

Show HN: My Weekend Project - Multiplayer TicTacToe - idigit

Link: http://xoxo.cm<p>The idea here was to build a multiplayer game with the lowest possible barrier to entry to get started. That is, no registration, no game setup, as few steps as possible to actually start playing.<p>There's not much substance here right now and there's still a few bugs that need to be hammered out. I'm also thinking of expanding on the idea with some other simple games down the road. Any feedback or suggestions on the concept in general would be much appreciated.
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daakus
Unnecessary plug: I wrote a ridiculously simple version using node and
socket.io to get a feel for this too: <https://github.com/nshah/tictactoe> \--
it only has random matchup mode. It's running here:
<http://tictactoe.daaku.org:9999/>

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ericlavigne
Nice work.

After waiting 10 minutes for an opponent, I opened a second tab and played
against myself. Until your application becomes immensely popular, and this
issue goes away, it would be nice to have an estimate of wait time.

Just keep track of recent "new opponent" events (keeping times of the most
recent 10 events is sufficient) such as new visitor arriving, game ending, or
server starting up (the last one just handles the edge case when you are the
first player to load the application). Time elapsed since the earliest event
(including only the 10 most recent events) divided by the number of events
(again, this is at most 10) yields a reasonable estimate of wait time.

Alternatively, you could pair someone with a computer player if they've been
waiting for more than a minute. [https://github.com/ericlavigne/tic-tac-
toe/blob/master/src/t...](https://github.com/ericlavigne/tic-tac-
toe/blob/master/src/tic_tac_toe/core.clj#L81)

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tlack
Random Matchup mode would be fantastic.. no one is online right now that I'd
like to play with.

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idigit
whats your share link?

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tlack
<http://xoxo.cm/2e773>

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vyrotek
(edit - ok site is back up)

Looks cool. I definitely think it needs a random match-up feature.

I wonder if this will help my game :) <http://xkcd.com/832/>

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idigit
Yeah, it's being sort of intense on my server. Trying to fix it. Let us know
your share URL when you can get through.

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vyrotek
<http://xoxo.cm/ed5e5> Got it!

edit - Ok maybe it doesn't quite need a random match-up feature. The fact that
I'm playing 4 games at once is pretty fun... and crazy.

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idigit
Clickable: <http://xoxo.cm>

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jaydz
Cool, who wants to play :)

<http://xoxo.cm/7fe54>

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iphoneedbot
I WON! Against you! High five!

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jaydz
24-28 so far :(

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ericlavigne
This application looks like it would make a very nice introductory example for
asynchronous web programming. Is the source code available?

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idigit
Not currently

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kunday
Is the domain down? It is not getting resolved.

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idigit
The servers getting hit a fair bit - working on it.

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idigit
for making this game I'm not doing so great in tictactoe against fellow HNers
:(

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vyrotek
Do other players get notified if I quit in the middle of a match? I had
multiple games going on (very cool) but I hope quitting didn't leave them
hanging.

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idigit
At its current state, your box will just get removed from their game, so they
should be aware.

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rick_2047
I think the site has been HNed (or whatever is the HN equivalent of
slashdoted).

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idigit
I'm adding another node - just rebuilding the disc. It will be back
momentarily. Sorry!

Edit: Site's back - should be all good now.

