Space Invaders 404 | Hacker News Reader

Space Invaders 404

masswerk.at

175 pointscarlsednaoui68 comments

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No, no it doesn't. It needs more useful 404 pages:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...

It can be both.

But I agree with you that the useful stuff should be first and most prominent.

Even Google doesn't follow it: http://www.google.com/alsfkj

I'm trying to figure out if the '1' for the last character of the Google 404 error page is deliberate or accidental... pretty funny!!!!11!!1 (not)

I always assumed it was deliberate. Ten years ago !!!!!1112threefour was a thing.

I'm guessing there's an engineer at Google responding to an alert of thousands of users across the world all attempting to load the same non-existent page on their servers.

And since HN is https they don't even get a referer to see where it came from.

That article doesn't really say that 404 pages should be useful. Their use is to tell the user that the page doesn't exist. As long as it communicates that in a way that users can understand (and returned a HTTP 404) it has done it's job.

There was a fad for a little while around 2000 where people tried to make 404 pages which would "guess" which page you wanted to visit, search it, or make suggestions.

Not only did these projects leave gaping security holes in many sites but they also seem to confuse many users more than if they had just been a roadblock (often resulting in users going around in circles).

Plus, as another comment said, even Google doesn't follow Google's advice.

I usually perform a search using the data I can get from the URL. I usually get a category and some keyword (from the clean title URLs) so I can indicate that there's a 404 and then offer some related results doing a search.

Angel

The title (h2 tag even) is literally "Creating useful 404 pages"...

To those wondering why the top answer says "No, no it doesn't."– the submission was originally titled "The internet needs more 404 pages like this"

Keep your Alans on, it's just a 404 page.

It depends on your definition of useful

  Did you ever fly a kite in bed?
  Did you ever walk with ten cats on your head?

  Did you ever milk this kind of cow?
  Well, we can do it. We know how.
 
  If you never did, you should.
  These things are fun and fun is good.

These things are fun and fun is good.

First, thanks for comments.

Now, it's a perfect 404 page (Status 404 with simple message body, the game is injected by JS, so it's not registered by any crawlers.) For a better understanding, things that might not be clear for any direct-linked visitors:

Most of the site's content is about classic computing in one way or the other. Also a main field of activity is in interactive web content (including a tradition in porting classic arcade games to JS). So it did make sense to offer an interactive error page, which is perfectly in tune with the main theme of the site. (So it's a perfect check for any item on the check list in the link referred to above.) Also it was meant as a humorous comment on interactivity, as you may either watch the interfering error being destructed to ruins (where the invaders would represent the site and the tank the user) or you could get even hands-on by "reaching trough" the error and interacting with the site (by shooting at it for being so dumb and lazy and not providing the right document).

Also, the error page isn't exactly new, in fact it is as of March 2012. (Which is still quite fresh, considering that the design of the main pages is as of 1999. Yes, I'm a bit lazy with this. But at least there's a current error page.)

[Edit] Just for info: An extra set of touch controls is injected, if a touch-enabled device is detected (supporting webkit/blink-style events or the ms-pointer-API as used by IE10). – For the benefit of SmartPhone- and tablet-users.

The 404 page on scri.ch (drawing tool I made with a friend) is a drawing like any other on the website (you can draw on it, save it again, etc.), except the HTTP status: http://scri.ch/-

This is cool, but it badly needs an erase feature. Also, setting a title/permalink for the finished drawing would be nice. Any plans to develop it more?

Thanks! Feel free to submit an issue [1], everything can be discussed, but the absence of an erasing tool (or any other tool) is a strong feature for us and our users.

[1] https://github.com/lisezmoi/scri.ch/issues

Ah, it's intentionally minimalist. That's cool too. Perhaps a small, unobtrusive link to about.scri.ch to explain the philosophy would be in order then.

One of my sites has something similar!! (No one sees it though :( )

http://www.designedbyfd.com/404

You forgot to tell users that it is a 404 page...

Kind of 50% of the point of a 404 page (the other 50% being the status code which you do deliver).

Unless it's been fixed in the 8 minutes since you posted, it does say 404 error in the graphic (in a thin font, though, so it's hard to see).

I agree that it should be in the page title, be more visible, and explain what "404 error" means, though.

I cannot see it. Might be an issue this side then. I see the asteroids floating around, and if I hit it I see a ship and can play an asteroids-like game.

It's just before you hit the space bar to begin playing the game, "404 Error! Press space to start," then it goes away. I missed it too until I saw your comment, then I went back and checked.

may use a version of this for my crappy website? can I fork it? Thanks = )

You might end up getting more traffic to your 404 pages than your site. I just spent 5 minutes on the 404 page, haven't seen the contents of the actual site yet.

It sure would ruin any chance of error reporting based on hits to your 404 page

Yup the web seems to be full of those. http://thefiletree.com/404

Whoa, that game is a blast!

I have a weakness for hexagons: https://floobits.com/404

The 403 and 500 pages are a little more aggressive: https://floobits.com/static/403.html https://floobits.com/static/500.html

I think I've picked a nice combination of utility and aesthetics. The game on masswerk.at's 404 page is pretty cool, but I could see it being a little distracting or confusing for some users.

I'm not sure if it's deliberate, or if my memory is accurate, but that reminds me a lot of the 'access denied' bit at the end of 'Lawnmower Man'.

Actually, I was inspired by Evangelion. I've never seen The Lawnmower Man.

If the internet was Evangelion, there wouldn't be many humans left to page.

500: "A HUMAN HAS BEEN PAGED"

I hope not. The poor pager will run out of batteries after a flood of HN users.

It's just the html served for the real 500 page. The HTTP response code is 200. Real internal server errors do trigger a page though.

It reminds me of the final scenes from The Lawnmower Man.

Yeah, it could say "access denied" :)

This seems to be done with divs and dom manipulation. Anyone know why they didn't use HTML5 canvas for this? I'm curious because I'm currently making an HTML5 canvas game.

Is it compatible with pre-canvas browsers (legacy IE and so forth)? That could be a valid reason particularly if it was written a while ago.

Sure, that's a valid reason. I guess I should have stated the intent of my question: Am I going down a bad path by trying to make my game with canvas when I could be doing it with a bunch of divs like this page?

Arguably, canvas should be more optimized for gaming. Especially with the use of WebGL and etc.

For writing a new game I'd go Canvas generally. It will perform far better in many cases, will often be easier to develop/maintain, and supporting legacy IE and older mobile browsers is just going to drain your time for little gain.

Of course your target audience, if you have a more specific market in mind, may make another decision for you!

Exactly.

http://hakim.se/experiments/html5/404/netmag.html

I'm always amazed by Hakim's stuff!

Meh, it's novel for about 10 seconds... But seriously, did you complete the level? I dabbled with it for about 10 seconds and then realized how long it would take and lost interest.

I completed the level.

You too young for the old arcades then?

It's really easy to complete when the invaders never drop down at the end of each line. Nice tribute to the game but fatally flawed.

They do drop down but not every pass.

In fact they drop down a row after some time and every time a row of invaders has been cleared. But they are to stay above the error code by design (the code always being the center of the action).

I completed 9 levels and decided to give it a rest.

Another one: http://snowpool.org/tgescg

Disclaimer: It's a fork of a game I made.

You bastard, I have a deadline and you post me this?

Problem is that when you get a 404, you're typically expecting something else. A game isn't going to change your entire plan and distract you for 10 minutes. Wait.. this is the internet, that is what will happen! Genius!

I amused myself with a grumpy cat 404 http://heyes-jones.com/404

How to win. Get in the middle of the 0 and drill a small hole with your own missiles up through the 0. From now on you will be safe and most of your shots initially will hit an invader. Once you get down to the last one it is a matter of timing.

If they break through the 0 and you are in danger, move under another safer part and drill a hole again.

Here is another HTML5 space invaders game http://www.webdigi.co.uk/fun/space/ You can also control this with your iPhone! (Socket.io/nodejs)

How familiar!

https://appneta.tv.appneta.com/nathoeusntaheous

OK, fine, not interactive, but still familiar.

Don't forget that this page isn't exactly new. Around since March 2012. (See: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113952620110664554186/posts/bak1... )

Further sass: you can click the title to change the error code, and it talks down to you a bit if you enter 666. There might be other fun ones too.

418 (I'm a teapot) is another.

To get a list of all known codes see: http://masswerk.at/status

Interesting when you change shotSpeed var to 50, only the middle row registers being hit, and when it's 100, none of the invaders register hits.

Pretty fun :}

bad boy hacker! ;-)

I was just frustrated at the low fire rate :P

Awesome 404!

If you don't have time to make a game, then you can always RickRoll ur users... totally kidding :)

Thanks for helping me wasting 10 mins of my life :)

most likely that was best 10 minutes of your day :-)

Probably true haha!

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