Equinox.space
equinox.space
equinox.space
Some background info on the project: https://littleworkshop.fr/projects/equinox/
For those aspiring to become creative developers, could you share any tips on which areas they should focus on?
Joystick sure, but the last joystick I had was a 15 pin DIN
Now, to be judgemental, anyone who enables the invert option is an obvious psychopath. Although, to be fair, everyone thinks I'm a psychopath for using Mouse2 for Forward.
Careful, with that attitude you might not have a wife for long.
everybody knows inverted is correct anyways.
One way is as though you are moving the observer. You move (yourself) up to look up.
Another way is as though you are moving the object. You move (the scene) down to look up.
Both are perfectly natural in different contexts.
Everyone perfectly naturally turns their head up or lifts a telescope up in order to look higher.
Everyone also perfectly naturally slides a paper down or rorates a globe down in order to see higher parts of it.
How big was the team and how long did it take to make it?
Someone should start a space ride hailing service. I bet the pod was yellow.
tried Brave + Chrome with same results
Maybe it is something to a high resolution screen, so one CSS pixel is actually quite large?
3840x2160 with 150% Scaling, Firefox on Wayland (KDE) on Arch Linux.
Somehow, the mouse is not just slow but has a hard downtrend. After swiping 5 times left to right and back again. I look at my feet. The downtrend increases with higher mouse sensitivity.
You can try to change the controls mode in the in-game menu (ESC key).
https://i.imgur.com/YX2OqXz.mp4
Not sure if it matters, but I have multiple monitors
Great game!
I was suspicious of that AI the whole time. Like, did it get sent into this asteroid field on purpose to destroy it because it was a threat? Were there other unconscious passengers locked in those rooms and if I died following some risky instruction would it simply wake the next one up? How could it practically see through my eyes and would I turn out to be an automated drone?
Would have liked a bit more subplot to explore. Eg. Fix the spinning satellite to utilize the Comms station. Gain access to the third floor in the lift. Poke around the AI control room to uncover sabotage.
Maybe I just missed some discoveries on my playthrough.
And now, everyone else is gone, and I am getting ordered around by an AI, maybe because the AI considered me the easiest one to manipulate, maybe the AI deliberately entered the asteroid field to that goal.
Edit:
And I don't think the game really needs more content. It is not a big budget AAA production after all. What it could benefit from however is maybe some hints to something bigger. Things like personal items, messages on screen, maps, ads, writings on the wall, etc... It doesn't have to connect to a big story, but just hint that there is something, even if it is all bluff.
It just occurred to me that it may be because I have my phone ringer set to silent. That is indeed what caused it, which is not great as I don't want notifications to be making noise.
It also felt slightly too zoomed in (I even attempted to zoom out using my fingers).
I'm pretty sure that's the way it should be, isn't it? Whenever I want something/anything/everything to not make noise on my phone, I set it to silent. It's been that way since the very first iphone I ever owned (I think it was the 4).
also game is tough? waiting for the walkthroughs lol
Tried the speed setting down to 10, barely made a difference.
Not sure if other FF users are experiencing the same thing?
edit:
Just finished it... Good game! I hope you expand it, because you've definitely got something fun here.
I was concerned that it would continue after the warp, because I knew I would not have been able to stop playing. 100% pure fun while it lasted.
Sorry to see this post is getting spam bombed for some reason :( Because it's one of the most interesting things I saw in the last days
There were things, like Epic Citadel, a full port of Unreal Engine to the browser (using asm.js, a technique of compiling assembly to Javascript) a decade ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9KRBuVBjVo
And yeah even that somehow feels futuristic today.
Seriously though, amazing implementation and vibe! (and a lesson to not let GPT drive your spaceship)
Edit: ignore me! It's one of my plugins!
Played it on Android long time ago.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Critical_(video_game)
There's a multiplayer game where you get in a match and play tiny minigames where you fix the issues of the ship, and once you fix them all, you win.
The twist is, there is an assasin among all players, and his goal is to sabotage your ship even more and to kill everyone, without getting caught. So the duration of the journey is only based on how quick you either fix the ship, find the impostor or die.
Wish I could remember the name, it was pretty popular during the pandemic.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sleepingbe...
Give SpaceTeam a try anyway. You have to love a game that bills itself as a "cooperative shouting game."
I tried it once and was looking forward to it, but it was just a bunch of kids running around with no coordination whatsoever killing each other. After a few plays I asked Steam for a refund. Maybe I was doing it wrong and should have tried it with friends.
Of course, all those groups burnt out on the game after playing way too much of it over the pandemic, so it is what it is.
When I first got into public lobbies - yeah, everybody was a kid and the first color shouted into the chat would get kicked.
The trick I found was to switch the search language to English as I was in European servers with my native language. That way, I would match with Europeans that manually changed their language to English as well... or just british kids.
Anyways, it got way better, no more "red is sus" and then kicking without proof. But then everyone was too rude. People always got EXTREMELY angry when I found who the impostors were by either using the cameras or just remembering who was with who + kill spots + behaviour. Like, we win the game because I confirmed the users were impostors based on actual proof, then they cuss me and ban me from the lobby!
So, yeah, I kinda not played much in public lobbies for these reasons. But with friends it was fun!
The ship will tell you what controls need to be activate, but the catch is that each player only has access to a portion of the controls, but will receive instructions for all them. Cue lots of yelling back and forth to try to communicate the appropriate directions :)
https://subsetgames.com/ftl.html
> In FTL you experience the atmosphere of running a spaceship trying to save the galaxy. It's a dangerous mission, with every encounter presenting a unique challenge with multiple solutions.
> What will you do if a heavy missile barrage shuts down your shields?
> - Reroute all power to the engines in an attempt to escape?
> - Power up additional weapons to blow your enemy out of the sky?
> - Or take the fight to them with a boarding party?
That said, the game mechanics are really well done and give you options for creative problem solving. For example your pilot increases the chance to evade missiles. Unless he is busy extinguishing a fire in another room. So instead you can open a door to space and power down your own oxygen supply. And use that power to charge a second weapon.
Neptune's Pride [0] is a fantastic real-time strategy game that has this feature without the maintenance part. You play the game over the course of days instead of minutes or hours. And it may take hours for your ships to reach their destinations. A ton of fun with friends.
Sounds a bit like 'Desert Bus'
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/desert-b...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1315980/Tin_Can/
You maintain an evacuation pod for as long as you can to survive the small journey (I think it can take as much as 30 minutes?) between the ship you're escaping and safety.
It's not perfect but it might scratch your itch.
I also started a game a while back called Still There which seems like that's what it's going to be, but I haven't completed it yet so don't want to pass judgement. You're on a space station and not a ship, though, and it's point-and-click.
Well done, I haven't heard that name for close to 30 years. Brings back good memories.
But even more than that, the game felt crisp. Movement, Mechanics, Voice Acting- all done fantastically. Just a 10/10 demo.
Now make a full game like this! I assure you, it'll take the internet by storm.
One suggestion: add the option to invert the touch camera controls. It feels weird to rotate the world rather than the camera in a first person game, and I'm constantly rotating in the opposite direction than intended.
While creating Equinox, it frequently felt like we were working on tiny details that hardly anyone would notice. But ultimately I believe that immersion largely relies on the accumulation of all these small additions.
There are some games made in JS with Electron.
And I wish your team luck with your consultancy bussines and making interactive experiences.
But I think you can achieve something in game dev as well!
Parts of it gave me Metroid Prime vibes that I haven't felt since I was a kid.
Can't find that damned access token though.
Related HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18058991
- Californium
- Electric Highways
- Fugue in Void
- NORTH
- Off-Peak (and sequels)
- The Station
- Tacoma
- They Came From A Communist Planet
- TIMEframe
These are all sci-fi walking sims, which is the genre of "wander around a strange place trying to figure out what happened and/or how to get out". Some walking sims have more of a traditional narrative and some have less, some are short (under an hour) and others are longer, some are comedic and some are more serious. There are lots and lots that aren't sci-fi too.
Probably the most accessible here is Tacoma, but it can get pretty rough on Intel graphics. If you want a free one you could try Electric Highways or Off-Peak, or if you don't care that they're not sci-fi you could try Gravity Bone, A Bewitching Revolution or Dr. Langeskov (suggested in a sibling comment).
Edit: also have you considered doing a how I made / tutorial series on youtube ?
We're working on some behind-the-scenes content that will most likely be published on X and LinkedIn. You can follow us if you're interested: https://twitter.com/glecollinet
It's funny how many of us distrusted the AI. I guess games + movies have taught us the AI is always up to something.
It's probably pretty rare nowadays, since it's off by default and rather hidden in the settings dialog ("Search for text when you start typing"). I had it activated up until (quite) a few years ago, and I think I switched it off, because of bad JavaScript interactions.
Makes me want to give Bevy another spin and try doing a short story-driven FPS as well.
p.s. it's impressive that this was written in THREE.basic, judging by the cockpit monitors. :)
One nitpick, the mouse speed is IMO too slow, I've set it to 100 in the game settings but I still needed to drag my mouse way further than normal to rotate the player. I grabbed my trackball mouse so I don't need to move the mouse itself that far and then it was a bit more playable.
Would it be possible to increase the mouse speed further than 100?
Edit: I see them now. Tiny little embossed patterns on the round parts with the lights inside the generator.
Again, thank you!
I only could suggest, for hackers don't show hints of code shapes (for engine consoles), just make less buttons, so for example, just 64 possible variants, so real hacker could just find code by brute force.
Other possible idea, sough harder to implement, to use rotating dials and issue some shake of screen when approach right number on some dial.
Brut-forcing won't be fun.
To be honest I didn't notice glyphs at first.
On iOS, I rotated to landscape and then portrait and it became permanently zoomed in. (even when I rotated back to landscape)
That's an Apple hardware classic. Sorry to report that your GPU might be shot. (Hopefully it was just a one-time fault, though.)
This was my first AC+ purchase.
Also my battery has been at 79% Service Battery health for about a year. I forgot to use AlDente to limit the battery to 80% but do it now and it hasn't gone down.
edit: Jesus I just realized 2025 is next year. Totally thought I had like 3 years left.. nevermind..
And it weights only 45 MiB! How did you achieve this? And most of it is sounds, what looks like.
It's built with babylonjs?
Why it weighs only 45mb: the 3D environment isn’t that detailed, and we use Draco compression on the model files which has huge benefits in terms of file size. In addition, the art style requires few textures, and we use KTX2 compression. The audio files are indeed the largest assets.
Looks great with minimum textures :)
Great job!
More detail would actually subtract from the experience. Keep it like this. This feels just right.
It reminds me of standard indie games with cel shading.
Reminds me of old flash games, just with high resolutions.
I honestly don't understand how you could look at something with that strong a visual style and think there was no intention.
Why is there a couch with no real TV, why is there an opening at the top with no couch or seat looking out, why are all the development techniques just base level shader passes? Why is there no new take on what space ship interiors look like? Why is there no detail?
I noticed something: The player character feels really tall to me. Or perhaps the doors are short? I subconsciously kept looking downward. I'm not a particularly tall person, but I don't remember feeling this way in a game before.
Has anyone had a similar experience?
I'd legit pay 10$ for this, let it be an episodic adventure!
Waking up on a spaceship reminded me of The Journeyman Project.
great atmosphere music graphics and sense of humour.
is 3js the only technology you all used to make this?
Nothing specific regarding mobile but we worked on rendering optimizations quite a bit to make the experience smooth. Most notably the render pipeline is based on MRT (Multiple Render Targets) which renders multiple frames at the same time, which is great when doing post-processing stuff. Also we made sure to keep the number of draw calls quite low by merging static objects. There is also a lot of culling going on, hiding rooms that are not visible.
We'll probably post more technical details on X in the coming days/weeks, be sure to follow us if you're interested.
I was impressed that it is present there. I would expect camer to fly directly to target location.
Edit: The correct symbols are right in front of you when you face the 3x3 fields.
4k rendering is slow on the integrated Ryzen 3 machine. Any way to lower rendering resolution?
Mobile FF just hangs after trying to load.
[1] I'm on an iphone, and I always tapped back to get to HN again so I lost progress every time I tried your game.
That’s tight code.
Not sure ROI would be there but maaaaaaaan would it be a cool ad to play with
anyone have a solution for turning the power generator on? I matched the squares with the tetris style symbols on the power generator but then nothing happened :S
It's nice when puzzle creators take the time to scaffold their puzzles.
But once, I seen tetris style symbol on sector illuminated by red color.
I remembered symbol and check consoles until found red console, and enter there shape....
perl -e 'for ($num = 0; $num <256; $num++) { $width = 8; printf("%*b\n", $width, $num) }'