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Plink, a multiplayer HTML5 music game
- rshm 15y agoInstant addiction.
- dekz 15y agoThis is incredibly fun. When others joined and started making music together it immediately brought a smile to my face. The greatest part about is the music created isn't terrible.
- kgen 15y agoSecond this comment, the real time feedback that you get and the realization that you aren't making something that doesn't completely sound like crap makes this surprisingly more fun than I thought it would be.
- larelli 15y agoTo me it sounds as if the reason for the music not sounding like total crap is, that the author uses pentatonic scales, which are also used in improvisations. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale)
- Goladus 15y agoI agree, I noticed that almost immediately. Also, the rhythms are quantized and the tempo is fixed. It's still a very cool demo, though.
- kevingadd 15y agoIs the Web Audio API actually part of HTML5? It looks like it's still just a proposal that only works in Chrome. :( Very cool demo though. Feels smooth.
- starwed 15y agoI think it's just a chrome proposal right now. Firefox also has an implemented proposal. Not sure if one or the other has any particular advantages? https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API
- overshard 15y agoThis is amazing. Even with a bunch of random people doing random things the music still sounds great!
- LukeFitz 15y agoAm I the only person this isn't working for right now? It loads, I enter a username and then it tells me I've been idle too long. I guess the servers may be overloaded due to HN?
- sepent 15y agoI have the same problem...
- kentnguyen 15y agoHow do you solve this?
- sepent 15y agoI used a proxy server in US and it works now.
- tricolon 15y agoI could play this forever.
- giberson 15y agoLove it. Needs one feature pronto. Channel mode, so me and my friends can jam out together in a private room.
- illdave 15y agoReally really impressive - surprisingly fun.
- Raphael 15y agoIt felt out of sync. I could move up and down, and clicking made the circles solid, and there were some other players, and some sounds. I suppose moving up and down and clicking changes the sound, but I'm not sure how.
- icandoitbetter 15y agoThis is amazing, and not only as a demo of the API. I was waiting for a uniform raw audio standard to be implemented by all browsers, but after this I'm motivated to start playing around now. There are so many interesting possibilities for musical improvisation interfaces.
- zantzinger 15y agoI wonder whether, if there were all 12 tones on the Western 12-tone scale, it be more cacophonous. Somehow, with two octaves of only white notes, as it were, and the tendency of users to move about constantly (because it looks pretty and you get the exciting perceptual feedback of changing the sounds), most of it doesn't sound bad. Great idea.
- gb 15y agoPretty sure this the pentatonic scale actually - so all black notes. It almost certainly woule be more cacophonous even if it was just all white notes, never mind the full scale.
- superkinz 15y agoI love it. I'm musically challenged but feel like I can actually make reasonably not-horrible music. And it's like a video game. Love it!
- DillonF 15y agoVery cool. This reminds me a lot of playing around on a korg kaossilator, a very nifty toy with an xy pad where you can pick a scale, bpm and an "instrument" and jam away without worrying about hitting wrong notes.
- peterhajas 15y agoJust played this for 5 minutes. Absolutely fantastic! I had a riot, and seemed to play some music with other people. Really cool!
- balac 15y agoThis is surprisingly addictive and the music actually sounds cool too. It would be nice to hit notes without sliding though.
- carterdea 15y agoSuper fun. I'd like to see some keyboard suport, like up and down arrow keys and space bar to play a note.
- zantzinger 15y agoAnd maybe keyboard support for 'notes' - every letter on the keyboard assigned to ABCDEFG and the black notes in between. Then you could, say, plug in a written text and see what happens.
- 9999 15y ago"Oops! Your browser doesn't support Web Audio." Meanwhile, Adobe just announced that the Unreal Engine runs in Flash Player 11. That's AAA quality 3d gaming in the browser (and not just Chrome). I am so bored with "HTML 5" game (that aren't even HTML 5 official spec) announcements getting such a ridiculous amount of play. Imagine if someone went out to E3 in 2011 and announced that they just came up with this crazy TV game concept called Pong, but it only works on Magnavox TVs. Absolutely no one would care.
- dbattaglia 15y agoin the main JS file, you can see an error thrown creating the main audio-context object triggers that message: audioContext = new webkitAudioContext(); IIRC, Firefox has their own mozXxx versions of these audio APIs. I guess both will be updated to standard names (ex: AudioContext) once everyone is on board.
- ugh 15y agoMeh. As if that matters. It’s not really a common use case and I don’t see it becoming one. Flash will die and then rot in its niche.
- tete 15y agoThe Quake Engine has been running inside browsers for ages. Also if you speak about portability. Flash really isn't very portable when you compare it with the platforms supported by Webkit. Flash has always been a huge mess when it comes to this. Webkit and Gecko are pretty much up to date, but many people hardcode browser checks instead of just asking whether the browser supports certain stuff. I think that's the biggest problem - well, besides the market share of outdated IE versions of course.
- zobzu 15y agoWhat portability. I mean, Web Audio API is supported by only Chrome and Safari (so that's not "webkit". Sure Flash ain't better. But hey! None of this is standardized. And why should Gecko support Web Audio API? You see, they got Web Audio Data instead. Not compatible of course. None are standard. So flash does beat them and HTML5 on that very topic.
- forkrulassail 15y agoUnfortunately doesn't allow my Chromium-browser
- tete 15y agoSame for my Firefox Aurora, even though I think it supports the Web Audio API (not sure, though if it's really up to date).
- melling 15y agoI run the Firefox Nightly and it doesn't support Web Audio either. Shouldn't that be happening soon?
- asadotzler 15y agoFirefox was the first with a Web Audio API. Google has an alternate API. Neither one is a standard. Both are great ground for experimentation though.
- zobzu 15y agoGoogle named his one Web Audio API and Mozilla named is one Audio Data API. Mozilla's Audio Data API is available since FF4. Web Audio API has been enabled in Chrome 13 or 14, before it was off by default. Probably appeared shortly after FF4 (?) Such non-standardization sucks balls if you ask me. These guys should make HTML5 standards and stick to it. Not make the standard evolve every NEXT day saying "oh look its what HTML5 is now!" That's absolutely non-standard and annoying as hell.
- sepent 15y agoDoesn't work in Chromium 13, but works in Chromium 14.
- zerostar07 15y agoI am hooked! Who was i playing with? Need keyboard shortcuts. Sometimes there are too many guys playing (sorry guys, some of you suck :P), have separate rooms.
- dn11 15y agoPretty cool. A time-quantised version would probably have the potential to sound better though, as the latency makes it difficult to get any kind of rhythm going in this version.
- hamidnazari 15y agoThis is really nice. Well done. It'd be great if you could create your own private games and invite your friends over.
- utunga 15y agoseriously the coolest thing ive seen in ages - had a really great time jamming out with a bunch of strangers just like that ... awesome effort
- danparsonson 15y agoCame here to say exactly that; so much fun :-)
- shocks 15y agoHey, I'm a pianist and I have a few ideas you might consider. 1. Let me pick the colour with the numbers 1-9. 2. Let me play notes with the keyboard. (I'm not sure the best way to assign the keys, but I'm sure you can come up with something). 3. Let me play chords. That would be awesome. Great work so far!
- zerostar07 15y agoSounds like you are asking for the ultimate band-roulette :)
- shocks 15y agoWell now that you mention it... Haha! :) Actually I was thinking, and perhaps adding to many features would make it harder to be musical without any previous experience.
- mitjak 15y agoI can't stress #2 enough: it's extremely difficult to do any complex playing without keyboard mapping. Try doing a disco hihat, a tom roll, or a repeating bassline pattern.
- nolok 15y agoThis is the kind of things I could lose days to. Well done.
- jamesrom 15y agoWhoa. That was heaps of fun!
- Inversechi 15y agoThis is awesome :)
- damncabbage 15y agoWow, this is amazing. I completely ignored HTML5 audio after a couple of abortive attempts at using it to make something for an iPhone web toy, but seems to show it's not quite as terrible anymore.
- jmettes 15y agoI think it's really clever how the game makes it very difficult to NOT sound good! The timing of the notes seems to snap to the tempo exactly (e.g., there's a delay when you hit a note too early) and the limited scale of notes all sound good together. I've played a few HTML5/Flash music games lately, and all of them give enough flexibility with sounds to easily become messy when played with multiple players (especially with trolls!). This game makes the player feel like they're good at music. Great work!
- aab1d 15y ago+1 creating a game that involves collaborating with strangers and creating music could be tedious. This overcomes that handicap pretty well. I love the concept, great work!
- c16 15y agoSeriously good fun! Wasted too much of my time today playing on it when I should have been working. Thanks :-)
- pedrocarvalho 15y agoWow, really cool. Great fun
- arc_of_descent 15y agoVery nice. It took me a moment to realize there were other users who were creating sound too!
- dts 15y agoFantastic! Great use of web sockets and though there was some obvious latency (unavoidable) it did not at all deter from having a great time. I love that all the sounds in the set work together well and you could take this in a million directions.
- noduerme 15y agoWhile it's very cool, it's worth pointing out that the idea is derivative of a Unity-based game called "Planck" (as in Max, size, etc) that's been in development for quite awhile. See: http://www.shadegrowngames.com/ http://www.shadegrowngames.com/ It's hard to believe the authors of Plink aren't aware of Planck...
- adam-a 15y agoWhilst Planck looks very cool (extremely cool), it is a bit of a stretch to say that Plink is a rip off of it. They both have generated music in them, but I can't see much similarity beyond that.
- noduerme 15y agoI didn't mean to say it's a rip off. It's different enough, and plus it's cool. I'm just speculating that the Plink coders must know about it. I got to play with the Planck alpha, and Plink "feels" similar in certain ways. The way the notes are displayed as ripples, the way motion across the play area triggers notes on a scale with different instruments (which in Planck are "weapons"), and the way the notes are quantized. In Planck, the notes/loops happen when you hit something you're shooting at, but the point isn't so much to hit things as it is to create rhythmic loops between the gameplay and the music you're generating. It makes some interesting compromises to keep the music on tempo and still give the sense of hitting the targets instantly. Really, I just wanted to know if the Plink guys had heard of it.
- dbattaglia 15y agoVery nice! Funny, I've been spending this last week (off from work) working on an Audio API/Node.js multi-user drum machine. So it's very cool for me to see another similar idea pop up at this point. As a long-time software synth/VST/music guy, I can't wait for the browsers to catch up on audio as fast as they are visual APIs.
- paraschopra 15y agoThis is seriously fun. LOVED it! Thanks for making it
- tristanperry 15y agoPretty awesome! I just played for a couple of minutes (well, that was the original aim - it turned into 6-7 minutes all-too-quickly!)
- paul9290 15y agoI enjoyed creating a song with it (lyrics/melody), but I didnt understand the gaming mechanics.
- paul9290 15y agoInteresting one of your clients created a drunk alarm clock app itunes.apple.com/se/app/fyllekameran/ . Not sure how it works? Do you you record a video when your drunk and that's what wakes you or is it your friend's creating drunk wake up greetings that are your alarm sound?
- superkinz 15y agoThis needs to be an iPad app ASAP. When can we get it?
- apitaru 15y agoHaving been through the Director, Flash and now HTML5 fads, I dream of a day when this title would suffice on HN: "Plink, a multiplayer music game" This is just to say - I enjoyed Plink very much and would have just the same regardless of the technology.
- mcferrin 15y agoLove it!!!
- jQueryIsAwesome 15y agoThere is a photo of the guys of dinahmoe next to the definition of awesome. Seriously, and i just had an overflow of ideas about online music creation.
- city41 15y agoThis is so great, that I really hope it catches on so I can go and jam out with others whenever I want. I spread this site as far as my little network will go. Awesome job!
- thepumpkin1979 15y agoAwesome... is Google Chrome the only browser with this API level?
- mahcode 15y agoAddictingly amazing!! Is there I way to record my jam session?
- giberson 15y agoI've wanted to dabble in a few audio experiments myself, however I keep coming up short trying to find single sample tones for all the notes on a scale. Not sure exactly what to search for. Any tips for good source material?
- kunley 15y agoI was delighted to see how people automagically give others a chance to try other instruments and switch with some kind of intuition. Also the most pleasure gave me an idea of playing a bass for a while and watching others improvise.