

Show HN: My first Ludum Dare entry, online multiplayer game Hide-n-Stab - bendmorris
http://54.244.244.60/

======
bendmorris
Last weekend for the Ludum Dare 48 hour game competition "Beneath the
Surface," I created an online stealth game. Building even a simple multiplayer
game in 48 hours was a very ambitious goal but I'm very pleased that I was
able to pull it off.

In Hide-n-Stab, everyone looks alike, but some characters are harmless NPCs
while others are fellow players like yourself. Your goal is to find other
players and kill them by stabbing them in the back, but whenever you attack,
you'll be revealed as a player for a short time.

You can play in your browser, and I'd love to hear your feedback:
[http://54.244.244.60](http://54.244.244.60)

The game was created with Haxe, using the HaxePunk game engine, which I'm a
contributor to.

~~~
ulyssesgrant
I like this type of game, reminds me of Spy Party. Suggestion: don't allow the
characters to walk through each other. If a player tries to stab you and
fails, the fight just becomes walking through each other and trying to turn
around fast enough to stab the other guy in the back, which isn't really fun
or strategic.

~~~
d23
Yeah, honestly it reminds me of what spy party had the potential to be. I
haven't played it in a while, but it was really a disappointment.

------
Wingman4l7
It seems like there is no advantage to being stealthy -- sure, a stabbing
action gives you away as a real player, but it also allows you to move
_faster_ than hidden players who, seeing you revealed, might try to distance
themselves from you.

~~~
ghayes
Agree that it almost makes more sense to make stealth mode fast and stab mode
slow.

------
adambard
It sounds fun, but I'm afraid it's not working for me on Chrome 34 on OSX.
Just shows the tiles and Score: 0 in the top left.

~~~
funkyy
Chrome 34.0.1847.131 m - does not work. Fix it soon as this looks like an
amazing idea!

~~~
bendmorris
I'm moving everything to a more robust EC2 instance, so please bear with me.

------
bendmorris
Thanks for playing, everyone! While my little server didn't stand a chance
against the deluge of new players, I was able to fix a lot of bugs and scale
things up quite a bit. I'm going to keep working on it and put out a more
polished final version soon.

------
bendmorris
Just completed a server upgrade and migration. Sorry for the delay - should've
seen that coming. Hopefully there will be no more problems.

~~~
bendmorris
Still some intermittent problems - I'm going to be constantly monitoring
things, but if your game freezes or glitches, just try refreshing.

~~~
rooster8
Seems this new server's getting crushed... but the times it's worked, it was a
lot of fun!

------
staticelf
Nice game, very addictive.

As a fellow developer I wrote a quick article on your game
([http://www.uppskattat.se/articles/hide-n-
stab](http://www.uppskattat.se/articles/hide-n-stab)). I hope you'll get some
visitors.

You should think of having some domain, I think most non-IT people are
suspicious against ip-addresses. Hit me up if you want me to add some credits
for you or if you change the hostname to something else.

~~~
bendmorris
Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the article! This is just a temporary home
for the game. Once the competition is over, I'm planning on polishing it up
and posting it on Kongregate or somewhere similar.

~~~
staticelf
Cool, when that happens and if you remember and care about it it hit me up and
I will update the article.

------
rooster8
The server is currently getting overloaded, but try reloading your browser a
few times before throwing in the towel. It's a lot of fun if you get in.

------
gjjhjjjhhh
Problems:

You are almost invulnerable running around constantly attacking and when
someone decides to kill you in this mode it is very random who dies, usually
best connection wins. This could be easily fixed not by improving the lag, but
by improving the gameplay.

I think you shouldn't be able to attack again until the reveled mode ends.
Otherwise, once revealed, the game become run and attack.

------
lucb1e
For God's sake fix that collision detection. I try to stab someone and someone
tries to stab me, we are going through each other and standing on top of each
other and still stabbing, and nothing happens.

Edit: It is so frustrating. I stand at exactly (pixel-perfect) the same height
as someone else. I stab him so that my knife ends directly in the middle of
the other player. It does nothing. I try again, this time going to the right a
bit (so move to the right, then look to the left so that I stab towards him).
This time the knife ends around where his sprite begins. At the same time he
does one stab and I die. Why do I die and never someone else? Is this lag or
something and has he stabbed me ten seconds ago? Is anyone getting scores of
over 1 or 2?

~~~
bendmorris
You can only stab from behind, so that might explain the trouble you're
having.

~~~
lucb1e
Oh, that might explain. Let me try.

Edit: yes that's it

------
ottocoder
Great job! Do you have any plans for keeping this up long term?

I managed to play for a while yesterday before it got HN'd (can we say that
now instead of slashdotted?) and was looking for a temporary diversion but it
does not seem to be functioning properly any more.

~~~
bendmorris
I'm working on fixing some bugs and adding a few new features, then I'll post
it somewhere more permanent like Kongregate. I'll be sure to announce when I
do.

------
lucb1e
How do I compile this? I've installed haxe, lime, openfl, renamed openfl
version from 1.4.0 to 1.2.3, but every time I install a dependency it gets
stuck on another. The one it's currently stuck on is spinehaxe, for which
google finds two github repositories, neither of which seem to be of any use.
It's not in the lime repositories either.

How do you compile this?

~~~
bendmorris
You'll need a few of my own libraries:

* spinehaxe: github.com/bendmorris/spinehaxe

* SpinePunk: github.com/bendmorris/SpinePunk

* my fork of HaxePunk: github.com/bendmorris/HaxePunk (use the "all" branch) which has modifications not accepted into the main version yet

To install spinehaxe and SpinePunk, clone the repository, enter that
directory, and run the command "haxelib dev <library name> src". For HaxePunk,
clone my fork, check out the "all" branch, and run "haxelib dev HaxePunk
path/to/haxepunk"

Hopefully installing those should be enough to get it working.

~~~
lucb1e
Did all you said, modded the openfl version to 1.3.0, then the following:

    
    
         - Running command: haxe bin/linux64/cpp/haxe/release.hxml -D HXCPP_M64
        src-client/hidenstab/Client.hx:66: characters 8-21 : sys.net.Socket has no field endian
        src-client/hidenstab/Client.hx:83: characters 15-36 : sys.net.Socket has no field bytesAvailable
        src-client/hidenstab/Client.hx:84: characters 15-36 : sys.net.Socket has no field bytesAvailable
        src-client/hidenstab/Client.hx:89: characters 30-45 : sys.net.Socket has no field readByte
        src-client/hidenstab/Client.hx:90: characters 30-45 : sys.net.Socket has no field readByte
        src-client/hidenstab/Client.hx:98: characters 20-36 : sys.net.Socket has no field readBytes
        src-client/hidenstab/Client.hx:102: characters 20-36 : sys.net.Socket has no field readBytes
        src-client/hidenstab/Client.hx:106: characters 33-54 : sys.net.Socket has no field bytesAvailable
        make: *** [linux] Error 1
    

Edit: So it's not `make linux` it seems, `make flash` seems to do something...
Let's try making the server or something...

Edit2: ./server:

    
    
        [...]
        Called from flash/Lib.hx line 191
        Called from /usr/lib/haxe/std/neko/Lib.hx line 30
        Uncaught exception - load.c(237) : Failed to load library : lime.ndll (lime.ndll: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
    

Edit3: Found lime.ndll in some bin folder somewhere. Copied it over to where
./server is. Now it seems to try to bind to 54.244.244.60 (your server's IP)
which of course doesn't work. Server.n is a binary format, that can't be the
config file, hmm...

Edit4: Oh there are replies that HN doesn't show in edit mode. Okay. Gonna try
this!

~~~
bendmorris
You'll need to run "lime setup linux" to build the lime.ndll file and then
copy it into the hide-n-stab directory.

edit because I can't reply to your comment: yes, the client also uses the
values in Defs.hx. It's likely a Flash security issue due to running it
locally. Try adding "-Dnetwork-sandbox" to the command in the Makefile which
builds the flash client.

~~~
lucb1e
Okay the server seems to run now, but the client gives a black screen. When
using `make flash` (without -final) it does show "Masks", "output:" and "\--
HaxePunk 2.6.0-dev --", but still no game. Does the flash client also use the
values in src/hiddenstab/Defs.hx?

~~~
abus
How's it going?

~~~
lucb1e
Still not working. It seems to compile, but I don't know what to do with the
black screen that the client gives. Compile errors are googleable, but I don't
feel like digging into code in some language that I have never used. I
wouldn't know how to do console.log nor where to read the console log.

------
saltylicorice
Cool concept, but ran into some crazy lag on kill events; another player and I
must have stabbed each other 6 or 7 times before I died.

------
Bartweiss
It's a fun and interesting idea, but it's loading about one time in three for
me. When it does, it frequently crashes, resets, or simply won't let me move.
The rest of the time it's various asset loading errors and other problems. I
know the HN hug of death is hard to avoid, but there are a lot of other bugs
going here also.

~~~
bendmorris
When the server went down, I was running around with my hair on fire trying to
fix it and other bugs that cropped up. Inevitably I ended up introducing even
more bugs in the process. Everything is working relatively smoothly right now,
and I'm keeping an eye on things.

------
bendmorris
I had to limit the game to 100 simultaneous players. It seems there are always
more people who want to play, so I set up a second server at
[http://54.186.236.169](http://54.186.236.169) \- this server should have
lower latency, but also fewer people. Consider switching!

~~~
abus
Page doesn't load.

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ericgoldberg
Nice, it's like Spy Party, but with an actual release. Nice job.

------
partisan
Pretty entertaining. Works well on Firefox 28 on Mac.

------
ahmett
This did not work on my machine running Chrome on OS X. I can't do anything in
the game, I am just staring at the screen loaded.

------
alttab
You got front-paged.

