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Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

You have elucidated a real gap in the marketplace: physically accurate mindless tapping orbital mechanics sandbox.

19:50 Put codex and claude (thinking high) to work in parallel to see who could come up with the better physically accurate mindless tapping orbital mechanics sandbox.

20:10 Both codex and claude finish pretty much at the same time, but my kids say claude's version is more fun.

20:50 Claude runs out of its 5h session limit while finetuning some things, while Codex has 80% left (!).

https://coezbek.github.io/orbital-tap/

It's still pretty far physically accurate because there is infinite acceleration the moment a ship reaches the target orbit.

True. Hard to square it being a game, fast-spaced and accurate.

That sounds like it would be a completely different game and probably not as fun since you'd have to use some very fiddly controls to manually get into orbit. If you eliminate orbit entirely then it's just a slalom race. "Hitting" each star/planet is the immediate feedback that makes it fun.

Yeah, I want to enter weird orbits around the planets.

Yes, give me weird orbits! I want a shot which is just outside the target area to get sucked in by the gravity of the planet, but potentially letting me slingshot around an intermediate planet towards a more distant one. The tap command should still mean “gravity disengaged, momentum still active“ to allow shifts from one orbit to another.

I like this version of the game more, keep at it!

Unfortunately it doesn't let you skip planets.

I tried it, but it doesn't make for good gameplay, it just gets too easy. Could maybe subtract points, but that also feels strange. I updated gravity to do things, but orbiting isn't permitted.

i love the gravity. but sometimes the orbital speed is to fast to be able to make the next jump. that's frustrating.

a slow mode, or an option to hit the brakes might be nice. or going slower as the orbit decreases. smaller orbit is harder but slower speed is easier. you just have to find the right moment

the quick bonus should not be more than one point. maybe an extra point for hitting 5 quick jumps in a row.

If the physics were accurate enough, I don't think it'd be easy - you'd get constant elliptical orbits in most cases, right? making the timing much harder going forward

This version is better than OP’s

Nice! For my taste you could remove the TAP OR PRESS bar after some time, maybe after score 3 or so including restarts.

It's a gap, but not due to lack of trying.

I made https://github.com/TeMPOraL/cloze-call a little over 16 years ago, and this itself was inspired by something then at least that much old.

Screenshot: https://jacek.zlydach.pl/old-blog/download/projects/ClozeCal...

Wonder if I can turn this into browser-playable version with just LLMs.

EDIT: Put Claude Code on the task (reason for choice: Claude Desktop lets me just throw it at a folder with unzipped bundle of sources and assets I found laying around my blog archive).

EDIT2: Holy shit it worked. Will upload it somewhere soon.

EDIT3: Here it is, in its full 800x600, 30 FPS cap glory: https://temporal.github.io/ClozeCall-Web/

The process I used was, have CC run over the original sources and create this document:

https://github.com/TeMPOraL/ClozeCall-Web/blob/main/design.m...

Then after verifying it matches what I remembered and clarifying some decisions (section 4 and 5), just told it to make a static client-side no-build-step no-webshit-frameworks game deployable to github.io, and it did it in a single shot (+ a second small request to add a fix to transparency of some assets). Personally, I'm impressed at how well it went, what a nice highlight of the weekend for me.

Past my edit window, so - a modernized port true to the spirit, but with some QoL updates, more performant and works half-decently on mobile:

https://temporal.github.io/ClozeCall-Web/index-ng.html

the main problem is that the projectile can continue flying outside of the visible area and sometimes get stuck there without ending the level. some option to abort the level without restarting would be nice.

or a way to zoom out so that one can try a trajectory that circles around the planets instead of through them. some levels can't be solved because i can't move the mouse outside of the playing area in order to get the trajectory that's needed.

i'd also like an option to replay a specific level. since levels are randomly generated i'd like to be able to replay a level until i can solve it, even if that breaks my streak.

Thanks for the feedback!

Given how easy the port is, I'm now inclined to fix a few things to make it properly playable, so I'll address it :).

I agree, the moment I launched the ported version I remembered the core annoyance in playtesting was always the ball spending most of its time off-screen, with player waiting for it to maybe come back. I was thinking to solve it more by scaling - zooming out, like in the original game that inspired this - Warheads SE[0].

On the levels, looking at the code I _think_ I originally wanted fixed levels loaded from data files, the randomized order and lack of replay/progression was a way to cut scope for what was a contest entry.

[0] - https://www.myabandonware.com/game/warheads-se-in5

i love the improvements. thank you. the way zoom out works is really nice. retry and abort, all there. being able to retry after failing adds so much satisfaction to figuring out a level.

the only thing missing is a manual zoom or pan so that i an get more freedom to control the starting direction. some level are not solvable because the starting vector needs to go further up than the space allows.

There's a 2014 game that is just that. Lim Rocket: slingshot around planets while also avoiding crashing.

https://dan-ball.jp/en/m/pc_lim/

when I first read "orbital slingshot" in the title I thought it was a game about doing gravity assists, which I think would be much more interesting and fun

Not really. Flight of Nova fills that gap, and I think I know how I'm going to spend this afternoon now.

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