

Show HN: Word Wars- HTML5 real time word game - farhadabas
http://wordwars.clay.io/

======
farhadabas
A couple of weeks ago, my friends and I built a word game during a hackathon
and got a great reception from people who played it. Previous HN thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3750068> My friends have cleaned up a lot
of the UI and the code, and have published it under a new name. It uses now.js
in the backend, and is all html5/js. Let me know what you think!

The game works well on mobile devices too. iPad has the best experience :)

~~~
nosecreek
Good work. You fixed my biggest complaint with the last version (not disabling
default backspace behaviour). The "Or just use your name" option is something
I really appreciate. I almost left when I didn't see it at first, so you may
want to consider making it a little more obvious.

~~~
austinhallock
Thanks! Yeah we made sure to tackle (I think) all the complaints of the
previous version.

I just tweaked the font of the "Or just use your name" to be less gray,
hopefully that makes it stand out a bit more.

------
kaybe
The English language really has a delightful amount of three-letter words. I
don't know all of them, but guessing gives me a high chance it actually
exists.

One issue: Sometimes I want to start with some letter, but the game only marks
the second letter, rendering the selection incorrect. Might be due to my
computer being busy with some simulations though.

~~~
austinhallock
If you're typing and hit the enter key it should start fresh so the first
letter will be accepted.

I think what's happening is you're typing in a few letters of one word, then
moving on to the next word with a new letter that's not adjacent to the
previous ones. Typing a letter that's not adjacent causes the word to fail,
and that letter won't be part of the next word. So if we had a 3x3 board

A B C D E F G H I

And I typed ABC GHI, it would only count HI since G was part of the failing
word ABCG.

This is how it's supposed to work, but it can get a little trippy some times.
If what I explained is not what's happening, and it's just not picking up the
first letter in a normal case, let me know!

~~~
kaybe
I'm using the mouse.

~~~
austinhallock
Pushed a fix for that, let me know if it did the trick!

~~~
kaybe
Seems to be better. Ah! The game is very addicting.

------
Jun8
Just sunk about 30 mins into this. NYT Magazine last Sunday had an article
([http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-
farmv...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-farmville-
and-other-hyperaddictive-stupid-games.html?pagewanted=all)) about "stupid
games" that are highly addictive. Case in point.

------
BrotherErryn
Very nicely done! Polish up the UI and you this could be a real winner...the
game play really works (and that's what really matters).

Makes me think again about updating my game, the original Word Wars
(<http://www.impulsedriven.com/ww>) to the web...

I'd really be interested to hear how the dictionary parser was done.

------
sodafountan
This is awesome and really pretty addictive. Although I was able to type and
drag the cursor around randomly and pick up little words like 'pe' or 'th' it
almost seemed like a stupid exploit. And another thing is the after game stats
are really pretty interesting, if there was a way to view them longer than ten
seconds that would be great!

~~~
austinhallock
I added it to my todo list to have an option to keep the leaderboard open
until you hit close, rather than closing automatically.

------
johns
As a Scramble with Friends addict this is clearly up my ally. I actually find
the mouse to be faster because the keyboard is too unpredictable and it's too
disruptive to completing a word. There must be something there since I was
consistently getting the top score.

~~~
aidenn0
My score quadrupled when I switched to keyboard. But I see the word, then type
it (at ~80wpm)

------
lostgame
Really super buggy...using Chrome on Mac 10.7...letters get stuck all the
time, sometimes keys don't register...needs work, but looks like an addictive
concept, if I could make it through one round without it misregistering my
keystrokes...

~~~
austinhallock
Could you clarify what you mean by letters getting stuck?

~~~
bmelton
For what it's worth, I'm using Chrome on OS 10.7 and it works flawlessly.

He _might_ be unaware that letters need to be inline. I ran into that at first
when I thought I could use any of the letters on the board whether they were
adjacent or not. Once I learned the mechanics, it stopped 'acting buggy'.

------
Mutinix
Great game! Although there was a problem with the leaderboard. A couple of
times the leaderboard showed up only for a fraction of a second and then
disappeared. I'm assuming it took too long to load and by that time the next
round started.

------
MitziMoto
Love it! Super addicting. My only complaint with these types of games is that
I always feel like people are cheating.

But at least it makes me feel better about how bad I am at these word games ;)

~~~
austinhallock
Glad you like it! We're doing our best to prevent cheating, but it's certainly
not impossible to cheat. If it becomes a problem we'll definitely address it.
As for the current scores, I don't believe they are cheating. I've been able
to get 310 after playing quite a bit, and I certainly know there are people
out there better than me.

------
kaybe
I have the impression that it allows quite a lot of spanish. No german, no
french, but spanish. Interesting. Where do you get the words from?

------
praxeologist
I tried clicking on top words or something in the leaderboard and it just went
to a new game (Win/FF).

~~~
austinhallock
New games start 10 seconds after the leaderboard first shows and we pretty
much have to hide the leaderboard right then and there. Since it's all real-
time against the world, every game runs at the same time, so there's no real
choosing when to start a new one.

~~~
kaybe
It would be great if I could look at the board for some more time and maybe
choose to skip a game.

------
f137
Does it drops high scores fron the leaderboard?

I've got 155, and then it is replaced by 147

------
herdrick
What does "We see you haven't installed Word Wars" mean? How is a web app
'installed'?

~~~
austinhallock
By installed, it just means it's added to your 'library' on clay.io. That way
once we have more than 3 games, it will be easy to find the games you have
played before and like.

------
zainny
Cool game. FYI, when you visit the site using IE9 it just remains stuck at
"Loading".

~~~
farhadabas
Were you able to play on other browsers? We have been told that happens on
some Android devices as well. We are looking into it right :/ Thanks for
pointing it out!

~~~
farhadabas
Nvm it should be fixed now :)

------
44Aman
Using FF 9 here, and I'm stuck on the loading/waiting for next round page :(

------
skadamat
Damn, this game is a ton of fun!

~~~
farhadabas
Thanks! Please let us know if there is any way we can improve it.

~~~
skadamat
Impossible, the game is perfect

