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Show HN: Homegames. An open-source game platform I've been making for 8 years

homegames.io

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Re: Show HN: Homegames. An open-source game platform I've been making for 8 years

#13

Post by __del__ »

homegamesjoseph wrote: post #9
avaer wrote: post #4

Does everything need a "session"? Is it possible to have fully static games/exports?

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

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

Re: Show HN: Homegames. An open-source game platform I've been making for 8 years

#14

Post by homegamesjoseph »

__del__ wrote: post #13
homegamesjoseph wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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

Re: Show HN: Homegames. An open-source game platform I've been making for 8 years

#18

Post by homegamesjoseph »

ricardobeat wrote: post #17

Could not play any of the games - too many requests errors. Why do they need "sessions", are they not running client-side?

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

Re: Show HN: Homegames. An open-source game platform I've been making for 8 years

#19

Post by avaer »

homegamesjoseph wrote: post #9
avaer wrote: post #4

Does everything need a "session"? Is it possible to have fully static games/exports?

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

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!

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