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Chrome World Wide Maze
- zerovox 14y agoI think this is the first time I've been genuinely impressed with a Chrome Experiment. They've recreated Super Monkey Ball entirely inside the browser, with the option of using a device as a controller. Certainly an interesting concept for multiplayer gaming, imagine Chrome running on a Smart TV(Chrome OS TV?) and a couple of friends can hook up their mobiles as controllers, and play some casual party style games like Monkey Ball or Mario Party.
- Kiro 14y agoYes, that's what I've been dreaming of ever since I first saw a smartphone. I'm very surprised it isn't as obvious to other people how cool it would be. The smartphone is the perfect game controller. For example a strategy game played on a TV together with friends where each phone is not only used for controls but also showing (private) game data and more!
- andypants 14y agoNo, it's not a perfect game controller. A convenient one maybe, but not perfect, not even good. It has the same problem that you would encounter if you tried touch typing on an iphone keyboard. It has no physical feedback so you have no idea if you are pressing the correct button (or any button at all) on the phone screen unless you are actually looking at it. Which means you won't be able to look at the TV screen at the same time.
- Kiro 14y agoSo you think it would suck or what?
- andypants 14y agoI think it would suck compared to a traditional game controller, if it were to be used as a traditional game controller. As say, a motion device, it could probably work just as well as any other controller. But there are of course ways to improve the experience. For example, you could show the visual feedback on the TV itself, so you can see where you are touching relative to the display. Similar to how the Kinect shows where it thinks your hands are.
- cgislason 14y agoDon't you think the reality is some middle ground? It's a perfect game controller for some games.
- vrek 14y agoI agree. It is perfect for games which rely on the idea of positioning your hands. It's really just a tool for the idea of moving the world with your hands. In this case it's perfect.
- andypants 14y agoYeah, you're right. I was thinking in terms of a traditional console game controller. A phone has other features that could be used like speakers, microphone, accelerometer, etc. As a motion device it would be great, definitely.
- pondababa 14y agoWhen my iPhone 3G's screen broke, the bottom part of the LCD broke--just enough to cover the keyboard. I was abroad, so for the month until I got home, I learned to touch type on my iPhone.
- AndyJPartridge 14y agoI feel for what you mean here. Personally I hate the PS3 controller as it's too small, I much prefer the xBox 360 controller and especially if it has the keyboard attached to it. Also, on the iPhone I dislike 99% of the games that use a virtual joystick on the screen, I just can't get on with them. But for touch interface games, what the parent post says is a joy I look forward to experiencing: A game with discreet information on the hand-held device. A touch screen certainly isn't for 60fps twitch-gaming in my opinion.
- mkr-hn 14y ago> But for touch interface games, what the parent post says is a joy I look forward to experiencing: A game with discreet information on the hand-held device. Isn't that the whole idea behind the WiiU?
- psbp 14y agoThe smartphone is also the perfect portable mouse. I wouldn't be surprised if the new Motorola phones are built with this in mind.
- candl 14y agoWhile I can't test the demo as I don't have an iOS or Android device around I don't think this is anything special. It's been done already, see for example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brassmonkey.controller&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brassmonke...
- tomchristie 14y ago> It's been done already This is kinda different in that the mobile device doesn't need a custom app on it to act as the controller (as in your Brass Monkey example), but can act as the controller directly within the browser. No extra installations, just hit up the website and go.
- endergen 14y agoHey guys, I'm the CTO at Brass Monkey. We definitely experimented with this approach of using a webpage and websockets to communicate, it is nice that it doesn't require installing an app but it communicates via relaying messages out to the internet and back and so generally has latency in the 100ms+ (<10FPS) range and usually worse. See early video I made at a previous Company using HTML5 for controllers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE8-TntjYB4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE8-TntjYB4 With Brass Monkey we decided to instead make a single master controller app that used a trick we discovered to communicate over LAN between your phone and PC, this way it's blazingly fast. Can be more like 10-20ms (100-50FPS) instead and more consistent. You only have to install it only once and then you can play any Brass Monkey experience seamlessly, including auto-pairing tech that detects other instances of Brass Monkey enabled web pages on your network. Note: There are still major advantages to the web based approach such as bypassing Apple's approval process. It's hard to have controller side code executed unless you bake into your app as Apple doesn't allow dynamically loading code into native apps. But we decided to go responsiveness for our initial focus and are trying to figure out how to bring in some of the other benefits the web page as controller approach takes. Would love some feedback on our App if you are games, orSDK if any of you are Javascript, Flash, and/or Unity developers. francois@playbrassmonkey.com
- jfoutz 14y agoThis one is pretty neat too. http://stripenight.com/racer/ http://stripenight.com/racer/ i'm sure it has been posted on HN before
- pudgereyem 14y agoDefinitely neat. Thanks for posting.
- JeremyKolb 14y agoYOu need to take a second to think about what Google is doing here. Again, Google is being clever about getting data from you. Take a moment and ask yourself why they're doing this... Google want to connect your browser information with your phone information. And they're doing a good job.
- DGCA 14y agoThis is not new. As an Android user and Chrome user, it's very convenient.
- greggman 14y agoYou mean like this? https://code.google.com/p/powpow/ https://code.google.com/p/powpow/ (see video) There's also this https://github.com/greggman/octopus https://github.com/greggman/octopus
- AlexMuir 14y agoMindbending. Sometimes you have to actually play with something to appreciate its potential.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- garethadams 14y agoThe reason this is so impressive is that it brings together three technologies that people aren't used to even seeing one good implementation of yet: * HTML5 accelerometer support * Sync between mobile/desktop using websockets * Web page slicing based (by the look of it) on DOM and image processing …and of course this is in a nice responsive WebGL-rendered package, which people are getting more used to thanks to the http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ project.
- flexie 14y agoIt also uses * Battery Lot's of it on my iPhone. But it's worth it :-)
- zmb_ 14y agoWell, good is bit of a stretch. On first try I got disconnected during loading the level. On the second the level loaded but accelerometer does not work, only the buttons do. Also the screen on the phone (Galaxy Nexus) is upside down.
- endergen 14y agoI had done some experiments like this 2 years ago with a Company I started called Emotely. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE8-TntjYB4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE8-TntjYB4 This has since been acquired by Brass Monkey: http://playbrassmonkey.com/ http://playbrassmonkey.com/
- thrownaway2424 14y agoThe reason I am impressed is the game is playable even though the control loop runs through a telephone company, Google's servers in god-knows-where, and back to my PC.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- m4tthumphrey 14y agoHoly shit this is absolutely incredible. My mind has been blown.
- adlpz 14y agoDoesn't seem to do anything with a Nexus 7. And it does have an accelerometer and gyroscope.
- jschuur 14y agoJust played it with a Nexus 7 (wifi via tab sync) and it worked just fine. The accelerometer was a little finicky though.
- alainbryden 14y agoWorked for me too. Felt a bit laggy, like steering a boat going real slow, still amazing.
- qznc 14y agoWhat is it? For me only a loading screen is shown. Update: Found a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AvTl9aU5D8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AvTl9aU5D8
- matthuggins 14y agoI'm having the same issue.
- jneal 14y agoSame issue here, using chrome too....
- orvtech 14y agoThis is awesome! now lets get some sweet Tux Racer or Mario Kart going! (please?)
- soccermove 14y agoHacker news stage is way too easy
- Extigy 14y agoNah, Google is just way OP.
- tonetheman 14y agoWish I could see it. Way too many passwords hoops to jump through to get everything setup. The idea is cool though.
- jschuur 14y agoI wasn't prompted for a single password. I was already logged into a Google account though.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoHuh? Chrome on Android will auto-login to your Google account.
- skeletonjelly 14y agoHad to enter my password here.
- albertzeyer 14y agoThe connect doesn't work for me. I tried using the TabSync method and by typing the code manually. It just keep saying "please enter the 6-digit code". Does this try to do a direct connection? In my network, that probably wouldn't work because of our firewall. Or it might if the port it listens on is high enough.
- spydum 14y agoNo, it does not. It appears to be going back through googles systems as the in between. I was able to play it and I know for certain my pc and tablet have no direct connectivity
- Jare 14y agoI chose to play only on PC and still got "disconnected from the phone", so there must be a few kinks to sort out still.
- jnadeau 14y agohad the same issue, type the url on your pc into your phone and it will connect for you.
- thefreeman 14y agoI had to pause Ghostery before it would allow me to connect.
- phpnode 14y agocrashed my entire PC on chrome, mint-linux 64bit edit - likely a webgl problem that I've brought upon myself by disabling the gpu-blacklist
- jplmelanson 14y agoWorking perfectly with Version 25.0.1364.160 Ubuntu 12.10 (25.0.1364.160-0ubuntu0.12.10.1)
- hydrology 14y agobut i got directed to this page: http://chrome.com/maze/pc/not-supported/ http://chrome.com/maze/pc/not-supported/ on Ubuntu 12.10 Chrome Version 25.0.1364.172
- thefreeman 14y agoIt depends on your video card and drivers whether WebGL will be automatically enabled / supported. I had to go to chrome://flags and enable the Override software rendering list Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android Overrides the built-in software rendering list and enables GPU-acceleration on unsupported system configurations. Option to get WebGL enabled by default
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- morefranco 14y agoThis is pretty damn cool....
- cdi 14y agoI see no reason why this should be a Chrome exclusive in PC only mode. Firefox supports WebGl.
- pytrin 14y agoYou're technically right (and I found it annoying too) - but it is a "Chrome" expriment... naturally it would only support Chrome.
- zobzu 14y agoits a website. one of many, that is chrome only. makes IE looks like a good citizen these days
- cdi 14y agoWell, Mozilla didn't make their BananaBread experiment Firefox only: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread
- bzbarsky 14y agoWhy "naturally", if other browsers also implement the relevant technologies?
- pytrin 14y agoThey create those demos to attract users to their browser - kind of defeats the purpose if you can run it using any browser. I actually downloaded mobile chrome on to run this - I usually run Firefox.
- craigerrington 14y agoLiterally just read http://www.fastcolabs.com/3007250/open-company/boxs-65-year-old-android-engineer-gives-your-startup-some-unsentimental-advice# http://www.fastcolabs.com/3007250/open-company/boxs-65-year-... from HN and saw mention of "Maze Wars" for the first time ever...Then an hour later, a Chrome Project with mobile controller pops up. I love the future.
- namenotrequired 14y agoIt tells me to use chrome while I am on chrome...
- cweathe2 14y agoIs there any url we could use to share a specific website?
- morganwilde 14y agoUnbelievable, my eyeballs were bursting out of their sockets when I saw this... Thank you Google for showing the way!
- fosfori 14y agoNice! Working pretty well with FF Nightly + Win7.
- sgdesign 14y agoSo that's what the Google Reader team is working on now!
- guylhem 14y agoI would love to see some apps better integrated - basic stuff like calendar and todo (BTW check out http://drive.google.com/keep http://drive.google.com/keep - it's a rival to Evernote) That was solved and properly done tens of years ago on the palm. Why can't I have something at least as good right into the browser, synced with my google account?? (Edit: not the wrong place since you already do your mail with a browser... and keep your contacts... and your todos... just remove the middleman, the website, and put everything in the browser. My guess is end users might love that)
- icoder 14y agoHm, my Galaxy SII isn't compatible with Google Chrome browser. Odd.
- codesuela 14y agoyou need ICS for Chrome
- angular 14y agoAll I saw is a loading screen. First webpage in forever that's successfully crashed Firefox for me though, so that's impressive I guess.
- drunken_thor 14y agoOkay so before I even got to the actual experiment I was impressed that the music on the page only plays while you are currently viewing the page, so if you are on another tab the music stops! I want to know how to just do that!
- woogley 14y agoAsk and you shall receive: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/pagevisibility/intro/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/pagevisibility/intro/
- elisee 14y agoI haven't looked at the source code but according to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/Using_the_Page_Visibility_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/Using_the_Page_..., you can simply register a onblur / onfocus event handler on the window object (this doesn't use the recent Page Visibility API, it's been possible for a long time)
- jgs1 14y agoPlaying http://theverge.com http://theverge.com with my Android phone - the final path just before the end of the level reads "Why Andy Rubin and Android called it quits".
- liquid_lazer 14y agodoesn't load on my machine.
- Achshar 14y agoMy PC is not fast enough, the intro lags very badly. And I don't have a ICS phone, so no way to run chrome :(
- flyheart 14y agonot supported
- sangupta 14y agoSuper awesome. If this is why Google did some spring cleaning, then am happy!
- gregparadee 14y agoThis is the most impressive "experiment" I have seen come out of Google in a long time. Hopefully others will start to take advantage of these new technologies and we will start seeing more things like this. +1 to Google. Pun intended.
- rockfort 14y agoFor me, the Screen just flickers when I'm ingame and I get a huge headache :( It does pick up on the smartphone movement on the minimap, but the ball wont move… I can jump tho. Any ideas? (OSX 10.6.8, Chrome Version 25.0.1364.172 // iPhone 4 10.6.2, Chrome Version 25.0.1364.124)
- logn 14y agoWorks on Chrome only. Reminds me of the good old "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer (click here to download)" days.
- bzbarsky 14y agoAnd the silliest part is that other browsers support the parts of this that are needed (accelerometers and websocket).
- mtgx 14y agoIt's an "experiment", which means it could be using some of the latest and cutting edge HTML5 specs. Chrome happens to be very good at supporting the latest specs. It's significantly more ahead than Firefox, and it's way, way, way ahead even than the latest version of IE. So if an "experiment" meant to use the latest technologies happens to "only work in Chrome", don't blame Chrome for implementing the specs much faster than anyone else, and then developers taking advantage of them. Blame IE and others for not implementing HTML5 specs fast enough. Unlike in the IE6 age where Microsoft did not follow the HTML standards, and made up their own new technologies, other browsers couldn't have implemented them even if they wanted to. In this case, if IE can't play this experiment, it just means it will be able to play it after one or two other major releases, once they get off their asses and get around to supporting the specs Chrome is support today. It doesn't mean they will never be able to support them (again, unlike with IE's tech in the "IE6 age").
- azakai 14y ago> It's an "experiment", which means it could be using some of the latest and cutting edge HTML5 specs. That's fair. > Chrome happens to be very good at supporting the latest specs. It's significantly more ahead than Firefox, and it's way, way, way ahead even than the latest version of IE. That's not accurate. Chrome is ahead in some areas, but behind in others. But the bigger point is that the site says > "We're sorry, but World Wide Maze is an experiment that was designed with the browser Google Chrome in mind." If it said "with modern HTML5 in mind", that would be fine. But it says it was designed for Chrome, not for standards.
- drv 14y agoThe first thing that showed up when I visited this page (in Chrome, no less): "This page is in Spanish; would you like to translate it?" Other than that, it seems to be just stuck on the loading screen.
- tlongren 14y agoTook about 2 minutes to fully load up for me. And Chrome appeared to freeze up in that time, but eventually became responsive again.
- k-mcgrady 14y agoI got the translation suggestion too (no idea why). The load time took about 45 seconds for me.
- savrajsingh 14y agoI'm having the same issue, and it keeps happening. It keeps asking me about Spanish! Otherwise, it worked well.
- jferge 14y agoA combination of marble blast and pacman, using websites as stages. Love it!
- f1codz 14y agoamazing. just wow. i havent been more impressed in a long time.
- shurcooL 14y agoDoes anyone know if the websocket connection goes through the internet, or if there's anyway it can shortloop to using LAN if both devices are on the same network? I got disconnected twice within 1 minute, so I'm guessing the former... That, and I suppose unless you literally give it the internal IP of a device, it can't really make any assumptions (i.e. it's meant to work over internet too).
- cromwellian 14y agoThe basic control mechanism was also detailed at Google I/O 2012 in this session: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lMcNPDR6uw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lMcNPDR6uw
- lazugod 14y agoWhat awkward emphasis put on syncing your phone with Chrome.
- faceyspacey 14y agoHow do they get other web pages, given cross-domain constraints? Are they downloading the page on the server into a headless browser like Phantom JS, and then delivering the result to your browser to be manipulated using WebGL and Javascript? I get that there are capabilities like drawWindow() to turn parts of the dom into raster images programmatically, but how doe they suck the web page into your browser in the first place, given cross domain constraints???
- faceyspacey 14y agoI actually think I got it, and it's less impressive than I thought. Check this Screenshot: http://snapplr.com/hb27 http://snapplr.com/hb27 ...they're essentially rendering the entire site in a headless browser like Phantom JS on their server and taking a screenshot (i.e. basic stuff any intermediate javascript developer can do). Next, they're manipulating a basic image with WebGL, etc. ...So this is NOT impressive because they have lost the dom, unlike Firefox Tilt which maintains knowledge of the DOM the entire time--for example you can continue to edit the web page as you're playing around with the rendering in 3D space. With this you could not do that. Tilt is a firefox addon, which must be where they get access other domains. Without being a firefox add on (or Chrome Extension), I was imagining this Maze experiment rendering the dom of another site in a headless browser on their server, and then delivering the resulting HTML to your page with all the absolute and relative URL paths of images and files adjusted so that they would render on another domain. And then at this point, the WebGL stuff could happen, manipulating an actual dom. That all said, there are a few things that happen in the game that suggest knowledge of the dom, such as the way the make text have a 3D bubble cloud style. Maybe they are in fact doing some analysis in a headless browser, aside from just making a simple screenshot. They also break up logical portions of the page. So maybe the find the coordinates and dimensions of these logical portions and then in webgl crop the large image of the page at these exact coordinates. I'm sure someone else has done a more thorough analysis. Would love to know what anyone else finds here to figure out how they're doing what they're doing.
- skeletonjelly 14y agoHow are they aware of the DOM level though? Certain elements pop out, are you suggesting they just use path mapping? It would be easier to, along with the screenshot, send the DOM tree hierarchy with some coordinates no? Still kind of impressive, but true it's no Tilt.
- gcb0 14y agoChrome, bringing back the "best viewed with Internet Explorer" banners... (and now the kids have no idea what i'm talking about :)
- aaronsnoswell 14y agoDoes nothing for me, just sits there loading in both Chrome 25.0.1364.172 and canary.