This is an infinite browser-based mmo universe where everything can be drawn and placed into the world, wiki-style... give us a shout if you need anything! You can also script blocks to have interaction or influence the environment (for instance, here's an adventure: http://manyland.com/newpolis ).
This is beautiful and I love it. I think the 8-bit graphics are definitely appealing to early generation gamers like myself. I don't know if it's my personal bias, but I think the cartoonish simplicity makes it more endearing.
In open areas yes, though please don't :) it's a very open world relying on each of us to do good. (Destructions of established blocks will leave dust that is traced back to you, and allows the undoing of the removal.) You can make a new area though where you can set the permission to you/ you and your friends only, meaning someone won't be able to remove a block there. Created areas with such permissions have another benefit: even your friends can enjoy them as explorers, trying to solve quest puzzles and such. I've made one such area here, for instance, an adventure game: http://manyland.com/newpolis
If something is placed over it, you can then remove the new block to show the old dust again, so you can undo even then. Dust only shows if the old block is considered established, which looks at ranking and time it was placed. The undo system kind of evolved over time...
I started a game, found a unicorn, flew up to a spaceship, flew up to a tiny, floating, green block. When I got out of the spaceship, it flew away! This stranded me on the block. Now I see no way to reset my character, and there is nothing to do but die.
I'm sure this is a fun game, but I only got 4 minutes in before it became totally unplayable. :(
Sorry for this! Could you please try running it in a smaller window and see if that helps? If not, could you pls try using Firefox for a quick comparison? If that also doesn't work, please email us at we@manyland.com so we can look at it together.
Oops. Can you please click this link? It points to green mountain center: http://manyland.com/3 (once you log in you can also make snapshots to later teleport to, or teleport with the map)
It's also not closed in the sense that you cannot hack the hell out of it once you buy a license. The closed part is just so that Dom gets his 99$ license fees (IMO a steal).
One thing we pondered might be cool for the future is some kind of iframe-sandboxed JavaScript to add object functionality, but already you can add to the functionality using behavior scripts called Interactings. http://manyland.com/info-interacting This is the way you can currently extend the logic, and we're setting most of our Interactings for tutorial purposes and such to 'clonable', meaning you can collect the object and adjust and copy its graphic & code. Take a look at some of the videos on the Interacting help page to get an idea, and please contact us if you have any questions or suggestions!
How many lines of code of each, how many people, how much work on which parts?
I dunno why, because I'm certain I've seen games like this somewhere, but this just seems really cool and sorta inspiring, along the lines of "hey, you can just write code and toss it in a browser and go". (Not to be rude; I'm sure it took a lot of effort.) This is one of the first times I've ever felt this way. Ever since '95, I've never been impressed with a web version of something, because usually it's a weak imitation of a native program. But this just feels like something different.
We're a great community and 2 developers. A lot of work goes into the details (we must have spent over a day just tuning the jump, or the way chat words are floating and such, not to mention the whole architecture Scott has set up), as well as to adjust to what the community is asking for, and new needs we see. It won't surprise you that a lot of the work goes into making things mmo-compatible.
JavaScript/ html5 has pros and cons but one thing that is fun is to be able to quickly release updates, sometimes several times over the course of a day, which will then instantly be visible to everyone in the world (and since we're using a browser wrapper for e.g. the iPad version, it will also be updated across devices).
Very cool. How is input sent to the server? Is it one packet when you press the button down and one packet when you release or constinuously sending packets while you hold the button down?
Looks interesting, but it's laggy as hell. Running latest Firefox on a beefy hardware. Got booted off twice already with "you have performance issues" and a suggestion to switch to Chrome (haha). Just FYI.
Sorry for that! Can you please try this area and see if it's better? http://manyland.com/7 There's also some arrow signs leading you to further portals
I haven't figured out how to use it yet, but the 2D editor I saw in a video that showed up when I sat on a bench was really cool. Efficient editing of the world around you is a really neat feature to have. I think the Starbound devs have an external tool to do that sort of thing, but having it internal is even better.
[Other dev] You can use firefox, but chrome seems to run the game a bit faster. Some of the busy areas have a massive amount of stuff in them, so you might want to try some that are a bit more lightweight (e.g. try manyland.com/5). We are working on improving client performance, so this will get better over time!
[co dev here] Interesting you mention this. When we saw Glitch closing, while we never had a chance to try it, we did see the amazing community spirit of the Glitchens. For our earliest launch, we invited Glitchens to give Manyland a try, and they built the very first blocks!
Thank you! Early on, we decided not to include an asset import tool - there were a number of factors, but mainly we wanted to nurture the in-game creativity, and keep a level playing field. We will keep an open mind regarding future direction though!
It does look a lot like Habbo. I've never actually played Habbo, but I know about it because I track phishing scams. Phishing scams for "Habbo coins" were popular a few years ago. (The good old days, when attacks came from kids in their parents basement, not major intelligence services.)
I thought "what a nice wind sound effect" until I realized it was the CPU fan in my laptop. Heh. But that's not really a big deal, at least for now, and I'm sure you can optimize.
Experiments like this show us that graphics and VFX are overrated. It's true for games, and it's true for movies too. Primer is still one of the best sci-fi flicks I've seen in the last ten years, and they used what looked like surplus air conditioning equipment as props. Sometimes too much FX actually gets in the way of your imagination. When I visit a virtual world, I kind of want it to be unlike the physical.
I tried a Rift the other day too, and that has its appeal as well. But it's a different appeal.
Noticed it was a tad laggy and then tracerouted and found that it's in London and I'm in Southern California. I suppose that's understandable. I guess if things take off you'd be able to geo-locate a bit via other cloud services.
> I thought "what a nice wind sound effect" until I realized it was the CPU fan in my laptop.
hehe... can I say we totally planned for that...
(sorry though! if you were around green mountain, that's actually our busiest area. Hope you stick around with us, and let us know how the upranking to 5 goes, it should be smooth over the coming days, and then you can do everything in the world.)
Is there a reason why we often have shitty nondescriptive titles like this? I almost always have to click on every link on the frontpage because it is impossible to predict if I might be interested in the article/webpage behind the title or not :(
Back in "the day" the rules said you couldn't go crazy with editorializing the title, but could improve it so it made sense. That rule disappeared from the guidelines about a year ago(?) and HN seemed to go to a strict "title must be verbatim" approach for a bit.
Now it seems the approach is that mods/people who run HN are the ones who usually improve titles, which I think is a good idea (Techmeme does this), although it's often not for some time after they hit front page too, sadly. Maybe they can give a more official explanation of the policy though.
We need hnify.com, a service to let a user give a title and brief summary for a website, and autocreate a web page with that title/info, for submission to HN.
Absolutely! I loved Compuserve's Worlds Away back in the 1990s, it's rooted in Habitat, and it was a big inspiration for Manyland. I've never seen Habitat except in trailers, and it looks absolutely amazing... like much else of what Lucasfilm did.
109 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadHave you looked into implementing some form of AI/bot API or the like? With the major workload being done on the creator/owner side.
I'm sure this is a fun game, but I only got 4 minutes in before it became totally unplayable. :(
I've gotten to http://manyland.com/info-speed-issues every single time.
And yes:
- I'm using Google Chrome
- This is my only tab/window open
- The window is about 25% of the screen size on a 15" rMBP
- I've disabled all extension windows
- I have no anti-virus software (plz don't hack me every1)
But I got on a horse, flew to the edge and now I'm falling for ever.
Is this an open-source project?
It's also not closed in the sense that you cannot hack the hell out of it once you buy a license. The closed part is just so that Dom gets his 99$ license fees (IMO a steal).
One thing we pondered might be cool for the future is some kind of iframe-sandboxed JavaScript to add object functionality, but already you can add to the functionality using behavior scripts called Interactings. http://manyland.com/info-interacting This is the way you can currently extend the logic, and we're setting most of our Interactings for tutorial purposes and such to 'clonable', meaning you can collect the object and adjust and copy its graphic & code. Take a look at some of the videos on the Interacting help page to get an idea, and please contact us if you have any questions or suggestions!
I dunno why, because I'm certain I've seen games like this somewhere, but this just seems really cool and sorta inspiring, along the lines of "hey, you can just write code and toss it in a browser and go". (Not to be rude; I'm sure it took a lot of effort.) This is one of the first times I've ever felt this way. Ever since '95, I've never been impressed with a web version of something, because usually it's a weak imitation of a native program. But this just feels like something different.
JavaScript/ html5 has pros and cons but one thing that is fun is to be able to quickly release updates, sometimes several times over the course of a day, which will then instantly be visible to everyone in the world (and since we're using a browser wrapper for e.g. the iPad version, it will also be updated across devices).
Edit: but I still got kicked off after going through a portal where everything was much slower. Maybe this laptop just isn't powerful enough though.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7364465
http://identity.mozilla.com/post/78873831485/transitioning-p...
Just a small suggestion: could the sound of forbidden actions be replaced by something smoother?
Could you add a way to import assets easily so that they can be developed using other tools or imported?
I thought "what a nice wind sound effect" until I realized it was the CPU fan in my laptop. Heh. But that's not really a big deal, at least for now, and I'm sure you can optimize.
Experiments like this show us that graphics and VFX are overrated. It's true for games, and it's true for movies too. Primer is still one of the best sci-fi flicks I've seen in the last ten years, and they used what looked like surplus air conditioning equipment as props. Sometimes too much FX actually gets in the way of your imagination. When I visit a virtual world, I kind of want it to be unlike the physical.
I tried a Rift the other day too, and that has its appeal as well. But it's a different appeal.
Noticed it was a tad laggy and then tracerouted and found that it's in London and I'm in Southern California. I suppose that's understandable. I guess if things take off you'd be able to geo-locate a bit via other cloud services.
hehe... can I say we totally planned for that...
(sorry though! if you were around green mountain, that's actually our busiest area. Hope you stick around with us, and let us know how the upranking to 5 goes, it should be smooth over the coming days, and then you can do everything in the world.)
Now it seems the approach is that mods/people who run HN are the ones who usually improve titles, which I think is a good idea (Techmeme does this), although it's often not for some time after they hit front page too, sadly. Maybe they can give a more official explanation of the policy though.
Great on-boarding!
My life is now complete.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)
which incidentally is being restored by booting the original servers found in a collector's basement:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/227045/rebooting_the_w...