Show HN: Word Wars- HTML5 real time word game

Show HN: Word Wars- HTML5 real time word game(wordwars.clay.io)

61 points by farhadabas 14 years ago | 40 comments

farhadabas 14 years ago |

A couple of weeks ago, my friends and I built a word game during a hackathon and got a great reception from people who played it. Previous HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3750068 My friends have cleaned up a lot of the UI and the code, and have published it under a new name. It uses now.js in the backend, and is all html5/js. Let me know what you think!

The game works well on mobile devices too. iPad has the best experience :)

nosecreek 14 years ago | |

Good work. You fixed my biggest complaint with the last version (not disabling default backspace behaviour). The "Or just use your name" option is something I really appreciate. I almost left when I didn't see it at first, so you may want to consider making it a little more obvious.

austinhallock 14 years ago | | |

Thanks! Yeah we made sure to tackle (I think) all the complaints of the previous version.

I just tweaked the font of the "Or just use your name" to be less gray, hopefully that makes it stand out a bit more.

kaybe 14 years ago |

The English language really has a delightful amount of three-letter words. I don't know all of them, but guessing gives me a high chance it actually exists.

One issue: Sometimes I want to start with some letter, but the game only marks the second letter, rendering the selection incorrect. Might be due to my computer being busy with some simulations though.

austinhallock 14 years ago | |

If you're typing and hit the enter key it should start fresh so the first letter will be accepted.

I think what's happening is you're typing in a few letters of one word, then moving on to the next word with a new letter that's not adjacent to the previous ones. Typing a letter that's not adjacent causes the word to fail, and that letter won't be part of the next word. So if we had a 3x3 board

A B C D E F G H I

And I typed ABC GHI, it would only count HI since G was part of the failing word ABCG.

This is how it's supposed to work, but it can get a little trippy some times. If what I explained is not what's happening, and it's just not picking up the first letter in a normal case, let me know!

austinhallock 14 years ago | | |

It didn't keep my formatting for the letters, but you can imagine a 3x3 board with those letters ;)

austinhallock 14 years ago | | |

Ah, well I'll take a look then because that shouldn't be happening

kaybe 14 years ago | | |

I'm using the mouse.

farhadabas 14 years ago | |

Could you please clarify on that issue? So it ignores the first letter and just skips to the second one? Thanks for playing the game!

kaybe 14 years ago | | |

Basically yes. It feels like lag. I click on the first letter and drag, but only a later letter (not neccessarily the first, sometimes also the second) gets highlighted. The simulation has ended now, so apparently it wasn't due to my CPU being maxed out.

Jun8 14 years ago |

Just sunk about 30 mins into this. NYT Magazine last Sunday had an article (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/angry-birds-farmv...) about "stupid games" that are highly addictive. Case in point.

BrotherErryn 14 years ago |

Very nicely done! Polish up the UI and you this could be a real winner...the game play really works (and that's what really matters).

Makes me think again about updating my game, the original Word Wars (http://www.impulsedriven.com/ww) to the web...

I'd really be interested to hear how the dictionary parser was done.

sodafountan 14 years ago |

This is awesome and really pretty addictive. Although I was able to type and drag the cursor around randomly and pick up little words like 'pe' or 'th' it almost seemed like a stupid exploit. And another thing is the after game stats are really pretty interesting, if there was a way to view them longer than ten seconds that would be great!

austinhallock 14 years ago | |

I added it to my todo list to have an option to keep the leaderboard open until you hit close, rather than closing automatically.

austinhallock 14 years ago | |

I added an option to keep the leaderboard window open.

johns 14 years ago |

As a Scramble with Friends addict this is clearly up my ally. I actually find the mouse to be faster because the keyboard is too unpredictable and it's too disruptive to completing a word. There must be something there since I was consistently getting the top score.

aidenn0 14 years ago | |

My score quadrupled when I switched to keyboard. But I see the word, then type it (at ~80wpm)

lostgame 14 years ago |

Really super buggy...using Chrome on Mac 10.7...letters get stuck all the time, sometimes keys don't register...needs work, but looks like an addictive concept, if I could make it through one round without it misregistering my keystrokes...

austinhallock 14 years ago | |

Could you clarify what you mean by letters getting stuck?

bmelton 14 years ago | | |

For what it's worth, I'm using Chrome on OS 10.7 and it works flawlessly.

He might be unaware that letters need to be inline. I ran into that at first when I thought I could use any of the letters on the board whether they were adjacent or not. Once I learned the mechanics, it stopped 'acting buggy'.

Mutinix 14 years ago |

Great game! Although there was a problem with the leaderboard. A couple of times the leaderboard showed up only for a fraction of a second and then disappeared. I'm assuming it took too long to load and by that time the next round started.

MitziMoto 14 years ago |

Love it! Super addicting. My only complaint with these types of games is that I always feel like people are cheating.

But at least it makes me feel better about how bad I am at these word games ;)

austinhallock 14 years ago | |

Glad you like it! We're doing our best to prevent cheating, but it's certainly not impossible to cheat. If it becomes a problem we'll definitely address it. As for the current scores, I don't believe they are cheating. I've been able to get 310 after playing quite a bit, and I certainly know there are people out there better than me.

kaybe 14 years ago |

I have the impression that it allows quite a lot of spanish. No german, no french, but spanish. Interesting. Where do you get the words from?

praxeologist 14 years ago |

I tried clicking on top words or something in the leaderboard and it just went to a new game (Win/FF).

austinhallock 14 years ago | |

New games start 10 seconds after the leaderboard first shows and we pretty much have to hide the leaderboard right then and there. Since it's all real-time against the world, every game runs at the same time, so there's no real choosing when to start a new one.

kaybe 14 years ago | | |

It would be great if I could look at the board for some more time and maybe choose to skip a game.

f137 14 years ago |

Does it drops high scores fron the leaderboard?

I've got 155, and then it is replaced by 147

herdrick 14 years ago |

What does "We see you haven't installed Word Wars" mean? How is a web app 'installed'?

austinhallock 14 years ago | |

By installed, it just means it's added to your 'library' on clay.io. That way once we have more than 3 games, it will be easy to find the games you have played before and like.

zainny 14 years ago |

Cool game. FYI, when you visit the site using IE9 it just remains stuck at "Loading".

farhadabas 14 years ago | |

Were you able to play on other browsers? We have been told that happens on some Android devices as well. We are looking into it right :/ Thanks for pointing it out!

farhadabas 14 years ago | | |

Nvm it should be fixed now :)

austinhallock 14 years ago | |

Fixed! I actually made the fix a few hours ago, but forgot to transfer to where the live game is :/ Thanks for pointing it out!

44Aman 14 years ago |

Using FF 9 here, and I'm stuck on the loading/waiting for next round page :(

skadamat 14 years ago |

Damn, this game is a ton of fun!

farhadabas 14 years ago | |

Thanks! Please let us know if there is any way we can improve it.

skadamat 14 years ago | | |

Impossible, the game is perfect