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[Eigen]

I took a few days off from working on Pioneers because I'd been looking at the same code for too long and felt like doing something new for a change. This is what I did:



As stated in the introduction text in the game, the inspiration came from this xkcd comic. I always thought it was hilarious but also really stupid. I've seen text-based shooters before but not in multiplayer. So I made one. It's very basic right now but if there's any interest, I'll work on it some more. Ammo management would be really tedious so it'd be a nice addition to have

Anyway, come join me and let's try it out

Let's Play!


Should at least work on Chrome, Firefox and Safari. IE might work too. Dunno. Don't take the game too seriously. Writing it was just a programmers idea of having fun.


POLYGON
ROCKPAPERSHOTGUN
EUROGAMER
GIANTBOMB
INDIEGAMES
/r/games
/r/webgames
SUPERLEVEL.DE
KOTAKU
KOTAKU (AU)

[Mittens]

LOL! this is great, you just killed me btw, I'm 'mittens'

[voidSkipper]

11 kills, 4 deaths, I am the fastest draw in west.

[Eigen]

Thanks guys. Some things came up I'll try to fix/add in the evening:

* Kill/Death messages should be visible to all players
* Respawn messages, though it might spam the screen too much, so perhaps not.
* Ability to see players on the same square as you. Since you can't shoot them, some knifing action maybe?
* If several players shoot you, the hit message shows only the last shooter.

11 kills, 4 deaths, I am the fastest draw in west.

I panic when under fire so I can't get away fast enough.

[Avgudar]

Interesting concept. Too bad I type slower than molasses.

[W3REWOLF]

I played for quite a while. This is pretty awesome. I could see a lot of depth being put into it.

[tmgs]

A different take on text-based deathmatch from the 1980's:

hunt

I used to play a lot of this. The walls are destructible and it's got bombs, slime, boots, trip-wire, guns and knives.

[Eigen]

I changed a couple of things this morning.

* Max players number wasn't taken into account when joining the room
* In-active (haven't moved in 30 minutes) players are kicked back into the lobby when someone new logs on or the cron job runs.
* Player list didn't fit into the screen with all 30 players - it now shows a top 10 and rest of the names are in one bunch.

The game was linked on GiantBomb also

[pluckyporcupine]

Man, I had an idea for something very much like this not too long ago. I'm going to have to try this out.

EDIT: I said it in-game, but that's a blast. Definitely had me ready to type like crazy a few times.

I'll probably be playing regularly, assuming you keep adding to it.

[Eigen]

It was just a small fun project to work on, a prototype of sorts, and as a prototype it has served its purpose very well. I see that people play it and they seem to enjoy the concept.

My current tech is not really scalable nor does it allow to add new features easily. You see, it's php+mysql on the backend, so not exactly gaming stuf, but it was easy to set up and run on my webserver. If I made this into an actual thing, it would have to be on a dedicated server using node.js most likely. But I don't have time for it right now. As I said, I just wanted to take a little break but now I've been fiddling and fixing this for the whole last week (which is way longer than the few evenings I had planned) and I really want to get back to Pioneers. I wasn't expecting so many players anyway, though which is totally awesome obviously

[Spring Missile]

That's actually awesome, nice work!

[Eigen]

That's actually awesome, nice work!

Thanks a bunch!

[Jcup]

Seriously awesome man, never thought of multiplayer text games like this. Fun and Simple.
The not knowing is exciting and scary. It was a bummer when people would bail after dying but yeah not your fault.

Good Job!

[Eigen]

Thank you!

It was a bummer when people would bail after dying but yeah not your fault.

Yeah, but it's a bit funny actually ... them n00bs. Also a lot of people leave just after logging in

Last night I added ammo. Type 'reload' to pop in a new clip. Makes playing a bit more interesting, especially when you run out of ammo in a fight and have to reload.


Anyway, it's been totally awesome how much interest this has generated with many tweets and couple of blog mentions. I never thought it would. I mean I sort of figured some people would find this enjoyable but people going from "wtf is this .." to "this is awesome!" was surprising.

I'm on there right now, if anyone's up for some asskicking.

[Eigen]

Sorry for the double post but if you want frantic gameplay then now's the right time to join in

edit: I'm just waiting for the server to give up.

[gorgyme]

This is amazing. Best game I've played in ages, a genuine shame you're going to stop

[Eigen]

This is amazing. Best game I've played in ages, a genuine shame you're going to stop

Thank you so much. Yeah, as I said this system isn't very expandable. Of course I'm going to leave it up, fix stuff and add smaller features here and there but to support hundreds of players and more rooms, different game modes, more weapons and whatnot it needs run on a dedicated server. For that I don't have time right now, sadly

Should I take another break that lengthens into a whole week or two, that is definitely what I'm going to be looking into. I do have an old laptop gathering dust that could run the server I think 

[Spring Missile]

If you're not looking to continue it, may I suggest releasing it as Open Source to help the community learn?

[Eigen]

This thing totally exploded all over the web last evening and this night. My poor little server is starting to struggle and 503 is quite common

The main complaint has been that the rooms are always full. That is true and I'm sorry but I can't increase the maximum numbers of players. If I did, the requests would error out even more.

3467 accounts have been created so far. Yay!

[gorgyme]

This probably doesn't help your server

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/11/welcome-to-the-worlds-first-text-based-first-person-shooter/