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Comment by guigui | Hacker News Reader

Author here. Happy to answer any questions!

Some background info on the project: https://littleworkshop.fr/projects/equinox/

I'm probably showing my age, but I'm just at awe what is possible in a browser in this day and age. Well done, OP. I'd love a hashed out, full length version of this, but with the same vector graphics.

I mean, WebGL was released in 2011, so this kind of thing was possible for like 13 years. If you go back once again as much, to 1998, the web has barely existed back then.

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.

This was awesome.

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.

Thank you, glad you got to enjoy our little warp visual effect!

Played on Chrome on my Android phone in portrait mode, and the whole game I felt it was too zoomed in.

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.

All valid points, and I completely agree that the narrative could have a bit more depth to it. I really wish there were more puzzles to solve. However, at the end of the day, we had to keep the scope under control, which was already quite large for a two-person team.

Congrats on shipping! I enjoyed my playthrough. I suspect it's the perfect length for blowing up on HN, since there's an emotional payoff for completing the game and if it were any longer, less people would complete it.

I also found the AI suspicious for a different reason. That is that it has its own agenda and is using me to do what it is not allowed to do. For some reason, the AI is not able to initiate a hyperspace jump, cannot bypass access, but can maneuver the ship through an asteroid field. As if it was not completely trusted.

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.

Haha a whole subreddit could spawn from the different lore hypothesis...

Especially when the AI told me to NOT look into the other passenger's rooms as they had already departed. Super sus.

The AI gave me the vibes of Umbrella Corporation, they are randomly kidnapping humans and replacing their recent memories with memories of this journey and testing the human behavior and competence through these subjects

Could you increase the range for the mouse sensitivity option? I'm finding that even maxing it out results in painfully slow look speed.

I've found that `localStorage.mouseSensivity = 4` (the default max is 1) seems to set it to about the right amount. However mouse movement is now very jumpy. It seems that individual mouse events are visible and mouse acceleration curves cause very unpleasant behaviour.

Maybe it is something to a high resolution screen, so one CSS pixel is actually quite large?

Thanks for the hint. I like 8 even better.

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.

Same here! My mouse arm is getting a workout lifting and recentering 5 times per turn lol.

I guess it depends on your system settings. I have my Logitech set up to almost max speed/acceleration so it felt very natural to me.

On a Mac/Safari, I noticed that looking around while holding the left mouse button down made it normal

I'm blown away by being able to drop in on it on my smartphone seamlessly! My phone got noticibly warm during play.

Thank you! Yes, making it available on mobile devices was one of our priorities from the start (even though the desktop experience remains the best one). Phones do tend to heat up when rendering complex WebGL applications.

Looks amazing but unfortunately I couldn’t get sound to work on my iPhone. Tried toggling sound off and on and still no go :(

Removing the Silent mode with the left button was the trick for me (like with most mobile game btw)

I played through on my phone (Android) too and it was very smooth, suprisingly it didn't seem to cause significant battery drain or overheating - it performed really well.

Could you put in an invert mouse Y-axis for us old farts?

What do you mean? I move the mouse (well trackpoint) up, and I see the ceiling, same with the trackpad

In a plane you pull back on the joystick to go up.

I played 3D games back in the days of Quake and Duke Nukem 3D and have never had a "move mouse down and view goes up"

Joystick sure, but the last joystick I had was a 15 pin DIN

Here's the `invert mouse` setting from Quake2[1], though, I know for certain that Duke3D and Doom had the same option. I feel like every FPS I've ever played has had it as an option.

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.

[1] http://www.quake2.com/kko/menu/options.jpg

Oh come on. I’m a pilot, or at least I spent a good deal of time in flight training when I was younger. I’d rather not mix systems, that’s all.

Yeah screwing with your muscle memory is a really bad thing to do for pilots because that will be there for you when you need it the most.

Doom didn't, since it didn't support looking up and down.

"Shearing" was added for up-down look in Heretic, for the non-Doom engine descendants Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of The Triad supported it as well. I don't remember if it could be bound to mouse movement in any of these games.

They were bound to keys for the DOS versions from memory. Forget when the mouse look was supported but the view was highly distorted so mostly useless until later ports enabled proper 3d rendering.

No need for a plane, works that way for my head in real life too :) tilt your head back and you look up

This game has no plane or joystick though.

Some people are more comfortable with mouse inversion, that is also my case; I read years ago somewhere that it is subjective and depends on how we "see" the scene in our brain, like 1st person or projected 3rd person (or something similar, don't take my words to the letter) anyway the number of people that would find games without mouse inversion next to unplayable is very high, therefore adding the option makes sense, and many games in fact have it.

i always thought it was people of a certain age who required inversion (i include myself here) because the first 3d games were flight sims, so pulling back on stick/down goes up etc.

Yeah it's not an age thing. My wife does the inverted thing whereas I do the correct way and we're basically the same age.

> do the correct way

Careful, with that attitude you might not have a wife for long.

or friends!

everybody knows inverted is correct anyways.

I've never really played a flight sim, but I can't get my head into non-inverted. Maybe if I spent a dozen hours, I could do it, but why would I?

At least for me, I've always associated preferring mouse inversion with growing up handling BB guns. When you're lifting a rifle up, you are pulling back/contracting on the right arm. When aiming, to go up you nudge the right hand down, or nudge up to point down.

To look down IRL, I move my head forward. Makes sense to me.

I got used to normal look controls with practice but lots of 2005ish console games have inverted controls as defaults. I started a playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on Gamecube to find that is has inverted left/right camera controls as the default. Also, GoldenEye 007 for the N64 has inverted up/down camera controls (if I remember correctly). If you're a certain age, you lived through a time when there was not an accepted default control scheme so console games just picked defaults and moved on. We got used to those defaults. There was a period of time where choice of selection of up/down inversion was seen as a must-have to even play a game (multiplayer split screen) and zero discussion or complaints would arise over 2-3 minutes of everyone (all 4 of us) setting their controls after every console reset. Eventually non-inverted controls became the accepted default. This likely happened during a time that many of us gamed less so we might not have the muscle memory of relearning the new defaults. That's my experience on the whole thing anyway.

I could see this. Like obviously I live first person, and when I want to look up I pull my head back, to look down I push my head forward. Similarly I expect pushing my mouse forward (up) to look down and pulling my mouse back (down) to look up.

That’s the opposite of how a real life joystick works, so some people don’t find it intuitive.

If I grab your head and pull back you would be looking at the ceiling. If I pushed your head forwards you would be looking at the floor. This is how mice should work. Touch devices screwed that up and are heresy.

There are two ways to define "natural".

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.

Yes, sorry. That's one of the many little features that we wanted to add but didn't make the cut. We may add this in a future update.

Excellent! I had originally planned to give it a quick glance, but I was so captivated, I had to see it through the end.

For those aspiring to become creative developers, could you share any tips on which areas they should focus on?

Thanks! Congrats on making it to the end. This is too broad a topic to cover here, but I'd say the most valuable skill is the ability to constantly learn new tools and techniques.

For me babylonjs was a bit of a leap forward. Great engine + tooling. Nice documentation with tons of examples for how to do things. Besides that, experiment lots and lots! Be very curious. And don't be afraid of 3D math.

This experience was created with Three.js, if you'd be interested in learning that then this is a great resource https://threejs-journey.com/

This is the most amazing experience I’ve ever had on the web. Bar none. I’m blown away.

Thank you for your kind words, we really appreciate it.

Excellent work, works great on mobile, which is rare for a web game

Thanks, making it available and actually playable on mobile was definitely a challenge. One of our inspiration for the mobile controls was the iOS version of the game The Witness.

Love the project. How long did it take for you to conceive and launch? What tools or platforms would you recommend to use for anyone interested in a similar project? Thanks

It roughly took 5-6 months in total over a span of 1-2 years (we paused development several times to work on client projects). I recommend diving into Three.js (or other WebGL libraries), and learning Blender or similar to create your own 3D scenes.

Thank you!

Super cool escape-room-esque game! I wish though, that the click-to-walk was a bit more pre-defined paths. For example, If I click on a spot thinking I could interact with it, I walk to the wall and am now so close to the wall that it becomes disorientating, and I have to click back to view the room.

On Linux/Chrome mouse look keeps snapping back. It's really frustrating and makes it unplayable for me

I'm also on Linux Chrome but not experiencing that.

Sorry about that. Does it happen also on this three.js example? https://threejs.org/examples/?q=pointerlock#misc_controls_po...

You can try to change the controls mode in the in-game menu (ESC key).

The threejs pointer demo works great. Here's what I'm seeing in game:

https://i.imgur.com/YX2OqXz.mp4

Not sure if it matters, but I have multiple monitors

it also happens to me, but not as bad as that. I'm on windows 11, rx570 and 3 monitors

it happens to me a little bit too, but I am low on RAM, so I suspect is a performance issue

I'm on ubuntu 20/firefox using WASD controls, and the mouse always wants to look down unless I'm already staring straight down.

Great game!

I especially liked the "Connecting..." sound. It's inescapable even in the future!

Looks awesome, nice work. I have an unrelated question, on little workshop's website I can see a pétanque game that I couldn't find online. Is there a way to play this game or was it available only during an event?

Thank you. The petanque game was only available for an event and not publicly anyway, only for the client company's employees.

Running firefox + linux. Mouse works fine in mouse only mode, in gamer/keyboard+mouse, the mouse is out of control. Often, moving the mouse in any direction, moves the mouse continuously left (for example). Other times, the tiniest twitch moves the screen in crazy flying loops.

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.

Tried it on firefox on linux and windows, both work good in gamer mode.

I enjoyed it, but in Safari on iOS there was no sound at any point. I checked my device volume. I toggled the game option for sound on and off.

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).

Thanks, we'll keep this in mind for a possible future version.

> 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.

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).

I can still listen to music and videos, with sound, while the ringer side button is set to off.

Can you do that on webpages (which is what equinox.space is) without first pushing play or unmuting them? I know on youtube you have to unmute it first. I don't really go to any other music or video websites on my phone, so I'm not sure if they're all like that or not, but in my experience, webpages respect the ringer side button unless something is clicked to override it.

Sure, within the website I have to unmute it and up my volume to hear anything, but it's still playing without me having to switch off the physical DND mode button on the side of the iphone. My phone remains in DND mode and I still have no audible notifications.

Lots of great projects. How can I experience TRACK in VR? I opened the site in my Quest 3 browser but it says webvr not supported.

About TRACK, sorry, the experience was released in 2018 and we need to update it so that it works with the WebXR API.

Ah! Ok, thanks for the reply!

It's amazing, thank you. I really struggled without mouse inversion but got there in the end.

I’m really impressed by the visual and audio design, and the graphics and audio implementation too. It’s great that it loads quickly - far too many online 3D games are stuck behind lengthy loading screens.

How big was the team and how long did it take to make it?

Thanks, this was done by a team of only 2 people over a span of 1.5 years, working on it intermittently between client projects, totaling approximately 5-6 months of work.

Wow, my guess was more like 4-6 people for a year. You guys are impressively multi-talented!

Really impressive, congratulations. How many hours of TLC went into building this?

Thank you for building it. Did you guys use Unity? The startup time is very low.

The project runs on Three.js, a JavaScript WebGL library, which explains the low startup time.

No, they used Three.js among other things. Startup time was fast here, it’s probably just how long it takes you to download the game assets that determines speed in the end.

Thanks for sharing this here! I'll try it tomorrow as it's late night here.

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

A bunch of other posts on the front page are getting bombarded with these spam messages too... I figure dang is probably aware by now (although idk what specific measures HN has against this sort of thing).

I can't wait 2500 years, are there hibernation pods anywhere on the ship?

Nope, but there is cafeteria :-P

There's always the chance of being picked up by someone who figured out your trajectory. Here's to hoping!

Amazing demo! This reminded me of the spaceship my friend and I made in the level editor of Duke Nukem 3D. Unfortunately, my legendary map got lost along with my old disk.

It was such a big let down. How could the AI make a mistake in the route calculation?!

Seriously though, amazing implementation and vibe! (and a lesson to not let GPT drive your spaceship)

Really nice, smooth. If this is hobby project, it is amazing. It is pretty good for an indie game. Real half-life/portal feel.

I'd like it to save my progress with some cookie instead of having to play it all from scratch every time.

It's 10min long...

Congratulations, I really enjoyed it. I never play videogames and I'm on mobile, but I engaged instantly.

Maybe you should play videogames....seems you would enjoy them.

Super impressive. I wish I could play any video game on the web like this. How long did this take to build?

Thank you. Answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114774

Hey :) I see you guys everywhere nowadays. Congrats, and happy to see you keep on doing amazing things!

Thanks, old friend. Always a pleasure to build cool stuff for a web browser, like in the good old days. ;)

Merci Paul :) happy to see your comment!

Someone else mentioned babylon.js in this thread. Did you evaluate that and choose three.js over it?

Babylon would have been a perfectly good choice to build this experience, but we have a preference for the three.js API.

Amazing work! How did you get the 3D engine to work so smoothly? Is this three.js?

Yes, it's running on Three.js. This comment from co-author Franck roughly sums it up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114297

Unfortunately it is very stuttery on my Pixel 7 Pro, looks awesome though

Sorry to hear that. That's weird, because we tested on a Pixel 3 and had decent performance.

Yeah, it's not due to poor rendering performance. I can see it running at full frame rate between stutters. It may be some kind of timing issue? Here's a video of the problem: https://x.com/modeless/status/1782432663649087917

I have the same phone (Pixel 7 Pro) and I have the same issue

tried Brave + Chrome with same results

Oh weird. My pixel 4a on Firefox felt like it was not hitting 60. The audio was fine and it was playable but I couldn't find the cockpit so I gave up

Seems great on my 6 (Firefox).

Ah, you also did the Transmit 3D truck for the Panic website. Nice work!

Thank you!

Please add a "reverse y-axis" option for mouselook!

That was fun - thanks!

This is beautiful and very fun

fantastic work!

also game is tough? waiting for the walkthroughs lol

I booked first class but your system is buggy and put me in economy; now I'm stuck because I wasn't in the escape pod!

Someone should start a space ride hailing service. I bet the pod was yellow.

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