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Pardon my English. Team consists of two programmers and four helpers, we live in different cities near Moscow. I started developing the game in April, publish

Pardon my English. Team consists of two programmers and four helpers, we live in different cities near Moscow. I started developing the game in April, published link at habrahabr.ru and since then i'm optimizing network and rendering. We were preparing for Mozilla GameOn, posted a link to /r/webgames, it became viral. We're in shock :) Game Core: Pure Java. Game Client: cross-compiled with GWT. Angular.js for UI (scoreboard, chat). Game Server: Haproxy -> Jetty Web backend: nginx -> node.js Servers are hosted in cloud and begin to slow down after 800 players. We'll rent dedicated servers to archieve 1500 players on a map. P.S. Langoliers are eating the time you spent in bombermine.

irahul 14y ago
What are you serving with node? Chat?
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I assume he means that node + nginx runs the game at the HTTP level but the actual game engine and logic are in Java.
  - rartichoke 14y ago
    But wouldn't the game just be connected straight to Java over websocket once the client has been paired to the server? From the looks of it I don't think they are using Node for anything related to the game itself. At best it might be used to pair a client to a server but that's basically nothing.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Not really sure, perhaps the game itself isn't web-aware and they just use node.js to pull messages in and out because it is fast? Will have to see if Ivan replies to know for sure. :)
      - ivanpopelyshev 14y ago
        Game is connected to Java over websocket through haproxy. I'm going to remove haproxy as soon as i discover solution for a few backend problems.
        rartichoke 14y ago
        Ah, that's pretty much what I expected. So Node has nothing to do with how nice it's running. One more question if you don't mind: Are you doing any server side checks to make sure player movement is within bounds and then doing prediction on the client?
Eliezer 14y ago
Hi! This is awesome from a technical perspective and was initially fun to play. Being reset when I died was a major problem, especially when joining for the first time in the middle of a round and playing against players who already had lots of stuff (at which point one tends to die quickly... and then have to start over). I'm not an expert in game design (just psychology) but from a hedonic perspective I strongly suspect that you should not be stripping players of assets when they die. In general, the case for "punishing" a player is weak (why cause the user pain?) and punishing them in a way that makes it hard for them to catch up in a highly competitive game is worse. The "Death" counter going up and losing your current position is sufficient incentive not to get killed, or there could be loss of points, or you could maybe strip off a single distance unit from the bombs. In the long run you might want some sort of way for early players to catch up quickly, like drops near a player becoming more frequent when they're less advanced compared to other players. Meanwhile, ceasing to strip assets when a player dies, or stripping off only a single unit of distance (not number of bombs, having only a single bomb slows down gameplay a lot) will greatly increase game playability. Especially don't strip the ability to kick bombs. This makes it far too easy for freshly respawned players to be killed.
- lambtron 14y ago
  I think when viewing this game from the understanding that every game lasts for 20 minutes, the dying and starting over again adds a sort of endless zen to the game.
- psionski 14y ago
  I like games with harsh punishments - my favorite is hardcore mode in Diablo - death is permanent and when you die, you loose MONTHS of work, every item you have on you, every skill and level you have gained, everything. This really gets the adrenaline going when you're in a tight spot.
  - GFischer 14y ago
    What happens when you have a blackout / internet failure / computer error, or another random problem? You lose everything as well, and usually through someone else's "fault" (and no adrenaline for you :) ). I used to play Mario 3 on the NES, and at the time my country had a bad electrical infrastructure, I hated going back to the beginning due to a blackout.
johnyzee 14y ago
Cool, another GWT game. Here's mine: http://www.gangsta-game.com http://www.gangsta-game.com
darkarmani 14y ago
Few comments: 1. Just starting with 2 bombs instead of one would make a world of difference starting out. Especially mid-game when everyone has 5+ bombs. 2. The nuke doesn't rack up kills. Make the nuke useful and so people respect it more. Right now it just makes people want to kill you. And it makes the nyan-nuke much more tactical in nature. 3. Make depot spawned bombs "owned" by the user that set them off. If you set off a chain reaction of bombs, you should get the kills. 4. Stack treasure shield and soccer ball shield. Almost no one wastes time scoring because it is so hard. Make it stackable and people will do it more often.

irahul 14y ago

What are you serving with node? Chat?

jiggy2011 14y ago
I assume he means that node + nginx runs the game at the HTTP level but the actual game engine and logic are in Java.
- rartichoke 14y ago
  But wouldn't the game just be connected straight to Java over websocket once the client has been paired to the server? From the looks of it I don't think they are using Node for anything related to the game itself. At best it might be used to pair a client to a server but that's basically nothing.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Not really sure, perhaps the game itself isn't web-aware and they just use node.js to pull messages in and out because it is fast? Will have to see if Ivan replies to know for sure. :)
    - ivanpopelyshev 14y ago
      Game is connected to Java over websocket through haproxy. I'm going to remove haproxy as soon as i discover solution for a few backend problems.
      - rartichoke 14y ago
        Ah, that's pretty much what I expected. So Node has nothing to do with how nice it's running. One more question if you don't mind: Are you doing any server side checks to make sure player movement is within bounds and then doing prediction on the client?

Eliezer 14y ago

Hi! This is awesome from a technical perspective and was initially fun to play. Being reset when I died was a major problem, especially when joining for the first time in the middle of a round and playing against players who already had lots of stuff (at which point one tends to die quickly... and then have to start over). I'm not an expert in game design (just psychology) but from a hedonic perspective I strongly suspect that you should not be stripping players of assets when they die. In general, the case for "punishing" a player is weak (why cause the user pain?) and punishing them in a way that makes it hard for them to catch up in a highly competitive game is worse. The "Death" counter going up and losing your current position is sufficient incentive not to get killed, or there could be loss of points, or you could maybe strip off a single distance unit from the bombs. In the long run you might want some sort of way for early players to catch up quickly, like drops near a player becoming more frequent when they're less advanced compared to other players. Meanwhile, ceasing to strip assets when a player dies, or stripping off only a single unit of distance (not number of bombs, having only a single bomb slows down gameplay a lot) will greatly increase game playability. Especially don't strip the ability to kick bombs. This makes it far too easy for freshly respawned players to be killed.

lambtron 14y ago
I think when viewing this game from the understanding that every game lasts for 20 minutes, the dying and starting over again adds a sort of endless zen to the game.
psionski 14y ago
I like games with harsh punishments - my favorite is hardcore mode in Diablo - death is permanent and when you die, you loose MONTHS of work, every item you have on you, every skill and level you have gained, everything. This really gets the adrenaline going when you're in a tight spot.
- GFischer 14y ago
  What happens when you have a blackout / internet failure / computer error, or another random problem? You lose everything as well, and usually through someone else's "fault" (and no adrenaline for you :) ). I used to play Mario 3 on the NES, and at the time my country had a bad electrical infrastructure, I hated going back to the beginning due to a blackout.

johnyzee 14y ago

Cool, another GWT game. Here's mine: http://www.gangsta-game.com http://www.gangsta-game.com

darkarmani 14y ago

Few comments: 1. Just starting with 2 bombs instead of one would make a world of difference starting out. Especially mid-game when everyone has 5+ bombs. 2. The nuke doesn't rack up kills. Make the nuke useful and so people respect it more. Right now it just makes people want to kill you. And it makes the nyan-nuke much more tactical in nature. 3. Make depot spawned bombs "owned" by the user that set them off. If you set off a chain reaction of bombs, you should get the kills. 4. Stack treasure shield and soccer ball shield. Almost no one wastes time scoring because it is so hard. Make it stackable and people will do it more often.