Show HN: 4snakes – a classic Snake game but with 4 snakes | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: 4snakes – a classic Snake game but with 4 snakes

xojoc.pw

48 pointsxojoc27 comments

Hi everyone! I wanted to learn Typescript and experiment with PWAs[1] so I decided to create these little games. In fact if you go to https://xojoc.pw/games2d/ in some mobile browsers you'll receive a prompt to install the games. They should work offline too.

You can find the code on my GitHub: https://github.com/xojoc/games2d

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

Mate, this is sick! Incredible job!

You should totally publish this to Google Play! (it's very little effort)

See the guide from Google https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2019/02/using-twa

Unfortunately it looks like the game fails with an error in Safari if you eat food :(

Hi, unfortunately I cannot test on Safari. Could you send me a screenshot of the console/error? Thank you!

Not OP, but this is the error I'm getting in Safari: https://imgur.com/a/bIHP8I5

Thank you! I opened an issue: https://github.com/xojoc/games2d/issues/10

I'll try to find out the problem.

I get 4 snakes, can control one, the rest remain stationary. It will then also show circle-food thingies that jump around, but always of a color that's not mine.

I suspect that's not how it is supposed to play, no? Using Mobile Safari.

Yes, when you eat a food your control will jump to the snake of that colour.

Hi eps, you're supposed to control only one snake at a time. When the snake eats some food (i.e. the circles) the snake of the corresponding color starts to move.

Sorry for the confusion... btw, under the game there's a short description of the game.

I don’t see it worked like that. After eating a food no snake moves. I’m on mobile safari.

Ops, there's a bug with Safari: https://github.com/xojoc/games2d/issues/10

Sorry for the confusion!

This makes me want to try a version where you control two snakes at once.

The steering interface is much harder than the traditional 4-direction version. (Not saying that's good or bad, just saying it.)

It shouldn't be too hard... if you want to try, you can find the source here: https://github.com/xojoc/games2d

Yeah, the 2-direction version is a little different than usual, but I wanted to try something new.

The snake game bundled with DOS 5 let you play with two snakes. It was very difficult to play solo. IIRC the intent was two players on the same keyboard.

I wrote a simultaneous control version a long time ago (very naive game implementation, please forgive the code): https://github.com/J-Swift/clj-multi-snake

Its pretty difficult to play actually. I find the best method is to control one in a circle while capturing with the other.

Interesting. Now I"m wondering how to motivate someone to use both of them. Maybe two different kinds of food, specific to each snake?

It has that feature already : )

3/4 of the food are for either snake, 1/4 is for a particular snake.

Neat little game, but the controls suck.

I think it'd be a lot easier to control the snake if you had the turning radius start wider and decrease over dozens of frames of constant turning before clamping to the tight one you currently use initially. That way the player could modulate turning a bit to maintain a larger turning radius, as well as make subtle corrections with small taps.

The game is lots of fun and a creative take on snake. The sound effect is very loud though. Cool work.

Thank you! In the upper left corner you can lower the volume. I should probably make it lower by default.

I also was confused by the 4 snakes concept. I think perhaps it could have been solved by putting a different color food in front of the snake when the board is initialized. This way the "time to snake change" is reduced drastically.

Hi sc9311, I like the idea, thanks!

(I opened an issue to track it: https://github.com/xojoc/games2d/issues/11)

I officially suck at this game, but it is pretty cool :-)

this is a great game, I only with it had less degrees of freedom (I.e. only 4/8 directions), it's super difficult to control while also thinking for me :)

Hi riffraff, 4 directions always felt "artificial" to me, maybe with 8 it could work!

Thank you for trying the game :)

Game halts on iPhone 6 safari in food eat.

Yeah, seems to be a problem with Phaser in Safari when playing a sound: https://github.com/xojoc/games2d/issues/10

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