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Show HN: Rustic Citrus

rusticcitrus.com

29 pointsfatty001134 comments

I always get messed up with these types of UIs. They look so intuitive, but when I try to click-and-drag, it doesn't work, and I can't figure out why.

I finally realise you just click - which is a quicker and less tiring mechanism, but it's not obvious, and there's no indication that that's what you're supposed to do.

I guess one solution is to make click-and-drag work, but pop up a hint... though that seems ugly and heavy-handed. Or, even a big word "CLICK!", pointing at the oranges. I know! Make it work instantly, from the "click" in click-and-drag. Then, you'll quickly notice you don't need to drag. And even if you don't, at least you can still play.

BTW: how many people here know the words awn, naan and alb?

naan? Like the bread? Pretty common word.

I'm planning on adding click and drag in a future release. The best input method is to just type the words though! You'd only realize you can do that if you read the help (which I realize no one really does). I'll think about how I can make it more obvious for players. Thanks for the feedback and for playing!

You should just flat out tell people to type the words, prominently. I tried it because I figured it would be the best way, but a prominent hint at the start would be the best way to do it.

Every game should feature a "How to play" thing right off the bat.

Yes, the game has somewhat skeuomorph graphics but don't have skeuomorph behavior. If the letters would look more like buttons then i think you wouldn't try to drag it because you don't drag a button in real life (when trying to use it intuitively).

Edit: If they would look like keyboard keys then that would also suggest that you can use the keyboard too as mentioned in another comment.

I must admit that I find it a bit depressing that creating the web site for the game looks like a more complicated job than the game itself.

I'll take that as a compliment :) I actually was able to throw the site together in about a week. The full game on Windows 8 has more features like saved games, high scores, and Windows 8 functionality (start screen tile, charms integrations, etc). The online version is just a slimmed-down version of the game. Plus, I've got a lot of new features like achievements and multiplayer mode in the works.

Is the game built in WinJS? Do you re-use the same code for both the game and the site?

Yes, the Windows 8 game is built using WinJS. However - and unfortunately - WinJS doesn't work on the web since it tries to call WinRT APIs which it doesn't have permission to use. Microsoft doesn't provide a subset of WinJS which works on the web so I essentially had to rip out all the WinJS code to make it work on my site. That meant I lost things like saved games and high scores since I used WinJS data binding to implement them. I also couldn't integrate with the Windows 8 charms from the web so I had to get rid of that stuff as well. But other than the UI and page navigation, the rest of the code is exactly the same on the app and the web.

I'm working on removing WinJS from the Windows 8 app since I only use it in a couple places where I can roll my own solution. If I accomplish that, I should be able to simply copy the same files onto my server and have it work on every browser. That would be pretty cool!

Very cool. I built a simple Windows 8 app, but rolled most of my own JS solutions b/c of a lot of the same reasons you had.

It's very well done.

I love anagrams, but I find it incredibly tedious trying to find every single 3-letter pseudoword that the game wants.

Most of them aren't words, and I'd be much happier with a timed "find the anagram and move on" game.

Also, if I were able to type instead of clicking, it would be a lot easier.

Good work, though!

EDIT:

And "piing" ??? that's never a word!

EDIT2:

And on the subject of anagrams, I made http://jes.xxx/anagram/ to assist in finding anagrams of longish phrases (unfortunately still too slow on anything over about 20 letters and therefore I haven't quite finished or polished it).

"weyr" is so a word, as most SF fen of the last half-century can tell you.

I used to play a similar game called TextTwist: http://zone.msn.com/en/texttwist/. Very fun and addicting

Nice work. Looks great and is very fun.

I also get the item overlap issues others have pointed out. You might consider just listing the number of words of each length rather than having them all blocked out (i.e. have "10x" in front of 3 blocks instead of having 10 separate rows).

And for increased difficulty, try not listing the discovered words alphabetically. I would not have gotten "ergs" without the alphabetical listing in the round that I played.

Again, nice job!

Thanks for the feedback! If your issue is that the word list is getting cut off, try scrolling in it. I'm planning on adding a "blurred edge" to the right side of the word list to make it more obvious that there is more content there. Also, I like your idea for increasing the difficulty. A "blind mode" like you suggested would be fun!

I really like it but the dictionary is weird, this is esp visible in names, eg. Dean was allowed, but Dan wasn't. And before you say Dean has more than one meaning - so does Dan.

Wordredeference does not seem to know "dan" as an english word (http://www.wordreference.com/enfr/dan) while dean exists (http://www.wordreference.com/enfr/dean). What would Dan be english ?

I ment the black belt but turns out its also a minecart

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dan#English

The game is certainly addictive. My mom likes to play games like these and I can remember watching her play for many hours while younger.

As an aside, however, the more I see the "scrolling leads to animation" design as a, sort of, product tour, the more it annoys me. I hope that trend goes away

UI problem when you run out of time as you are just about to press the 'Submit' button, the 'exit' button (or whatever it was) pops up and then you never find out what the 5-letter words were.

Web version unusable on a 7" android tablet (1280x800): the left side of the gaming area is out of the screen, neither scrolling nor resizing seem allowed. Same problem in landscape and portrait mode.

This is unfortunately a known issue. The web version isn't responsive which makes it unplayable on small screens. A fix for this is coming soon though!

Cool game! I hope you release for iOS, I'll buy.

Maybe an option to allow or disallow plurals/conjugation. i.e. if I have bake, bask, ask, don't make me enter bakes basks asks.

I'm planning on making both an iOS and an Android version. If you want to be notified when that happens, I'm collecting email addresses on the home page (scroll down towards the bottom). Thanks for playing!

Looks fun. Couple dictionary issues, but those can be fixed. Anybody know of the best free dictionaries for word-games?

I like it so far (playing online) but the round score and time is not visible for me (hidden behind the letter platform)

The game board layout can get a bit messed up on smaller screens. Try maximizing the window and refreshing. I'm working on making the website as responsive as the actual Windows 8 app.

This is on my 15.6" laptop. I did start with my window already maximized.

Welp there goes that theory. If you don't mind me asking, what browser do you happen to be using?

Chrome 28.0.1500.95 on Linux. Actually, I did reload (same size window) and it is mostly visible now. Could definitely still use some more space though. In any case, it's a minor complaint. The game is still fun! :)

Great, thanks for playing and I'm glad you like it!

Good game. Reminds me I need to finish "The Fool and his Money"

Quite addictive. Fun game.

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