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Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

athenacrisis.com

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Re: Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#11

Post by cpojer »

npinsker wrote: post #8

Your game looks great! Love the color palette, I’ll keep an eye on this for sure. Sorry for the curveball, but I’d be really interested in hearing about the process of finding your publisher (if you don’t mind) — it seems incredibly tough for devs without huge resumes right now, so I’m curious how the process went.

I started building this game while I was on paternity leave after our second daughter was born. At the time it was a fun side project, and I was sure I would ship it in some form, but I never even thought about founding a company and finding a publisher.

When I had something fun I got a few keynote slots at React and web conferences in 2023 (that's where the resume comes in, I guess?) and while I put together the presentation I also put a publisher deck together, mostly just for fun. The game was fully embedded in the slide deck just like it is now on the website, and how I did it in the public presentation (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8SmXOTM8Ec ).

A mutual friend introduced me to Null, we had one meeting, and that set me on this path. I didn't seriously talk to other publishers.

I'm afraid this story is not super repeatable and mostly just hard work and serendipity. Before all that I spent 10 years as a teenager and early adult building games and social networks, and than I spent 12 years at Facebook & Stripe.

I wrote about my reasons for starting a company here: https://cpojer.net/posts/building-a-company

Re: Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#12

Post by theogravity »

personjerry wrote: post #9
mashlol wrote: post #4

Very cool demo, but I think it needs a NUX as I have no idea what to do. I randomly clicked stuff but I have no idea if anything accomplished anything.

(NUX stands for new user experience)

I've always known it as FTE (First Time Experience). Agreed, the controls aren't entirely intuitive. I didn't know I had to click on the wait icon to 'end' that char's 'turn'.

Didn't know what to do when all the chars were dimmed out.

Also it didn't seem like I could move then attack? It was either move or attack (that or the tiles that showed the actionable area was way too dim to make out to see if it overlapped with an enemy tile).

The artillery didn't show any range tiles at all so I thought I couldn't use it even though it wasn't dimmed.

Re: Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#15

Post by cpojer »

theogravity wrote: post #12
personjerry wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(NUX stands for new user experience)

I've always known it as FTE (First Time Experience). Agreed, the controls aren't entirely intuitive. I didn't know I had to click on the wait icon to 'end' that char's 'turn'. Didn't know what to do when all the chars were dimmed out. Also it didn't seem like I could move then attack? It was either move or attack (that or the tiles that showed the actionable area was way too dim to make out to see if it overlapped wi…

You are all correct, both about calling it NUX or FTE* and that the game should teach players better. That's been recurring feedback, and the actual game once it fully launches (after Early Access) will feature a gentle introduction – which I'll also add to the landing page then.

*Some companies I worked at called it NUX because FTE would be ambiguous as it usually means "Full-Time Employee".

Re: Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#17

Post by elliottcarlson »

Very neat -- one issue with the site is once you have started a game, if you try to scroll down to check out the rest of the page it keeps scrolling me back up to the game. I was looking for a pause button, hoping that would let me check things out, but couldn't find one.

Re: Show HN: Play the game I'm developing directly on its website

#20

Post by andai »

cpojer wrote: post #6
mtlynch wrote: post #3

I tried it out, but it froze up my browser on Firefox + Windows on a pretty well-resourced desktop. The page loaded fine, but when I hit "Play" everything ground to a halt, and even scrolling the page up and down had a 3-5 second delay.

Oh that sucks. If you don't mind helping me troubleshoot the issue: Does this also happen with a Chromium based browser? Any chance you could profile using Firefox's web tools and send it to me (Find my details on twitter.com/cpojer or on the bottom of cpojer.net). Firefox has not been a focus for the game as it mostly ships on Chromium/WebKit based browsers/app wrappers, but the landing page should still work great.

It's very laggy on my phone too. (Several seconds input delay.) That's fairly normal for a game made in React though (at least the ones I've tried). Is the paid version also made in React?

For some context, my phone is old (2016) but I do find it amusing that it can run this page with a physics engine and 3D rendering without any lag http://kripken.github.io/box2d.js/demo/webgl/box2d.html

Your game looks great though, and the website matches it perfectly! Nice work

(As an aside, I'd urge you to take the from-scratch ethos just one step further and make you next game without any libraries, or with sensible exceptions like Howler and Pixi.)

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