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Launch HN: Senpai.gg (YC S21) – Personal gaming coach for PC gamers

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Senpai.gg (YC S21) – Personal gaming coach for PC gamers

#31

Post by orliesaurus »

For league of legends I can see how this can work, in fact I've used many similar tools to understand how a certain champion works.... for the other games tho - the ones that are faster - wouldn't an in-game agent (like a coach) with good suggestions work? For example, in Warzone, someone in-game could say, oh look you might have not noticed but there are enemies shooting there, either go on 3rd party or steer clear of the area.

but now I guess that's against TOS of most games, right? i.e. a voice that tells you what to do / how to do better next round. Now that would be something useful to learn faster!

Re: Launch HN: Senpai.gg (YC S21) – Personal gaming coach for PC gamers

#32

Post by leppr »

Small nitpick/advice, the hero subtext should be a little bit shorter and more to the point (you have 3 instances of "get better at games" paraphrasing). I like how descriptive the rest of your site's copy is, but the hero should be parseable in its entirety very quickly.

Re: Launch HN: Senpai.gg (YC S21) – Personal gaming coach for PC gamers

#33

Post by anigbrowl »

jerednel wrote: post #9

This is interesting. Jumping into Warzone after everybody has memorized every corner of the map and knows where to look is a pain and something like this could help. As a former CS player (1.6, CZ, Source, Go) I had these maps committed to memory. Now that I am far removed from school (and the maps got way bigger) this isn't super possible so I find I just get obliterated quickly then just peace out. Not sure if this…

I've always hated the map memorization thing. To me it destroys the uncertainty and exploratory aspect of a game like CS. I didn't mind it as much in Team Fortress (which is built on cartoonish excess and thus fosters a sillier and less aggressive style of play. Thinking back to when I was a regular CS player, my favorite ever map was a Katamari Damacy style giant room where the players were effectively reduced to the size of action figures and moving around was quite time-consuming. Visually it was quite crude - very basic textures and blocky objects - but it gave rise to all sorts of interesting tactical problems and solutions, while being big enough to make speedrunning impractical.

It's surprising to me that there aren't more procedurally-generated environments for multiplayer; there might not be as interesting to spectate (because you don't know where to look or what to expect), but they'd probably be much more exciting to play.

Re: Launch HN: Senpai.gg (YC S21) – Personal gaming coach for PC gamers

#35

Post by ZephyrBlu »

rich_sasha wrote: post #3

Very clever. Not a gamer anymore so won’t be a client, but it’s a great idea. As I aged/matured/whatnot I find I have more money and less time. It’s great to have a service where I can close a skills gap time-efficiently for money.

The problem is that you still have to invest a shit load of time, even if you trade some for money.

Re: Launch HN: Senpai.gg (YC S21) – Personal gaming coach for PC gamers

#36

Post by banana_maker »

The current marketing pitch (a personal gaming -coach-) has nothing to do with the current functionality of e.g. voicing timers or providing notifications. That's more akin to a personal assistant.

I would also say that what it's doing with Valorant is cheating. It's providing additional cues and advantages automatically, that other players have to keep tabs on manually. The other players have to risk glancing at the timer(s) and temporarily divert attention from the other parts of the screen, while the "AI" user can rely on auditory feedback that is not present in the game for everyone (and maybe was a conscious decision from the game developers).

The whole point of competition is to evaluate player vs player performance, not player+personal assistant vs player performance. If you allow uneven things like that, then it becomes an arms race and also becomes boring from both a viewer and participant standpoint. Part of the challenge of games like Valorant, League of Legends, DotA2, etc, is to learn how to manage the sheer amount of information while also engaging in fights/gameplay.

An actual coach "AI" concept could be to provide intelligent information -inbetween rounds-, not during gameplay itself.

Re: Launch HN: Senpai.gg (YC S21) – Personal gaming coach for PC gamers

#37

Post by nairoz »

Very interesting. A personal coach is certainly the most efficient way to improve. My main concern is about the legality of such a software. Even if the data is presented on screen and available, changing the UI to help the player is not accepted in all games as it can provide a strong edge. For AoE2, part of the game is about scouting and remembering key information while managing your economy.

Re: Launch HN: Senpai.gg (YC S21) – Personal gaming coach for PC gamers

#39

Post by smlss_sftwr »

Congrats on the launch, a question on the technical side of things -- how much computational overhead does your desktop client incur on the host machine? If you're running CV algorithms locally, would that necessitate higher minimum system performance specs beyond those recommended by Riot/other game vendors to avoid impacting the performance of the game client itself?
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