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[bfilmhelden]

Hello there!

I proudly present my first version of an massively multiplayer snake game im working on:
It can be found, and tried out at: http://bfilmhelden.de

It's a playable prototype, but lacks somewhat in the comfort department, so:
* To restart, you have to refresh the page.
* You can bite yourself if you move into the opposite of the current direction. (Maybe that's a feature! ;°)
* No indication of "points" - I'm still not sure if I should count the eaten eatables, or the number of killed enemies, or the number of perfect squares you formed with you worm... Or all of the above
* No names of other players.

Be aware that as long as there are less than 128 active players, those slots are filled up by AI Worms (They are pretty stupid atm.)

Enjoy!

It would be great to get some feedback!
It's my first game that left my own PC, so be as harsh as possible - I can probably take it! (If not I'll harass you with pictures of me crying until 21st december)

Technically: Front end is written in Javascript (its not really obfuscated) the backend is written in Go. Communication over Websockets. Drawn on html's canvas.

I'd be happy to describe it in more detail, if you guys are interested

[bfilmhelden]

Added scoring and a "tactical" element.
If you eat a pellet you earn a point, but if you make another worm run into you ("kill it") you get all the points of that worm.

What do you think?

[LiquidAsh]

Very neat idea!  My connection right now is really too laggy to judge fairly, but I hope to try again when it is better.  Best, Gary.

[DET. Defective]

Haven't played a game of Snake in a while. Pretty damned fun, but I wish it were a little faster. Can't wait to see where this goes, though. :D

Also, ran into a graphics bug, when the pink line highlighting my snake freaked out and stretched out to one side of the screen. Got a screenshot here.

Edit: The highlight bug happens when you go over the boundaries, from 0 to 180 or 180 to 0.

Double Edit: Blagh, hit 269 points and ate myself by mistake. ._.

[johnki]

I played until about 32 points or so.

The idea seems really interesting. I think it could be really fun. Just a few comments/concerns.

1. At one point, almost my entire snake turned blue and a red line showed up from the head of the snake to the edge of the screen where it was facing and didn't disappear until every part of the snake had passed the point where the head was when it showed up. This happened a few times and I didn't know what was going on.

2. The "digging" idea was kinda neat, but I didn't really understand the point of separating people like that, between only two layers (instead of, say, separating them based on how many points they have, or adding more layers than just two, or something). It just kind of seemed like a way to "cheat death" as a last second escape if you, say, get trapped in a corner on one layer, but there isn't a corner there on the second layer.

Also, on the subject of layers, I had difficulty telling which layer the pellets were on from time to time (though that may just be me), and it's a bit irritating that the "upper layer" still shows OVER the "lower layer" when you're on the lower layer, making it difficult to see at times.

3. It may just be the way it's written, but it felt as if it moved in "steps", moving everything once every, let's say, half a second, as opposed to continuously, and it made it difficult to move back and forth quickly (I had to hit two keys directly in a row [meaning BEFORE I had even moved the first time] to switch directions twice in a two-tile space).

I did enjoy the idea and hope you continue to develop it.

In specific, usernames and a leaderboard would be an awesome feature for something like this. If I got up to something like 1000 points, I'd sure as hell like it to be immortalized!

[bfilmhelden]

Oh, wow. Thanks for the feedback!

@LiquidAsh: Thanks Would be nice to hear what you think of it

@ZacharyDCCLXXVII: Thanks a lot man! You even took the time to analyse a bug for me. And to be a good dev, I already fixed it!
It's a bit of a "hack" at the moment... This showed me that the current format, I send the player position is a huge mess has potential for further development 

@johnki: Thanks for playing. And lots of thanks for your feedback! Much apprechiated.
  I'll write a longer reply later... My daughter just woke up. whaaaaa

[aeveis]

interesting take on snake! it's sort of cute to see other snakes running around in the level.

I was sort of confused what the colors mean. I was eating the light green dots but I couldn't eat the darker green dots? Also because its step by step it feels laggy, there is a slight disconnect between when you can move the snake or not (like for example if you hit up and then right fast when your snake is moving left then you will kill yourself). Maybe some indication when you can control the snake? or maybe just a visual indication of what direction you want the snake to move in before the snake moves (just a suggestion, I'm assuming its step-wise since it is multiplayer online so I'm not sure how much you can do here).

Anyway cool idea, At first when I started I thought the other snakes were walls, but they were also moving so I had a "everything is a snake!" moment haha.

[idmadj]

Javascript + Go is great! Any thoughts on the language?

I'm getting around 2-3 FPS which makes the game feel kinda sluggish. Not sure if that's expected.

Also, I couldn't find anything to eat, but was able to make points by having other worms run into me. At one point I had two worms run into me, and only killed one, the other ran straight through.

Neat, simple concept.

[bfilmhelden]

Ahoi,

@jonki: (2) Yes, digging up or down a layer meant to be an additional way to avert collision. (Other than changing directions). Seems I have to make this more clear, also through the rendering of the depth...
(3) I'd love to tell you that this was my intention to keep a "retro-snake-you-know-from-your-first-mobile-phone" - but that would be a lie
 I really wanted to keep the effort as condensed as possible. One way I thought to achieve this was to stay with discrete time (an space) intervalls. Having a simulation based on continious space / time would've been too much for me. (Maybe a second prototype, with various speeds, and non orthogonal angles?!) This time I wanted to actually finish something playable, and stay with the "good enough" and not abandon some castle in the cloud WIP.
You're also right about the leader board. I was trying to find a ready made solution (Like Scoreloop) but was unable to find something to integrate quickly. Hmmmm...  realise no permanent scores suck a lot and absolutely kill motivation for "competitive players"... Should keep this in mind for the next prototypes.


@aeveis: Great to hear you liked the idea You are right, Somehow I need to make the layers more readable. (Thats probably why wou were unable to eat the dark dots, thats not possible when you are digged down.)
Maybe I can think of a way to indicate direction. It should be possible to obscure the steps a bit...

@idmadj: Yep, thats the way it is. It is 2 FPS (+- lag)
I have to look into the two worm problem! Thanks for pointing out.

Thanks again fro playing!

I added mouse input. (Click to change in that direction, move vertically by clicking near your worm.) This means you could play it also on a smart phone... (It kind of worked on my android with chrome mobile)

[Indievelopper]

Just one thing : MAKE IT SO WHEN A WORM HITS ME MY WORM GETS LONGER!!

It increases my score but not my worm size...

[bfilmhelden]

Oh wow, heroic worm you got there!  

 I need to get a scoreboard!

[AgentSimon]

I can't make it start. What am I doing wrong? I think I just get the start page...

[bfilmhelden]

Hmm.. Is there no game feedback at all?!

could you tell me which browser (+ version) you are using?
Did you disable Javascript?

[bfilmhelden]

Now with vertical moving NPCs! Wooot

In other news I'm currently trying to reduce the size of the game-update-packages, by packing everything into a binary format - So I can create a TCP based client.
Does anybody have experience with "multiplayer game protocols"?

[Jackson31]

the game froze for me when I got to length 95