Show HN: OverThrown – A multiplayer turn based strategy game | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: OverThrown – A multiplayer turn based strategy game

overthrown.io

141 pointsdan33549 comments

I'm starting to think that web sites will eventually offer so little information about their product/idea/service/game that there will just be a logo at the top and after scrolling down through various fancy backgrounds, there will be the second of two UI elements which is a link to their facebook account.

Generally speaking I'm seeing an overall improvement in this, with short videos, demos, and better attention to on-boarding.

This particular site could use some gameplay videos/tutorials, but this looks like the recently revealed passion project of a single developer so I think we can cut Daniel some slack.

Edit: others below have commented about the docs[0] and a tutorial video[1]

[0] https://overthrown.io/docs [1] https://youtu.be/fItliXZ2Agg

I know some people like videos, but just a reminder: some of us really hate videos, so please don't skimp on screenshots and, you know, text.

You should make it possible to inspect games without an account. I love that you've made your Trello open btw! Very cool to have it next to Facebook and Twitter.

Yea the option to spectate would be good for people like me who just want to see what the whole thing is about.

Yep, I'll add it to the list. Here's a game you can view.

It will look a little broken but should be viewable.

edit: Removed link, tons of people coming from hacker news.

Seconded. At least some screenshots, a video or two of game play, and a general story and game play idea, would help a lot for potential players to determine whether they would be interested or not. I don't want to have to create an account just to figure out if I would be interested in playing the game.

I signed up for the game. But while waiting for my game getting started, I found this link for spectating and read the docs, and you know what, this is one of the least fun games one could design, imo. Otherwise they would show how it plays I guess, and everything. Look:

Let's compare to the game Risk. In Risk, when two armies fight, the outcome is randomized with dice rolls. Here the outcome is totally deterministic, the larger army always wins.

Another basic combat mechanics is Rock-Paper-Scissors (Age of Empires and many other strategy games used this mechanics). You could have three kinds of military units with their strengths and weaknesses. There is no such a thing here, you just have plain soldiers and workers.

The only potentially good thing about this game is the alliance part. Still it remains unclear does it really add anything to the game mechanics or not..

I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but it sounds more like diplomacy than risk.

Yeah, I guess so, you are right.

You just should find the game ID you want to spectate and browse this:

https://overthrown.io/game/:id

https://overthrown.io/game/38c752cf-40a2-4dd1-8c97-631dd56a4...

You can find game id's in the Websocket frames using inspector tools on chrome.

Nothing interesting though. I think most games have just begun and with 12h turns not much has happened yet.

this should be linked in the games list!

I was spectating w/ Chrome and it figuratively melted my late 2015 MBP (sans discrete graphics card). I hate to think what this would do to a mobile device's battery.

The curse of HTML5 games. It's a damn shame because it would've become a great medium. My tin foil hat theory is that it was purposely sidelined so it wouldn't detract from the mobile gaming craze that was growing at the time.

I wish there were a temp game for 3 or 4 minutes to sample the thing and it would require 2-5 players. This would make it easy to learn what happens instead of waiting 6 hours.

This seems really cool! How much work outside the standard meteor workflows did you have to do for all the clients to be nicely synchronized? I guess since the turns are "slow" you have plenty of leeway to make sure the data gets where it needs to be, but I've had a little trouble before with many people connected to a meteor app and having them looking at the same interface, where some of the smaller, incremental graphic updates got skipped over and caused some visual lag. I'd love to see some sort of technical write up for how this game is structured!

Here's how I got RethinkDB working with Meteor. https://medium.com/@danphi/meteor-and-rethinkdb-db8864762139...

Thanks!

Just a reminder to everyone that this is a Show HN which has different commenting rules. So honesty is okay but maybe lay off the snark, sarcasm and acidic cynicism.

Here's some explanation of the game, including a short video under the second header: https://overthrown.io/docs.

Maybe there should be a link to that on the homepage.

Yeah good point I'll add it.

This sounds very much like Diplomacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)). Very cool.

It's nice you made your Trello todo list public, but why not make the game open source and use the GitHub issue tracker so we can also open issues and feature requests?

Very nice game, I just started on game 46, I can't wait to get further into it.

Also great job on the UI, everything is smooth and easy to understand.

Instead of the Youtube video, I think a step-by-step guide and feature introduction would be way better. Something like http://introjs.com/ but otherwise the game seems interesting.

Also, 12h turns seem incredibly long :(

Planning on having faster ones eventually :D

Personally I think 12-24h is perfect for busy people. Will try to convince my friends to try this out with me ;)

Too quick for me. With Diplomacy I prefer 24-36h. ;)

With kids and a busy work day, I could easily miss a turn in the morning.

12 hours seems pretty great in terms of time investment for a new game. But I can see how it's probably annoying if you have a lot of free time or you game a lot. I miss those days.

Looks promising. How about a gameplay video, more screenshots, and a short description of how the gameplay works on the homepage (without digging)? You have to give us something more to go on...

Nice! This reminds me a lot of Iron Helmet's games (http://www.ironhelmet.com).

This game is not good.

I will stop playing it in the middle of a match.

I want to apologize for the other players, but I think we shouldn't play a game just because it is a game and it is free and the game has a nice UI. Games are important things and no one should be incentivized to release games to the public if they are not interesting.

Is it somehow possible to leave a game that hasn't started yet? I logged in using Google, but I have notifications disabled for the account, so I would rather register using an alternative email address. Changing the email used for notifications would work too.

Not possible right now after the game starts.

If you like turn-based strategy games, check out backstabbr.com (web-based Diplomacy).

Joined a game as well, the camera should pan to your city on game start.

Had the same issue, didn't find my city until I found the zoom option (scrolling doesn't work). But on another game it did pan automatically. YMMV?

Very cool idea! I'll definitely be trying this out.

Is the app a reasonable improvement over the browser version?

hmm, joined a game, turns are supposed to run every 12 hours. Two turns ran almost immediately. Now I am getting server disconnect errors.

Those two turns are correct, they run when a game starts. Disconnects are because of all the people from hackernews.

Any chance you guys could make a speedy game mode where turns are like 15min ?

Yep, planning on having some quicker games.

The best way to do it will be 5-10 min. turns with option to end your turn before that. If everyone is ready than it's not needed to wait and just jump to the next turn.

I recommend a game mode where you can check a box and send a notification to the server that you completed your turn. If all 50 players checked their turn then automatically update the server move on to next round.

I was also thinking a 24 hour turn game would be nice. Then I can just check in every day at the same time, no way I will find a good 12 hour routine for a few weeks. Probably would work if you just allocated more resources per turn with more initial resources. Regardless, looks fun.

For anyone interested, the from a laptop computer (macbook, chrome browser) this game was buggy and nearly unplayable. It took up 900 MB of memory and 50% CPU.

Age of Empires was more responsive in 2002.

I started hearing sounds from my MacBook that I've never heard before. There is an option within the game to simplify the graphics, which helped enough to silence my laptop.

bug found... i choose fb login, and i didn't provide my email, and i can't login with my fb any more..

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