10 ms·
Space Frigates
- fctorial 7y agoIt's unplayable on my computer.
- smcameron 7y agoInteresting mechanics. You can't spam the controls. Well, you can, but you won't do well.
- contingencies 7y agoUnplayably superjerky in Australia, Firefox 72.0.2, OSX.
- swiftcoder 7y agoFeels like this needs some latency reduction. Client-side prediction and server-side input replay. Etc.
- jonathankoren 7y agoLinking turn to fire makes the game no fun. I kind of like the idea of limited resources, but this makes all the ships degenerate into spinning drifters that occasionally in a spread. There's no skill at that point.
- z-cam 7y ago503
- NikolaNovak 7y ago"503 Service Unavailable" - I guess enough people here thought it was worth a try
- dhardenb 7y agoYea, sorry about that. If you want to give it another try now that traffic has died down the performance is a lot better. Thanks!
- c0restraint 7y ago503 error now. Hug of death. What was it? Sounds like a game from some of the comments...
- dhardenb 7y agoSorry all, wasn't expecting all the traffic. :-)
- dhardenb 7y agoSorry all, wasn't expecting the traffic.... spinning up some more servers now...
- mLuby 7y agoWhile the servers are down, do you have a demo video you could post?
- archgoon 7y agoThey're up!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bamboozled 7y agoIt's still down.
- dhardenb 7y agoThis all went down while I was on vacation so have limited access. Plan to make some play through videos when I get home. You can follow my progress at: blog.spacefrigates.com or twitter: @spacefrigates
- mst 7y agoHonestly while it was laggy enough I stopped after a couple minutes it was doing pretty damn well for "hugged by HN". (I've done enough ops work to be impressed everything was still loading even if the backends clearly weren't quite keeping up :) Shall have to try again later.
- dhardenb 7y agoThanks. I keep resizing to try to keep up. Wasn't expecting to show up on Hacker News. Not complaining though. :-)
- 7y ago
- Neverending 7y agoIf you're interested in a free game that has had this core functionality (online multiplayer Asteroids) since 1995 - visit https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum... (edit: replaced with Steam link) There has been a dedicated community of thousands of players, many of which have been playing well over a decade. Plenty of videos on youtube under either "Subspace" or more recently "Continuum". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) Also - a plug for my favorite Zone: HZ. www.rshl.org.
- mst 7y agoSince www.rshl.org doesn't appear to be loading here, could you give me an ELI5 on how this differs from Trench Wars (which I still play periodically having owned a copy of Subspace itself) ?
- hnhnhnhnhn 7y agowww.rshl.org doesn't work, but rshl.org does. In Hockey Zone you play hockey with a powerball.
- mst 7y agoTa.
- Neverending 7y agoHockey Zone creatively shortens the bullet lengths for ships and decreases the respawn timer to simulate a hockey check. A powerball serves as the puck, and there is both public games (effectively pickup in recreational sports nomenclature) and a 20+ year running league. Technically Hockey Zone runs on something called ASSS (a small subspace server) which enables significantly more advanced features than the base client such as instant replay and dynamic scoreboard overlays.
- mst 7y ago
- beamatronic 7y agoUsed to play a game like this on Amiga. Think it was called Spacewar and you could play against a friend via modem.
- oh_sigh 7y agoI'd be more interested in good content about actual space frigates.
- dhardenb 7y agoThe long term vision is to allow players to control much larger ships. True frigate class ships. I'm still in alpha right now but will continue work if there is interest.
- zentiggr 7y agoCan't play it where I am now... how well would this work on say Android Firefox?
- dhardenb 7y agoHi! I’m working on mobile controls right now that will allow play on mobile browsers. Hope to have that done in the next week. You can check out my progress here: https://blog.spacefrigates.com https://blog.spacefrigates.com
- gustavorg 7y agoWell if you someday write a postmorten of you experience implementing this, the HN dead hug, how to deal with it and so, it will be very helpful. Think about write down your actions everyday so that hypothetical report will be easier to write.
- dhardenb 7y agoI’m planning to do exactly that! Should have an updated post out tomorrow. You can follow at https://blog.spacefrigates.com https://blog.spacefrigates.com
- waltbosz 7y agoDoes anyone remember Netrek ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netrek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netrek
- yborg 7y agoI remember Empire on the old PLATO system, the grandaddy of them all. Orions, represent!
- sliken 7y agoHeh, yes. It played WAY WAY WAY smoother in the late 80s than space frigates plays on my 3+ GHz desktop. At the time netrek was near unplayable on my 386. But I got the optional 387 FPU and a S3-801 (that had hardware support for vectors) and suddenly netrek, xpilot, and similar vector games played great.
- Tepix 7y agoHell yeah. We even had various leagues such as the INL (International Netrek League). 8 vs 8 (plus up to 16 spectators) e-sports in the mid 90s!
- cypherlh 7y agoTwitter of the dev... https://twitter.com/spacefrigates https://twitter.com/spacefrigates
- r3dk1ng 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPilot
- dspillett 7y agoWas about to suggest that myself (but searched and found you already had). I've not looked in recently so I don't know how much development is going on, but I wasted many a bit of time playing this and its variants with a group of friends while at Uni two decades ago. Key-words for those searching: cross-platform, open source, multi-player, fun.
- nbrempel 7y agoI’m suddenly reminded of this game I played the hell out of back in the day: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Velocity_Nova https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Velocity_Nova
- mLuby 7y agoEndless Sky is a well-polished FOSS version of the same thing. https://endless-sky.github.io https://endless-sky.github.io
- nbrempel 7y agoHere we go...
- MikeTheGreat 7y agoIt looks like it's a single-player game. Is there a multiplayer (specifically, co-op) option?
- Jowsey 7y agoWas just about to mention this game. Glad other people still play it, an absolutely incredible game and open source project.
- oerb 7y agoSo nice :)
- dhardenb 7y agoThank you! You can follow along with my progress at: https://blog.spacefrigates.com https://blog.spacefrigates.com
- oerb 7y agoSo nice!!
- mortenjorck 7y agoI like the conservation of angular momentum, a nod to physics realism relatively uncommon in classic space shooters. The "brakes" (down arrow key) seem like they should follow the same rules, though, that you should start moving backward if you fire them too much.
- dhardenb 7y agoYes, you are correct! Nice catch! I left the brakes as is for now because the game was very difficult with out them. However, to retain the level of realism that I was hoping for I plan to rework the brakes such that they show the ship slows to a stop properly. For example, the onboard computer should calculate the actual thrusters needed to stop the ship for the player.
- lmm 7y agoCounterintuitively that's actually not realistic. Distances and velocities in space are so large that the thrust required to change a spacecraft's orientation and angular velocity to essentially any desired value will always be completely trivial compared to the thrust it needs to go anywhere.
- FriendlyNormie 7y agoCan you be honest, did this actually make the game more fun to you? And why should a pilot, whether in a game or in real space, need to think about conservation of angular momentum when computers can very easily handle that themselves and perform the calculations necessary to emulate simple steering instead?
- ani-ani 7y agoSome playing tips: - Never keep any controls pressed down. Consider each single keypress as a discrete action that consumes energy. The more conservative you are with keypresses, the more energy you keep. - Because it's busy, you have to accelerate right after spawning, otherwise you're in the hellzone and people will actually spawn inside you, causing instant death. - The down arrow will brake/stop your ship, no matter which direction you're pointing. This is handy when you approach the edge of the map. - Try cruising along the edge of the map at a leisurely pace, avoid the center, and pwn slowly.
- Fnoord 7y agoI figured. Game registers a single keypress as multiple (Firefox / macOS). Keypresses register late (I can notice this especially with brake). Nearly unplayable for me.
- lucb1e 7y agoSame here, even when I'm alone in the arena. Unplayable. Feel like the packet has to go to the server and back before I see a response in my local craft. Edit: Pinging 13 times I got: rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 125.981/217.330/322.054/63.585 ms >200ms ping average, 64ms median deviation, yeah I bet the packets have to go to the server before it responds and that explains everything. The weird thing is that it was still an issue while I was alone on the server so it can't have been overloaded. To my own website that's 37.490/39.462/41.610/1.199 ms, so it's not my connection.
- MrGilbert 7y agoThe "ALT"-key will toggle the context menu in Vivaldi, and thus steal the focus from the game when activating the shield. ;)
- vector_spaces 7y agoI love this. This reminds me a lot of my first experience with teeworlds[1], which came pre-installed with LXLE (a sort of hipster Lubuntu derivative). In both cases my emotions transitioned from "oh, another one of these games", to delight as I realized the ships around me were controlled by other players, to being thoroughly amused by the wonky physics. I love lightweight games where it's super low friction to launch, interact with other players, and sign off. [1] https://teeworlds.com/ https://teeworlds.com/
- hardlianotion 7y agoThis brings back unpleasant reminders of my early gaming days, my middle gaming days and my later gaming days, in which I am sitting at the controls struggling to move in a voluntary manner. Fortunately there are other folk there who are kind enough to put me out of my misery, speedily.
- nickthemagicman 7y agoWhat tech stach are you using? This is really cool.
- FriendlyNormie 7y agoCan you explain why you think this is cool?
- nickthemagicman 7y agoI find multiplayer websocket games cool. Can you explain why you want to know?
- FriendlyNormie 7y agoIt’s unplayable and barely functional. Do you actually like it, or you just like the idea of what it could be? There has been a multiplayer websocket .io game renaissance ongoing since 2016. Hundreds of multiplayer websocket games have been released in that time and they’re all objectively better than this, tech stack included. People like you are acting like this never happened, and I don’t know how you could actually be unaware of it. Some multiplayer websocket games such as slither.io are a worldwide phenomenon on par with Pokémon Go in terms of popularity. In light of all that, I’m asking why you think this is cool because it doesn’t make sense to me.
- dhardenb 7y agoHi! Thank you! I’m using the Meteor JS full stack framework as the base framework. Really convenient for an app like this where parts of the code, like the game engine, need to run on the client and server and be identical. Of course, you could do the same thing with node and web sockets yourself but Meteor JS made it easier for me to get started. I’m not currently using any client side framework like React or Vue (although both work great in Meteor JS) because I render everything client side in the Canvas tag. In the future, will probably be moving to the Lance real time JS engine and Pixie for WebGL tendering.
- bullen 7y agoI made this in 3D: http://aeonalpha.com http://aeonalpha.com
- gameswithgo 7y agofeels like authoritative server with no client side prediction?
- dhardenb 7y agoHi! It does have client side prediction. What it is lacking is a working sync when the updates come back from the server. I’ve tried and tried to get that part right but it has been difficult. I recently found the Lance engine and may just port to that since they seem to have figured it out. You can follow my progress at: https://blog.spacefrigates.com https://blog.spacefrigates.com
- compscistd 7y agoOpened this on mobile safari, wondering why I can only see players and movement while drag-scrolling the screen...
- platz 7y agohttps://airmash.online/ https://airmash.online/
- sequoia 7y agoIs the fact that steering is almost impossible a bug or a feature?
- inkeddeveloper 7y agoIt's space. There isn't really steering; you have to use thrust to modify your vector.
- cypherlh 7y agoYep, I love the "2d physics" aspect of the way moving works.
- FriendlyNormie 7y agoComputers can take input and handle it however the programmer wants in order to replicate ordinary steering. This is true in both games and in actual space. Why is everyone in this comment section seemingly unable to say anything negative about Space Frigates? This deserves its own 2 hour documentary. I’m tempted to submit a random .io game and see how people react.
- dhardenb 7y agoHi! Yes, you are correct. In fact, this has been something I have gone back on forth on myself. I do actually have an “on board computer” That sits between what the player tried to do and what the ship actually does. For example, the on board computer will only allow the pilot to fire the rotational thrusters to a certain max angular momentum. I’ve also experimented with having the on board computer automatically stop rotation by firing the opposite rotational thruster for the pilot automatically. The thing is, it was a pain because whatever we that degree turn was was never just right. So, when you tried to fire at another ship you would often rotate a little too much or a little not enough. Having it the way it is now we’re the pilot has to manually control angular velocity gives the. More precise control. So that is why that is the way it currently is. But, many people have had the same feedback... What I am thinking about doing is having a control on the HUD where pilots can choose manual versus automatic and also set the amount of predefined degree of rotation they want when in automatic. I think that might be the best of all worlds?
- trinny 7y agosafari gave me a seizure. Otherwise, fun!
- justinclift 7y agoOops. Using "Alt" for a key isn't good here, as on Firefox it pops open the top menu bar (eg File, Edit, ...), changing the window height too.
- rolandog 7y agoNice game! How do you refuel or collect debris? Is that discarded when another player dies? Edit: Nvm. It seems I wasn't noticing debris being generated by shooting it instantly.
- dhardenb 7y agoYep, when ships explode they drop debris which can be picked up for energy. How much energy you get depends on how much energy the ship had when they exploded.
- FriendlyNormie 7y agoWanting something to be good and usable based on its name being exciting to you isn’t the same as it actually being good or usable. It’s astonishing that this was upvoted by 179 people. There are already hundreds of multiplayer .io browser games that are actually playable. Some of them are space games, microgravity.io for instance. Why is no one giving their honest opinion on Space Frigates, which can only possibly be negative? I suppose there is a culture of fear in HN comment sections, people are afraid of pointing out when something is obvious amateur hour garbage because they don’t want to get spanked with downvotes or a shadowban for hurting someone’s feelings. Is this really necessary? Why protect someone’s feelings? Sometimes people need to hear what they don’t really want to hear, otherwise you’re just enabling their delusion and they never improve themselves.