

Show HN: (my first webapp) An HTML5 platform game stage design community - ttbmike
http://taketheblock.com

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jiggy2011
This is an excellent idea, you should definately work on this some more. It
has a lot of appeal because it is social and creative too. It also brings back
memories for me, I loved to play with level editors for games in my younger
years.

I think though that you should allow people to play a level without signing
in.

The gameplay does feel a little slow and generic though, you should work on
making that more fun and a little more polished. For a well polished 2d game
have a look at Cavy Story.

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ttbmike
thanks! the toolset is extremely bare-bones right now, somewhat in the spirit
of "launch and iterate". we're trying to gauge what percentage of the
population is interested in stage design (vs. just playing). as for the player
logins, i want to keep an identity because the main value-add of our game is
the player stats tracking and replay footage. cave story is a huge
inspiration, and i hope someday we can enable folks to build their own cave
story-like experience.

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iag
Not bad for your first web app.

I'd recommend that you work on making it easier for the user to play the game
right away. Every click the user makes will result in a dropoff in conversion
rate. Otherwise this is pretty interesting!

Keep at it!

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ttbmike
thanks! yeah, a more interactive front page is in the works -- we're hoping to
let the player jump into the game with minimal fuss. stay tuned!

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jiggy2011
Did you use an existing game engine to build this , or was it something
custom?

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ttbmike
the client-side javascript is written from scratch -- so if there's any
wonkiness with the physics (especially with the moving crates), it's my own
fault. it probably would have been faster to use an existing engine (i'm sure
there's many), but i wanted to take on the challenge myself.

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michaelkscott
The "(my first webapp)" in the title feels a lot like a link-bait.

Surely this isn't the first time you wrote HTML, CSS, and Javascript, right?

I mean this could very well be honest, but I really don't think it belongs
there.

(I could be wrong.)

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

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ttbmike
this is my first time posting to hacker news, so sorry if i made any faux pas.
i've done html and css before, but i started learning javascript/node.js a few
months ago. my background is in hardware engineering at apple (with some
experience in C and java), and recently i've decided to get into software/web
app development (with this being a project to sink my teeth into). needless to
say, i'm not a fan of javascript :-)

~~~
michaelkscott
No apologies needed :) The term "webapp" was just a bit too general.

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kenrikm
It needs a keyboard to play however I could not find a way to bring up my iPad
keyboard so it does not seem to be iPad compatible?

~~~
ttbmike
Currently it is desktop browser only. If there's enough traction and the
concept is proven, we plan to look into porting it to iOS / Android / etc.
We'll see!

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Don't port it, it would be better if you could just add on-screen controls.

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user23409
The logging in barrier is a deal breaker for me.

Not saying you shouldn't keep it, just letting you know that some people will
not get past it because they don't want to.

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kjhughes
I think he allows a reasonable experience prior to having to log in. I watched
his overview video (nice job), played the first level, and started designing a
level without having to log in. Requiring account creation to save a level
seems fine to me.

Overall, nice job, ttbmike.

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AskHugo
Played through the tutorial, it's pretty good save for the moon gravity
jumping.

~~~
ttbmike
hah, yeah, the physics was a lot of back and forth for us. we tried to match
the original super mario bros. physics, but clearly we're still missing the
mark. the plan is to update our engine periodically with versioning control,
so we can fix issues without breaking old stages. thanks for the feedback!

~~~
1qaz2wsx3edc
<http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/mariogravity.shtml>

~~~
ttbmike
wow, that's going in my bookmarks. video game research -- every day i learn
something new.

