
Buildy, a real-time HTML5 building game - come build in our biggest world yet - RoboTeddy
http://playbuildy.com/world?id=50736d9452572c7481000000#x=61840&y=0&z=-289040&s=32
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RoboTeddy
Hey, this world started on the Something Awful forums, and we thought it'd be
fun to continue it here. Feel free to contribute anywhere in the world.

It's still early for this project (alpha). Chrome and Firefox only for now.
Please don't grief or ruin the fun!

Some tech details: canvas-based rendering engine, firebase for chat and
presence, sockjs for realtime events, phantomjs + beanstalkd for rendering
static tiles (for zooming way out), python on the server side, mysql where
convenient and mongodb where convenient.

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stevejohnson
NB: We've only tested on recent Chrome and Firefox builds on OS X. Bug reports
in other browsers are appreciated, but I can't promise we'll be able to act on
them in the near future.

Also doesn't work very well on iOS.

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xk_id
Safari looks good so far

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wwwtyro
Everything feels really polished. Congrats guys, this looks fantastic. :)

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stevejohnson
If you want to get updates about Buildy, you can follow our blog:

<http://blog.playbuildy.com/>

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soup10
Awesome, did this just launch? People love this kind of thing, i'd be
surprised if it wasn't successful.

Performance seems great for javascript/canvas. Though I would love to see a
high performance native app. Good luck to you guys!

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bryceneal
This is cool. I would highly recommend you sheet your sprites because ATM you
are loading in each graphic individually via an HTTP request, which is pretty
inefficient.

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ujeezy
This is really nice! Looks like you're using Firebase for the realtime stuff?

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pyrotechnick
See RoboTeddy's comment above.

 _Some tech details: canvas-based rendering engine, firebase for chat and
presence, sockjs for realtime events, phantomjs + beanstalkd for rendering
static tiles (for zooming way out), python on the server side, mysql where
convenient and mongodb where convenient._

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colinwinter
This reminds me of something... As someone who LOVED rollercoaster tycoon,
please please please consider object/character movement, such as NPC's that
move and do stuff. Like puke on the ground after roller coasters =) Also other
players who are in control of a character (like Sims game) would be fun to
highlight and watch interact with NPC's.

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SwellJoe
Yeah, while it's fun to scroll around and see what stories people are trying
to tell through this medium, it'd be really cool to have some actors moving
around in the world. Riders on the roller coasters (which seem to be among the
most fun things to build in any building game; even when the tools don't make
it easy to do so), people roaming around exploring (and occasionsally being
chopped up by the chainsaw guy or eaten by the scary smoke monster thing, or
turned into a newt when walking over a black magic altar, etc.) would make
this absolutely magical to just watch and play with. Not to say it's not cool
today, as it is, just that if the dinosaurs roared and flung cars, it'd be a
mild form of ecstasy.

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colinwinter
Exactly, it looks great as it is right now. Where's waldo like. But I'm a
video guy and motion would make this world epic.

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mannjani
I've seen a few HTML5 games for sometimes now but have only been impressed by
two - first Subbania and now this one. And I must say Buildy tops them all.
Good Job. The thing that I like most about it is that people don't use the
canvas element as creatively as it can be but you did it. Such games must be
developed more to popularize HTML5.

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morsch
Cool. I don't know how expensive it is to create a new world. If it's cheap,
it'd be cool to offer unregistered accounts a way to play around in their own
private, non-persistent sandbox before making the jump and registering.

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mindhunter
Reminds me of Paul Bakaus' Aves Gaming Engine (also canvas based and isometric
view).

He was very active documenting his research on it's performance:
[http://paulbakaus.com/2010/07/19/why-canvas-is-not-an-
obviou...](http://paulbakaus.com/2010/07/19/why-canvas-is-not-an-obvious-
choice-for-web-games/)

~~~
thomasbachem
Which was sold to Zynga in 2010 btw: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/zynga-
continues-internation...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/zynga-continues-
international-expansion-buys-german-game-engine-developer-dextrose-ag/)

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abozi
I know this is mean, but you know what's really fun... undoing what people are
doing in real time... someone just planted a tree.. and then I moved that
tree.. (tee hee hee) - sorry. maybe this type of moves shouldn't be allowed? -
but I just had the best 10 minites of my week!!!

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stevejohnson
If you're in the world and someone is doing this to you, please say something
in chat and we'll ban them.

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chrissnell
The page loaded and the Paperboy theme immediately started playing in my head.

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abozi
OMG! Addicted already.

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brianchu
Really awesome. Although I suspect some people might take advantage of the
ability to delete/move anything they want. What would be the solution to this?

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RoboTeddy
We're gonna allow people to create invite-only worlds. In the mean-time, the
entire history of the world is evented, so we can actually filter out events
from a given user and it'll be like they never existed.

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chii
It'd be so awesome if the engine and code behind this world builder can be
opensourced.

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GraffitiTim
We may at least do a couple write-ups about some of the tech behind it.

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drwl
This is really freakin' neat. The beginning of the future of the interwebz

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SeanDav
Looks great, needs rotation though!

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MartinCron
That raises the barrier to object creation, as the objects appear to be just
flippable 2D images.

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pyrotechnick
Works such as this are very near to my heart. As a developer of collaborative
games in emerging technologies including "HTML5" I want to articulate the
intense delight I feel each instance I discover others pursuing this strange,
new, often difficult, but ultimately vastly rewarding path to success. I found
this particular exchange exceptional.

The developers (chatting in-game) were rather friendly and particularly
forthcoming about their sound choices for their technology stack which I found
to be refreshing. This kind of transparency, at least in this industry, is
somewhat rare and is absolutely commendable.

If you indeed enjoyed the experience, as I suspect most did, please continue
to support these developers and their work. It is through this process we, as
a community, will continue to manifest works such as this.

Do not underestimate the power of getting the word out about these endeavours.
A "like" on Facebook. A tweet. A blog post. It all adds up. And we really do
appreciate such a priceless commodity.

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dgesang
Thanks for another great example why 'HTML5' is not (yet) an alternative to
Flash when it comes to vector performance and games.

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pyrotechnick
Thanks for another great example of fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding
the undeniable ubiquity of HTML.

<http://alwaysbetonjs.com>

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abozi
I told you to stop using IE6....

