
Show HN: Wick – A free and open-source creation suite - azamat-bagatov
http://wickeditor.com/
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cryptarch
Pretty cool idea, though it's advertised rather vaguely. It's basically an
HTML5-based Flash alternative with an HTML5-based editor.

The menu bar disappeared after a few seconds and I couldn't get it back, I'm
on fresh Chromium.

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SpaceDingus9000
Agreed, if the creator added something like "media creation suite" instead of
"creation suite" it'd be a bit more clear.

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azamat-bagatov
Creator here!

Yup, I'm still trying to find the right wording for it; "media creation suite"
is definitely more descriptive! Thx

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DaiPlusPlus
"Media" is still too vague. I would be blunt and say "Flash-like content
authoring tool for HTML5" or "HTML5 Interactive Animation Editor".

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VT_Drew
Not creator here. "Flash-like content authoring tool for HTML5" isn't catchy
at all, that's like calling an iPod "Digital music playing device". Branding
and marketing count.

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dperfect
This is great.

If it had some basic drawing tools integrated (+ a bit more polish on the UI),
it would be a killer tool for kids and non-programmers to get their feet wet
with some core programming concepts and visual creativity. It's basically all
there right now, but the hassle of creating assets externally and importing
them is just an extra barrier that may frustrate inexperienced users.

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luxapodular
Hi dperfect,

I'm one of the co-creators of Wick. We're in the process of getting those
finished! We'll be tweeting / posting about all of our major updates if you're
interested.

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davegauer
Wick looks like a great start to finally filling that huge, gaping hole where
there should be a tool. Thank you for creating this. I hope it becomes hugely
popular and quickly becomes a polished tool.

I have bookmarked this and will definitely be using it the next time I have my
kiddo at the computer so I can show her how to make something move on the
screen.

Increasingly, I find myself perfectly happy to use online tools for certain
tasks. I'm a huge proponent of having local tools, local file storage, and for
desktop computing in general. But there are amazing convenience gains to
having browser-based applications. That's doubly true for this since the
delivery platform is also the browser.

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webwanderings
I was thinking something along the same lines using Google Drawings. Just the
local to cloud clipboard, and smart image/text alignments makes local image
editing software (Paint etc) go extinct.

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xatan_dank
This is nice, I really missed the Flash IDE's paradigm for game creation. The
timeline and visual nature of the IDE made making a game a hell of a lot
easier, especially for people without real CS education (kids). It looks like
you write JS with Wick though, which I think is better for kids to learn how
to interact with the web than AS3 ever was.

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slackstation
This looks like it could be a more modern interpretation of what Apple's
Hypercard was trying to be.

Flash did this very well but, the technology and corporate ecosystem around it
was terrible so it was good that we got rid of it.

This seems poised not to have those burdons. I wish the creators of this would
do two things: 1\. Get a sustainable funding model - Patreon seems pretty good
for this. 2\. Make indepth user testing (with non-technical people) a heavy
priority within their culture.

The internet needs something for making media that isn't Adobe or Facebook or
Google or Microsoft. Something that is open and financed directly by the
people who want to use it and people that care about a free and open internet
should happen.

If the authors of this project open a Patreon page, I pledge $20/mo for an
entire year. I will also match $5/mo for anyone else willing to join me in
supporting this project.

FYI: I have never met nor spoken to any of the Wick team members. I just got
inspired to do something other than just throw out random advice on the
internet today.

To the Wick team: PM me if you are interested in starting a Patreon.

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azamat-bagatov
Hey! Creator here -

I agree, it's super important to get Wick self-sustaining as soon as possible.
Part of that is definitely to start getting some core developers involved and
having a way to reimburse everyone for their time~~

Hit me up on twitter (@zrispo) or on the github repo, let's talk!

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hugs
This is awesome! Wick reminds me of HyperCard. I fell in love with programming
as a kid because of HyperCard (and its HyperTalk programming language). I hope
Wick likewise inspires another generation of hackers.

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qwertyuiop924
It's good that somebody's trying to fill the (massive) boots of Flash. Yes,
flash is clunky, and it's soundly mocked around here for good reason, but it
filled a genuine need, and was used to create a lot of cool content
(Eddsworld, Animator vs Animation, Weebl's stuff, My Little Pony (yes, really:
look it up)), and sparked an age of experimentation in game design, kicked off
casual gaming, and allowed easier publication of and access to independant
games than ever before (Speaking as one of the many who have lost countless
hours to N, Run 2, Meat Boy, FreeRider 2, Fancy Pants Adventures, PacXon,
Portal The Flash Version, SHIFT, The World's Hardest Game, This is The Only
Level (1, 2, and 3), Exit Path, Escape the <x>, Sushi Cat, and countless other
games).

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idreyn
I love this so much — I got into programming with AS2 in the Flash MX days and
although it's great that HTML5 replaced Flash as a _platform_ , the lack of a
replacement _tool_ has left a bit of a hole in my creative life. Is there a
roadmap for motion tweens?

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luxapodular
Hi idreyn,

we actually have motion tweens implemented! (They're just not represented in
the GUI as well as they should be yet) We'll have a demo up for them soon!

~~~
idreyn
That's great to hear, thanks!

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GordonS
What is a 'creation suite'?

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radley
Creation Suite is the Adobe brand for their suite of creative software tools.

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t0mek
The Adobe brand name is Creative Cloud.

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radley
Sorry - originally it was Creative Suite (2003 - 2013). Adobe used a new
product name when they switched to subscriptions.

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Xeoncross
Minor victory today. After pushing all my keys I finally figured out how to
play "Flappy Ghost".

~~~
Fnoord
Tried for 5 minutes. Couldn't get past the 2nd pipe. With a HQ mouse (Naga).
What am I doing wrong? Just bad?

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hugs
If you couldn't get past the 2nd pipe I think that means it's a successful
Flappy Bird clone.

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hugs
What's the license? (I don't see any explicitly mentioned in the source repo.)

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azamat-bagatov
Just now added a GPLv2 - thanks for the heads-up

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WhitneyLand
Nice work, I like it. Two peeves:

1) Mobile is broken (iPad). Maybe you don't expect a lot of mobile users but
it's not a lot of extra work, and can be productive for large tablet users.

2) I would prefer that twitter not be used for your dev blog.

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zhte415
I balked at the output, which was 1.9MB for KitchenSink.html which showed up
in editor as 3,902 lines and 707,605 columns, by simply adding 3 characters to
the template provided.

Could this be optimised? Having not a single file as output? As much as I
dislike CDNs most of the time, if this is to be federated to cache most of
this fluff on a central CDN option (or local CDN) seems to be sensible, or at
least let it be cached somewhere.

^ Wish to be be critically useful.

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dkersten
This site doesn't work for me on iOS: the content doesn't fit on screen and
the scroll is broken (i.e. I cannot scrol at all)

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JLK_121416
Same for me in chrome on android 6

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salzig
Closed in rage mode on mobile.

Zoom disabled? Rly?

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hugs
It looks like it wasn't tested on (or designed for?) mobile. Works great on
desktop Chrome, though.

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lukaszkups
who would like to develop a game on mobile device anyway? ^^

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hugs
Not 100% sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but there are two legit use
cases:

1) Design on desktop, but publish for playing on mobile phones/tablets.

2) Design on iPad/tablet with connected keyboard. Play on tablet/phone with or
without keyboard. (A phone would probably be too small for the Wick editor,
but I can see it being useable on a larger touchscreen.)

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evilDagmar
To put this in clearer terms, there's a huge difference between building a
model ship on your desk, and building a model _ship in a bottle_ on your desk.

Putting a well-instrumented usable UI together is hard enough without scope
creep including doing a UI that's also useable on a phone.

~~~
hugs
I agree that _editing_ on a small screen-sized phone would be silly. But
targeting phones for _playback_ of Wick-created content would be a worthy
goal. Also a worthy goal would be making the editor work on tablets _if_ the
screen was big enough (iPad, iPad Pro, etc.).

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aub3bhat
You might want to take a look at Fabric.js, while it lacks keyframe based
animations, it does support other things.

[http://fabricjs.com/kitchensink](http://fabricjs.com/kitchensink)

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luxapodular
Hi aub3bhat,

We're actually using Fabric.js for the editor canvas!

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endergen
I think desktop tools with an easy to version control file format fits better
with branch based app development. Use Electron and it's super easy. Automatic
updates also

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dfar1
+1 for reminding me of the flash editor and keyframe animations!

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eridal
Good work!

I been thinking about self-replicating systems and seems to me that the web
could be a great medium for them.

A tool that's capable to build itself.

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erwinkle
I love the maplestory gifs when you press the right arrow :)

