Yeah, strange to name it identical to the somewhat obscure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinc_(protocol) when they had a free choice of any first letter. I'd have gone with zinc ( short for Zinc Is Not Catan), which is at least a word.
Reminds me of the time that guy named his online bookstore after a rainforest in South America. Or was it named after a river? Maybe a tribe of people? I can't remember.
I'm all for a good naming conflict, but no one is mistaking a board game for a networking protocol.
I feel everyone always finds something to complain about a name. Let's examine the *INC name space.
A, E, I, U, X - don't really work
Binc - why did you name it identically to a book foundation?
C, K - you dirty old boy, you!
Dinc - dual income no children, huh?
Finc - how contemptible!
Ginc - taken
Hinc - not bad, although urban dictionary tells me it's Latin slang for lesbian, so some language major or 1600 year old European is going to might raise a red flag here
Jinc - there's a website, it looks important
Linc - this name space is so crowded already!
Minc - just some USDA thing, not too bad
Ninc - another book thing, eh?
Oinc - lol, I kind of like it. Too bad Catan doesn't have bacon.
P, R, S - all crowded
Vinc - actually pretty well open here
Winc - do you want to compete with the Internet's #1 way to wine? Maybe they should join forces? Nah, Catan is more of a beer game.
Yinc - there's stuff here, but not too shabby
Zinc - as you pointed out, it's a thing already, which is the same logic you used against tinc
Point being, naming is hard, and nothing is unique, and it doesn't really help anyone to complain about names unless there's a really valid conflict, like, say, they came out with a new network protocol and named it tync or invented some new miracle element named zink and there's actual room for confusion.
I’m currently building a web version of a board game (Scoville, super fun) with a friend. We decided to use bordgame.io as it handles most of the multiplayer state transitions and has a pretty impressive selection of games done with it (https://github.com/philihp/fields-of-arle, https://github.com/hwabis/forbidden-desert, https://github.com/mbrinkl/santorini). A lot of board games have some sort of web version as AFAIK copyright doesn’t extend to the rules and systems, just the names and art (we called ours “Capsaicin” to be cute). Maybe there’s a greater thought about the effectiveness of building and prototyping something that can be constructed from paper and mediated by humans, and only introducing computers once a design is more or less finalized.
Why not on boardgamearena? They already have a developer program where licenses are made available by developers and there's tens of thousands of users.
BGA doesn’t have all the licenses and you have to get approval before you can work on a game (they might have changed this since), and the BGA framework is an ancient mix of no-framework PHP with ExtJS.
Much easier to just submit to freeboardgames.io or host your own instance.
With firefox's market share of about 10%, the "we don't support firefox" message is basically announcing "our website is useless to 1 in 10 people". Very frustrating.
10%? All the statistics
I've seen recently put firefox bellow 5% and often well bellow like 3-4%. Given that is less common than colorblindness, colorblindness is not all that well handled on the web, and not handling a disability is an actual legal liability..
But then you wouldn't post your product in the "vision impaired community forums" for example. I'd be curious to see the actual stats, but HN surely has a high percentage of Firefox users compared with the general tech-naive population.
This isn't a "show HN" so most likely the author is not the poster. HN is also probably more color blind than average, so the poster should have checked multiple browsers and then the palettes before finding it interesting enough to post?
I get the idea that it would be nice if the web were different, but I think that is a personal responsibility to choose for yourself or try to address yourself by submitting a PR that makes the repo better.
It really isn’t for most websites. There are a handful of APIs to be careful about but a mainstream website shouldn’t take much time at all. I do most of my development in Firefox and most of the time it works unmodified in Chrome and Safari. Mobile browsers can be trickier but most of that is adjusting for the form factor rather than the browser.
Don't be sad, it doesn't seem to work on Chrome either :)
To the authors: Personally I wouldn't put too much effort into cross-browser compatibility early on for the sake of satisfying the users of niche software, but ... almost all modern DOM features are available cross-browser/platform these days and it will likely save you a lot of effort further on down the road dealing with deprecated APIs and other headaches to use it as a smoke test for code quality.
Frustrating as it may be, depending on the meaning behind "originally built as an intro to SWE project" I get why it really just works on Chrome. If they just pushed it up after that project so people could see, whatever. If they really want people to use it, a bit frustrating.
Let's assume that this project merely clones the game mechanics and uses scans of its artwork, and all it does is providing a software version of the game, available at no cost.
With those assumptions in mind, would it be OK from a legal/copyright POV to release such an adaptation to the general public?
Nooo, I was having so much fun playing with player whack and at one point about 80% on the way through it just disconnected. Awful bug for me, but also congratulations on making a great not Catan! It really had me involved.
35 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 82.6 ms ] threadBrick Really Isn't Catan, K?
I'm all for a good naming conflict, but no one is mistaking a board game for a networking protocol.
I feel everyone always finds something to complain about a name. Let's examine the *INC name space.
A, E, I, U, X - don't really work
Binc - why did you name it identically to a book foundation?
C, K - you dirty old boy, you!
Dinc - dual income no children, huh?
Finc - how contemptible!
Ginc - taken
Hinc - not bad, although urban dictionary tells me it's Latin slang for lesbian, so some language major or 1600 year old European is going to might raise a red flag here
Jinc - there's a website, it looks important
Linc - this name space is so crowded already!
Minc - just some USDA thing, not too bad
Ninc - another book thing, eh?
Oinc - lol, I kind of like it. Too bad Catan doesn't have bacon.
P, R, S - all crowded
Vinc - actually pretty well open here
Winc - do you want to compete with the Internet's #1 way to wine? Maybe they should join forces? Nah, Catan is more of a beer game.
Yinc - there's stuff here, but not too shabby
Zinc - as you pointed out, it's a thing already, which is the same logic you used against tinc
Point being, naming is hard, and nothing is unique, and it doesn't really help anyone to complain about names unless there's a really valid conflict, like, say, they came out with a new network protocol and named it tync or invented some new miracle element named zink and there's actual room for confusion.
Winsoc Is Not Settlers of Catan.
That way you throwback both to the old name of the game AND the old internet thing, but spelled different.
Eh, maybe I'm salty because I use the everliving heck out of Tinc-the-vpn-thing. :)
Much easier to just submit to freeboardgames.io or host your own instance.
PLEASE don't do this. PLEASE.
I get the idea that it would be nice if the web were different, but I think that is a personal responsibility to choose for yourself or try to address yourself by submitting a PR that makes the repo better.
But I understand that ironing out all the issues on all browsers is very resource demanding...
There's no need for the "go use X browser right now" messages unless you're taking advantage of some bleeding edge API that only exists in one place.
To the authors: Personally I wouldn't put too much effort into cross-browser compatibility early on for the sake of satisfying the users of niche software, but ... almost all modern DOM features are available cross-browser/platform these days and it will likely save you a lot of effort further on down the road dealing with deprecated APIs and other headaches to use it as a smoke test for code quality.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinc_(protocol)
Oof
I'm only one data point, but when I visit a site and see that, I immediately close it and move on.
With those assumptions in mind, would it be OK from a legal/copyright POV to release such an adaptation to the general public?