[HN Gopher] Equinox.space
___________________________________________________________________
Equinox.space
Author : fragmede
Score : 1085 points
Date : 2024-04-22 10:37 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (equinox.space)
(TXT) w3m dump (equinox.space)
| guigui wrote:
| Author here. Happy to answer any questions!
|
| Some background info on the project:
| https://littleworkshop.fr/projects/equinox/
| fragmede wrote:
| I'm blown away by being able to drop in on it on my smartphone
| seamlessly! My phone got noticibly warm during play.
| guigui wrote:
| Thank you! Yes, making it available on mobile devices was one
| of our priorities from the start (even though the desktop
| experience remains the best one). Phones do tend to heat up
| when rendering complex WebGL applications.
| OccamsMirror wrote:
| Looks amazing but unfortunately I couldn't get sound to
| work on my iPhone. Tried toggling sound off and on and
| still no go :(
| hackton wrote:
| Removing the Silent mode with the left button was the
| trick for me (like with most mobile game btw)
| taberiand wrote:
| I played through on my phone (Android) too and it was very
| smooth, suprisingly it didn't seem to cause significant
| battery drain or overheating - it performed really well.
| petepete wrote:
| It's amazing, thank you. I really struggled without mouse
| inversion but got there in the end.
| Broussebar wrote:
| Looks awesome, nice work. I have an unrelated question, on
| little workshop's website I can see a petanque game that I
| couldn't find online. Is there a way to play this game or was
| it available only during an event?
| franck wrote:
| Thank you. The petanque game was only available for an event
| and not publicly anyway, only for the client company's
| employees.
| felixarba wrote:
| This is beautiful and very fun
| izolate wrote:
| Excellent! I had originally planned to give it a quick glance,
| but I was so captivated, I had to see it through the end.
|
| For those aspiring to become creative developers, could you
| share any tips on which areas they should focus on?
| guigui wrote:
| Thanks! Congrats on making it to the end. This is too broad a
| topic to cover here, but I'd say the most valuable skill is
| the ability to constantly learn new tools and techniques.
| davedx wrote:
| For me babylonjs was a bit of a leap forward. Great engine +
| tooling. Nice documentation with tons of examples for how to
| do things. Besides that, experiment lots and lots! Be very
| curious. And don't be afraid of 3D math.
| larschdk wrote:
| Could you put in an invert mouse Y-axis for us old farts?
| ta1243 wrote:
| What do you mean? I move the mouse (well trackpoint) up, and
| I see the ceiling, same with the trackpad
| masfuerte wrote:
| In a plane you pull back on the joystick to go up.
| ta1243 wrote:
| I played 3D games back in the days of Quake and Duke
| Nukem 3D and have never had a "move mouse down and view
| goes up"
|
| Joystick sure, but the last joystick I had was a 15 pin
| DIN
| mmh0000 wrote:
| Here's the `invert mouse` setting from Quake2[1], though,
| I know for certain that Duke3D and Doom had the same
| option. I feel like every FPS I've ever played has had it
| as an option.
|
| Now, to be judgemental, anyone who enables the invert
| option is an obvious psychopath. Although, to be fair,
| everyone thinks I'm a psychopath for using Mouse2 for
| Forward.
|
| [1] http://www.quake2.com/kko/menu/options.jpg
| adastra22 wrote:
| Oh come on. I'm a pilot, or at least I spent a good deal
| of time in flight training when I was younger. I'd rather
| not mix systems, that's all.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah screwing with your muscle memory is a really bad
| thing to do for pilots because that will be there for you
| when you need it the most.
| Narishma wrote:
| Doom didn't, since it didn't support looking up and down.
| rzzzt wrote:
| "Shearing" was added for up-down look in Heretic, for the
| non-Doom engine descendants Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of The
| Triad supported it as well. I don't remember if it could
| be bound to mouse movement in any of these games.
| MisterTea wrote:
| They were bound to keys for the DOS versions from memory.
| Forget when the mouse look was supported but the view was
| highly distorted so mostly useless until later ports
| enabled proper 3d rendering.
| tslater2006 wrote:
| No need for a plane, works that way for my head in real
| life too :) tilt your head back and you look up
| squarefoot wrote:
| Some people are more comfortable with mouse inversion, that
| is also my case; I read years ago somewhere that it is
| subjective and depends on how we "see" the scene in our
| brain, like 1st person or projected 3rd person (or
| something similar, don't take my words to the letter)
| anyway the number of people that would find games without
| mouse inversion next to unplayable is very high, therefore
| adding the option makes sense, and many games in fact have
| it.
| wigster wrote:
| i always thought it was people of a certain age who
| required inversion (i include myself here) because the
| first 3d games were flight sims, so pulling back on
| stick/down goes up etc.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Yeah it's not an age thing. My wife does the inverted
| thing whereas I do the correct way and we're basically
| the same age.
| dustyduster wrote:
| > do the correct way
|
| Careful, with that attitude you might not have a wife for
| long.
| natebc wrote:
| or friends!
|
| everybody knows inverted is correct anyways.
| recursive wrote:
| I've never really played a flight sim, but I can't get my
| head into non-inverted. Maybe if I spent a dozen hours, I
| could do it, but why would I?
| burntwater wrote:
| At least for me, I've always associated preferring mouse
| inversion with growing up handling BB guns. When you're
| lifting a rifle up, you are pulling back/contracting on
| the right arm. When aiming, to go up you nudge the right
| hand down, or nudge up to point down.
| recursive wrote:
| To look down IRL, I move my head forward. Makes sense to
| me.
| ijxjdffnkkpp wrote:
| I got used to normal look controls with practice but lots
| of 2005ish console games have inverted controls as
| defaults. I started a playthrough of The Legend of Zelda:
| Twilight Princess on Gamecube to find that is has
| inverted left/right camera controls as the default. Also,
| GoldenEye 007 for the N64 has inverted up/down camera
| controls (if I remember correctly). If you're a certain
| age, you lived through a time when there was not an
| accepted default control scheme so console games just
| picked defaults and moved on. We got used to those
| defaults. There was a period of time where choice of
| selection of up/down inversion was seen as a must-have to
| even play a game (multiplayer split screen) and zero
| discussion or complaints would arise over 2-3 minutes of
| everyone (all 4 of us) setting their controls after every
| console reset. Eventually non-inverted controls became
| the accepted default. This likely happened during a time
| that many of us gamed less so we might not have the
| muscle memory of relearning the new defaults. That's my
| experience on the whole thing anyway.
| tslater2006 wrote:
| I could see this. Like obviously I live first person, and
| when I want to look up I pull my head back, to look down
| I push my head forward. Similarly I expect pushing my
| mouse forward (up) to look down and pulling my mouse back
| (down) to look up.
| adastra22 wrote:
| That's the opposite of how a real life joystick works, so
| some people don't find it intuitive.
| MisterTea wrote:
| If I grab your head and pull back you would be looking at
| the ceiling. If I pushed your head forwards you would be
| looking at the floor. This is how mice should work. Touch
| devices screwed that up and are heresy.
| guigui wrote:
| Yes, sorry. That's one of the many little features that we
| wanted to add but didn't make the cut. We may add this in a
| future update.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Excellent work, works great on mobile, which is rare for a web
| game
| guigui wrote:
| Thanks, making it available and actually playable on mobile
| was definitely a challenge. One of our inspiration for the
| mobile controls was the iOS version of the game The Witness.
| cloudking wrote:
| Amazing work! How did you get the 3D engine to work so
| smoothly? Is this three.js?
| guigui wrote:
| Yes, it's running on Three.js. This comment from co-author
| Franck roughly sums it up:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114297
| iainmerrick wrote:
| I'm really impressed by the visual and audio design, and the
| graphics and audio implementation too. It's great that it loads
| quickly - far too many online 3D games are stuck behind lengthy
| loading screens.
|
| How big was the team and how long did it take to make it?
| guigui wrote:
| Thanks, this was done by a team of only 2 people over a span
| of 1.5 years, working on it intermittently between client
| projects, totaling approximately 5-6 months of work.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| Wow, my guess was more like 4-6 people for a year. You guys
| are impressively multi-talented!
| Jugurtha wrote:
| I booked first class but your system is buggy and put me in
| economy; now I'm stuck because I wasn't in the escape pod!
|
| Someone should start a space ride hailing service. I bet the
| pod was yellow.
| leetrout wrote:
| Lots of great projects. How can I experience TRACK in VR? I
| opened the site in my Quest 3 browser but it says webvr not
| supported.
| franck wrote:
| About TRACK, sorry, the experience was released in 2018 and
| we need to update it so that it works with the WebXR API.
| leetrout wrote:
| Ah! Ok, thanks for the reply!
| donbrae wrote:
| Ah, you also did the Transmit 3D truck for the Panic website.
| Nice work!
| franck wrote:
| Thank you!
| modeless wrote:
| Unfortunately it is very stuttery on my Pixel 7 Pro, looks
| awesome though
| guigui wrote:
| Sorry to hear that. That's weird, because we tested on a
| Pixel 3 and had decent performance.
| modeless wrote:
| Yeah, it's not due to poor rendering performance. I can see
| it running at full frame rate between stutters. It may be
| some kind of timing issue? Here's a video of the problem:
| https://x.com/modeless/status/1782432663649087917
| MartinoPalmitos wrote:
| I have the same phone (Pixel 7 Pro) and I have the same
| issue
|
| tried Brave + Chrome with same results
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Oh weird. My pixel 4a on Firefox felt like it was not
| hitting 60. The audio was fine and it was playable but I
| couldn't find the cockpit so I gave up
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| Seems great on my 6 (Firefox).
| Gr4phTh3ory wrote:
| Could you increase the range for the mouse sensitivity option?
| I'm finding that even maxing it out results in painfully slow
| look speed.
| kevincox wrote:
| I've found that `localStorage.mouseSensivity = 4` (the
| default max is 1) seems to set it to about the right amount.
| However mouse movement is now very jumpy. It seems that
| individual mouse events are visible and mouse acceleration
| curves cause very unpleasant behaviour.
|
| Maybe it is something to a high resolution screen, so one CSS
| pixel is actually quite large?
| RDaneel0livaw wrote:
| Same here! My mouse arm is getting a workout lifting and
| recentering 5 times per turn lol.
| paulrouget wrote:
| Hey :) I see you guys everywhere nowadays. Congrats, and happy
| to see you keep on doing amazing things!
| guigui wrote:
| Thanks, old friend. Always a pleasure to build cool stuff for
| a web browser, like in the good old days. ;)
| franck wrote:
| Merci Paul :) happy to see your comment!
| russdill wrote:
| On Linux/Chrome mouse look keeps snapping back. It's really
| frustrating and makes it unplayable for me
| loeg wrote:
| I'm also on Linux Chrome but not experiencing that.
| guigui wrote:
| Sorry about that. Does it happen also on this three.js
| example? https://threejs.org/examples/?q=pointerlock#misc_con
| trols_po...
|
| You can try to change the controls mode in the in-game menu
| (ESC key).
| russdill wrote:
| The threejs pointer demo works great. Here's what I'm
| seeing in game:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/YX2OqXz.mp4
|
| Not sure if it matters, but I have multiple monitors
| smarri wrote:
| Love the project. How long did it take for you to conceive and
| launch? What tools or platforms would you recommend to use for
| anyone interested in a similar project? Thanks
| guigui wrote:
| It roughly took 5-6 months in total over a span of 1-2 years
| (we paused development several times to work on client
| projects). I recommend diving into Three.js (or other WebGL
| libraries), and learning Blender or similar to create your
| own 3D scenes.
| iamcreasy wrote:
| Thank you for building it. Did you guys use Unity? The startup
| time is very low.
| guigui wrote:
| The project runs on Three.js, a JavaScript WebGL library,
| which explains the low startup time.
| Operyl wrote:
| No, they used Three.js among other things. Startup time was
| fast here, it's probably just how long it takes you to
| download the game assets that determines speed in the end.
| drittich wrote:
| Someone else mentioned babylon.js in this thread. Did you
| evaluate that and choose three.js over it?
| guigui wrote:
| Babylon would have been a perfectly good choice to build this
| experience, but we have a preference for the three.js API.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Played on Chrome on my Android phone in portrait mode, and the
| whole game I felt it was too zoomed in.
|
| I was suspicious of that AI the whole time. Like, did it get
| sent into this asteroid field on purpose to destroy it because
| it was a threat? Were there other unconscious passengers locked
| in those rooms and if I died following some risky instruction
| would it simply wake the next one up? How could it practically
| see through my eyes and would I turn out to be an automated
| drone?
|
| Would have liked a bit more subplot to explore. Eg. Fix the
| spinning satellite to utilize the Comms station. Gain access to
| the third floor in the lift. Poke around the AI control room to
| uncover sabotage.
|
| Maybe I just missed some discoveries on my playthrough.
| guigui wrote:
| All valid points, and I completely agree that the narrative
| could have a bit more depth to it. I really wish there were
| more puzzles to solve. However, at the end of the day, we had
| to keep the scope under control, which was already quite
| large for a two-person team.
| yayitswei wrote:
| Congrats on shipping! I enjoyed my playthrough. I suspect
| it's the perfect length for blowing up on HN, since there's
| an emotional payoff for completing the game and if it were
| any longer, less people would complete it.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I also found the AI suspicious for a different reason. That
| is that it has its own agenda and is using me to do what it
| is not allowed to do. For some reason, the AI is not able to
| initiate a hyperspace jump, cannot bypass access, but can
| maneuver the ship through an asteroid field. As if it was not
| completely trusted.
|
| And now, everyone else is gone, and I am getting ordered
| around by an AI, maybe because the AI considered me the
| easiest one to manipulate, maybe the AI deliberately entered
| the asteroid field to that goal.
|
| Edit:
|
| And I don't think the game really needs more content. It is
| not a big budget AAA production after all. What it could
| benefit from however is maybe some hints to something bigger.
| Things like personal items, messages on screen, maps, ads,
| writings on the wall, etc... It doesn't have to connect to a
| big story, but just hint that there is something, even if it
| is all bluff.
| dcormier wrote:
| I enjoyed it, but in Safari on iOS there was no sound at any
| point. I checked my device volume. I toggled the game option
| for sound on and off.
|
| It just occurred to me that it may be because I have my phone
| ringer set to silent. That is indeed what caused it, which is
| not great as I don't want notifications to be making noise.
|
| It also felt slightly too zoomed in (I even attempted to zoom
| out using my fingers).
| guigui wrote:
| Thanks, we'll keep this in mind for a possible future
| version.
| joemi wrote:
| > It just occurred to me that it may be because I have my
| phone ringer set to silent. That is indeed what caused it,
| which is not great as I don't want notifications to be making
| noise.
|
| I'm pretty sure that's the way it should be, isn't it?
| Whenever I want something/anything/everything to not make
| noise on my phone, I set it to silent. It's been that way
| since the very first iphone I ever owned (I think it was the
| 4).
| gr8r wrote:
| fantastic work!
|
| also game is tough? waiting for the walkthroughs lol
| armanr7 wrote:
| Super impressive. I wish I could play any video game on the web
| like this. How long did this take to build?
| guigui wrote:
| Thank you. Answered here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114774
| sgt wrote:
| I can't wait 2500 years, are there hibernation pods anywhere on
| the ship?
| winnie_ua wrote:
| Nope, but there is cafeteria :-P
| grdeken wrote:
| Really impressive, congratulations. How many hours of TLC went
| into building this?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Running firefox + linux. Mouse works fine in mouse only mode,
| in gamer/keyboard+mouse, the mouse is out of control. Often,
| moving the mouse in any direction, moves the mouse continuously
| left (for example). Other times, the tiniest twitch moves the
| screen in crazy flying loops.
|
| Tried the speed setting down to 10, barely made a difference.
|
| Not sure if other FF users are experiencing the same thing?
|
| edit:
|
| Just finished it... Good game! I hope you expand it, because
| you've definitely got something fun here.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| That was fun - thanks!
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Really nice, smooth. If this is hobby project, it is amazing.
| It is pretty good for an indie game. Real half-life/portal
| feel.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Super cool escape-room-esque game! I wish though, that the
| click-to-walk was a bit more pre-defined paths. For example, If
| I click on a spot thinking I could interact with it, I walk to
| the wall and am now so close to the wall that it becomes
| disorientating, and I have to click back to view the room.
| quicon wrote:
| Congratulations, I really enjoyed it. I never play videogames
| and I'm on mobile, but I engaged instantly.
| windowshopping wrote:
| Maybe you _should_ play videogames....seems you would enjoy
| them.
| bdastous wrote:
| Please add a "reverse y-axis" option for mouselook!
| qwertox wrote:
| This was awesome.
|
| I was concerned that it would continue after the warp, because
| I knew I would not have been able to stop playing. 100% pure
| fun while it lasted.
| _HMCB_ wrote:
| This is the most amazing experience I've ever had on the web.
| Bar none. I'm blown away.
| franck wrote:
| Thank you for your kind words, we really appreciate it.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this here! I'll try it tomorrow as it's late
| night here.
|
| Sorry to see this post is getting spam bombed for some reason
| :( Because it's one of the most interesting things I saw in the
| last days
| BalinKing wrote:
| A bunch of other posts on the front page are getting
| bombarded with these spam messages too... I figure dang is
| probably aware by now (although idk what specific measures HN
| has against this sort of thing).
| appel wrote:
| I'm probably showing my age, but I'm just at awe what is
| possible in a browser in this day and age. Well done, OP. I'd
| love a hashed out, full length version of this, but with the
| same vector graphics.
| nickjj wrote:
| I especially liked the "Connecting..." sound. It's inescapable
| even in the future!
| natkiny wrote:
| Nice work !!
| hackton wrote:
| I am very much impressed by this project. The smoothly rendering
| on the browser, stunning graphics and captivating music create an
| immersive journey. And I always love to discover some Easter
| eggs. Bravo!
| guigui wrote:
| Thanks hackton. Really appreciate it!
|
| While creating Equinox, it frequently felt like we were working
| on tiny details that hardly anyone would notice. But ultimately
| I believe that immersion largely relies on the accumulation of
| all these small additions.
| desdenova wrote:
| The sarcastic remarks from the computer were definitely
| great.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| very cool! it delayed me getting out of bed for 15 minutes.
| worked great on android phone.
|
| great atmosphere music graphics and sense of humour.
|
| is 3js the only technology you all used to make this?
| franck wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! We used the Three.js WebGL library and
| a custom-built game engine for the various interactions,
| pathfinding and game logic. We modeled the scenes in Blender
| and SideFX Houdini, and also baked lightmaps with Blender.
| abj wrote:
| Amazing job! Any specific settings in Three.js you used to
| get the great mobile performance? Really interested in seeing
| anything you'd like to share about how you optimized
| performance. Amazing work!
| franck wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Nothing specific regarding mobile but we worked on
| rendering optimizations quite a bit to make the experience
| smooth. Most notably the render pipeline is based on MRT
| (Multiple Render Targets) which renders multiple frames at
| the same time, which is great when doing post-processing
| stuff. Also we made sure to keep the number of draw calls
| quite low by merging static objects. There is also a lot of
| culling going on, hiding rooms that are not visible.
|
| We'll probably post more technical details on X in the
| coming days/weeks, be sure to follow us if you're
| interested.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| Awewome thx for the info. Its inspiring.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| I've noticed that pathfinding works on mobile mode!
|
| I was impressed that it is present there. I would expect
| camer to fly directly to target location.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| At breakfast so I can't play right now, but those are some
| buttery-smooth animations on a new Android running Firefox. Nice
| work.
| mikae1 wrote:
| The only thing I'm seeing is a spinning globe on FF for
| Android. Smooth, but I guess I'm missing something...
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I had to switch to Edge to get it to work.
|
| Can't find that damned access token though.
| alalp wrote:
| Check the storage room accessible from the main "hub"
| franck wrote:
| Thanks for the bug report. We'll have to figure out what
| could be causing this issue.
| mikae1 wrote:
| To be precise, Mull browser (a Firefox fork).
| burkaman wrote:
| Mull probably has WebGL disabled as an anti-
| fingerprinting measure.
| bscphil wrote:
| I experienced this in Librewolf as well, it happens when
| WebGL is disabled. Should probably present a visible error
| to the user when this happens.
| alje wrote:
| That was also the case for me (FF for Android), and I
| eventually found that I have WebGl disabled by default.
| Everything worked as expected after I resumed. FF animations
| run quite smoothly. Good work for developers.
| reaperman wrote:
| Delightful experience from start to finish. Thanks for showing
| what web apps are capable of at the moment. It would make sense
| to title this "Show HN: "
| asicsp wrote:
| Show HN is for authors submitting their own work...
| franck wrote:
| Thanks! About "Show HN:", we would have done so but someone
| else posted it so we have no control over the title.
| echoangle wrote:
| It would only be Show HN if OP were the creator, which they are
| not, I think.
| carlnewton wrote:
| This is amazing! The visual style is stunning. This actually
| comes very close to a style of game I've wanted to exist for a
| long time. The premise being this: You're on a ship going between
| destinations, but there's no light-speed shortcut, or jump-cut to
| the destination. Instead, you have to maintain the ship for the
| entire duration of the journey. Making sacrifices in power and
| computing ability to resolve problems that occur throughout the
| ship.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Just had a few seconds, A/D is strafing as I'd expect
| carlnewton wrote:
| I just opened it again to make sure I wasn't imaginging it.
| Oddly enough, A works to strafe left for me, but D doesn't
| work to strafe right. I'm using Firefox 121.0.
|
| Edit: ignore me! It's one of my plugins!
| cess11 wrote:
| If someone is using Vimium or something similar and aren't
| aware yet, entering input mode, usually 'i', will let key-
| presses slip by the plugin input parser and go straight to
| the web page.
| franck wrote:
| Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! I like your idea a lot, I would
| definitely play this.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| That sounds similar to a sub-plot in Children of Time by Adrian
| Tchaikovsky. Very interesting book!
| carlnewton wrote:
| I've never heard of it, but I'm on the lookout for a new sci-
| fi read, so I think I'll get it! Thanks!
| SamBam wrote:
| Don't read it if you're terrified of spiders. Otherwise,
| it's a great book.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I hate spiders but I was able to get past it for this
| series. That and A Deepness in the Sky.
| RA2lover wrote:
| See Tharsis
| (https://store.steampowered.com/app/323060/Tharsis/) and
| Seedship (https://johnayliff.itch.io/seedship).
| winnie_ua wrote:
| Wow. I didn't know that Seedship is available in browser.
|
| Played it on Android long time ago.
| rom16384 wrote:
| This game reminds me of the 90's FMV game Mission Critical [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Critical_(video_game)
| FragmentShader wrote:
| > you have to maintain the ship for the entire duration of the
| journey. Making sacrifices in power and computing ability to
| resolve problems that occur throughout the ship.
|
| There's a multiplayer game where you get in a match and play
| tiny minigames where you fix the issues of the ship, and once
| you fix them all, you win.
|
| The twist is, there is an assasin among all players, and his
| goal is to sabotage your ship even more and to kill everyone,
| without getting caught. So the duration of the journey is only
| based on how quick you either fix the ship, find the impostor
| or die.
|
| Wish I could remember the name, it was pretty popular during
| the pandemic.
| TimSchumann wrote:
| I think you're thinking of Among Us.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Among_Us
| FragmentShader wrote:
| Yeah! Thanks :)
| daelon wrote:
| https://spacestation13.com/ maybe?
| ZeWaka wrote:
| Yeah this isn't the right game, but is much closer to a
| full game based on that idea than among us.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Are you thinking of SpaceTeam? We had a ton of fun with this
| game at a previous job.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sleepingbe.
| ..
| 0xEF wrote:
| Scratch that, I missed a paragraph in OP's post about the
| assassin. Definitely _not_ SpaceTeam and more likely Among
| Us.
|
| Give SpaceTeam a try anyway. You have to love a game that
| bills itself as a "cooperative shouting game."
| rzzzt wrote:
| Spaceteam also exists as a physical card game, the
| mechanics seem to be a bit different from the app (not
| sure which one of them was released first) but is still
| lots of fun and shouting.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Among Us.
|
| I tried it once and was looking forward to it, but it was
| just a bunch of kids running around with no coordination
| whatsoever killing each other. After a few plays I asked
| Steam for a refund. Maybe I was doing it wrong and should
| have tried it with friends.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Yeah, random lobbies are absolutely unplayable. Lobbies
| that are coordinated in some public Discord server tend to
| be a coinflip if they're going to be passable or not. But
| the game really shines when you have a core group of people
| to play with that all engage with it in good faith.
|
| Of course, all those groups burnt out on the game after
| playing way too much of it over the pandemic, so it is what
| it is.
| helboi4 wrote:
| I've only played among us as in private lobbies with
| friends to have fun during the pandemic. That's why it was
| so popular. Would never think to play it online with
| strangers. There's really not much to it its just about as
| complex as a simple boardgame. It was just a way to easily
| socialise with everyone you knew even if they weren't a
| hardcore gamer during lockdown.
| bombcar wrote:
| Online boardgames is a good way to look at it -
| https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/red-
| november/ and similar for example
| FragmentShader wrote:
| I played mostly with friends and it was fun.
|
| When I first got into public lobbies - yeah, everybody was
| a kid and the first color shouted into the chat would get
| kicked.
|
| The trick I found was to switch the search language to
| English as I was in European servers with my native
| language. That way, I would match with Europeans that
| manually changed their language to English as well... or
| just british kids.
|
| Anyways, it got way better, no more "red is sus" and then
| kicking without proof. But then everyone was too rude.
| People always got EXTREMELY angry when I found who the
| impostors were by either using the cameras or just
| remembering who was with who + kill spots + behaviour.
| Like, we win the game because I confirmed the users were
| impostors based on actual proof, then they cuss me and ban
| me from the lobby!
|
| So, yeah, I kinda not played much in public lobbies for
| these reasons. But with friends it was fun!
| michaelmior wrote:
| Not the game you were thinking of, but Spaceteam is a very
| fun game with a related premise. You're flying a ship and the
| ship is breaking down so you need to activate the right
| controls to keep it moving.
|
| The ship will tell you what controls need to be activate, but
| the catch is that each player only has access to a portion of
| the controls, but will receive instructions for all them. Cue
| lots of yelling back and forth to try to communicate the
| appropriate directions :)
| FrontierProject wrote:
| Space Station 13 is a much deeper take on a similar premise.
| nmarinov wrote:
| FTL: Faster Than Light is sort of similar to your premise but
| the style is very different - it's a roguelike RTS.
|
| https://subsetgames.com/ftl.html
|
| > In FTL you experience the atmosphere of running a spaceship
| trying to save the galaxy. It's a dangerous mission, with every
| encounter presenting a unique challenge with multiple
| solutions.
|
| > What will you do if a heavy missile barrage shuts down your
| shields?
|
| > - Reroute all power to the engines in an attempt to escape?
|
| > - Power up additional weapons to blow your enemy out of the
| sky?
|
| > - Or take the fight to them with a boarding party?
| jrrv wrote:
| I have pages of notes for a game like this that I've been
| thinking about since university, largely inspired by Battlestar
| Galactica and The Expanse. This game reminded me of it too,
| maybe I'll get to it one day.
| buzzy_hacker wrote:
| > You're on a ship going between destinations, but there's no
| light-speed shortcut, or jump-cut to the destination. Instead,
| you have to maintain the ship for the entire duration of the
| journey.
|
| Neptune's Pride [0] is a fantastic real-time strategy game that
| has this feature without the maintenance part. You play the
| game over the course of days instead of minutes or hours. And
| it may take hours for your ships to reach their destinations. A
| ton of fun with friends.
|
| [0] https://np.ironhelmet.com/#landing
| gr8r wrote:
| had my vote at the landing page
| davidw wrote:
| > the entire duration of the journey
|
| Sounds a bit like 'Desert Bus'
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/desert-b...
| LanternLight83 wrote:
| Sunless Seas and Sunless Skys are two narrative-driven games in
| the Fallen London universe which otherwise hit a lot of these
| beats.
| Gulthor wrote:
| A finely crafted piece of art. Out of curiosity, do you plan to
| make this project open source? I'd be curious to learn about some
| the technical details.
| franck wrote:
| Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. We have no plans for open
| sourcing it at the moment. We'll tweet more details on how we
| made it, soon-ish.
| desdenova wrote:
| Looks amazing, great work.
|
| One suggestion: add the option to invert the touch camera
| controls. It feels weird to rotate the world rather than the
| camera in a first person game, and I'm constantly rotating in the
| opposite direction than intended.
| franck wrote:
| Thank you! This is a feature we are planning to add in the near
| future. We used the same controls as Google Maps street view
| but perhaps for a game it can feel a bit weird.
| gamebak wrote:
| amazing to see this working with decent frames in the browser,
| congrats!
| ydnaclementine wrote:
| Really good, and the music after the first thing that doesn't go
| as expected is particularly good.
| franck wrote:
| Thanks for the music appreciation, it means a lot!
| soci wrote:
| awesome piece of work. ai can't find the cockpit though.
| franck wrote:
| Thank you. Hint: look for a door which doesn't look like the
| others in the central hub.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| It's not in the hub, though. You have to go past the hub
| first.
| enigmashot wrote:
| i found the little yellow thing in that room and i was
| expecting it to enable the elevator but no luck.. what am i
| missing?
| efilife wrote:
| behind the "restricted door" you will find another door
| that leads to the cockpit
| soci wrote:
| I tried to open another door with Restricted title in it
| and didn't open. I assumed all "restricted" doors would
| have the same fate.
| soci wrote:
| Thank you. While I really want to check your hint, I won't.
| Since there's no way to save progress this would be my fourth
| attempt to play the game from the start [1]. Maybe saving
| status would have it make it different for me. Please, don't
| take me wrong, the game looks amazing, reminds me of the old
| times of Mac Classic gaming, but I'm no gamer.
|
| [1] I'm on an iphone, and I always tapped back to get to HN
| again so I lost progress every time I tried your game.
| tmilard wrote:
| Very nice graphics and design. I wonder who would ne the client
| for such a 3D game. And how much (about) it cost to build such a
| game.
| tarr11 wrote:
| here's another one by the same studio
|
| https://demos.littleworkshop.fr/infinitown
| hammock wrote:
| Hollywood level storytelling ,visual and sound design. Nice job.
| The music was great
| jordemort wrote:
| I'm sure it's not the fault of the game, but this straight-up
| crashed my machine after about a minute of play. Screen froze,
| everything went unresponsive for a couple seconds, then I got
| about half a second of a pure magenta screen, and my machine
| rebooted. M1 Pro Macbook Pro, Sonoma 14.4.1, Firefox 125.0.1.
| jordemort wrote:
| Doesn't seem like the crash is repeating itself. Now it is
| running fine. The first time through, it died right after I was
| told to open the door but right before the door became
| openable.
| rafram wrote:
| > then I got about half a second of a pure magenta screen
|
| That's an Apple hardware classic. Sorry to report that your GPU
| might be shot. (Hopefully it was just a one-time fault,
| though.)
| Ono-Sendai wrote:
| Nah probably buggy Mac OpenGL drivers
| jordemort wrote:
| It would be a shame, just a tragedy, if this machine suffered
| catastrophic hardware failure with 3 months left on my
| AppleCare contract :)
| dev-tacular wrote:
| Oh no! How will you ever recover? /s
| swozey wrote:
| I'm on a 14" M1 Max from 12/2021 and my AC+ expires in
| 2025. I'm pretty sure you can buy it right before your
| warranty expires to extend it. But maybe you bought 1 year
| of AC+ and can't extend it after?
|
| This was my first AC+ purchase.
|
| Also my battery has been at 79% Service Battery health for
| about a year. I forgot to use AlDente to limit the battery
| to 80% but do it now and it hasn't gone down.
|
| edit: Jesus I just realized 2025 is next year. Totally
| thought I had like 3 years left.. nevermind..
| rvba wrote:
| Reminds me a bit by "mystery of time and space" flash game. That
| someone is rewriting in html5
|
| https://github.com/calculuswhiz/HTML5-MOTAS
| jeroen79 wrote:
| very nice concept!
| elwell wrote:
| Music reminded me slightly of Perfect Dark.
|
| Waking up on a spaceship reminded me of The Journeyman Project.
| mare5x wrote:
| The music reminded me of Super Hexagon.
| franck wrote:
| Oh I loved the Journeyman Project as a kid and I didn't think
| of it at all when creating Equinox, but thanks to your comment
| I'm now starting to think it had some unconscious influence!
| whitepaint wrote:
| I never play games but this was actually fun. Are there PC games
| that have a similar concept that can run on not a very powerful
| laptop?
| degenerate wrote:
| You would likely enjoy Myst:
| https://www.gog.com/en/game/myst_masterpiece_edition
|
| Related HN thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18058991
| timnetworks wrote:
| Stanley Parable / Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly
| Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist are two (from the same devs)
| that stand out in recent memory. Myst (and Riven and there are
| like six total ending with a fully 3d Obduction) are cult
| classics and already referenced.
| qingcharles wrote:
| There's a few like this on Sandbox that work fine on my 13 year
| old Lenovo PC:
|
| https://sandbox.game/
| nexoft wrote:
| bien joue!
| workingdog wrote:
| When I learned my fellow passengers had escaped, I knew this game
| was for me. I love a bit of fun without ghoulish death.
| ijontic wrote:
| That's so good! I haven't played a computer game in ages. But the
| atmosphere here, the graphics, the sound captivated me from the
| beginning. And soon enough, I felt that desire again, to solve
| the next puzzle... just like the last time in the 90s... um...
| with Simon the Sorcerer. Thank you for that!
| franck wrote:
| Wow thank you, this comment made my day. Really glad that our
| little project could make you experience that feeling again!
| Adventure games from the 90s definitely played their part as an
| inspiration for this.
| the_duke wrote:
| If this was a demo for a full-fledged game, I would have
| bought the game immediately.
| duckmysick wrote:
| > Simon the Sorcerer
|
| Well done, I haven't heard that name for close to 30 years.
| Brings back good memories.
| ikt wrote:
| this is amazing
|
| anyone have a solution for turning the power generator on? I
| matched the squares with the tetris style symbols on the power
| generator but then nothing happened :S
| jasonsb wrote:
| You have to match the colors as well.
| ikt wrote:
| ty!
| SamBam wrote:
| It's a classically-done puzzle with a classic hint. One of
| the colors is correct, so if you just put in all the shapes
| that are in front of each console, _one_ core starts
| spinning. That triggers you to understand that you 're part-
| way there but are missing something.
|
| It's nice when puzzle creators take the time to scaffold
| their puzzles.
| w-ll wrote:
| I had to come to the comments, i was looking for the hint,
| but the shape being the same drab blue made me miss it. i
| noticed the rings colors, but not the shape
| linuxguy2 wrote:
| Did you match colors too?
| simne wrote:
| I've tried few things, even written script to show all possible
| configurations.
|
| But once, I seen tetris style symbol on sector illuminated by
| red color.
|
| I remembered symbol and check consoles until found red console,
| and enter there shape....
| simne wrote:
| BTW just for fun, my perl script:
|
| perl -e 'for ($num = 0; $num <256; $num++) { $width = 8;
| printf("%*b\n", $width, $num) }'
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| It sounds like other people have gotten this to work. For me it
| just hangs on "Launching..."
| Oras wrote:
| That modem sound!
| lxe wrote:
| Very polished throughout. I wouldn't mind playing a full length
| puzzle adventure like this in the browser.
| ilvez wrote:
| Was playing in mobile and constantly wanted to zoom out, because
| the view was too narrow.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| Bug report:
|
| On iOS, I rotated to landscape and then portrait and it became
| permanently zoomed in. (even when I rotated back to landscape)
| guigui wrote:
| Thanks, we'll look into it.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Got me Von Braun flashbacks.
|
| 4k rendering is slow on the integrated Ryzen 3 machine. Any way
| to lower rendering resolution?
|
| Mobile FF just hangs after trying to load.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Great performance running on Android mobile!
|
| I'd legit pay 10$ for this, let it be an episodic adventure!
| nathell wrote:
| Where do I donate to the authors?
| timnetworks wrote:
| Runs right in a browser, Linux/Firefox. Game devs, take note!
| nharada wrote:
| Really awesome, well done!
| thelittleone wrote:
| Oh damn.. I played it out... got me invested in this guys
| soul.... and ready to hand over some $. Was engaging and fun.
| Super inspiring.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Sierra/Vivendi/Activision/Microsoft should revive the Space Quest
| brand and make something like this.
|
| Edit: also have you considered doing a how I made / tutorial
| series on youtube ?
| guigui wrote:
| We sure hope that game publishers/studios will find Equinox
| inspiring.
|
| We're working on some behind-the-scenes content that will most
| likely be published on X and LinkedIn. You can follow us if
| you're interested: https://twitter.com/glecollinet
| masterkram wrote:
| amazing, reminds me of the opening scene of jedi knights of the
| old republic.
| sonicrocketman wrote:
| I thought exactly the same thing.
| benreesman wrote:
| This thing runs hot shit on a generation-behind iPhone.
|
| That's tight code.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Every time I hit 'W' Firefox highlights the letter, meaning the
| help menu comes up.
| Perseids wrote:
| You probably have Find As You Type enabled?
| http://kb.mozillazine.org/Accessibility.typeaheadfind
|
| It's probably pretty rare nowadays, since it's off by default
| and rather hidden in the settings dialog ("Search for text when
| you start typing"). I had it activated up until (quite) a few
| years ago, and I think I switched it off, because of bad
| JavaScript interactions.
| mcoliver wrote:
| "if only your economy pod included an escape pod"
| lagt_t wrote:
| I'm surprised by the performance, I've seen lighter 3js projects
| slower than a powerpoint.
| todotask wrote:
| Adding a torch light would be helpful, especially if you work in
| these situations.
| devmor wrote:
| That was so fun and cool. I found myself wanting more. I would
| kill for a Myst-style game with this setting and feel.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Probably the most impressive browser-based game I've played in my
| 20+ years of being on the web. Hats off to the creators, very
| nicely done.
|
| Parts of it gave me Metroid Prime vibes that I haven't felt since
| I was a kid.
| franck wrote:
| Thanks a lot for your kind words! Metroid Prime wasn't a direct
| inspiration but it may certainly have had some influence on us,
| as we loved playing that game when we were younger.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I really want to keep playing. Well done! That was a lot of fun.
| TimCTRL wrote:
| How are y'all turning on the generator? I'm stuck.
| pmx wrote:
| The patterns
| qingcharles wrote:
| What patterns??
|
| Edit: I see them now. Tiny little embossed patterns on the
| round parts with the lights inside the generator.
| mikebrockman wrote:
| excellent job making an intuitive game map! I was nervous I was
| going to get lost looking around the ship
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Wow, what an amazing escape game!!!
| ed_mercer wrote:
| Alien Isolation flashbacks...
| not_a_dane wrote:
| good game :) I just initiated the warp system but had no time to
| play more.
| SamBam wrote:
| That was the end (as far as I can tell).
| yreg wrote:
| This is beautiful.
|
| I noticed something: The player character feels really tall to
| me. Or perhaps the doors are short? I subconsciously kept looking
| downward. I'm not a particularly tall person, but I don't
| remember feeling this way in a game before.
|
| Has anyone had a similar experience?
| franck wrote:
| Thanks! About the character height, it's set at 1.6m and all
| the environment is supposed to be at the right scale, but
| perhaps we made the doors a bit too short. We tried to convey a
| bit of claustrophobic feeling, especially in the lower level,
| as you would expect in this kind of spaceship.
| iamsanteri wrote:
| The craziest thing is that those AI assistants coming up early in
| this game don't feel so far off anymore...
| winnie_ua wrote:
| That's amazing!
|
| And it weights only 45 MiB! How did you achieve this? And most of
| it is sounds, what looks like.
|
| It's built with babylonjs?
| guigui wrote:
| Three.js.
|
| Why it weighs only 45mb: the 3D environment isn't that
| detailed, and we use Draco compression on the model files which
| has huge benefits in terms of file size. In addition, the art
| style requires few textures, and we use KTX2 compression. The
| audio files are indeed the largest assets.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| I really liked art style!
|
| Looks great with minimum textures :)
|
| Great job!
| simne wrote:
| Cool.
|
| I only could suggest, for hackers don't show hints of code shapes
| (for engine consoles), just make less buttons, so for example,
| just 64 possible variants, so real hacker could just find code by
| brute force.
|
| Other possible idea, sough harder to implement, to use rotating
| dials and issue some shake of screen when approach right number
| on some dial.
| chrisan wrote:
| manual brute force doesn't really sound like a fun way to
| "hack"
| winnie_ua wrote:
| That was a point, for player to notice code.
|
| Brut-forcing won't be fun.
|
| To be honest I didn't notice glyphs at first.
| arcastroe wrote:
| This is amazing. The movement is very similar to movements in VR
| worlds. Would be awesome to integrate with the VR web apis to
| play this on an oculus as well.
| franck wrote:
| Thanks. I guess a potential issue would be rendering the
| outlines because it's implemented with post-processing and I'm
| not sure how it would look in VR.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| With that art direction you can release game on Steam!
|
| There are some games made in JS with Electron.
|
| And I wish your team luck with your consultancy bussines and
| making interactive experiences.
|
| But I think you can achieve something in game dev as well!
| franck wrote:
| Much appreciated, thanks! Releasing a successful game on Steam
| would be amazing of course but it's not easy, to say the least.
| I hope we'll manage to do it some day!
| vendiddy wrote:
| Want to give this a try later but just wanted to say the artistic
| style is beautiful. Good work!
| aetherspawn wrote:
| Well done, the aesthetic is excellent.
| reimertz wrote:
| amazing work, I could not stop playing. I wish there was more
| after the warp.
| franck wrote:
| Thanks a lot. I wish there was more too, but we unfortunately
| had to keep the project's scope under control! Lots of puzzle
| ideas and content were cut.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| Only bug I've noticed -- you can move through doors before they
| fully opened. (using keyboard and mouse mode)
| Cockbrand wrote:
| This is a thing of great beauty, even on a phone. Congrats!
| yayitswei wrote:
| This is a hit, congrats on your success! My favorite part is
| sound and music design: the SFX and music mesh well, the
| transitions are seamless and intentional e.g. when the warp
| stalls there is also a breakdown on beat.
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