8 ms·
Show HN: Word Wars- HTML5 real time word game
- farhadabas 14y agoA couple of weeks ago, my friends and I built a word game during a hackathon and got a great reception from people who played it. Previous HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3750068 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3750068 My friends have cleaned up a lot of the UI and the code, and have published it under a new name. It uses now.js in the backend, and is all html5/js. Let me know what you think! The game works well on mobile devices too. iPad has the best experience :)
- nosecreek 14y agoGood work. You fixed my biggest complaint with the last version (not disabling default backspace behaviour). The "Or just use your name" option is something I really appreciate. I almost left when I didn't see it at first, so you may want to consider making it a little more obvious.
- austinhallock 14y agoThanks! Yeah we made sure to tackle (I think) all the complaints of the previous version. I just tweaked the font of the "Or just use your name" to be less gray, hopefully that makes it stand out a bit more.
- zainny 14y agoCool game. FYI, when you visit the site using IE9 it just remains stuck at "Loading".
- austinhallock 14y agoFixed! I actually made the fix a few hours ago, but forgot to transfer to where the live game is :/ Thanks for pointing it out!
- farhadabas 14y agoWere you able to play on other browsers? We have been told that happens on some Android devices as well. We are looking into it right :/ Thanks for pointing it out!
- farhadabas 14y agoNvm it should be fixed now :)
- Jun8 14y agoJust sunk about 30 mins into this. NYT Magazine last Sunday had an article (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-farmville-and-other-hyperaddictive-stupid-games.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-farmv...) about "stupid games" that are highly addictive. Case in point.
- lostgame 14y agoReally super buggy...using Chrome on Mac 10.7...letters get stuck all the time, sometimes keys don't register...needs work, but looks like an addictive concept, if I could make it through one round without it misregistering my keystrokes...
- austinhallock 14y agoCould you clarify what you mean by letters getting stuck?
- bmelton 14y agoFor what it's worth, I'm using Chrome on OS 10.7 and it works flawlessly. He might be unaware that letters need to be inline. I ran into that at first when I thought I could use any of the letters on the board whether they were adjacent or not. Once I learned the mechanics, it stopped 'acting buggy'.
- skadamat 14y agoDamn, this game is a ton of fun!
- farhadabas 14y agoThanks! Please let us know if there is any way we can improve it.
- skadamat 14y agoImpossible, the game is perfect
- kaybe 14y agoThe English language really has a delightful amount of three-letter words. I don't know all of them, but guessing gives me a high chance it actually exists. One issue: Sometimes I want to start with some letter, but the game only marks the second letter, rendering the selection incorrect. Might be due to my computer being busy with some simulations though.
- farhadabas 14y agoCould you please clarify on that issue? So it ignores the first letter and just skips to the second one? Thanks for playing the game!
- kaybe 14y agoBasically yes. It feels like lag. I click on the first letter and drag, but only a later letter (not neccessarily the first, sometimes also the second) gets highlighted. The simulation has ended now, so apparently it wasn't due to my CPU being maxed out.
- austinhallock 14y agoIf you're typing and hit the enter key it should start fresh so the first letter will be accepted. I think what's happening is you're typing in a few letters of one word, then moving on to the next word with a new letter that's not adjacent to the previous ones. Typing a letter that's not adjacent causes the word to fail, and that letter won't be part of the next word. So if we had a 3x3 board A B C D E F G H I And I typed ABC GHI, it would only count HI since G was part of the failing word ABCG. This is how it's supposed to work, but it can get a little trippy some times. If what I explained is not what's happening, and it's just not picking up the first letter in a normal case, let me know!
- austinhallock 14y agoIt didn't keep my formatting for the letters, but you can imagine a 3x3 board with those letters ;)
- 14y ago
- praxeologist 14y agoI tried clicking on top words or something in the leaderboard and it just went to a new game (Win/FF).
- austinhallock 14y agoNew games start 10 seconds after the leaderboard first shows and we pretty much have to hide the leaderboard right then and there. Since it's all real-time against the world, every game runs at the same time, so there's no real choosing when to start a new one.
- kaybe 14y agoIt would be great if I could look at the board for some more time and maybe choose to skip a game.
- austinhallock 14y agoI added an option to keep the leaderboard window open.
- MitziMoto 14y agoLove it! Super addicting. My only complaint with these types of games is that I always feel like people are cheating. But at least it makes me feel better about how bad I am at these word games ;)
- austinhallock 14y agoGlad you like it! We're doing our best to prevent cheating, but it's certainly not impossible to cheat. If it becomes a problem we'll definitely address it. As for the current scores, I don't believe they are cheating. I've been able to get 310 after playing quite a bit, and I certainly know there are people out there better than me.
- herdrick 14y agoWhat does "We see you haven't installed Word Wars" mean? How is a web app 'installed'?
- austinhallock 14y agoBy installed, it just means it's added to your 'library' on clay.io. That way once we have more than 3 games, it will be easy to find the games you have played before and like.
- johns 14y agoAs a Scramble with Friends addict this is clearly up my ally. I actually find the mouse to be faster because the keyboard is too unpredictable and it's too disruptive to completing a word. There must be something there since I was consistently getting the top score.
- aidenn0 14y agoMy score quadrupled when I switched to keyboard. But I see the word, then type it (at ~80wpm)
- BrotherErryn 14y agoVery nicely done! Polish up the UI and you this could be a real winner...the game play really works (and that's what really matters). Makes me think again about updating my game, the original Word Wars (http://www.impulsedriven.com/ww http://www.impulsedriven.com/ww) to the web... I'd really be interested to hear how the dictionary parser was done.
- sodafountan 14y agoThis is awesome and really pretty addictive. Although I was able to type and drag the cursor around randomly and pick up little words like 'pe' or 'th' it almost seemed like a stupid exploit. And another thing is the after game stats are really pretty interesting, if there was a way to view them longer than ten seconds that would be great!
- austinhallock 14y agoI added it to my todo list to have an option to keep the leaderboard open until you hit close, rather than closing automatically.
- austinhallock 14y agoI added an option to keep the leaderboard window open.
- Mutinix 14y agoGreat game! Although there was a problem with the leaderboard. A couple of times the leaderboard showed up only for a fraction of a second and then disappeared. I'm assuming it took too long to load and by that time the next round started.
- 44Aman 14y agoUsing FF 9 here, and I'm stuck on the loading/waiting for next round page :(
- f137 14y agoDoes it drops high scores fron the leaderboard? I've got 155, and then it is replaced by 147
- kaybe 14y agoI have the impression that it allows quite a lot of spanish. No german, no french, but spanish. Interesting. Where do you get the words from?