
Show HN: Play scrabble, chess, checkers, etc with your friends by copying a url - mikeycgto
http://breakbase.com
======
btoconnor
Myself and 2 friends built BreakBase with the goal of making the seemingly
simple process of playing a board game on the Internet with friends as easy as
it should be. Existing sites on the web are shockingly complex to find a way
to play against people you already have means of contacting.

At the time of this writing, we’ve got 5 games: Checkers, Chess, Four-in-a-
Row, Reversi and WordBase.

Features:

\- Each ‘room’ has a unique url - share it via email, Facebook, Twitter,
Google chat, or text message, it makes no difference to us. There’s no need to
coordinate navigation to the same server, just to play a game. Just share the
url.

\- Play anonymously- you can play on our site without registering. If you want
to, you can register to keep track of your records, get alerts when it’s your
turn or something else interesting happens in your games.

\- Real time updates. When your opponent makes a move / chats, you’ll see it
right away without refreshing.

\- Come back to your game later. If you register for an account, you can
resume your game from a different device. Play from your phone, desktop,
tablet, whatever. If you don't register, this doesn't work - we can't keep
track of your games if we don't know who you are.

\- No plugins required. BreakBase works on HTML5 / Javascript. No Flash / Java
needed.

\- WordBase supports up to 4 players.

\- Get smart notifications via email or Twitter, and via the browser.
Registered accounts only.

The stack:

\- Main web app built on Pylons.

\- Our Comet/push layer is built using Node.js, as the glue between ZeroMQ and
Socket.io.

\- We use MongoDB because it’s web scale.

The future: These are being actively worked on, and will be released in the
near future:

\- Planning more games. Currently considering Backgammon, War strategy games,
or card games. Open (and eager) to suggestions

\- Challenges. Challenge someone to a game directly from their profile.

\- Mobile support. As of right now, you can make moves on Android / iOS
devices by just going to breakbase.com in the browser, but we’d obviously like
to provide a tailored experience for smaller screens.

What would it take to get you to use this on a regular basis?

~~~
graue
This looks very cool. I play a lot on <http://iggamecenter.com>, which has a
zillion games, but is kinda clunky and does have the extra friction of
requiring players to create an account first. What you've made is definitely
better for the use-case of IMing someone a link to play.

However, if you add the ability to find other players on the site/play a
random person, as has been suggested here, I think you may find that accounts
being optional is a downside. Some people will make one move then leave, or
just play very slowly and poorly. An account system where you can see stats on
someone's past games helps avoid that un-fun situation.

The game I would most like to see you add is Hex.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_%28board_game%29> Maybe Dots and Boxes
would be nice too as a casual game that can be played quickly, but has a bit
of depth.

~~~
btoconnor
Ha, Hex was top on my list for games to create. I was leaving it open for
other people to suggest. Glad I've got some support :)

Yes, anonymous accounts poses many challenges to things like that. Chances
are, if/when we implement random opponents, you'll have to be registered (and
your opponent would have to be registered as well).

------
mmcnickle
This is cool, though it should be possible to create a cross-device URL for
people who don't want to register. For example in chess, you'd generate two
URLs, one for you and one for your opponent.

    
    
        http://breakbase.com/<game_id>/<opponent_1_id>/
        http://breakbase.com/<game_id>/<opponent_2_id>/
    

Also, are you using any pre-existing game engines, or did you write them from
scratch?

Would love to see diplomacy on there.

~~~
heretohelp
You don't even need that, just a player2, 3, 4, or just use a session object.

~~~
mmcnickle
They'd need to be kept secret, so other opponents couldn't easily see each
others' game screens. It doesn't make much difference in chess, but in the
word game, seeing other people's letters is cheating.

It would complicate the sharing a little, because as the initiator of the
game, you shouldn't know what the other players' unique URL is. You'd need a
workflow like this:

You create new game:

    
    
       Game URL: http://breakbase.com/<game_id>
       Your URL: http://breakbase.com/<game_id>/<your_unique_id>
    

You send the game URL to your friend. If there are available spaces, it
creates a unique URL for them the first time they access the game:

    
    
       You send them: http://breakbase.com/<game_id>
       They're redirected to their unique URL: http://breakbase.com/<game_id>/<their_unique_id>
    

That way you haven't shared the unique ids with each other.

------
rbonvall
I sent a url to a friend with whom I usually play scrabble, and we started to
play immediately. Great!

I would like to be able to play Spanish words without the game disallowing
them (I think letter frequencies and scores in Spanish Scrabble are not very
different from the English version). I'd love a "don't check words against a
dictionary" option :)

Actually I've been thinking that multiplayer online games (e.g. card games)
could allow players to enforce rules themselves. For Scrabble there could be a
"object word" button, for instance. It would even allow players to cheat, when
not getting caught. It would also be easier to implement .

------
saddino
Hasbro is a little crazy about defending their copyrighted board and rules
(including point values, board layout, letter distribution), etc., so if
WordBase gets any serious traction expect to get a letter.

~~~
ishkur101
<http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html>

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the
method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system,
method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising,
or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright
law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles.
Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in
literary, artistic, or musical form.

~~~
saddino
That's nice and all, but didn't stop Hasbro from taking down Scrabulous:
[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/scrabulou...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/scrabulous-
sc-1.html)

And didn't stop the Tetris Company from taking down Mino:
<http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/06/wireduk-tetris-clone/>

IMO this is why Zynga's Words With Friends has a different board, different
point values and different bonus squares...

~~~
praxulus
"Scrabulous" the name is a pretty obvious ripoff of "Scrabble," so that's not
really a great example. However, the Mino case is certainly very interesting.

~~~
saddino
The Scrabulous case alleged both trademark infringement (the obvious name
ripoff) AND copyright infringement (the board and tile design).

------
stevenringo
Looks awesome. However, I give you guys about a week before you get a takedown
notice from Scrabble.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexulous#Legal_and_copyright_is...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexulous#Legal_and_copyright_issues)

------
0Y5T
Really enjoyable, thanks! My opponent had some bugs where he could place chess
pieces on top of each other. And he was unable to move pieces that were in
certain positions. He was on Chrome, Mac. Unsure if the game or the browser
failed, I had no problems

~~~
btoconnor
Thanks for the feedback. Not sure about being able to drop pieces on top of
each other.

Also, in chess, you can only move pieces that have available moves. For
instance, if your knight is pinned, you'll be unable to move it.

If this continues, please let me know!

~~~
0Y5T
It looked like this <http://i.imgur.com/8hPFB.png> Pretty sure it was a Chrome
bug, all is fine now in a new game using Opera

~~~
btoconnor
Thanks for the screenshot. I think this is a pretty rare bug that has
something to do with the push layer stuff. We're looking into it to see if we
can detect this a little smarter, especially as we move towards mobile
experiences.

In the interim, if you see this, you should just be able to refresh and all
will be good again.

~~~
0Y5T
Yes we played for a couple of hours and ran into a few similar situations
where my opponent got his view out of sync. Refresh fixed it so no worries.
Didn't know we could just F5 mid game ;)

------
shazow
I've been helping Brian play test this on and off. I love how low-friction and
low-commitment it is. Especially in the age when everything requires a
Facebook login. Really easy to just send a link to a friend over IM and play.

------
modarts
I really like the execution of this. Similar to how join.me allows you to
share your desktop session in a friction-less manner; this makes it easy to
share multiuser game sessions.

------
supo
Game suggestion: Hnefatafl <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games>

~~~
simonbrown
While we're suggesting games, Go could be interesting.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)>

------
ElliotH
In Checkers if you need to 'double-jump' I find in Chrome I have to refresh my
browser to do this

~~~
mikeycgto
Thanks for this! Was an interesting bug that would manifest itself when the
push-layer reaches the client before the XHR request finishes.

All fixed now and will be deployed soon.

