as an active osm contributor and community member and io games enjoyer i love this.
if the author is readin this by any chance pretty please improve the attribution placement, projects like this are whats bringin interested people in to help us build a better open map for everyone <3
It keeps saying "Your connection dropped. Let’s get you back out there." after a few seconds, then returns me to my spawn point. I don't see any bad HTTP status codes in the network tab
Can you make it a little more resilient on Wifi + 4G? I would really like to try this, it seems fun
Also, incorporating elevation data would also be really cool
Real people, no bots :) If you join with the default option, you're dropped near where other players are already fighting, so you'll usually find company
Nice! Are tanks spawned at the last picked location? I picked my hometown as I wanted to demolish a friend's house, and I was surprised to find 2 tanks there (it's a random small city in Europe).
I also have the bug where it keeps respawning me to the starting point after ~30 seconds
Fun idea but horribly laggy. Just driving down a street and I would get bounced back constantly and make very little progress. Ping was showing up as much as 5000ms
Just me or is this a bit cynical? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the gameplay is fun and everything. Just the concept makes me really uneasy, especially as I have a friend who's house was destroyed recently in war...
I'm really sorry about your friend's home. I never meant it that way. It started as just a 3D map that you could drive around. Then I added collisions, then a tank, and it grew into a game from there. None of it came from anything in real life. But I understand why it feels uneasy when war is real for people you know.
As someone who was personally a victim of a violate car accident when very young, causing permanent facial scarring; I give everyone permission to play GTA, Wreckfest and Burnout 3.
I would hope my friends would never use me to say otherwise.
I'm surprised by the comments defending this, I also think it's in poor taste. I wouldn't say cynical, in my opinion it's worse than that, it's too real.
This kind of outrage takes away from things that are actually distasteful and cynical. Conflating unproblematic things with actual harmful things is a you problem. Policing tone, while people are actually dying out there, is more cynical that this game. The only outcome here is there you guys feel better about yourself.
I don't think that quite makes sense. Sometimes it's useful to point out/shame unsettling things that happen in society, even if it doesn't directly cause harm.
Having a negative opinion is not policing. If you want to spend your free time simulating destruction, that is really your thing. It's common entertainment. It doesn't mean others can't share a different perspective on it.
Fun is very much allowed. But people are also allowed to question if one person’s fun is another person’s pain.
Like, if a bunch of kids caught a stray cat, tied him up, and started shouting in his ears and laughing, would you stop them? And if they complained “no fun allowed”, would you think that was fair? What about if there was a video game in which you beat to a pulp a deepfake representation of your partner? Do you not agree it would be reasonable for some people to find that in bad taste, especially those who have suffered from domestic violence in real life?
You may say that this is just a game, but media affects people too. There are thousands of games where you can shoot at fictional infrastructure, is there really that much to gain from destroying representations of real buildings?
Your premise makes no sense. We’re talking about a top down tank game where the buildings don’t even resemble their real life counterparts here.
If you’re offended by this, maybe you should just not engage with it. Why does the onus fall on the creator?
Take a look at Battlefield. Should we take that down because it simulates war? Maybe we should remove guns from ever appearing in media because people have died from guns. Should we remove color from media because it may be insensitive to the colorblind? Why don’t we just remove all words everywhere because someone has had their feelings hurt by words. Where do we draw the line?
I’m not offended by it. I am in fact very politely and cordially inviting the commenter above to consider a different perspective, and my approach to this subject in this entire thread has been one of compassion and curiosity, which is easily verifiable. I recommend doing that before launching on tirades of bad faith argumentation.
It’s been my observation that people who accuse others of being offended are themselves the most easily offended. Very much like the people who call others “snowflakes” have the thinnest skins themselves.
> maybe you should just not engage with it.
Despite it not being my case, those who are offended can and should very much still engage. Suggesting otherwise is nonsensical and a tool of those who promote hate. There is no societal progress if those who see something wrong do not speak up.
> (…) Should we take that down because it simulates war? (…)
I said in my comment that we already have thousands of games like that. I didn’t say that was bad. You are arguing in profound bad faith and are not even doing a good job of hiding your repeated straw men. I recommend you learn to engage with the arguments, instead of making up new ones in your head and fighting those.
Sorry but I am genuinely bewildered by what you are writing. I urge you to take a step back and compare your tone and argumentation to that of the other commenter involved. Clearly your parent argument is blatant slippery slope argumentation and besides any point that anyone was making here. If you are too ideologically blinded to attempt to see concerns others are trying to express, even if still in a pre-articaulated manner, then please don't pretend like you have a meaningful contribution. We have enough bots in the internet spewing empty words as it is. Saying 'premise' in every comment does not make you smarter btw, just lazy.
You completely misunderstood. I meant that media affects people emotionally. Have you ever seen a person cry watching a movie? Have you ever seen someone say “this story speaks to me on a personal level”? Have you ever seen someone say “I couldn’t finish the show, it reminded me too much of my own father and his struggle with the same disease”? That’s what I meant, not “booga booga, fear mongering”.
God damn, why must HN always assume the worst? Engage in good faith for once, stop assuming every argument is made by an imbecile and that you understand everything and are the lord of reason.
Thank you for putting it elegantly, I think that was also was unsettles me. Not "media causes X" but rather how it can latch on to conceptual and emotional systems. Not saying it is a problem or should be forbidden, just calling into question what kind of meaning we are reinforcing.
> Like, if a bunch of kids caught a stray cat, tied him up, and started shouting in his ears and laughing, would you stop them? And if they complained “no fun allowed”, would you think that was fair?
You are talking about directly harming another living creature who cannot fight back.
> What about if there was a video game in which you beat to a pulp deepfake representations of your friends and family?
You are talking about "harming" a collection of north and south facing flips on a disk, a few ones and zeros in a RAM chip. Hell, we used to actually make Quake characters with our real faces on back in the day so you really could blast your real-life friends and family to pieces.
> You are talking about "harming" a collection of north and south facing flips on a disk
No, you missed the point. It has nothing to do with the entities in the game, it’s about the player outside of it. Look, it’s all well and good to blast your friends in a game and call each other rude names and whatnot, have fun! But you understand that’s OK because you have consent, right?
Here’s a story for you. I have omitted unnecessary details because outing anyone isn’t the point. There was a guy who played a certain competitive game. He was a good person, but he had the habit of describing a big game loss as a “rape”. He wasn’t trying to be malicious, he described himself as having been raped too when he lost big. But he threw it around too casually, and one day he played against a rape victim. Now, can you put yourself in the other person’s shoes and understand how having a traumatic experience thrown back at you casually can make you feel? And even if you believe it wouldn’t bother you personally, can we agree that everyone is different and that we shouldn’t ignore how they feel their pain? That there are little things we can all do to make other people be comfortable, and in turn they may do the same for us?
That’s all I’m saying, that we should practice some empathy. I’m not even saying this game shouldn’t exist, I’m only asking that we recognise that it may affect some people in major ways most of us on this website can’t possibly understand (and we should be thankful for it, not derisive) and that we should take that into account. In short, remember other people exist and share the planet with you, and try to not be a dick to them.
It's quite a leap from using the word "rape" in that context, which no-one in their right mind would think is acceptable, to thinking that maybe possibly somebody somewhere could possibly be offended by a game that they might or might not have seen where you blow up cardboard box-like structures on a map.
Do you also believe that "cultural appropriation" is a thing? On a scale of 1 to Taylor Swift how white and suburban middle-class are you?
if my playing a game hurts someonec it's not my problem. If The game were targeted directly at them i'd understand. But this "nobody should ever do anything because someone, somewhere, has had a bad experience that was vaguely related" just does not make sense
If it makes you feel any better tanks are almost useless now in modern war.
They can't at all compete with some off the shelf kids toy costing $30 with a HEAT round attached. The cost differential here with a 35 million euro tank is beyond pale.
You're on HN, where people celebrate YC companies that in "defense". The majority of people in our networks would bomb a house if it completed their next round. Let's not pretend that we're surprised people defend this.
It's been jarring to see just how thin morality in engineering was all along. Turns out it's mostly downstream of whatever level of morality doesn't get VCs uninvited from cocktail parties.
It's art, it's supposed to make you feel uneasy. If this wakes you up by making a faraway concept suddenly seem real to you - I'd say the artist did a very good job.
If your friend would be willing to share their thoughts, I’m interested in learning. Of course, if they don’t want to share or you think it would be disrespectful to even ask, don’t. I’m just thinking the perspective of such people should not be ignored.
I think it's rather poor taste to code something like this. Usually when buildings or other things are destroyed in movies or even a game, it's to tell some kind of story. In a way telling the story brings the justification because the destruction in the story is usually counterbalanced by someone trying to stop it, which brings the story to the level of good being done.
This is just wanton destruction and has nothing good in it.
I mean, technically, Blast Corps had a story (you needed to pave the way for a runaway nuclear missle to not crash and explode or something), but then you'd get medals for thoroughly destroying everything anyway, because really it was about knocking down buildings and the "story" was a silly pretense. And it was great.
Rampage and its sequels were pretty much also just "destroy buildings, the game," and also great.
My kids enjoy building with tiles and then knocking it down.
Counterpoint - the whole point of the arcade game Rampage was to have a big monster punch lumps out of buildings and helicopters, and just destroy as much stuff as possible, and everyone played the absolute shit out of that.
I wouldn't say so, since shooting at mini tanks and buildings that look like cardboard on a gray street map doesn't seem connected to real events.
That said, I did not find the game fun. It was laggy, UI elements seemed a bit sloppy and cut off, and the purpose of buttons wasn't very clear. Also, I saw mostly brown tiles rather than buildings, maybe it was already all destroyed.
Thanks for the honest feedback. The lag was the server struggling with today's crowd, and I've shipped fixes for it over the last hour. The brown tiles are rubble from earlier players. Pick a city further away and you'll find it untouched.
I think it’s the particular design choice of leaving emoji on the rubble you destroyed, with options like a skull, fire and so on.
The Call of Duty series gives a much more detailed view of the battlefield, with a lot more blood, and it doesn’t get a reputation for being cynical because it doesn’t force your hand with a choice that feels like mockery of the situation. This game’s emoji defaults slightly do, whether it was intentional or not.
It has been probably 15 years since I've played a Call of Duty game, but I don't remember the games necessarily glorifying war. Especially World at War I feel was trying to convey how horrific it really is. There is a difference between writing a story about a serious subject, conveyed in game form, and making a mockery of it.
Zero human input? AIs just running around on the Internet doing things with no human behind them at all? Because that would be huge news! Even a Cron job fired at Claude telling it to do something still required a human to set that up in the first place.
I think many counterstrike kids wanted to custom map of their school, or suspended for making one. Wanting to call down artillery in HOA is as natural as want to drown named SIMs.
I want to try this but every time I try to join either from my mobile or desktop (both on WiFi), I get this error: "That callsign belongs to another player. Pick a different one." that comes from the Railway-hosted wss://worldstrike.fun/ws
I am genuinely interested in the opinions of people who live in or fled war-torn countries. Would they find this in poor taste? That it trivialises ongoing struggles? Have they tried looking into their own cities? Do they not care? Do they think this is somehow useful? Does it surface memories? Are they more bothered by the execution?
Of course, we’d need more than one or two data points. If you know someone (or are you yourself) in that situation, I’d welcome learning your thoughts. No judgement or ulterior motive, just looking to understand another perspective.
about 7500 buildings have been destroyed since this was posted. most are houses, shops, restaurants and offices. I'll add a stats page soon so anyone can see it.
For US addresses, can you include the state in the search? It's common for the same city name to be reused. For example: Dallas North Carolina (small town) vs Dallas Texas (metropolis)
I can't load the thing, but the idea reminds me of the trope of adolescents playing early FPSes and making maps based on their homes and schools, for good or for bad…
116 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 38.4 ms ] threadif the author is readin this by any chance pretty please improve the attribution placement, projects like this are whats bringin interested people in to help us build a better open map for everyone <3
Can you make it a little more resilient on Wifi + 4G? I would really like to try this, it seems fun
Also, incorporating elevation data would also be really cool
I also have the bug where it keeps respawning me to the starting point after ~30 seconds
Bye bye, ballroom!
I'm sorry for your friend.
I would hope my friends would never use me to say otherwise.
Overall feels net-positive.
I know meta-comments are discouraged, but I wanted to encourage managing emotions during discourse with clear emotional fuel.
Like, if a bunch of kids caught a stray cat, tied him up, and started shouting in his ears and laughing, would you stop them? And if they complained “no fun allowed”, would you think that was fair? What about if there was a video game in which you beat to a pulp a deepfake representation of your partner? Do you not agree it would be reasonable for some people to find that in bad taste, especially those who have suffered from domestic violence in real life?
You may say that this is just a game, but media affects people too. There are thousands of games where you can shoot at fictional infrastructure, is there really that much to gain from destroying representations of real buildings?
If you’re offended by this, maybe you should just not engage with it. Why does the onus fall on the creator?
Take a look at Battlefield. Should we take that down because it simulates war? Maybe we should remove guns from ever appearing in media because people have died from guns. Should we remove color from media because it may be insensitive to the colorblind? Why don’t we just remove all words everywhere because someone has had their feelings hurt by words. Where do we draw the line?
I’m not offended by it. I am in fact very politely and cordially inviting the commenter above to consider a different perspective, and my approach to this subject in this entire thread has been one of compassion and curiosity, which is easily verifiable. I recommend doing that before launching on tirades of bad faith argumentation.
It’s been my observation that people who accuse others of being offended are themselves the most easily offended. Very much like the people who call others “snowflakes” have the thinnest skins themselves.
> maybe you should just not engage with it.
Despite it not being my case, those who are offended can and should very much still engage. Suggesting otherwise is nonsensical and a tool of those who promote hate. There is no societal progress if those who see something wrong do not speak up.
> (…) Should we take that down because it simulates war? (…)
I said in my comment that we already have thousands of games like that. I didn’t say that was bad. You are arguing in profound bad faith and are not even doing a good job of hiding your repeated straw men. I recommend you learn to engage with the arguments, instead of making up new ones in your head and fighting those.
You misunderstand the entire premise of my original comment, presumably on purpose. Oh well, I guess that’s just how online discourse is now.
Why are you framing that as a bad thing? Pretending that “slippery slopes” aren’t worth talking about is insane
>too ideologically blinded to attempt to see concerns others are trying to express
Hello pot, meet kettle.
Premise. Perchance.
God damn, why must HN always assume the worst? Engage in good faith for once, stop assuming every argument is made by an imbecile and that you understand everything and are the lord of reason.
You are talking about directly harming another living creature who cannot fight back.
> What about if there was a video game in which you beat to a pulp deepfake representations of your friends and family?
You are talking about "harming" a collection of north and south facing flips on a disk, a few ones and zeros in a RAM chip. Hell, we used to actually make Quake characters with our real faces on back in the day so you really could blast your real-life friends and family to pieces.
No, you missed the point. It has nothing to do with the entities in the game, it’s about the player outside of it. Look, it’s all well and good to blast your friends in a game and call each other rude names and whatnot, have fun! But you understand that’s OK because you have consent, right?
Here’s a story for you. I have omitted unnecessary details because outing anyone isn’t the point. There was a guy who played a certain competitive game. He was a good person, but he had the habit of describing a big game loss as a “rape”. He wasn’t trying to be malicious, he described himself as having been raped too when he lost big. But he threw it around too casually, and one day he played against a rape victim. Now, can you put yourself in the other person’s shoes and understand how having a traumatic experience thrown back at you casually can make you feel? And even if you believe it wouldn’t bother you personally, can we agree that everyone is different and that we shouldn’t ignore how they feel their pain? That there are little things we can all do to make other people be comfortable, and in turn they may do the same for us?
That’s all I’m saying, that we should practice some empathy. I’m not even saying this game shouldn’t exist, I’m only asking that we recognise that it may affect some people in major ways most of us on this website can’t possibly understand (and we should be thankful for it, not derisive) and that we should take that into account. In short, remember other people exist and share the planet with you, and try to not be a dick to them.
Do you also believe that "cultural appropriation" is a thing? On a scale of 1 to Taylor Swift how white and suburban middle-class are you?
They can't at all compete with some off the shelf kids toy costing $30 with a HEAT round attached. The cost differential here with a 35 million euro tank is beyond pale.
Edit: typo
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50390997
If your friend would be willing to share their thoughts, I’m interested in learning. Of course, if they don’t want to share or you think it would be disrespectful to even ask, don’t. I’m just thinking the perspective of such people should not be ignored.
This is just wanton destruction and has nothing good in it.
Rampage and its sequels were pretty much also just "destroy buildings, the game," and also great.
My kids enjoy building with tiles and then knocking it down.
That said, whoever made it might not be thinking about that. A kid could vibecode a game these days. I wouldn’t hold it against them.
Moreover, many AAA games glamorize war (Call of Duty, Far Cry, Battlefield…) or crime (GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Payday, Hitman…).
This used to be so ridiculous it was satire.
That said, I did not find the game fun. It was laggy, UI elements seemed a bit sloppy and cut off, and the purpose of buttons wasn't very clear. Also, I saw mostly brown tiles rather than buildings, maybe it was already all destroyed.
The Call of Duty series gives a much more detailed view of the battlefield, with a lot more blood, and it doesn’t get a reputation for being cynical because it doesn’t force your hand with a choice that feels like mockery of the situation. This game’s emoji defaults slightly do, whether it was intentional or not.
Would give better perspective if your own virutal geographical building was equally destroyed as destroying others.
Would also be better if RL names where replaced with fictional random names.
Here's a full response with headers:
HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols Connection: Upgrade Sec-Websocket-Accept: GeKaJfsfiYd9s2vROz7kMU3RDWA= Sec-Websocket-Extensions: permessage-deflate; server_no_context_takeover; client_no_context_takeover server: railway-hikari Upgrade: websocket X-Railway-Request-Id: UA8DKXk_TKiusD2aYqVb7A x-hikari-trace: lhr1.7mfs x-railway-edge: lhr1
{"type":"error","message":"That callsign belongs to another player. Pick a different one."} Connection Closed: 1005
Of course, we’d need more than one or two data points. If you know someone (or are you yourself) in that situation, I’d welcome learning your thoughts. No judgement or ulterior motive, just looking to understand another perspective.