
Plink, a multiplayer HTML5 music game - skimbrel
http://labs.dinahmoe.com/plink
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dekz
This is incredibly fun. When others joined and started making music together
it immediately brought a smile to my face.

The greatest part about is the music created isn't terrible.

~~~
larelli
To me it sounds as if the reason for the music not sounding like total crap
is, that the author uses pentatonic scales, which are also used in
improvisations. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale>)

~~~
Goladus
I agree, I noticed that almost immediately. Also, the rhythms are quantized
and the tempo is fixed.

It's still a very cool demo, though.

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jmettes
I think it's really clever how the game makes it very difficult to NOT sound
good! The timing of the notes seems to snap to the tempo exactly (e.g.,
there's a delay when you hit a note too early) and the limited scale of notes
all sound good together.

I've played a few HTML5/Flash music games lately, and all of them give enough
flexibility with sounds to easily become messy when played with multiple
players (especially with trolls!). This game makes the player feel like
they're good at music. Great work!

~~~
aab1d
+1 creating a game that involves collaborating with strangers and creating
music could be tedious. This overcomes that handicap pretty well. I love the
concept, great work!

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shocks
Hey, I'm a pianist and I have a few ideas you might consider.

1\. Let me pick the colour with the numbers 1-9. 2\. Let me play notes with
the keyboard. (I'm not sure the best way to assign the keys, but I'm sure you
can come up with something). 3\. Let me play chords.

That would be _awesome_. Great work so far!

~~~
zerostar07
Sounds like you are asking for the ultimate band-roulette :)

~~~
shocks
Well now that you mention it... Haha! :) Actually I was thinking, and perhaps
adding to many features would make it harder to be musical without any
previous experience.

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utunga
seriously the coolest thing ive seen in ages - had a really great time jamming
out with a bunch of strangers just like that ... awesome effort

~~~
danparsonson
Came here to say exactly that; so much fun :-)

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icandoitbetter
This is amazing, and not only as a demo of the API. I was waiting for a
uniform raw audio standard to be implemented by all browsers, but after this
I'm motivated to start playing around now. There are so many interesting
possibilities for musical improvisation interfaces.

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giberson
Love it. Needs one feature pronto. Channel mode, so me and my friends can jam
out together in a private room.

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apitaru
Having been through the Director, Flash and now HTML5 fads, I dream of a day
when this title would suffice on HN:

"Plink, a multiplayer music game"

This is just to say - I enjoyed Plink very much and would have just the same
regardless of the technology.

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Raphael
It felt out of sync. I could move up and down, and clicking made the circles
solid, and there were some other players, and some sounds. I suppose moving up
and down and clicking changes the sound, but I'm not sure how.

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damncabbage
Wow, this is amazing.

I completely ignored HTML5 audio after a couple of abortive attempts at using
it to make something for an iPhone web toy, but seems to show it's not quite
as terrible anymore.

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9999
"Oops! Your browser doesn't support Web Audio."

Meanwhile, Adobe just announced that the Unreal Engine runs in Flash Player
11. That's AAA quality 3d gaming in the browser (and not just Chrome). I am so
bored with "HTML 5" game (that aren't even HTML 5 official spec) announcements
getting such a ridiculous amount of play.

Imagine if someone went out to E3 in 2011 and announced that they just came up
with this crazy TV game concept called Pong, but it only works on Magnavox
TVs. Absolutely no one would care.

~~~
tete
The Quake Engine has been running inside browsers for ages.

Also if you speak about portability. Flash really isn't very portable when you
compare it with the platforms supported by Webkit. Flash has always been a
huge mess when it comes to this. Webkit and Gecko are pretty much up to date,
but many people hardcode browser checks instead of just asking whether the
browser supports certain stuff. I think that's the biggest problem - well,
besides the market share of outdated IE versions of course.

~~~
zobzu
What portability. I mean, Web Audio API is supported by only Chrome and Safari
(so that's not "webkit". Sure Flash ain't better. But hey! None of this is
standardized.

And why should Gecko support Web Audio API? You see, they got Web Audio Data
instead. Not compatible of course. None are standard.

So flash does beat them and HTML5 on that very topic.

~~~
cromwellian
The Gecko API is very basic, it just gives you access to sample buffers in
Javascript, so everything must be processed in Javascript.

The Web Audio API is a much more fleshed out API, built on the higher level
audio APIs used in professional sound apps. You can use it to process raw
buffers, but you can also use it sequence and compose many effects on audio
buffers with very low latency timing requirements without having to write time
critical javascript DSP code and hope for the best that no delays or
scheduling skew creep in.

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tristanperry
Pretty awesome! I just played for a couple of minutes (well, that was the
original aim - it turned into 6-7 minutes all-too-quickly!)

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peterhajas
Just played this for 5 minutes. Absolutely fantastic! I had a riot, and seemed
to play some music with other people. Really cool!

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zantzinger
I wonder whether, if there were all 12 tones on the Western 12-tone scale, it
be more cacophonous. Somehow, with two octaves of only white notes, as it
were, and the tendency of users to move about constantly (because it looks
pretty and you get the exciting perceptual feedback of changing the sounds),
most of it doesn't sound bad. Great idea.

~~~
gb
Pretty sure this the pentatonic scale actually - so all black notes. It almost
certainly woule be more cacophonous even if it was just all white notes, never
mind the full scale.

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balac
This is surprisingly addictive and the music actually sounds cool too. It
would be nice to hit notes without sliding though.

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dbattaglia
Very nice!

Funny, I've been spending this last week (off from work) working on an Audio
API/Node.js multi-user drum machine. So it's very cool for me to see another
similar idea pop up at this point. As a long-time software synth/VST/music
guy, I can't wait for the browsers to catch up on audio as fast as they are
visual APIs.

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overshard
This is amazing. Even with a bunch of random people doing random things the
music still sounds great!

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dts
Fantastic! Great use of web sockets and though there was some obvious latency
(unavoidable) it did not at all deter from having a great time. I love that
all the sounds in the set work together well and you could take this in a
million directions.

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giberson
I've wanted to dabble in a few audio experiments myself, however I keep coming
up short trying to find single sample tones for all the notes on a scale. Not
sure exactly what to search for. Any tips for good source material?

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kunley
I was delighted to see how people automagically give others a chance to try
other instruments and switch with some kind of intuition.

Also the most pleasure gave me an idea of playing a bass for a while and
watching others improvise.

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DillonF
Very cool. This reminds me a lot of playing around on a korg kaossilator, a
very nifty toy with an xy pad where you can pick a scale, bpm and an
"instrument" and jam away without worrying about hitting wrong notes.

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tricolon
I could play this forever.

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dn11
Pretty cool. A time-quantised version would probably have the potential to
sound better though, as the latency makes it difficult to get any kind of
rhythm going in this version.

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LukeFitz
Am I the only person this isn't working for right now? It loads, I enter a
username and then it tells me I've been idle too long. I guess the servers may
be overloaded due to HN?

~~~
kentnguyen
How do you solve this?

~~~
sepent
I used a proxy server in US and it works now.

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city41
This is so great, that I really hope it catches on so I can go and jam out
with others whenever I want. I spread this site as far as my little network
will go. Awesome job!

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zerostar07
I am hooked! Who was i playing with? Need keyboard shortcuts. Sometimes there
are too many guys playing (sorry guys, some of you suck :P), have separate
rooms.

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nolok
This is the kind of things I could lose days to. Well done.

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superkinz
I love it. I'm musically challenged but feel like I can actually make
reasonably not-horrible music. And it's like a video game. Love it!

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kevingadd
Is the Web Audio API actually part of HTML5? It looks like it's still just a
proposal that only works in Chrome. :(

Very cool demo though. Feels smooth.

~~~
starwed
I think it's just a chrome proposal right now.

Firefox also has an implemented proposal. Not sure if one or the other has any
particular advantages?

<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Audio_Data_API>

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rshm
Instant addiction.

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forkrulassail
Unfortunately doesn't allow my Chromium-browser

~~~
tete
Same for my Firefox Aurora, even though I think it supports the Web Audio API
(not sure, though if it's really up to date).

~~~
melling
I run the Firefox Nightly and it doesn't support Web Audio either. Shouldn't
that be happening soon?

~~~
asadotzler
Firefox was the first with a Web Audio API. Google has an alternate API.
Neither one is a standard. Both are great ground for experimentation though.

~~~
zobzu
Google named his one Web Audio API and Mozilla named is one Audio Data API.

Mozilla's Audio Data API is available since FF4.

Web Audio API has been enabled in Chrome 13 or 14, before it was off by
default. Probably appeared shortly after FF4 (?)

Such non-standardization sucks balls if you ask me.

These guys should make HTML5 standards and stick to it. Not make the standard
evolve every NEXT day saying "oh look its what HTML5 is now!"

That's absolutely non-standard and annoying as hell.

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illdave
Really really impressive - surprisingly fun.

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hamidnazari
This is really nice. Well done. It'd be great if you could create your own
private games and invite your friends over.

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c16
Seriously good fun! Wasted too much of my time today playing on it when I
should have been working. Thanks :-)

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carterdea
Super fun. I'd like to see some keyboard suport, like up and down arrow keys
and space bar to play a note.

~~~
zantzinger
And maybe keyboard support for 'notes' - every letter on the keyboard assigned
to ABCDEFG and the black notes in between. Then you could, say, plug in a
written text and see what happens.

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paul9290
I enjoyed creating a song with it (lyrics/melody), but I didnt understand the
gaming mechanics.

~~~
paul9290
Interesting one of your clients created a drunk alarm clock app
itunes.apple.com/se/app/fyllekameran/ . Not sure how it works? Do you you
record a video when your drunk and that's what wakes you or is it your
friend's creating drunk wake up greetings that are your alarm sound?

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arc_of_descent
Very nice. It took me a moment to realize there were other users who were
creating sound too!

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thepumpkin1979
Awesome... is Google Chrome the only browser with this API level?

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mahcode
Addictingly amazing!! Is there I way to record my jam session?

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superkinz
This needs to be an iPad app ASAP. When can we get it?

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paraschopra
This is seriously fun. LOVED it! Thanks for making it

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jamesrom
Whoa. That was heaps of fun!

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pedrocarvalho
Wow, really cool. Great fun

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Inversechi
This is awesome :)

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mcferrin
Love it!!!

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noduerme
While it's very cool, it's worth pointing out that the idea is derivative of a
Unity-based game called "Planck" (as in Max, size, etc) that's been in
development for quite awhile. See: <http://www.shadegrowngames.com/>

It's hard to believe the authors of Plink aren't aware of Planck...

~~~
adam-a
Whilst Planck looks very cool (extremely cool), it is a bit of a stretch to
say that Plink is a rip off of it. They both have generated music in them, but
I can't see much similarity beyond that.

~~~
noduerme
I didn't mean to say it's a rip off. It's different enough, and plus it's
cool. I'm just speculating that the Plink coders must know about it. I got to
play with the Planck alpha, and Plink "feels" similar in certain ways. The way
the notes are displayed as ripples, the way motion across the play area
triggers notes on a scale with different instruments (which in Planck are
"weapons"), and the way the notes are quantized. In Planck, the notes/loops
happen when you hit something you're shooting at, but the point isn't so much
to hit things as it is to create rhythmic loops between the gameplay and the
music you're generating. It makes some interesting compromises to keep the
music on tempo and still give the sense of hitting the targets instantly.
Really, I just wanted to know if the Plink guys had heard of it.

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jQueryIsAwesome
There is a photo of the guys of dinahmoe next to the definition of awesome.
Seriously, and i just had an overflow of ideas about online music creation.

