5 ms·

WebSockets and WebGL used to create multiplayer shoot'em up

55 points by jamesaustin 14y ago

kevingadd 14y ago
Runs pretty smooth and the multiplayer seems to work fine (though Quick Play dropped me into an empty game the first time). Giving the bullets a black outline is a good move because I cannot make sense of the rest of the visuals - horribly low contrast and super noisy, almost random use of color. Seems to play pretty well other than the issues created by the indecipherable visuals though. I think multiplayer makes this kind of game more engaging, but you need to take steps to overcome the visual confusion and tendency to be overwhelmed when there are 4 players worth of bullets and special effects flying around the screen.
- dbalatero 14y ago
  I agree about the visuals. I also found the WASD movement, arrow keys to fire scheme pretty hard to use. Can you use the mouse to fire?
  - kevingadd 14y ago
    Yes.
- gavanwoolery 14y ago
  Yeah visuals are confusing, here is how I would fix it: Make each players view of the game unique such that it is easiest to decipher where their ship is, and where incoming bullets are. So the player's ship could be bright white, the harmfull bullets bright red or orange, and everything else a darker color. What the next player sees is different - a view designed to distinguish their own ship, and player 1's ship is dark. Make sense?
  - benvio 14y ago
    Thanks for the ideas and thoughts, I'll link the team to this post :)
    - tinco 14y ago
      Please don't, isn't the whole idea of geometry wars that the difficulty comes from the visual chaos? If everything was super clear the whole challenge of the game would be reduced..
pirateking 14y ago
Not quite Ikaruga level yet, but quite impressive and the gameplay is good. It could feel almost like a whole new game with re-done artwork.
benvio 14y ago
You can use an Xbox 360 gamepad if you've got one lying about :)
- corysama 14y ago
  Didn't seem to work for me in Chrome, but did work in Chrome Canary.
  - FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
    You might have to enable a setting in chrome://flags in normal Chrome.
10098 14y ago
Doesn't work in Firefox
- btbuilder 14y ago
  Just played it on ff 16.0.2 no problem.
- ch0wn 14y ago
  We're on Hacker News. Couldn't you at least try to give a meaningful description of what doesn't work?
  - wtallis 14y ago
    I'm seeing just a blue to white vertical gradient, so I'd hazard a guess that the whole thing isn't working. (And yes, WebGL is working.)
- benvio 14y ago
  If you've got a moment it'd be good to know your configuration. My default answer is to recommend Chrome, but all versions of Firefox are supported (for those without WebGL support we provide a small plugin as an alternative).
  - 10098 14y ago
    Seems like it was blocked by AdBlock. Disabling itresolved the issue
  - 10098 14y ago
    Actually, now I can see the menu, but neither "quick play" nor "create game" work. Says "Something has gone wrong - please try again". Firefox 16.02 on Windows 7. Music is great though :)
  - 10098 14y ago
    I was finally able to play it, and one issue I noticed was that the sound becomes choppy when there are a lot of projectiles on the screen (which is, all the time :))
rrbrambley 14y ago
This. Is. Awesome.
AYBABTME 14y ago
This is cool and it works well. However the graphics are giving me a headache. I played for 10 minutes and I quickly couldn't find my mouse's cursor, nor distinguish between enemies and the background, enemies and the rewards, and enemies from myself. Too many colors.
tinco 14y ago
Damn pretty great, I played a Geometry Wars game together with some other people, no lag, no glitches the entire game. And a whole bunch of nice animations and effects. This shows that at least for the arcade market, the web really has become a mature platform. Ofcourse, this game was cooperative, and chaos-y. It's not certain at all this kan be made feasible for competitive multiplayer with more strict rules. Maybe that just means it's restricted to fun games ;)
arcatek 14y ago
Is there a technical reason for not using webgl frameworks such as Three.js ?
- jamesaustin 14y ago
  The game uses the Turbulenz Engine which includes a WebGL graphics framework (which is equivalent to Three.js) - http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers#turbulenz-engine http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers#turbulenz-engine
rartichoke 14y ago
The usability is awful. Too many graphics blend in together and the hot key choices are confusing. However it's ridiculously smooth and ran great on a ~5 year old machine. The controls felt excellent.
digeridoo 14y ago
Nice, I've been looking forward to seeing games like this.
mslot 14y ago
Not sure what was doing, but it was kind of fun. What I'm really hoping for now is multi-player pong (with up to 32 rotating pong bats).
htc 14y ago
I played with some of the effects tunned down and it was less chaotic. Great game.
willvarfar 14y ago
Neat! Would love to know how you handle prediction and correction. My last ludum dare was webgl+websockets, but because I used server lockstep (it being a 72hr game and coded from scratch) it was pretty poorly received :/ http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/08/30/cage-flight-autopsy/ http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/08/30/cage-flight-autops... <-- give it some love
tgb 14y ago
Great fun! I registered for an account, but then stopped being able to play multiplayer games. Maybe I'm just missing it, but there "quickplay" button that I was using as a guest is no longer there.
- jamesaustin 14y ago
  Make sure you're playing "Score Rush MP" which is the multiplayer version. You might have accidentally started the original single player version. Select the game from the "Games" dropbox in the top right of the website.
  - tgb 14y ago
    Thanks, that fixed it.
jrogers65 14y ago
The small print (http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers): >We're sorry to hear that. Publishing with Turbulenz gets your game in front of a larger audience. We don't charge an upfront fee and we expect to help you achieve higher user and revenue numbers. If you still don't want us to publish it, contact us about alternative licensing options. >Our mission is to create the greatest online gaming experience. We have heavily invested in the tools and technology to enable this experience and provide these to you free of charge. In exchange, we receive a 30% fee for helping you publish and promote your games to millions of potential customers globally. In fact, we take it a step further and provide services other online platforms don’t. For example, we take care of hosting, servers, analytics, marketing, payment processing, and we even provide developers with a live staging service (Developer Hub) to A/B test and optimize different development versions of a game. So they're going for an app store model by using a free API as bait.
jon6 14y ago
Is there a youtube video? I found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDGl-eDEuNQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDGl-eDEuNQ but I'm not sure if its the same game.
seanica 14y ago
It was fun, but sometimes _really_ hard to determine if I was actually participating in the game or just spectating!
camus 14y ago
Great but the action is a bit too chaotic , to much things on screen. I suggest reducing the sprite sizes a bit , and make the background less distracting.
sahat 14y ago
Impressive. This is the most fun HTML5 games that I played.

55 points by jamesaustin 14y ago

Runs pretty smooth and the multiplayer seems to work fine (though Quick Play dropped me into an empty game the first time). Giving the bullets a black outline is a good move because I cannot make sense of the rest of the visuals - horribly low contrast and super noisy, almost random use of color. Seems to play pretty well other than the issues created by the indecipherable visuals though. I think multiplayer makes this kind of game more engaging, but you need to take steps to overcome the visual confusion and tendency to be overwhelmed when there are 4 players worth of bullets and special effects flying around the screen.

dbalatero 14y ago
I agree about the visuals. I also found the WASD movement, arrow keys to fire scheme pretty hard to use. Can you use the mouse to fire?
- kevingadd 14y ago
  Yes.
gavanwoolery 14y ago
Yeah visuals are confusing, here is how I would fix it: Make each players view of the game unique such that it is easiest to decipher where their ship is, and where incoming bullets are. So the player's ship could be bright white, the harmfull bullets bright red or orange, and everything else a darker color. What the next player sees is different - a view designed to distinguish their own ship, and player 1's ship is dark. Make sense?
- benvio 14y ago
  Thanks for the ideas and thoughts, I'll link the team to this post :)
  - tinco 14y ago
    Please don't, isn't the whole idea of geometry wars that the difficulty comes from the visual chaos? If everything was super clear the whole challenge of the game would be reduced..

pirateking 14y ago

Not quite Ikaruga level yet, but quite impressive and the gameplay is good. It could feel almost like a whole new game with re-done artwork.

benvio 14y ago

You can use an Xbox 360 gamepad if you've got one lying about :)

corysama 14y ago
Didn't seem to work for me in Chrome, but did work in Chrome Canary.
- FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
  You might have to enable a setting in chrome://flags in normal Chrome.

10098 14y ago

Doesn't work in Firefox

btbuilder 14y ago
Just played it on ff 16.0.2 no problem.
ch0wn 14y ago
We're on Hacker News. Couldn't you at least try to give a meaningful description of what doesn't work?
- wtallis 14y ago
  I'm seeing just a blue to white vertical gradient, so I'd hazard a guess that the whole thing isn't working. (And yes, WebGL is working.)
benvio 14y ago
If you've got a moment it'd be good to know your configuration. My default answer is to recommend Chrome, but all versions of Firefox are supported (for those without WebGL support we provide a small plugin as an alternative).
- 10098 14y ago
  Seems like it was blocked by AdBlock. Disabling itresolved the issue
- 10098 14y ago
  Actually, now I can see the menu, but neither "quick play" nor "create game" work. Says "Something has gone wrong - please try again". Firefox 16.02 on Windows 7. Music is great though :)
- 10098 14y ago
  I was finally able to play it, and one issue I noticed was that the sound becomes choppy when there are a lot of projectiles on the screen (which is, all the time :))

rrbrambley 14y ago

This. Is. Awesome.

AYBABTME 14y ago

This is cool and it works well. However the graphics are giving me a headache. I played for 10 minutes and I quickly couldn't find my mouse's cursor, nor distinguish between enemies and the background, enemies and the rewards, and enemies from myself. Too many colors.

tinco 14y ago

Damn pretty great, I played a Geometry Wars game together with some other people, no lag, no glitches the entire game. And a whole bunch of nice animations and effects. This shows that at least for the arcade market, the web really has become a mature platform. Ofcourse, this game was cooperative, and chaos-y. It's not certain at all this kan be made feasible for competitive multiplayer with more strict rules. Maybe that just means it's restricted to fun games ;)

arcatek 14y ago

Is there a technical reason for not using webgl frameworks such as Three.js ?

jamesaustin 14y ago
The game uses the Turbulenz Engine which includes a WebGL graphics framework (which is equivalent to Three.js) - http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers#turbulenz-engine http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers#turbulenz-engine

rartichoke 14y ago

The usability is awful. Too many graphics blend in together and the hot key choices are confusing. However it's ridiculously smooth and ran great on a ~5 year old machine. The controls felt excellent.

digeridoo 14y ago

Nice, I've been looking forward to seeing games like this.

mslot 14y ago

Not sure what was doing, but it was kind of fun. What I'm really hoping for now is multi-player pong (with up to 32 rotating pong bats).

htc 14y ago

I played with some of the effects tunned down and it was less chaotic. Great game.

willvarfar 14y ago

Neat! Would love to know how you handle prediction and correction. My last ludum dare was webgl+websockets, but because I used server lockstep (it being a 72hr game and coded from scratch) it was pretty poorly received :/ http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/08/30/cage-flight-autopsy/ http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/08/30/cage-flight-autops... <-- give it some love

tgb 14y ago

Great fun! I registered for an account, but then stopped being able to play multiplayer games. Maybe I'm just missing it, but there "quickplay" button that I was using as a guest is no longer there.

jamesaustin 14y ago
Make sure you're playing "Score Rush MP" which is the multiplayer version. You might have accidentally started the original single player version. Select the game from the "Games" dropbox in the top right of the website.
- tgb 14y ago
  Thanks, that fixed it.

jrogers65 14y ago

The small print (http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers): >We're sorry to hear that. Publishing with Turbulenz gets your game in front of a larger audience. We don't charge an upfront fee and we expect to help you achieve higher user and revenue numbers. If you still don't want us to publish it, contact us about alternative licensing options. >Our mission is to create the greatest online gaming experience. We have heavily invested in the tools and technology to enable this experience and provide these to you free of charge. In exchange, we receive a 30% fee for helping you publish and promote your games to millions of potential customers globally. In fact, we take it a step further and provide services other online platforms don’t. For example, we take care of hosting, servers, analytics, marketing, payment processing, and we even provide developers with a live staging service (Developer Hub) to A/B test and optimize different development versions of a game. So they're going for an app store model by using a free API as bait.

jon6 14y ago

Is there a youtube video? I found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDGl-eDEuNQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDGl-eDEuNQ but I'm not sure if its the same game.

seanica 14y ago

It was fun, but sometimes _really_ hard to determine if I was actually participating in the game or just spectating!

camus 14y ago

Great but the action is a bit too chaotic , to much things on screen. I suggest reducing the sprite sizes a bit , and make the background less distracting.

sahat 14y ago

Impressive. This is the most fun HTML5 games that I played.