The old QBasic Nibbles game that shipped with DOS 5.0 used up/down/left/right, and that was the one I always played as a kid. All the clones I've seen over the years use up/down/left/right as well. Which versions did you play that only use left/right?
Does anyone else think the stages ramp up too quickly? How about cranking down the speed multiplier a little bit for each round? By the time I get a long snake I spend more time just not running into an outer wall than actually trying to corner my opponent.
The controls don't react if you press them too quickly. How about queueing up key presses and then each additional step of the snake would dequeue a key press?
As an expert in this area (I implemented snake, once, in ascii for kicks) the problem with that approach is there's no way to undo your presses. So if you erroneously press left when you meant to press right, you're screwed. The best control strategy I found, and the one that seemed to correlate with classic implementations, is to simply take the most recently pressed key at each tick, and only allow the keys that correspond to left and right relative to your snake's direction.
Ah, but then you can't do a quick U-turn. I think ideally you'd queue up to two moves, the second always being a 180 if any, but if you change your mind it clears the queue. E.g. you're going right, you can queue up-left or down-left but if you hit up-left-up you just go up, up-left-right you just go right, etc.
This is amazing. I have fond memories of playing Lightcycle/tron-style games on some older computers against my brother as a kid. We got that program installed and we played forever.
This has a lot of potential, some suggested improvements:
* Chat System
* Rematch (both players agree, then yes, one says no, then no)
* Names for players
I like this and I'm sure you could monetize this with ads if you wanted to. Have you thought about supporting more than 2 players? There are many directions you could go with this, but this is an excellent MVP, if you want it to be an MVP.
Also, have the two snakes face each other when they start. This teaches the users from the first second into the match that they can, and must, control the snake.
i'd like to see a score system, and some kind of score ladder scheme where you only play people with on adjacent rungs of the ladder. then the folks that are really good don't end up playing against people like me who just crash into themselves all the time :-)
It's quite addicting, but it doesn't seem to be stable. I often just stop moving and have to refresh the browser and some enemies snake right into the wall without moving.
I really enjoyed playing this while it works but maybe 33% of the time the game just freezes on me and I have to refresh to get it to start working again. I have a strong internet connection so I don't think that's the problem.
Without a point system the one thing I've found is that the multiplayer makes it a disadvantage to play the normal game. The bigger you are the harder it is, you win when the other player crashes. Just a thought.
Awesome! For some reason when I want to turn around very quick (Left/Right + Down or Left/Right + Up depending which way I'm going) I just "Die". I wouldn't run into myself in that case, so not sure what's going on. Apart from that, very cool!
I think it turns in on itself inside one pixel, which I don't think is right compared to the way the classic played (one turn always meant at least one pixel in that direction, no matter how fast you pressed)
Nice. One complaint: when it's really slow in the beginning, you can apparently do a 180 in place and kill yourself, but it looks like you didn't turn at all. Unless that's how the classic played too...
EDIT: I've had a few TRON-like cut-off or near-cutoff moments. Very cool.
I agree the ability to kill your self with a 180 kinda sucks. It's not fun when you do it to yourself and it is not satisfying when your opponent does it either. I would make sure that it was impossible to do.
Only complaint is that I can't automatically tell which color I am to start. Maybe I'm missing something, but it's never immediately known - I need to jiggle left and right.
maybe the game could start paused for the first second or two, and visually indicate which snake is yours e.g. by making it flash, or explicitly labeling it ("this is your snake, there are others like it...")
It seemed really slow to take my control movements. Is it sending each move to the server before moving the snake? Maybe it needs to make the change locally (optimistically), and reconcile it after.
Ha, I just went Kamikaze on someone. This is so fun. Hope traffic does not die for a while, because I plan to play the shit out of this one. Anyone interested in forming an HN league?
79 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadSigh I am old.
This has a lot of potential, some suggested improvements:
* Chat System
* Rematch (both players agree, then yes, one says no, then no)
* Names for players
I like this and I'm sure you could monetize this with ads if you wanted to. Have you thought about supporting more than 2 players? There are many directions you could go with this, but this is an excellent MVP, if you want it to be an MVP.
Great job; totally wasted a morning on this.
for example you're facing south and press est and then north immediately after: insta death.
$("html").css("background","white")
Clarification: my colors, not the background's
EDIT: I've had a few TRON-like cut-off or near-cutoff moments. Very cool.
...added. Will go out in next deploy.
Only complaint is that I can't automatically tell which color I am to start. Maybe I'm missing something, but it's never immediately known - I need to jiggle left and right.