Show HN: My Weekend Project - Multiplayer TicTacToe

20 points by idigit 15 years ago | 23 comments

Link: http://xoxo.cm

The idea here was to build a multiplayer game with the lowest possible barrier to entry to get started. That is, no registration, no game setup, as few steps as possible to actually start playing.

There's not much substance here right now and there's still a few bugs that need to be hammered out. I'm also thinking of expanding on the idea with some other simple games down the road. Any feedback or suggestions on the concept in general would be much appreciated.

daakus 15 years ago |

Unnecessary plug: I wrote a ridiculously simple version using node and socket.io to get a feel for this too: https://github.com/nshah/tictactoe -- it only has random matchup mode. It's running here: http://tictactoe.daaku.org:9999/

ericlavigne 15 years ago | |

Nice work.

After waiting 10 minutes for an opponent, I opened a second tab and played against myself. Until your application becomes immensely popular, and this issue goes away, it would be nice to have an estimate of wait time.

Just keep track of recent "new opponent" events (keeping times of the most recent 10 events is sufficient) such as new visitor arriving, game ending, or server starting up (the last one just handles the edge case when you are the first player to load the application). Time elapsed since the earliest event (including only the 10 most recent events) divided by the number of events (again, this is at most 10) yields a reasonable estimate of wait time.

Alternatively, you could pair someone with a computer player if they've been waiting for more than a minute. https://github.com/ericlavigne/tic-tac-toe/blob/master/src/t...

tlack 15 years ago |

Random Matchup mode would be fantastic.. no one is online right now that I'd like to play with.

idigit 15 years ago | |

whats your share link?

tlack 15 years ago | | |

http://xoxo.cm/2e773

vyrotek 15 years ago |

(edit - ok site is back up)

Looks cool. I definitely think it needs a random match-up feature.

I wonder if this will help my game :) http://xkcd.com/832/

idigit 15 years ago | |

Yeah, it's being sort of intense on my server. Trying to fix it. Let us know your share URL when you can get through.

vyrotek 15 years ago | | |

http://xoxo.cm/ed5e5 Got it!

edit - Ok maybe it doesn't quite need a random match-up feature. The fact that I'm playing 4 games at once is pretty fun... and crazy.

idigit 15 years ago |

Clickable: http://xoxo.cm

jaydz 15 years ago |

Cool, who wants to play :)

http://xoxo.cm/7fe54

biot 15 years ago | |

Thanks for the game. :)

iphoneedbot 15 years ago | |

I WON! Against you! High five!

jaydz 15 years ago | | |

24-28 so far :(

iphoneedbot 15 years ago | | |

2 Games! Thanks! This is a good take on an old game

ericlavigne 15 years ago |

This application looks like it would make a very nice introductory example for asynchronous web programming. Is the source code available?

idigit 15 years ago | |

Not currently

kunday 15 years ago |

Is the domain down? It is not getting resolved.

idigit 15 years ago | |

The servers getting hit a fair bit - working on it.

idigit 15 years ago |

for making this game I'm not doing so great in tictactoe against fellow HNers :(

vyrotek 15 years ago | |

Do other players get notified if I quit in the middle of a match? I had multiple games going on (very cool) but I hope quitting didn't leave them hanging.

idigit 15 years ago | | |

At its current state, your box will just get removed from their game, so they should be aware.

rick_2047 15 years ago |

I think the site has been HNed (or whatever is the HN equivalent of slashdoted).

idigit 15 years ago | |

I'm adding another node - just rebuilding the disc. It will be back momentarily. Sorry!

Edit: Site's back - should be all good now.