Live data from Hacker News

Croquet: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming

theregister.com

31–40 of 79 posts

Re: Croquet: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming

#31
Perfect world. Thanks for those classic gems in new setting and caring about them.

Ah, and I am grateful for that comment giving official blessing to the part of my mind that loves Squeak and Applescript to also be that happy about the expressive coding feature integration that JS has become. Incredible how well all the parts fit in the end (the language perfection unfortunately not being extended to that limited canvas to HTML integration. Seems we still can only draw in boxes and structure with text and objects.)

Excellent work. Thanks so much.

Re: Croquet: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming

#32

This looks very interesting, but if I was to write a game with it, how would I handle cheating if I can't control the server?

Just to follow up with this. I've had the idea knocking around of creating an online version of the RoboRally boardgame and this looks like it would fit well for that. However, if I can't model the rules on the server then anyone would be able to easily cheat.

Re: Croquet: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming

#33
post #29

I'm trying to get a sense of what this can do. The demos look like something from the Web3D era. (Web3D was VRML in XML syntax.) You can make little rooms and put a modest amount of stuff in them. Kind of like Decentraland, etc. There are lots of systems like that. Redblox was promoting theirs yesterday on Reddit. A few car brands have web sites like that. They work fine, but you're done in ten minutes. It's when you…

WebXR + Croquet PoC: https://github.com/Squareys/wonderland-engine-croquet & https://x.com/squareys/status/1669238573219086336

Re: Croquet: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming

#34

This looks very interesting, but if I was to write a game with it, how would I handle cheating if I can't control the server?

Just to follow up with this. I've had the idea knocking around of creating an online version of the RoboRally boardgame and this looks like it would fit well for that. However, if I can't model the rules on the server then anyone would be able to easily cheat.

  Two-way gateways to and from other instances, and existing web pages and web apps ... Croquet environments can contain multiple live web views, and Croquet code can also fetch data from external sources and render it live within the virtual environment. 
Hopefully "decentralized" (+ centralized reflector) Croquet in Javascript can co-exist with JS libraries that work with existing servers.

Re: Croquet: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming

#36

This looks very interesting, but if I was to write a game with it, how would I handle cheating if I can't control the server?

Just to follow up with this. I've had the idea knocking around of creating an online version of the RoboRally boardgame and this looks like it would fit well for that. However, if I can't model the rules on the server then anyone would be able to easily cheat.

Not sure in the case of Croquet, but you can implement this very well with https://reflect.net (my company). Server authority is a core piece of what it provides, and as a bonus you don't need a special runtime – it runs in plain javascript in a web page.

I play Robo Rally all the time with my kids and would love you to implement this. Happy to help any way I can :).

Re: Croquet: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming

#37
post #7

This looks very interesting, but if I was to write a game with it, how would I handle cheating if I can't control the server?

Exactly this, if the networking is all handled automatically, the server is only relaying data so won't be able to validate things. The update in TFA is interesting as well, they're worried about Amazon for some reason, hence not releasing some of the moving parts. There are open source licenses that prohibit cloud usage.

Why open source any of it? The copyright owners don't believe they have a business model that can survive in the open source world. Fine. It's their creation, their choice of license. It gets filed in my mind on the closed-source shelf.

Re: Croquet: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming

#38
post #29

I'm trying to get a sense of what this can do. The demos look like something from the Web3D era. (Web3D was VRML in XML syntax.) You can make little rooms and put a modest amount of stuff in them. Kind of like Decentraland, etc. There are lots of systems like that. Redblox was promoting theirs yesterday on Reddit. A few car brands have web sites like that. They work fine, but you're done in ten minutes. It's when you…

https://github.com/croquet/croquet-for-unity-guardians/blob/...

https://github.com/croquet/croquet-for-unity-guardians/blob/...

Is this supposed to be representative of the technology?

> A few car brands have web sites like that.

For free experiences online, either you are trying to do things as cheaply as possible, or you are the biggest richest player in town. There is no viable middle experience, as much as people pretend there is. A car brand choosing to use this is trying to do middle.

Re: Croquet: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, this is a huge shame. What were this sticking points for investors if you don't mind me asking? What is the value proposition? I mean, I am really interested in potentially using this in the AEC industry as an open source product. But where would the revenue come from?

The biggest sticking points were: a) metaverse hype collapse causing blowback oversteer against any kind of virtual world platform b) the team wasn't interested in running it standalone as a for-profit startup outside of the Matrix Foundation, and Matrix doesn't have enough $ to fund core Matrix, let alone Third Room c) big organisations who claimed they were interested in funding it within Matrix entirely failed to…

Thank you for outlining the challenges. I think the whole metaverse angle has been a mistake. There are many legitimate use-cases like work collaboration, or multiplayer games. The marketing of the metaverse just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

If one were to create a MVP for a collaboration platform. Would it be possible to do that with the current state of Third Room in your opinion?

Post reply on HN