15 ms·

Scenic Tram Simulator

918 points by fredley 9y ago

seattle_spring 9y ago
I just got back from a good, long trip to Europe. This captures the spirit quite nicely.
- troymc 9y ago
  Yes, I live in Europe and can confirm that this is much like my morning commute. I felt deja vu. Maybe it's about me? I thought nobody noticed I'm a cat.
  - valesco 9y ago
    Ah ah, where do you live? My guess would be Switzerland or Austria.
speps 9y ago
Title should be changed to "Short Trip".
- falsedan 9y ago
  mailto:hn@ycombinator.com
Fifer82 9y ago
This is really great! I love "toys" like this on the web, they were prominent in Flash, but then the web looked like bootstrap, and now like Material Design... Sometimes, a little bit of web creativity is what you need to brighten the day.
- minxomat 9y ago
  Before flash goes away for good, I feed my nostalgia using http://www.andkon.com/arcade/ http://www.andkon.com/arcade/. Also, this toy/experiment reminds me so much of Machinarium, I'm going to play it again right now.
  - Fifer82 9y ago
    Thank you for your insight. Please also check http://fl.corge.net/ http://fl.corge.net/ because it contains outrageous amounts of outstanding code.
- andybak 9y ago
  The ebb and flow of various conventions for utilitarian or practical sites bears little connection with the amount of creativity present on the web. "Shall I make a beautiful illustrative web-based experience or shall I make a site using Bootstrap?" said nobody ever.
  - problems 9y ago
    It's not about what any individual person may say, but about what gets produced in the end. Pure HTML and JS tools like Bootstrap make it easy to crank out basic web templates for developers, while tools like Flash made it easier for designers to make beautiful toys.
    - andybak 9y ago
      Well. It sounds to me now that you're making a slightly different point - and an altogether better one. I actually made a similar argument yesterday to someone - whatever we feel about Flash as medium for normal web content or as a browser plugin, that shouldn't taint it's reputation as a content creation tool.
    - fredley 9y ago
      This is a really good observation. Flash allowed a designer to work in their tool and export that content directly to the web. Back in the day you'd buy a cheap FTP-enabled web hosting account, and upload your exported index.html and content.swf as-is and that would be it. As a designer these days I don't think there's anything like that kind of workflow available any more.
  - stuaxo 9y ago
    You say that, but Flash was basically a drawing program with a timeline - this makes it much easier to doodle all sorts of things compared to building a site with Javascript and HTML.
    - Fifer82 9y ago
      Not entirely true. The Flash Runtime was ES4. Few who made applications after 2006 used Flash Pro. It was an Eclipse based editor for the most part (Flash Builder). However I get the point, but I feel it is important to stress this difference that you bring up. My 18 year old clueless self seen turtleshell.com randomly, thought it was amazing, looked up flash, did stuff in Flash, 10 years later OOP. 10 years after that, software engineering. My 18 year old clueless self today would want to be like "somethingcool.com" but I would have to troll through about 12 months of tutorials to see something on the screen. I'd work in a factory.
bane 9y ago
I need much more of this kind of lovely thing in my life.
sbuttgereit 9y ago
It's a very nice demonstration. Very pleasant and aesthetically pleasing. I don't know that the title here is really quite right. "Demo" is probably closer to what this is, maybe "Interactive Animation". When I think of a simulation I'm typically thinking of some effort around achieving realism and a much higher degree of freedom of action. This isn't an effort to achieve any of that. This is an artistic impression of such a trip. I can interact with it, but there is very little freedom of choice. Also the rendering is "drawn" 2D.
- jakelear 9y ago
  The title of the piece is actually "Short Trip" as seenin the title tag and the end of the experience. It seems the HN submitter chose "simulator."
- Theodores 9y ago
  From the credits: http://alexanderperrin.com.au/portfolio/short-trip/ http://alexanderperrin.com.au/portfolio/short-trip/ > Three.js, Javascript > Short Trip is the first instalment in a collection of interactive illustrations created for the web. It has been created as a study into capturing the essence of graphite on paper within a digital context, and to learn more about web-based graphics technologies. Short Trip will run on most devices supporting WebGL, including mobile devices. > Have a look at alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip > Due to the current limitations of both WebGL technologies and my understanding of them, there’s bound to be issues found here and there. If you’ve found something particularly odd and have a spare few minutes it would be greatly appreciated if you tell me about it here. At the moment there’s a few known issues particularly relating to Android support. I hope that these will improve with time. > Regardless, I hope that you enjoy your journey.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Well, it is literally on rails...
- troymc 9y ago
  Did you notice that you can choose whether or not to stop at each stop. If you do, the cats will get on and/or off.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
It would be nice if it didn't require any input from me; I feel guilty skipping stops, but it brings me out of the reverie that I have to play a game, instead of just enjoying the scenery roll by.
pmontra 9y ago
So beautiful. It stopped loading at 93% on my phone (Android 7.1.1, latest Firefox) but it works well on my laptop. Nice illustrations. The sounds are also great. I could spend the night driving the car back and forth but I've got work to do and I already spent too much time on this :-)
- bastijn 9y ago
  Got the same on my IOS (iPhone 6S, chrome and safari) and OSX (MacBook Pro 2015 mid, chrome and safari). Getting 522's so I guess the site is being HNed to death. Or there is some issue with apple OS things. Bandwidth limit exceeded. Guess it was the former :).
- larkeith 9y ago
  Huh, I was able to load it (and even run it, they thought to put in touch controls!) on Android 6.0.1, Chrome 59.0. I'm quite impressed at how smoothly it ran on a mobile device.
- vldr 9y ago
  Same here, Tried firefox at first but doesn't load in chrome either.
- k_sze 9y ago
  Also stuck at 93% on Firefox for macOS (not iOS).
- tobyhinloopen 9y ago
  93% here as well :(
kps 9y ago
I don't see it in the help, but Space also does something.
sabujp 9y ago
i didn't stop for anyone on the way back, am i a bad person?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  To absolve your conscience, imagine your tram had "TECHNICAL RIDE" written on it.
- kps 9y ago
  The next release will have a switch and several people tied to the tracks.
Asooka 9y ago
Beautiful, well done. I love that we can now publish short interactive-ish experiments like that on the plain web. Also, I love the little details - the wheels conform to the shape of the track and the pantograph conforms to the shape of the wires above. Mean rant below: However, this suffers from terrible hitching and framerate issues. I tried it both in Firefox and Chrome (latest stable release for both), on Windows, on a i7-6700k cpu and nVidia GTX 1080ti gpu. The framerate just isn't stable and there are random hitches of one or two dropped frames. By itself this wouldn't be that big of a problem, but combined with the very contrasting art style (black on full white), it started giving me a headache and making me seriously sick after a short while. Even when not dropping frames, the motion was quite juddery, e.g. I saw the nearby poles jumping from position to position. I won't ask that the authors resolve the frame-rate issues, because I suspect it's an inherent issue to the browsers. Instead I would suggest that motion blur be implemented to hide the harsh frame-to-frame transitions and less contrast be employed between foreground and background (maybe make the background a bright grey rather than 100% full white).
- ju-st 9y ago
  i was more annoyed by the fixed 30fps framerate
- cyannaro 9y ago
  Interestingly it was very smooth on my iPhone SE but stuttered a lot on my desktop.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    MBP2015 here, with Intel GPU, and Chrome with 100+ open tabs - no problems here. I even noticed that you're playing a cat avatar. Just how awesome is this.
- chrisb 9y ago
  Reducing the browser window size fixed the glitching for me (Chrome, MacBook Pro).
- cyberferret 9y ago
mih 9y ago
Quite impressive, especially paying attention to little details like the clock showing the local time.
- cyberferret 9y ago
  Dang, didn't notice that until you pointed it out. Yes, that is really cool. Also, love the little animated cats along the path. At one stop, I saw an 'old lady' cat off to the left of the screen moving fast towards my tram. Perhaps she was rushing to get on, but I took off on my next leg of the journey regardless, and noticed that as soon as I started moving, she stopped running with a somewhat dejected slump to her stance. Probably totally random and coincidental, but I'd like to think she was trying to run and catch the tram and missed it!
  - ehnto 9y ago
    It really is like public transport!
- Alan_Dillman 9y ago
  Also the flora changes with the gain in elevation.
make3 9y ago
Hugged to death
- make3 9y ago
  guys stop downvoting me xD it was true when I wrote this
sheraz 9y ago
Loved to death. Bandwidth limit exceeded.
- perryprog 9y ago
  Poor fella. Couldn't handle all the hugs.
  - DigitalJack 9y ago
    A lot of people on hacker news have trouble receiving affection.
gt_ 9y ago
Can someone recommend to me what I can to do view this despite the bandwidth exceeded? I am not sure my life can go on without.
- fredley 9y ago
  It's back up, for me at least.
robputt 9y ago
Damn, bandwidth eaten for the month, I'll check back in November :-D, but would like to see this.
- fredley 9y ago
  It's back up, for me at least.
Exuma 9y ago
Damn I missed it... why do people ever host stuff on this trash? :(
- mulmen 9y ago
  Is this your way of offering to pay for hosting?
  - jermaustin1 9y ago
    But if software/web are your profession, surely $5/mo on a droplet isn't too much of an investment.
  - Exuma 9y ago
    You don't have to pay, just put it on github pages.
- teh_klev 9y ago
  Because: 1. It's not a Show HN, the author didn't post this here 2. It's some random person's experiment and they likely didn't expect the HN hug of death.
dhekir 9y ago
I've noticed it had several upvotes during the interval in which it has been hugged to death. Is this expected?
- ljf 9y ago
  Could well have been that they were returning from playing it and were up voting it then.
AJRF 9y ago
Beautiful
dag11 9y ago
I love this so much.
teh_klev 9y ago
What a lovely thing to play with. [spoiler warning] It's nice that you're not allowed to walk the cat over the cliff at the end and ting the bell.
- a_t48 9y ago
  Yeah, I saw that cliff and thought it was going to end a lot more morbid than it did.
- Tomte 9y ago
  Where do you get the cat?
  - jdmulloy 9y ago
    I believe they are referring to the character you are controlling. It doesn't let you walk off the cliff.
cyberferret 9y ago
What a lovely web experience! I adore the style and artistry of the illustrations here, and the attention to detail to the little things like the clack of the wheels increasing in frequency with the speed, the squeak of the brakes and the different noise when the tram goes over the wooden bridge etc. I do wish there was a small prompt on screen right at the start with an indication of how to start off the animation. I clicked, dragged and swiped everywhere on the screen before I finally clicked the (i) button to see it was all keyboard driven! :) But perhaps that was deviously intentional, as it gave the site time to load up all the assets it needed in the background?
- Olivia56 9y ago
  ï'm mäkïnġ $86 än höür wörkïnġ fröm hömë. ï wäs shöċkëd whën mÿ nëïġhböür töld më shë wäs ävëräġïnġ $95 büt ï sëë höw ït wörks nöw. ï fëël sö müċh frëëdöm nöw thät ï'm mÿ öwn böss. thïs ïs whät ï dö, ====http://www.todaysfox.com http://www.todaysfox.com
- chairmanwow 9y ago
  I would imagine it is mostly just oversight, given the loading period in the beginning.
- jen729w 9y ago
  Just shows you the ‘power’ of touch. On my iPad, I didn’t even think about it.
jay-anderson 9y ago
You can click on the bell at the end. Besides letting passengers on and off was there anything else along the way that was interactive like that?
- cyberferret 9y ago
  Press the spacebar when in the tram...
toddmorey 9y ago
Beautiful illustration and execution. I was hoping for a bit of discussion on tools used to create this. Looks like it makes clever use of three.js.
mshenfield 9y ago
This was such a refreshing experience. The sound work especially brought things home for me.
loeg 9y ago
Please include a volume control.
mschuster91 9y ago
This is one of the things I see on HN where all I can think is "how the flying f..k does this even work" and "what a madness of assets, that must have taken months to record". For what its worth, the simulator even does physics (try not pressing right on a hill, for example - the tram will roll backwards, and brake much faster than on plain level)... awesome.
katelynsills 9y ago
What kinds of libraries did you use to build this? I see you have a webpack bundle.
- alexanderperrin 9y ago
  Webpack was certainly invaluable when developing this! The ThreeJS framework was used for everything graphics and animation, however. I absolutely love working with it.
  - anc84 9y ago
    How much of the graphics is procedurally generated versus sprites?
  - katelynsills 9y ago
    Very cool! Thanks!
the_arun 9y ago
What an awesome experience! In fact you could reverse it too. Splendid!
neocodesoftware 9y ago
loved that? you will love this!!! http://hobolobo.net http://hobolobo.net
- cyberferret 9y ago
  Some nice illustrations and animations there, but not really an interactive sequence like this one in the OP. Also, I know it is a take on a popular children's fable, but this one seems to have a not so subtle political message underlying it, and it also seems to be a lot darker (I only got up to the end of page 3). I don't know - it seemed to me in this one that the rats seemed to be a metaphor for a particular socio-economic cultural group. I could be wrong, but something about it made me a little uneasy.
- chuckevolved 9y ago
  I can't get past page three! Hell I already can't wait to see what happens with coked-up rats
whatgoodisaroad 9y ago
In tone this reminds me of the fable of the "Cat Town" in the novel "1Q84" by Haruki Murakami.
- ehnto 9y ago
  I picked up a copy because of your comment. I am looking forward to diving in!
jannyfer 9y ago
Loved it. Does anyone get smooth scrolling, or does the animation stutter even on high end machines? Not complaining, just trying to figure out if I have the wrong settings for my PC.
- jjallen 9y ago
  I got no stuttering on my 2017 MBP
  - joevo2 9y ago
    2017 MBP LOL well it runs fine on my 2013 MBA
    - nopassrecover 9y ago
      Ran fine on my iPhone 5S, although admittedly that's a far lower resolution.
- d-sc 9y ago
  Ran great on my iPhone 8.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  Runs perfectly here in Firefox, on Linux, with Intel graphics. Very smooth, no stuttering.
- problems 9y ago
  Stutters like mad for me, so bad that I closed it even though it seemed really sweet. Chrome and Firefox on Windows, recent i7 and higher end nvidia GPU.
- Lorin 9y ago
  It seemed pretty fuzzy while moving on a 144hz display.
jaza 9y ago
A very pleasant ride! I didn't think to stop for passengers at the first few stops. I feel a bit guilty about that. Meh... they should have read the "express service" sign.
- rkagerer 9y ago
  I didn't grab any at all, but thanks for the tip I picked them up on the way back.
- madamelic 9y ago
  Interactive MTA Conductor: Unannounced skipping stops and shows up when it wants to.
chi18 9y ago
I really wanted to drive it off the cliff.
aryehof 9y ago
Loved this. Many thanks to the author for brightening my day!
FraKtus 9y ago
The site seems down...
rozap 9y ago
that was a good thing
qualitytime 9y ago
Lovely! Really enjoy playing it. Great work. P.S. you have a erroneous </div> tag in the html source near the credits block.
dixiesk 9y ago
very nice. I'd got an urge to visit "The Bus" by Paul Kirchner: https://imgur.com/gallery/jJaFZ https://imgur.com/gallery/jJaFZ
Rifu 9y ago
If this awakened feelings inside of you of driving people from station to station, may I suggest Densha de Go[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densha_de_Go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densha_de_Go!
nippples 9y ago
I wish there was the opportunity to drive myself off the cliff at the end. :(
mewwts 9y ago
This is insane. Extremely well done!
twfarland 9y ago
Very calming way to start the day. Almost like a guided meditation.
marnett 9y ago
This was really pleasant. Thanks for sharing this.
sambf 9y ago
It was much needed this morning, thank you for this wonderful piece of Internet!
kinard 9y ago
Amazing, I loved this.
wiz21c 9y ago
Is the scenery a huge one-time drawing or is it generated as the train progresses ? In any case it's truly well done !
aaron695 9y ago
Technical write up? [edit] some info here - http://alexanderperrin.com.au/portfolio/short-trip/ http://alexanderperrin.com.au/portfolio/short-trip/
m23khan 9y ago
beautiful, beautiful work! Well done Sir!
blumomo 9y ago
Lovely! Did you notice that ... wall clocks are showing your local time? ... passengers walk towards you (the driver) when you miss their stop?
fnord77 9y ago
Doesn't appear to work on Google chrome on Linux Mint.
Strategizer 9y ago
I thought he was going to jump off at the end.. that was close to taking a turn towards Limbo
BFatts 9y ago
Fails in Chrome Version 60.0.3112.113 (Official Build) (64-bit) with the error: "My apologies, your device doesn't support WebGL, which is what Short Trip relies on! Try updating it, or try another one." WebGL works all across the web, so you must be doing something wrong in detecting it. This is on a Mac running Yosemite (I know, company won't let me upgrade!) with plenty o' memory and lots o' CPU available.
Shinchy 9y ago
That was fantastic.
timvdalen 9y ago
Unfortunately, I'm getting a Cloudflare timeout on http://alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip/static/img/trees.png http://alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip/static/img/tre...
peternicky 9y ago
Wow! This is such a lovely, inspiring experience. Is the source available?
spamtarget 9y ago
To be honest, it's kinda mediocre, the gameplay is ok, but really linear, the color filter feels grayish and the characters are really two-dimensional

918 points by fredley 9y ago

seattle_spring 9y ago

I just got back from a good, long trip to Europe. This captures the spirit quite nicely.

troymc 9y ago
Yes, I live in Europe and can confirm that this is much like my morning commute. I felt deja vu. Maybe it's about me? I thought nobody noticed I'm a cat.
- valesco 9y ago
  Ah ah, where do you live? My guess would be Switzerland or Austria.

speps 9y ago

Title should be changed to "Short Trip".

falsedan 9y ago
mailto:hn@ycombinator.com

Fifer82 9y ago

This is really great! I love "toys" like this on the web, they were prominent in Flash, but then the web looked like bootstrap, and now like Material Design... Sometimes, a little bit of web creativity is what you need to brighten the day.

minxomat 9y ago
Before flash goes away for good, I feed my nostalgia using http://www.andkon.com/arcade/ http://www.andkon.com/arcade/. Also, this toy/experiment reminds me so much of Machinarium, I'm going to play it again right now.
- Fifer82 9y ago
  Thank you for your insight. Please also check http://fl.corge.net/ http://fl.corge.net/ because it contains outrageous amounts of outstanding code.
andybak 9y ago
The ebb and flow of various conventions for utilitarian or practical sites bears little connection with the amount of creativity present on the web. "Shall I make a beautiful illustrative web-based experience or shall I make a site using Bootstrap?" said nobody ever.
- problems 9y ago
  It's not about what any individual person may say, but about what gets produced in the end. Pure HTML and JS tools like Bootstrap make it easy to crank out basic web templates for developers, while tools like Flash made it easier for designers to make beautiful toys.
  - andybak 9y ago
    Well. It sounds to me now that you're making a slightly different point - and an altogether better one. I actually made a similar argument yesterday to someone - whatever we feel about Flash as medium for normal web content or as a browser plugin, that shouldn't taint it's reputation as a content creation tool.
  - fredley 9y ago
    This is a really good observation. Flash allowed a designer to work in their tool and export that content directly to the web. Back in the day you'd buy a cheap FTP-enabled web hosting account, and upload your exported index.html and content.swf as-is and that would be it. As a designer these days I don't think there's anything like that kind of workflow available any more.
- stuaxo 9y ago
  You say that, but Flash was basically a drawing program with a timeline - this makes it much easier to doodle all sorts of things compared to building a site with Javascript and HTML.
  - Fifer82 9y ago
    Not entirely true. The Flash Runtime was ES4. Few who made applications after 2006 used Flash Pro. It was an Eclipse based editor for the most part (Flash Builder). However I get the point, but I feel it is important to stress this difference that you bring up. My 18 year old clueless self seen turtleshell.com randomly, thought it was amazing, looked up flash, did stuff in Flash, 10 years later OOP. 10 years after that, software engineering. My 18 year old clueless self today would want to be like "somethingcool.com" but I would have to troll through about 12 months of tutorials to see something on the screen. I'd work in a factory.

bane 9y ago

I need much more of this kind of lovely thing in my life.

sbuttgereit 9y ago

It's a very nice demonstration. Very pleasant and aesthetically pleasing. I don't know that the title here is really quite right. "Demo" is probably closer to what this is, maybe "Interactive Animation". When I think of a simulation I'm typically thinking of some effort around achieving realism and a much higher degree of freedom of action. This isn't an effort to achieve any of that. This is an artistic impression of such a trip. I can interact with it, but there is very little freedom of choice. Also the rendering is "drawn" 2D.

jakelear 9y ago
The title of the piece is actually "Short Trip" as seenin the title tag and the end of the experience. It seems the HN submitter chose "simulator."
Theodores 9y ago
From the credits: http://alexanderperrin.com.au/portfolio/short-trip/ http://alexanderperrin.com.au/portfolio/short-trip/ > Three.js, Javascript > Short Trip is the first instalment in a collection of interactive illustrations created for the web. It has been created as a study into capturing the essence of graphite on paper within a digital context, and to learn more about web-based graphics technologies. Short Trip will run on most devices supporting WebGL, including mobile devices. > Have a look at alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip > Due to the current limitations of both WebGL technologies and my understanding of them, there’s bound to be issues found here and there. If you’ve found something particularly odd and have a spare few minutes it would be greatly appreciated if you tell me about it here. At the moment there’s a few known issues particularly relating to Android support. I hope that these will improve with time. > Regardless, I hope that you enjoy your journey.
throwanem 9y ago
Well, it is literally on rails...
troymc 9y ago
Did you notice that you can choose whether or not to stop at each stop. If you do, the cats will get on and/or off.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

It would be nice if it didn't require any input from me; I feel guilty skipping stops, but it brings me out of the reverie that I have to play a game, instead of just enjoying the scenery roll by.

pmontra 9y ago

So beautiful. It stopped loading at 93% on my phone (Android 7.1.1, latest Firefox) but it works well on my laptop. Nice illustrations. The sounds are also great. I could spend the night driving the car back and forth but I've got work to do and I already spent too much time on this :-)

bastijn 9y ago
Got the same on my IOS (iPhone 6S, chrome and safari) and OSX (MacBook Pro 2015 mid, chrome and safari). Getting 522's so I guess the site is being HNed to death. Or there is some issue with apple OS things. Bandwidth limit exceeded. Guess it was the former :).
larkeith 9y ago
Huh, I was able to load it (and even run it, they thought to put in touch controls!) on Android 6.0.1, Chrome 59.0. I'm quite impressed at how smoothly it ran on a mobile device.
vldr 9y ago
Same here, Tried firefox at first but doesn't load in chrome either.
k_sze 9y ago
Also stuck at 93% on Firefox for macOS (not iOS).
tobyhinloopen 9y ago
93% here as well :(

kps 9y ago

I don't see it in the help, but Space also does something.

sabujp 9y ago

i didn't stop for anyone on the way back, am i a bad person?

TeMPOraL 9y ago
To absolve your conscience, imagine your tram had "TECHNICAL RIDE" written on it.
kps 9y ago
The next release will have a switch and several people tied to the tracks.

Asooka 9y ago

Beautiful, well done. I love that we can now publish short interactive-ish experiments like that on the plain web. Also, I love the little details - the wheels conform to the shape of the track and the pantograph conforms to the shape of the wires above. Mean rant below: However, this suffers from terrible hitching and framerate issues. I tried it both in Firefox and Chrome (latest stable release for both), on Windows, on a i7-6700k cpu and nVidia GTX 1080ti gpu. The framerate just isn't stable and there are random hitches of one or two dropped frames. By itself this wouldn't be that big of a problem, but combined with the very contrasting art style (black on full white), it started giving me a headache and making me seriously sick after a short while. Even when not dropping frames, the motion was quite juddery, e.g. I saw the nearby poles jumping from position to position. I won't ask that the authors resolve the frame-rate issues, because I suspect it's an inherent issue to the browsers. Instead I would suggest that motion blur be implemented to hide the harsh frame-to-frame transitions and less contrast be employed between foreground and background (maybe make the background a bright grey rather than 100% full white).

ju-st 9y ago
i was more annoyed by the fixed 30fps framerate
cyannaro 9y ago
Interestingly it was very smooth on my iPhone SE but stuttered a lot on my desktop.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  MBP2015 here, with Intel GPU, and Chrome with 100+ open tabs - no problems here. I even noticed that you're playing a cat avatar. Just how awesome is this.
chrisb 9y ago
Reducing the browser window size fixed the glitching for me (Chrome, MacBook Pro).
cyberferret 9y ago

mih 9y ago

Quite impressive, especially paying attention to little details like the clock showing the local time.

cyberferret 9y ago
Dang, didn't notice that until you pointed it out. Yes, that is really cool. Also, love the little animated cats along the path. At one stop, I saw an 'old lady' cat off to the left of the screen moving fast towards my tram. Perhaps she was rushing to get on, but I took off on my next leg of the journey regardless, and noticed that as soon as I started moving, she stopped running with a somewhat dejected slump to her stance. Probably totally random and coincidental, but I'd like to think she was trying to run and catch the tram and missed it!
- ehnto 9y ago
  It really is like public transport!
Alan_Dillman 9y ago
Also the flora changes with the gain in elevation.

make3 9y ago

Hugged to death

make3 9y ago
guys stop downvoting me xD it was true when I wrote this

sheraz 9y ago

Loved to death. Bandwidth limit exceeded.

perryprog 9y ago
Poor fella. Couldn't handle all the hugs.
- DigitalJack 9y ago
  A lot of people on hacker news have trouble receiving affection.

gt_ 9y ago

Can someone recommend to me what I can to do view this despite the bandwidth exceeded? I am not sure my life can go on without.

fredley 9y ago
It's back up, for me at least.

robputt 9y ago

Damn, bandwidth eaten for the month, I'll check back in November :-D, but would like to see this.

fredley 9y ago
It's back up, for me at least.

Exuma 9y ago

Damn I missed it... why do people ever host stuff on this trash? :(

mulmen 9y ago
Is this your way of offering to pay for hosting?
- jermaustin1 9y ago
  But if software/web are your profession, surely $5/mo on a droplet isn't too much of an investment.
- Exuma 9y ago
  You don't have to pay, just put it on github pages.
teh_klev 9y ago
Because: 1. It's not a Show HN, the author didn't post this here 2. It's some random person's experiment and they likely didn't expect the HN hug of death.

dhekir 9y ago

I've noticed it had several upvotes during the interval in which it has been hugged to death. Is this expected?

ljf 9y ago
Could well have been that they were returning from playing it and were up voting it then.

AJRF 9y ago

Beautiful

dag11 9y ago

I love this so much.

teh_klev 9y ago

What a lovely thing to play with. [spoiler warning] It's nice that you're not allowed to walk the cat over the cliff at the end and ting the bell.

a_t48 9y ago
Yeah, I saw that cliff and thought it was going to end a lot more morbid than it did.
Tomte 9y ago
Where do you get the cat?
- jdmulloy 9y ago
  I believe they are referring to the character you are controlling. It doesn't let you walk off the cliff.

cyberferret 9y ago

What a lovely web experience! I adore the style and artistry of the illustrations here, and the attention to detail to the little things like the clack of the wheels increasing in frequency with the speed, the squeak of the brakes and the different noise when the tram goes over the wooden bridge etc. I do wish there was a small prompt on screen right at the start with an indication of how to start off the animation. I clicked, dragged and swiped everywhere on the screen before I finally clicked the (i) button to see it was all keyboard driven! :) But perhaps that was deviously intentional, as it gave the site time to load up all the assets it needed in the background?

Olivia56 9y ago
ï'm mäkïnġ $86 än höür wörkïnġ fröm hömë. ï wäs shöċkëd whën mÿ nëïġhböür töld më shë wäs ävëräġïnġ $95 büt ï sëë höw ït wörks nöw. ï fëël sö müċh frëëdöm nöw thät ï'm mÿ öwn böss. thïs ïs whät ï dö, ====http://www.todaysfox.com http://www.todaysfox.com
chairmanwow 9y ago
I would imagine it is mostly just oversight, given the loading period in the beginning.
jen729w 9y ago
Just shows you the ‘power’ of touch. On my iPad, I didn’t even think about it.

jay-anderson 9y ago

You can click on the bell at the end. Besides letting passengers on and off was there anything else along the way that was interactive like that?

cyberferret 9y ago
Press the spacebar when in the tram...

toddmorey 9y ago

Beautiful illustration and execution. I was hoping for a bit of discussion on tools used to create this. Looks like it makes clever use of three.js.

mshenfield 9y ago

This was such a refreshing experience. The sound work especially brought things home for me.

loeg 9y ago

Please include a volume control.

mschuster91 9y ago

This is one of the things I see on HN where all I can think is "how the flying f..k does this even work" and "what a madness of assets, that must have taken months to record". For what its worth, the simulator even does physics (try not pressing right on a hill, for example - the tram will roll backwards, and brake much faster than on plain level)... awesome.

katelynsills 9y ago

What kinds of libraries did you use to build this? I see you have a webpack bundle.

alexanderperrin 9y ago
Webpack was certainly invaluable when developing this! The ThreeJS framework was used for everything graphics and animation, however. I absolutely love working with it.
- anc84 9y ago
  How much of the graphics is procedurally generated versus sprites?
- katelynsills 9y ago
  Very cool! Thanks!

the_arun 9y ago

What an awesome experience! In fact you could reverse it too. Splendid!

neocodesoftware 9y ago

loved that? you will love this!!! http://hobolobo.net http://hobolobo.net

cyberferret 9y ago
Some nice illustrations and animations there, but not really an interactive sequence like this one in the OP. Also, I know it is a take on a popular children's fable, but this one seems to have a not so subtle political message underlying it, and it also seems to be a lot darker (I only got up to the end of page 3). I don't know - it seemed to me in this one that the rats seemed to be a metaphor for a particular socio-economic cultural group. I could be wrong, but something about it made me a little uneasy.
chuckevolved 9y ago
I can't get past page three! Hell I already can't wait to see what happens with coked-up rats

whatgoodisaroad 9y ago

In tone this reminds me of the fable of the "Cat Town" in the novel "1Q84" by Haruki Murakami.

ehnto 9y ago
I picked up a copy because of your comment. I am looking forward to diving in!

jannyfer 9y ago

Loved it. Does anyone get smooth scrolling, or does the animation stutter even on high end machines? Not complaining, just trying to figure out if I have the wrong settings for my PC.

jjallen 9y ago
I got no stuttering on my 2017 MBP
- joevo2 9y ago
  2017 MBP LOL well it runs fine on my 2013 MBA
  - nopassrecover 9y ago
    Ran fine on my iPhone 5S, although admittedly that's a far lower resolution.
d-sc 9y ago
Ran great on my iPhone 8.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
JoshTriplett 9y ago
Runs perfectly here in Firefox, on Linux, with Intel graphics. Very smooth, no stuttering.
problems 9y ago
Stutters like mad for me, so bad that I closed it even though it seemed really sweet. Chrome and Firefox on Windows, recent i7 and higher end nvidia GPU.
Lorin 9y ago
It seemed pretty fuzzy while moving on a 144hz display.

jaza 9y ago

A very pleasant ride! I didn't think to stop for passengers at the first few stops. I feel a bit guilty about that. Meh... they should have read the "express service" sign.

rkagerer 9y ago
I didn't grab any at all, but thanks for the tip I picked them up on the way back.
madamelic 9y ago
Interactive MTA Conductor: Unannounced skipping stops and shows up when it wants to.

chi18 9y ago

I really wanted to drive it off the cliff.

aryehof 9y ago

Loved this. Many thanks to the author for brightening my day!

FraKtus 9y ago

The site seems down...

rozap 9y ago

that was a good thing

qualitytime 9y ago

Lovely! Really enjoy playing it. Great work. P.S. you have a erroneous </div> tag in the html source near the credits block.

dixiesk 9y ago

very nice. I'd got an urge to visit "The Bus" by Paul Kirchner: https://imgur.com/gallery/jJaFZ https://imgur.com/gallery/jJaFZ

Rifu 9y ago

If this awakened feelings inside of you of driving people from station to station, may I suggest Densha de Go[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densha_de_Go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densha_de_Go!

nippples 9y ago

I wish there was the opportunity to drive myself off the cliff at the end. :(

mewwts 9y ago

This is insane. Extremely well done!

twfarland 9y ago

Very calming way to start the day. Almost like a guided meditation.

marnett 9y ago

This was really pleasant. Thanks for sharing this.

sambf 9y ago

It was much needed this morning, thank you for this wonderful piece of Internet!

kinard 9y ago

Amazing, I loved this.

wiz21c 9y ago

Is the scenery a huge one-time drawing or is it generated as the train progresses ? In any case it's truly well done !

aaron695 9y ago

Technical write up? [edit] some info here - http://alexanderperrin.com.au/portfolio/short-trip/ http://alexanderperrin.com.au/portfolio/short-trip/

m23khan 9y ago

beautiful, beautiful work! Well done Sir!

blumomo 9y ago

Lovely! Did you notice that ... wall clocks are showing your local time? ... passengers walk towards you (the driver) when you miss their stop?

fnord77 9y ago

Doesn't appear to work on Google chrome on Linux Mint.

Strategizer 9y ago

I thought he was going to jump off at the end.. that was close to taking a turn towards Limbo

BFatts 9y ago

Fails in Chrome Version 60.0.3112.113 (Official Build) (64-bit) with the error: "My apologies, your device doesn't support WebGL, which is what Short Trip relies on! Try updating it, or try another one." WebGL works all across the web, so you must be doing something wrong in detecting it. This is on a Mac running Yosemite (I know, company won't let me upgrade!) with plenty o' memory and lots o' CPU available.

Shinchy 9y ago

That was fantastic.

timvdalen 9y ago

Unfortunately, I'm getting a Cloudflare timeout on http://alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip/static/img/trees.png http://alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip/static/img/tre...

peternicky 9y ago

Wow! This is such a lovely, inspiring experience. Is the source available?

spamtarget 9y ago

To be honest, it's kinda mediocre, the gameplay is ok, but really linear, the color filter feels grayish and the characters are really two-dimensional