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Show HN: My Weekend Project - Multiplayer TicTacToe

20 points by idigit ↗ HN
Link: http://xoxo.cm

The idea here was to build a multiplayer game with the lowest possible barrier to entry to get started. That is, no registration, no game setup, as few steps as possible to actually start playing.

There's not much substance here right now and there's still a few bugs that need to be hammered out. I'm also thinking of expanding on the idea with some other simple games down the road. Any feedback or suggestions on the concept in general would be much appreciated.

24 comments

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ericlavigne
This application looks like it would make a very nice introductory example for asynchronous web programming. Is the source code available?
vyrotek
(edit - ok site is back up)

Looks cool. I definitely think it needs a random match-up feature.

I wonder if this will help my game :) http://xkcd.com/832/

idigit
Yeah, it's being sort of intense on my server. Trying to fix it. Let us know your share URL when you can get through.
vyrotek
http://xoxo.cm/ed5e5 Got it!

edit - Ok maybe it doesn't quite need a random match-up feature. The fact that I'm playing 4 games at once is pretty fun... and crazy.

idigit
for making this game I'm not doing so great in tictactoe against fellow HNers :(
vyrotek
Do other players get notified if I quit in the middle of a match? I had multiple games going on (very cool) but I hope quitting didn't leave them hanging.
idigit
At its current state, your box will just get removed from their game, so they should be aware.
kunday
Is the domain down? It is not getting resolved.
idigit
The servers getting hit a fair bit - working on it.
rick_2047
I think the site has been HNed (or whatever is the HN equivalent of slashdoted).
idigit
I'm adding another node - just rebuilding the disc. It will be back momentarily. Sorry!

Edit: Site's back - should be all good now.

daakus
Unnecessary plug: I wrote a ridiculously simple version using node and socket.io to get a feel for this too: https://github.com/nshah/tictactoe -- it only has random matchup mode. It's running here: http://tictactoe.daaku.org:9999/
ericlavigne
Nice work.

After waiting 10 minutes for an opponent, I opened a second tab and played against myself. Until your application becomes immensely popular, and this issue goes away, it would be nice to have an estimate of wait time.

Just keep track of recent "new opponent" events (keeping times of the most recent 10 events is sufficient) such as new visitor arriving, game ending, or server starting up (the last one just handles the edge case when you are the first player to load the application). Time elapsed since the earliest event (including only the 10 most recent events) divided by the number of events (again, this is at most 10) yields a reasonable estimate of wait time.

Alternatively, you could pair someone with a computer player if they've been waiting for more than a minute. https://github.com/ericlavigne/tic-tac-toe/blob/master/src/t...