Show HN: Realtime multiuser, multitouch block toy | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Realtime multiuser, multitouch block toy

box.jit.su

30 pointsBigFatGangsta31 comments

This is really fun and bizarre. Unable to really say anything, I find myself trying to communicate structure by my action. I've been trying things like: holding my block in one place, trying to stick to somebody else's block, joining the builders.

I think there's an interesting idea here of multiplayer games with highly limited expression, but with some need for them to communicate through whatever limited means.

From what I understand from the description in this video, Journey for PS3 might be such a game. Unfortunately I don't have a PS3 to test it myself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD7KWAQr8Q8#t=1746s

This has had me in hysterics for the last 5 minutes.

We need to build, not destroy!

Stop destroying everything, you bastards! Some of us are trying to build!

It's like Poltergeist in there!

I want to vote off the destroyers

Its definitely one of those interesting sites that pops up every so often, more fun when people are just playing around with it.

During the time playing with you ended up going from newbie-ooh break stuff/fight to - hey it looks like someone is trying to build something, hmm hey we can help.

At which point you realize that all the blocks couldn't possibly fix perfectly, and a new comer enters the room and his/her cycle begins anew.

This is really cool. Perhaps you could add some indicator that a box is under force by one or multiple users - just arrows, or even a colored pattern representing stress by conflicting force vectors.

I had a nice little game of block tennis going on but of course someone had to come along and ruin it :)

This would make a good Turing test.

You guys are the best box throwers ever. <3

Yeah, it's a lot of throwing going on. =) And less tower building..

it would be nice some way to identify which box is used by who, like every user has a color and when i'm dragging a box the border of that box has my color. Nice job anyway, get ready to be crashed by the traffic!

Thanks! And good idea. I'll work on something like that, maybe tonight.

I would like to see some information about server load. I want to write something like this, but I don't know if I can host it on a EC2 micro?

It is hosted on NodeJitsu (Joyent hardware) a PaaS.

And I only use 1 drone, which I think is somewhat equal to an amazon micro

Perhaps it would be better if the blocks were heavier? So that it isn't quite as easy to ruin everything?

It's like trying to build a tower with my daughter, anything over 2 must be destroyed!

A goal would be nice like the tallest stack or something.

I like this! Perhaps, at random/scheduled times, post a challenge and see if the group can collaborate to achieve it. Give group points that accrue when accomplished. When you rejoin at some later time, you get a private message that shows who is in room that you have collaborated with in past. Keep all usernames anonymous . .

I'M TRYING TO BUILD SOMETHING HERE!!!! =P

Fun, but we lost all the boxes :(

They were tasty...

Muhahahahaaa

Seems that I have to build thicker walls so the boxes can not escape!

It also seems that you can throw it over the left or right wall when you get it above the top wall. Alternatively you could just return them back inside the game rectangle when you see that their coords are somewhere outside... Or improve the collision detection / collision mechanics...

EDIT: You also seem to scale the game considering only the width, when it is decreased then user can see higher. Suggestion would be to check the height as well and make sure that all users see the same area.

Now its fixed. With thicker walls and weaker mousecursors. I think you cant make the boxes escape now...

Well.. That's a workaround, not a true solution.. that takes away our mouse cursor strength...

you should add a bit where if there's less than (starting blocks - 2) in the main game area it resets

Please make it possible to hide the "now there are N users" messages. Or at least put it at the top of the page. This is really cool, but those messages are absolutely ruining it for me on the iPhone.

Good idea. I'll try to make the messages less annoying on small screens...

Done!

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