
Keep Out – A WebGL Game - rinesh
http://www.playkeepout.com/
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erikb
Nobody has said it yet: It's incredibly fun to play. It's not just a good
demo, it's simply a good game. The enemies are so smart. Like the nearly
invisible ghost. The animations are also great. You want to do something all
the time. And it looks just incredible!

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guigui
Thank you! We did try to give each enemy a unique behavior/attack pattern to
create some gameplay diversity.

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mangeletti
I only played 3 levels (gotta work), but that's some awesome work.

Quick question: is it possible to use multitouch to have movement controls on
one side and direction controls on the other? Or, is that not doable, and
that's why you guys decided to put all the controls on the left?

~~~
guigui
Yes, it's probably possible to do as you suggest. However, we're already using
the right portion of the screen for player actions (use weapons and potions).

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guigui
Hi, I'm one of the developers of the game. Feel free to post questions.

Also, be sure to try the mobile version with your phone or tablet.

More info on the project here:
[http://littleworkshop.fr/keepout.html](http://littleworkshop.fr/keepout.html)

~~~
pcx
Game is practically unplayable in Firefox Developer Edition on OSX. The first
key I press works but then triggers 'Find' and focus shifts away from the game
screen to the 'Find' input field. Any workaround?

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4h53n
Go to Preferences -> Advanced -> General

Uncheck "Search for text when I start typing"

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jkrippy
Love this!

I uploaded a recording of Level 13 here, not sure what the max level is. This
is from my first play through:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF2TaK3s4fc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF2TaK3s4fc)

I think it's fun and has a lot of potential. There's some fun combos I started
to be able to pull off in the video the more I played. I think this could lead
to some really interesting multiplayer combat. If you look at what people have
added on to Minecraft as PvP game modes, I think a lot would carry over well
to this engine.

I would really like to remap the keys! I can dodge strafe left but not right
because of muscle memory. In the video, you can see this makes me attempt to
fire the bow when I should be strafing right.

A few suggestions, if you want to develop it further:

) Have an experience point system that grants you access to other skills
(could be as simple as faster walking, more hps, regen, etc)

) By level 13, I had no more need for gold because I purchased everything in
the shop already. Maybe add on extra purchases like increased inventory space
for arrows, etc...

) Add a shield to help block some of the ranged attacks (the physical non-
magic attacks)

) Harder AI as you level up would be nice, you can see in the video that
creatures don't attack me even though I'm near and they should be able to hear
me attacking their friends.

I'm sure I could come up with more suggestions if you want to focus on the
game mode more.

Thanks for sharing this with us!

~~~
guigui
Just watched your video. Well played! Thanks for your detailed feedback, I
agree the AI could be more difficult but we also have seen a lot of players
finding the game a bit too hard. About the shield I would disagree,
strafing/moving to avoid a range attack is part of the core gameplay and a fun
element, imho. We will definitely work on some improvements to the game in the
future.

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pascalmahe
Thanks a lot for letting me choose my keyboard layout! I'm using azerty and
using qwerty-based commands is getting really old...

~~~
guigui
You're welcome! As French, we're also often frustrated at qwerty being the
only option in most demos/games.

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carlob
Why aren't you frustrated at the continued existence of azerty? I lived for a
few years in France and I always had to ask for a US keyboard or my brain
would just get too confused keeping azerty and qwerty separate.

Now I'm back in Italy and I still prefer the US layout for the convenient
position of brackets and braces, but at least the 26 letters are in the same
place as the US keyboard.

Slight variations of qwerty are IMHO much worse than completely different
standards like imperial vs. metric units because they are too close to keep
separate in my brain.

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sbergot
azerty is a cultural thing. You learn to use them as a kid, and so most french
are used to them. How can someone feels frustrated by something that feels
completely natural?

Pro tip: alt+shift switchs the layout between azerty and qwerty

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superplussed
Very fun game, actually surprisingly so. But one niggle, when you are turning
left or right, it always seems to turn you one beat too far than you would
think it would turn you. It's probably just a feel thing, but it took me out
of the flow a bit. But other than that, it's as smooth as better and really
nice.

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cyrusaf
I'm curious as to why more WebGL games aren't popular? Is it due to the
infancy of the WebGL scene or is WebGL just not capable of creating great
games yet?

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guigui
I suppose it's mainly due to the infancy of WebGL. The technology itself is
well capable of creating good games, which I hope Keep Out! helps to
demonstrate.

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akanet
While this is certainly an impressive demonstration of the WebGL platform, I
find the game itself to be not much more than that. Lots of potential, though!

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woogley
This works really great on Android Chrome, it is pretty close to an app
experience (not being 60fps is the biggest giveaway). Speaking of Android, FYI
the Orientation API is available, so you can lock to landscape and avoid that
Portrait interstitial. `screen.orientation.lock('landscape')` at the time of
this writing :)

~~~
guigui
Oh, didn't know about this one. Thanks for the heads up!

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pilif
Thank you, thank you, thank you for the keyboard selection. So many cool web
game demos assume querty which makes it really inconvenient or even impossible
to play them without changing the keyboard layout in the OS, but that's asking
a bit much for trying out some game demo.

~~~
guigui
100% agree. Unfortunately there's no way to detect the keyboard layout with
JS, so we had to ask the user to choose their keyboard.

~~~
pilif
Yeah. I know. You could try heuristics and trick the user into pressing y or z
early. Then you'll know what they probably have.

But yeah - just asking is better and I'm really happy that you did

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heinrich5991
There's this keyboard selection thing in the Ubuntu installation that asks you
to type in a few keys, like "Type any of AZ123...". Perhaps this could be
useful here?

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NicoJuicy
This is one of the best WebGL user experiences i have seen. Any thoughts about
a followup on the used software, tools, libraries, gotchas, ... ?

I don't know much about 3D modeling, but i would sure believe you if you gave
references to some type of tooling, workflow :p

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guigui
Thanks! We definitely plan to write more details about the development
process. About the 3D models, just to clear up any confusion, we did not make
them. They were bought from bitgem3d.com which offers amazing assets for 3D
games.

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slashink
It's a very good game, fun, easy and addictive. Keep working on it as a side
project and this might turn into something really great. A really nice
showcase for your agency!

Although i will echo what other people said, once you go mouse look you never
go back.

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bencoder
Great game.

There's a weird bug in the shop screen when you click left or right more than
two times the 2nd+ time it seems to scroll multiple times (it actually only
moves you one across, but the animation looks like it scrolls multiple times).

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guigui
Thanks for reporting this, will look into it.

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rustamm
The most awesome part is that it works super smooth on my android, feels
absolutely like a native app from store.

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Dru89
You've done an incredible job with this game. I sat down for a minute to just
take a look at it, and it nearly made me late for work an hour later.

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Confiks
Looks good. One bug I found though: I have my Firefox window on OSX positioned
on the left half of my 2560x1440 screen, and I could complete the first level
fine, but when I got in the shop, the screen turned totally black after
getting a message about having to buy a sword.

When I made the window only a little wider, I could see the shop interface
perfectly fine and continue with the game.

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xigency
Great game! I love it.

One critique, the controls feel a little bit off when moving.

There's a slight jerk when moving from space to space instead of fluid
motions. I understand that there might be a need to slow down when moving
between spaces, for input actions, but I'd recommend decelerating when landing
on spaces instead of "stopping." It has a sort of negative visual effect.

Keep up the good work.

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Kiro
Turning with Q and E felt very weird. It got much easier when I realized you
could use the arrow keys for turning.

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bliti
Nice game. My first try had me hooked for 15 minutes. I wish there was a way
to save progress... :)

~~~
guigui
There is. Your progress is automatically saved in local storage, so if you
come back later, you will continue right where you left (except that the level
will be regenerated).

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bliti
oh nice! Time to visit again layer today then. :)

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kirchhoff
Neat game. Point of view seems to snap to 90 degree angles, which is a
little... unnatural?

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guigui
Thanks! The locked point of view is part of the classic dungeon crawler genre.

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shultays
3d view is though is not. it works on a 2d grid but it gets weird when you
move in 90 degrees in a 3d game

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edmccard
>3d view is though is not. it works on a 2d grid but it gets weird when you
move in 90 degrees in a 3d game

From 1980-ish to the mid 1990s this was how "3D" dungeon crawlers worked;
anyone who played Wizardry, or the Bard's Tale, or Might and Magic, or the SSI
Gold Box RPGs, etc., will feel right at home.

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harperlee
It was sent yesterday, you can find more information here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225247)

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WA
It looks nice, I like that I can select my keyboard.

But I feel a bit dizzy after 2 minutes of playing, because of the weird 90°
turns. So, this is not for me.

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danparsonson
Ah, feels like Eye Of The Beholder all over again, nice work! Very polished
and I love the graphical style :-) Minor bug report regarding the audio which
started off fine but got progressively more and more stuttery until I couldn't
hear anything at all, around level 5 or 6 - it was breaking up like a bad
phone line. I'm using Firefox 40.0.3 on Windows 7 x64.

~~~
guigui
We'll look into the issue, thanks for reporting this.

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ahoge
Fun game. Works really well. However, after playing 4 or 5 levels with Firefox
40 the sound got really stuttery and it never recovered.

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AbraKdabra
I still didn't try it because I'm at work right now, but I'd really like to
read about the development, I'm using three.js right now on a project and
would love to read about your current architecture, how do you manage 3D
models, if you use modules and how, etc. As soon as I get home I'll try it,
congratulations on the release!

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sidcool
I have been playing this game entire day today (holiday here in Maharashtra,
India) and it's amazingly performant and smooth. Well done, sir.

Please add some more awesome weapons, otherwise after a while there's no point
in collecting coins.

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dutchbrit
This is pretty sweet, great job!

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roywiggins
Does not work well on my Windows tablet- I assume it presents a touch
interface for Android and iOS? It assumes I have a keyboard, and I can't see a
way to turn on a touch interface by hand. HP Stream 7, Windows 8.1.

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khaki54
Reminds me of Legend of Grimrock-- Nice work, something to be proud of for
sure.

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aesthetics1
Really really well done. I am consistently surprised at the level of quality
we can achieve from simple web games these days.

Played through to level 8 before taking a break. Very fun and the artwork is
excellent.

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Haiperlink
There they go... Thousands of working hours of Hacker News readers... ;)

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Zren
You can play most of the game with one hand on the keyboard, but you're forced
to use the mouse instead of the spacebar to close popups and to purchase
things.

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veidelis
Authors of Mozilla's BrowserQuest still keeping it up!

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danvesma
unplayable for me (Safari 9.0 on El Cap Beta). moved a few spaces to the left
and everything freezes. Shame, as it looks very impressive.

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cdnsteve
Well done! What about the 3d characters and their animations, did you use
Blender, Unity or something like that? Cheers

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guigui
We didn't create the 3D models. We bought them from the amazing bitgem3d.com
store.

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doki_pen
This reminds me of the dungeon crawler in phantasy start I, one of my favs of
all time. Also, Eye of the Beholder.

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zurn
Perfect on Nexus 7 (2012) + Opera

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prezjordan
Throw this on iOS/Android and you will make a _lot_ of money.

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bhz
FYI: This web demo already works extremely well on my Android device.

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alinseba
Awesome game! Congratulations to the developers!

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maximecoh
Great game ! Thanks for sharing

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ofcapl_
very nice game!

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nojvek
Makes me want to create my own game now. Impressive job with Three.js. Would
be cool if this was multiplayer.

