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Comment by mmcnickle | Hacker News Reader

This is cool, though it should be possible to create a cross-device URL for people who don't want to register. For example in chess, you'd generate two URLs, one for you and one for your opponent.

    http://breakbase.com/<game_id>/<opponent_1_id>/
    http://breakbase.com/<game_id>/<opponent_2_id>/

Also, are you using any pre-existing game engines, or did you write them from scratch?

Would love to see diplomacy on there.

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Thanks for the feedback.

We actually have something like that semi-implemented. They're called 'recall links', and they allow people to generate unique urls per game (secret) that allow a new session to take over an existing anonymous session.

If there's enough call for it, I'll finish out the implementation and launch it asap.

Also - I wrote all the engines from scratch.

You don't even need that, just a player2, 3, 4, or just use a session object.

They'd need to be kept secret, so other opponents couldn't easily see each others' game screens. It doesn't make much difference in chess, but in the word game, seeing other people's letters is cheating.

It would complicate the sharing a little, because as the initiator of the game, you shouldn't know what the other players' unique URL is. You'd need a workflow like this:

You create new game:

   Game URL: http://breakbase.com/<game_id>
   Your URL: http://breakbase.com/<game_id>/<your_unique_id>

You send the game URL to your friend. If there are available spaces, it creates a unique URL for them the first time they access the game:

   You send them: http://breakbase.com/<game_id>
   They're redirected to their unique URL: http://breakbase.com/<game_id>/<their_unique_id>

That way you haven't shared the unique ids with each other.

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