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CubeSlam

cubeslam.com

197 pointsstcredzero47 comments

This project made me much, much sad...

I am a game developer, and when I am testing a new tech I frequently make a pong clone, I even made one with lots of items like this...

Yet the game is so much better than anything that I ever made, that I wonder if I will ever be that good :(

There are many people better than you. There are also many people worse. Feel for the gradient. Walk uphill.

Pro tip : when dealing with the idea that there are many people better than you realize that you are better than them for thinking that, and if they do to, you still are better for being thinking that they think that too. A few recursions later you are the brightest guy in the world!

Hey wait, you can't be, I am. Ok it used to work when I was 8 or 10, doesnt work anymore.

> Feel for the gradient. Walk uphill.

That is the most awesome advice I've ever heard. Thank you for sharing it.

There will always be people that are better than you. Don't ever let that discourage you from doing whatever you want to do. Use those examples as inspiration, not a disincentive.

This is more a Shufflepuck Cafe[1] clone than a Pong clone.

Also note that this is sponsored by Google; I couldn't find the credits but apparently (from other comments on this post( there were three separate companies involved in making it. You're comparing the Ping clone you make for a quick technology test to a thing polished to perfection by a bunch of people.

ALSO let me note that EVERYONE starts from scratch. You're never going to be a master if you give up now; make lots of mistakes and try to not make them more than once.

1: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9pUmfxM9h54

He's put a lot of work into the design and aesthetics of it as well as the engine. If your project was to make a "better" pong, then you might turn up something like this. However from what I assume would be a learning exercise is usually throw-away material..

Well, my last attempts the idea was to make a Piet Mondrian pong...

But I tried to make a "better pong" too, and was still not that nice... although it was probably more or less the same amount of fun, people enjoyed playing it a bit (Also my AI was much better...)

Compete with yourself. You'll always spot failures, you'll always see when you improve. The reduction in stress will be a significant catalyst to improvement. You just have to be very honest.

The behind the scenes is an amazing writeup by Cubeslam's creator: http://www.inear.se/2013/07/cube-slam-behind-the-three-scene...

Browser idea: each tab should have it's own volume control. I should be able to hit some hotkey or button, and then scroll-wheel to the desired volume. It's annoying when I have a browser-based music player, and then I open up a noisy page like this one. I want a standardized way to mute or turn down this page's volume without having to hunt for a custom button.

I really liked Windows 7's per-app volume mixer [0] (Windows 7 is the last Windows I really used, not sure if they kept it or not in later versions).

I'm sad that the idea hasn't made it to other operating systems, with a system level API to allow for setting volumes independently on sound streams in different apps (an app could expose any arbitrary number of sound streams - most apps would likely have just 1, but browsers could have one per tab).

[0] http://i.imgur.com/y63Fl35.png

Theoretically per app volume is one of the things you get from pulse audio on linux.

In practice it depends on (at least) your volume manager app(let) so you don't see it on say XFCE.

XFCE 4.10 does at least launch pavucontrol when you click on the "Sound settings..." menu item under the volume applet. However, you're right that it only shows one volume slider in the applet menu itself.

That also has come default on ubuntu since at least 12.04!

I may be misremembering, but I have a feeling the per-app volume mixer was available all the way back in Windows XP. Possibly sound-card dependent?

An app called Jack OS X does the job on Mac: http://www.jackosx.com/

Per app volume control arrived in Vista. Previously you had a single master volume control in the notification area which if you double clicked would open the sound mixer control panel.

That panel on XP (and before) only permitted per-device volume control.

For reference see [1] at around 04:00 and Larry Osterman's posts from September and December 2005 [2][3].

[1]: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/scobleizer/Steve-Ball-Learnin...

[2]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/09/19/471...

[3]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/12/15/504...

JACK is a huge amount more than just a per-app volume mixer, it's basically a virtual audio cabling system. Very handy if you've ever had a need to pipe audio between applications or manipulate audio streams from arbitrary apps.

It's also a complete pain in the arse to get running on Linux, due to the ALSA+Pulse stack being in the way.

If your goal is to use Linux for audio production (or some other use case where JACK would be necessary), it helps to use a distro like Musix or Ubuntu Studio that already takes care of that "get running" part for you.

JACK is pretty complex, but infinitely useful; one of those things I end up installing long before I decide I actually need it.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728046

Such a beautifully crafted design.

I truly wish they made their design as open as their code (https://code.google.com/p/cubeslam/). Not judging their code, but I would benefit more from seeing how they make their art (3d renders specially).

This is amazing. The bear's reactions are simply brilliant. Nice implementation of pong. It must have taken quite a bit of time to put together and polish off.

Super-cool game! I was doing well until Level 9 when they started swapping the left and right controls. I couldn't wrap my brain around that and lost all three points that round because of that.

It's unfortunate the sound still doesn't work in Firefox. I thought Firefox was supposed to have support for the Web Audio API by now?

(Firefox 30, Linux, official Mozilla build)

Hi, I'm one of the Web Audio API developers at Mozilla. This demo uses a very old version of the Web Audio API, that we don't support, because it is not standard (and we started to implement after the breaking changes in the spec anyways).

Standard compliant Web Audio API is available from Firefox 25,

I suppose that's also why Infinite Jukebox, my other favorite Web Audio demo, doesn't work either.

http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html

Thanks for the clarification!

It does here! (I'm running Nightly on OXS). I met Paul Lamere the other day at the music hack day in Barcelona and he told me he updated his numerous demos so that they use the new spec.

I don't care much for pong, but this game is worth playing for the shear beauty of it. Lots of wonderful detail and happy surprises!

This game is awesome! Everybody starts with pong when learning to make games... but this game tops them all. I like the bumpers and the "gravity" well (I haven't gotten past level three yet because I had to pause the game to come and praise it.). I like that you can get enhancements ala Arkanoid. Once you get past the fact that this is a coolest variant of pong, you start to notice how simply beautiful this game is. I like the expressions of the bear and seeing him "play" the game. I like how when you lose a round your screen "zaps" out of focus, just like what you see when his screen goes out. Very nice webgl project!

Oh and this has a webRTC network play?! This is the first web game I've played that I would honestly say I would pay to play (after I got a demo version first, of course). This is by the far one of the coolest projects I've seen posted on hacker news. Beats the hell out of 1024. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing!

https://code.google.com/p/cubeslam/

Very cool! Found this by accident, press the number 0.

Taken from the behind the scenes blog post: http://www.inear.se/2013/07/cube-slam-behind-the-three-scene...

Try for yourself with the ?dev querystring.

Some of the settings also bind to a key. In the game, try to select thedifferent cameras by pressing 1-5. Or press E and H to preview the explosion/heal effect. Or perhaps stresstest the physics by enable God Mode in the menu and press “Create Puck” or hit the P.

The mirror effect is also using a render target of it’s own. You can try the effect by pressing “M” in the game.

Full list of cheats can be seen here: https://www.cubeslam.com/cheats.html

I wish the developers took this a bit further and visualized the AI decision making and object tracking.

Perhaps even visualize some of the WebRTC communications (a la WebRTC internals) to explain how things are working, visually.

I challenged a co-worker, but for some reason the game requires you to have a webcam to play another human.

Otherwise, well done.

If you get the "ball" to hit the side of your bar.. it goes kerbonkers.

Hmm… my paddle kept getting stuck. I'd hit the arrow buttons and nothing would happen. Then it would unstick for no reason and work (after losing a point, of course). Very frustrating.

I wonder what the costs are, nobody seems to care about it? At least 3 different companies worked on this. A lot of work has been put into this, must be millions :)

This is really nice, just spent some time playing the game and then I had a connection error, and I almost yelled "bob you cheater"

I wish I didn't need a webcam to play a friend.

It works fantastically well on mobile; buttery smooth controls, and vibration when a point is scored. Feels like a native app.

Sweet game! Definitely has the ingredients to go viral: Simple, annoyingly difficult, and something new at every level.

Is this working in multiplayer mode? I am on Firefox 30 and it doesn't seem to work for me.

Wow, css has come a long way, it never ceases to blow my mind when I see stuff like this

Great game. I ran my MBPr out of battery playing and resorted to my iPad after posting the link in my company's slack chat. Slack is great, btw. I then resorted to my iPad which does work really well but I'm missing Bobs expressions. I'd really like to see Bob on my iPad. Excellent work though.

Publicclass.se for more beauty

This is practically ancient.

Cubeslam is so 10 minutes ago. My grandma plays Cubeslam.

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