115 pointsby homegamesjoseph7 hours ago12 comments
  • ricardobeat6 hours ago
    Could not play any of the games - too many requests errors. Why do they need "sessions", are they not running client-side?
    • homegamesjoseph6 hours ago
      I forgot to mention this in the post, but the games themselves run on the server. This gives every game multiplayer for free out of the box, and clients just read the server state and send back input.

      The idea is that you could use a browser or custom client or whatever to connect to a game server

      • nnevatie35 minutes ago
        Hmm, not sure why "Weed Smoke Willie" would require any of that? It looked like an interesting game, though - I hadn't appreciated the idea of fishing shark with weed, before.
        • homegamesjoseph31 minutes ago
          For sure it doesn’t utilize any network stuff now, but it would be super easy to add a couple more Willies in there. But definitely considering adding an optional client side only thing for single player games
  • avaer7 hours ago
    Does everything need a "session"? Is it possible to have fully static games/exports?
    • homegamesjoseph6 hours ago
      One thing I forgot to mention is all of these games run server side and thin clients just render and send input back to the server. So a game session needs to exist for the back and forth communication to work.

      Theoretically you could do this all client side too, but that would remove the magic of every game getting multiplayer for free

      • avaer6 hours ago
        If you architect your protocol cleanly, you should be able to run the simulation client side too without much effort (certainly the web platform has everything you'd need). This is how modern game engines do it, it goes back to the Quake VM and probably beyond.

        You'd still get multiplayer "for free", but it could be turned on and off. You could do it with zero code change for the actual games, they don't have to know.

        It seems some of the games could do with a singleplayer mode that doesn't depend on the backend having free slots.

        Just an idea from a fellow web games person!

        • purple-leafy6 hours ago
          This is something I’ve done with my web game, I run the entire simulation client side so as to never worry about scaling issues.

          Why reach for a server unless you truly need one! My multiplayer mode is p2p planned

        • homegamesjoseph6 hours ago
          Thanks for the feedback! Local games weren't something I really considered until recently, but it would definitely be cool
      • __del__6 hours ago
        as a matter of ux, users probably don't need to know that a session is being instantiated, and probably expect a simple play button

        fun

        • homegamesjoseph6 hours ago
          Thanks for the feedback! Need a good way to clean up the UI to distinguish between joining someone's multiplayer session or creating your own
  • purple-leafy6 hours ago
    I like the concept and tried to play some games by starting or joining sessions, either nothing happened or I got disconnected straight away?

    Anyway nice concept. I’m also making web games (see my post history) so if anyone wanted to connect and discuss, send me an email (in profile too)

    • homegamesjoseph5 hours ago
      Sorry about that, looks like the traffic spike from HN overwhelmed my session management stuff. It will only get better!
      • purple-leafy5 hours ago
        No need to be sorry! Good job on launching and working on it for years. It’s awesome. These launch hiccups happen.

        Just keep pushing, I know how hard it is

  • HoldOnAMinute7 hours ago
    Does anyone remember "Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit" on the Amiga?
    • teddyh6 hours ago
      And for the Commodore 64.
      • Pxtl6 hours ago
        I was obsessed with the Arcade Game Construction Kit on the C64.
    • alienbaby6 hours ago
      And Amos and blitz basic
  • BSTRhino4 hours ago
    Wow! Can you tell us a bit about what the past 8 years have looked like for you?
    • homegamesjoseph2 hours ago
      Sure thing! Basically started making simple rendering tests over a websocket and then added images, font and audio support.

      The initial idea was to make jackbox style games people could host on their computers and play on their phones in the same room over wifi.

      Added to that and kind of did a whole lot of nothing productive around covid, just experiments that didn’t get deployed anywhere. And a podcast with over 100 episodes.

      A few years ago my wife and I had our first kid, so I spent about a year polishing the self hosted stuff and figured I would put the project on the shelf.

      So that’s pretty much what I did until around 6 months ago when I realized the actual Internet is fast enough to run these games outside of a LAN, and a lot of people including myself miss browser based games. That plus Claude making me way more effective in my limited free time led to the current state of things

  • ViAchKoN7 hours ago
    Nice idea. I found a couple of interesting games on this.

    Thanks for sharing! Cool that you haven't stopped working on this project after that long time. It gives me inspiration to work on my projects which I can't find time to finish.

    • homegamesjoseph6 hours ago
      Thanks! I'm planning on making a lot more. I made most of this stuff before AI tools were available. But now Claude can one shot really impressive stuff, it's amazing
      • matthewfcarlson6 hours ago
        I worked on a similar concept (padgames.io now defunct) that offered a state sync networking system with rollback netcode style stuff. It could handle exposing only certain information or fake info to certain clients (to prevent cheating). It integrated super nicely with vuex or react stores as it was all observable and all game actions just turned into state mutations.

        I made the game I wanted, enjoyed it with family and friends, and then let COVID sweep it away. Congrats on continuing to work on it.

        • versteegen5 hours ago
          Isn't it strange, how some incredibly crude game written in the 80's will probably live forever in an archive somewhere, while the sophisticated things we create today are amazing but too numerous to be preserved or remembered. Working on a rollback netcode system as well currently.
        • homegamesjoseph4 hours ago
          Even a similar name! That’s awesome.
  • subbu9632 hours ago
    interesting idea, i wanted to build something like this for some time
  • alienbaby6 hours ago
    Nice! Some fun making big chains explodey things :)
  • lukasco5 hours ago
    Fun, seems to be working. Do you have levels? All the games I played seemed to have a static level.
    • homegamesjoseph4 hours ago
      Thank you! I don’t have any super fleshed out games with progression yet. I have some ideas but the most thorough game at this point is vegas trail. The balancing is busted in that at the moment. Will definitely fix that and make more games with some depth
  • nadermx7 hours ago
    I was just closelined by a beam in one of the games. Badass
    • homegamesjoseph7 hours ago
      Nice! I actually didn’t know the rendering stuff could support anything pseudo-3D like that until yesterday.
  • mantisman6 hours ago
    Very cool! Love seeing more browser games
    • homegamesjoseph6 hours ago
      Thank you! Obviously still some gaps to close but would love for this to carry on the spirit of newgrounds and stuff like that.
  • iamoseauditor6 hours ago
    Wow nice.