands. Click to expand:
