Pong Clock | Hacker News Reader

Pong Clock

bigjobby.com

175 pointsdonohoe45 comments

Great idea! Wish the speed was bit more. I think it would be cool if it takes exactly 1 second to bounce between the two paddles.

Type this into your dev console to speed it up to one hit per second (or if you want in the URL bar, prefix it with `javascript:`)

  (()=>{const T=1;window._u0=window._u0||update;update=function(){const W=gameCanvas.getBoundingClientRect().width,dist=0.92*W,vx=Math.abs(ball.speedX)||INITIAL_BALL_SPEED;let n=(dist/vx)/(60*T);n=Math.max(1,Math.min(20,Math.round(n)));for(let i=0;i<n;i++)_u0();};})()`

I might to try to add this in if thats ok?

That was my assumption as well and I'm sort of shattered that it doesn't work like this.

I thought that was the idea and felt the seconds seemed tab bit longer :)

I have increased the speed a bit.

tab -> tad

(for the sake of non-native English readers)

I don't understand either of those words in this context!

(Maybe "a tad"?)

Yes I meant a tad and made a typo too. Apologies.

That would be ideal if coupled with a mode where the paddles never miss.

I like to imagine two actual people controlling this game, and it's their job to control time. If one misses by accident, time for everyone on earth advances a little too quickly.

Cute, I love it! Thanks for sharing this.

It would be just a little bit better though if the paddles just missed the ball when the time changes rather than entirely stepping aside.

But still wonderful, nevertheless.

It took me a while to figure out that the time would advance when one of the paddles missed. I was also disappointed by the way it missed by intentionally moving to the top of the play field.

I wonder how difficult it would be to code it so the miss was more convincing.

I spent longer than I care to admit trying to find the player keys..

I have adjusted that mechanic. It should be a bit more realistic now

Thanks for the hint about what is interesting about this.

Ah! Reminded me I have one of these in storage some place.

https://www.sandermulder.com/pong_clock.html

You can still get the screensaver.

This was my inspiration. I'd love one of these! I had to settle for the XP screensaver at the time.

I might make one using Arduino at some point

Loved that screensaver on my XP machine

I have an old TV that I bought in 2015. It's in this kind of weird situation where it's "too good to throw away but not good enough to actually use". All I have been using it for in the last six years is plugging it into servers that only have a VGA port, and I don't have any of those anymore.

I've thought about mounting it to a wall plugging in a Raspberry Pi and have it constantly rotate fun different types of clocks. Something like this seems like it could be a fit.

Wow, my only TV is from 2012!

I mean none of my TVs are top of the line, I don't own any TVs that cost more than $600, but I did feel like the upgrade to 4K was worth it back in ~2018.

The TV I was referring to was extremely cheap even in 2015. It's not even 1080p, and I'm not even 100% convinced it's even 720p, despite what it says. It served us well enough when I was broke working for academia, but I upgraded everything when I was able to afford it.

Still, this TV is relatively small and could still be kind of fun for a virtual clock, so it might be nice to get a bit more life out of it.

Hi. This is my webpage. I have added some code so the misses are so wild anymore. You may have to refresh your page or clear cookies maybe for this to take effect.

All feedback muchly appreciated and always welcome. Unless too harsh. I'll ask Reddit for more brutal feedback.

https://bigjobby.com/pong/?v=23

Thanks for posting this. I have welcomed all the feedback and made a few changes.

The theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNAdtkSjSps

Pretty cool! You can force a miss by setting these vars in the console

  scoreMinute += 1

  forceMissPaddle = rightPaddle; // or leftPaddle

I feel bad for the guy playing the left side; 0 - 55 is a heck of a deficit to come back from.

Yeah, the left guy's pretty bad. I admire his persistence, though!

They seem to play with a made-up rule set with a handicap: every time the left guy lands a goal, the other guy's score is reset... So left usually starts in the lead, but then quickly loses out again.

I estimate he's behind roughly 89% of the time.

(For a fun exercise, ask Google for that percentage. It's astonishing how wrong the AI answers can get.)

My "AI" response was actually pretty good; It summed up the number of minutes per hour, making only one (glaringly obvious but understandable by some metrics) error:

> Hour 12: The hour (12) is never greater than the minute (0–59), so the time is 0.

Misunderstanding how human clocks work, but right for this clock.

It then doubled that, because there's two 12-hour periods in a day, which was useless but reasonable, and finally divided by 1440 minutes in a day, and got an answer of 9%

Then I asked again, and while it got the same answer, it used totally different "reasoning" that was wrong in a unique way.

Left player is playing the long game.

Left player sucks at Pong

Thank you for bringing a tiny bit of joy to the day

thx

This is great, congrats on getting it out!

Thx. I have made a few improvements since getting some feedback. Thanks for trying it

Out of curiosity, are you Scottish?

No. But I am aware of the meaning

I hope so, otherwise he’s in a bit of a disappointment if someone ever explains to him what his domain means in Scotland ;)

Hi, no not Scottish but well aware of the meaning.

So cool, very creative.

Thx

Better not let Atari see it, you’ll get a takedown notice.

This is true. At least in the past, they've been pretty protective about the "pong" name. Example: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/21161/does-a-pon...

this is actually entertaining

Thx

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