2020-06-18 19:59:26

Hi all,
So I've been working on Backstreets for a while now. It's a better version of my old Mindspace project, for anyone who remembers that.

The game can be found at this link. It's all web based, no downloads required.

It's got to the stage where I think I'm about ready to start having other people work with me to build it up, and decide the future direction of the game. At present, there's what I think is a pretty good map and building system, but I've got a few different ideas as to where to go next, and I kind of need some help deciding which one to go for.

If anyone's interested, come on, have a look around, chat to me (I'll probably be logged in. There's a place in the game (I'll let you find it), where you can become a builder.

People who are just applying so they can tell their mates they're a staff member on a game, the power hungry, and people who can't be arsed using a spell checker or capital letters need not apply, although all of those people are still more than welcome to come on and play the game, such as it currently is.

For the programatically-minded, the code can be found here. When looking through it, please bear in mind this is a new language for me, and I'm still finding my style, so be aware that the style isn't exactly consistent (and I don't like the auto formatter).

Hope to see some of you online soon.

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I have code on GitHub

2020-06-18 20:06:05

Hi.
Please send me an E-mail?
I'd love to help.

Hopefully, we'll get a fully accessible open world game someday.

2020-06-18 20:06:58

Hi!
What is this game about?

2020-06-18 21:57:21

@3
As the first message says, I've not fully decided. I've got a map system that works, so it could turn into anything: A place where people can go to build in proper 2d as a creative social game. Space could be made (although I feel like that would be stretching the limits of my maths knowledge). FPS is another possibility, although again, it's already been done. So in short, I'm not sure.

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I have code on GitHub

2020-06-18 21:58:41

@2
If you could get in touch that would be great. Thanks for your offer.

I'd email you, but I think the forum email is broken, and I've no idea what your address is.

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I have code on GitHub

2020-06-18 22:00:06

well, tbh, I'm rather confused as to what to do. there's no locater, there's a garden then a space like room at 0 0 and I've circled all around and keep banging in the walls.
I'd  help with building but I don't even know where most stuff is

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2020-06-18 22:38:25

@6
Try pressing your question mark key (usually shift and /). That should give you a list of all possible hotkeys.

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I have code on GitHub

2020-06-19 00:02:33

hay, i went to your link, and hit the start buton, but nothing happened the page stayed the same.

2020-06-19 02:42:06

If there are more than 1 object in room, should make it so that it'll ping first object and wait for a seocond or so and then ping another object and etcetera. pinging still no help. also ambience lags game, I mean the spaceship ambience. Logged off two times because of that

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2020-06-19 08:17:02

the concept is cool, lets see where it goes. keeping an eye on this project

allow me to speak more,
catch me on Twitter
or, Mastodon

2020-06-19 09:43:28

I love this. an FPS should be cool... then you could just log in and what not. no need for downloading the game to get started... just login and play. and if updates are released you will also not need to download them at all. but if this is not what you're in to... then it's perfectly fine.

best regards
never give up on what ever you are doing.

2020-06-19 17:13:21

@8, the same problem.

meow meow.

2020-06-19 19:34:19

Is this one of those online text games or does it have sounds and allow you to walk around the environment?

If you wish to contact me privately, you can do so in the following ways.
Telegram, Rich_Beardsley. Discord, RichBeardsley. Facebook, Rich W. Beardsley
Twitter, RichBeardsley. Email, [email protected]. Both iMessages and emails are welcome.
Battle tag, Rich#12744. You can also add me through my email address.

2020-06-19 23:16:05

I love that you opensourced this. I haven't really taken a look at the code but just beware of possible security holes that could be introduced by doing that.

2020-06-20 19:18:44 (edited by Minionslayer 2020-06-20 19:22:12)

@Shane and PatrykK, Same over here. I'm using Firefox, latest beta.
Edit: Yes, the game works using Google Chrome.

If you for whatever reason wish to contact me, the best way to do so is through Discord (Minionslayer#2980). You'll get the quickest response times, and by extension, a higher priority. I also sometimes post my thoughts (for the better or worse) over on Twitter at @Minionslayer2.

2020-06-21 18:39:54

OK, @8 and all. I'm not sure how this will work in anything other than Google Chrome.

I'm not using JavaScript directly, and the tools I am using are all Google. I will definitely look into making this work on Firefox though.

@14
Thnaks for that mate. I'm hoping that any security problems I've coded in will show themselves (hopefully by nice people who find them), so I can fix them. Also, IMO, it's better than security by obscurity.

@9
Have you tried the "p" key? It pings walls and doors (not objects), and the ping is timed according to a modifier, which you can change with the semicolon key (;).

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I have code on GitHub

2020-06-22 00:45:03

I've been trying to catch you and not successfully so I'll just write here. First, as my alt char Nodnarb, the builder, the radio errors out and says something like no such method called. It lists that char in the radio list, but idk if its lying or not. The Brandon char seemed to be able to join the radio no problem. Also, yeah we need soooooounds lol. Everything that's there is just so aggressively sci-fi, it's hard to do other things.

Also, regarding build things, I'm wondering how you did your spoken zones around the fountain in the main map, because sections always seem to build their own walls. I think we should have two levels of zones deep, so the first could be the name of the area or building, and the second could be an area in the building; for example: Cereal Isle of Department Store.

We also need to have a way to undo mistakes. It's actually quite interesting to me that there seems to be this phenomenon among developers of games that let you build on them where they add all the options in the world, but damned if you make a mistake because there's no delete options smile

Also regarding sections, I'm not sure I like how the ambience seems to center on the section, and raising up the distance barely has an effect. I'd like to have the ambience of a section cover the entire thing from end to end, and the distance be that at which you can't hear once you're out of the section. Unless you meant to have a lot of little maps. If that's the case, i think builders need a way to be able to create them and teleport around without finding themselves unable to get back to the main map or any other of their own maps. Maybe an area or a region could help in this way? You could make an area, and that is under the builder's control, and they can make maps that only go in that area.

This would stop the builders run amuck thing, but I can also see problems with it. Maybe you could have two builder ranks, junior and Junior builders get one area and can work within that area. If they get a second, it would have to be manually assigned to them. Senior builders would be able to make changes anywhere. I say this because as the game becomes more filled out,  it'll be kind of weird for each builder to have their own area and only their own area. Say you have 15 unique areas, that's 15 builders. If the person isn't coming around and their area needs work, someone's gonna have to fix it.

Also, hopefully if we can get some new sounds, they probably should be organized into folders that best match what they're for. Like, room tones, outdoor ambiences, etc. I would also like the ability to be able to place sounds on the map that are stationary. These could serve two purposes: aesthetic and land mark.

Also for building sections, I think it should be made clearer which way you're going so you don't actually cut over something you've already done. Like the builder arrow walk thing, it took me a little while to realize that those directions were absolute, and not relative to your heading. I would like to be able to free form or brush stroke them too at some point.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2020-06-22 11:12:45

OK, @16, that's some great feedback, thank you very much for it. I'd definitely like to implement some of that stuff.

I *believe* I've fixed the problems with communications channels. By which I mean they now work again, and I'm unclear as to why they stopped working while everything else continued. I've got about 3000 lines of log to work through though, so I'll keep plugging away on that.

So you can delete everything that you can create: Sections, walls (both kinds), and maps. There's no kind of CTRL+Z type thing though, and honestly I'm not even sure how I'd make that.

Section ambiences don't do what you're after. I'm not sure how I'd make them do it either. I made them for small areas, like the fountain in the park. You could probably cheat and put the same sound at each corner of a square, but that may cause phasing issues.

As for naming things, you just make small areas on top of other areas. In the park, the fountain is a 1x1 square, and the gravel path that surrounds it is a 3x3 one, with the fountain at the middle. It *shouldn't* matter which order you create stuff in, the code that picks (and announces) the current area should filter by the section with the smallest area.

No walls are built without your express keystrokes.

FWIW, you're right about the multiple maps. I'm more than happy to give prolific builders more maps. At the minute, you can team up with people. In the build menu, there's a sub menu called builders. You can add other people to be builders of your zone. I could (and should) also add an admin-only ability to change the ownership and everything in it, to a new builder.

Currently - although it shames me to admit it - I'm erring on the side of paranoia. Alls it takes is one person to get in as a builder (I'm not exactly in a position to be picky), and hack the socket to create unlimited maps. Then the server memory and disk space fills up, and I'm a bit snookered. I'm not telling you that to sidestep responsibility for lacking builder tools by the way, I'm just trying to explain why stuff is a bit more restrictive than it probably should be.

Also sounds... Sounds, sounds, sounds. I'm going to have a look through stuff today and see what I can find to add in, but not put onto Github. You're right, they're seriously lacking, and that's something I've been putting off, because coding is easier.

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I have code on GitHub

2020-06-22 15:27:59

As long as we can delete, that's a good thing, but how? I see ways to delete objects, but not sections or walls. I've just tried going over to them and hitting delete and nothing.

i'm also confused about the whole no walls being built without your express keystrokes. When I got my map, it was all void area. I placed my first section down and it has walls around it. I placed my second section down and it has walls around it. and same for the third. Now, what I haven't done is placed one inside another. Like for my office area, the only place where it overlapped was the back wall, which it removed to allow me to get back there. When I built the office, there was no point at which they touched, so I made a door. But the office has walls around it too.

As far as the sounds go, yeah I'm afraid to say it but this is essentially all for naut if we don't have any. I wonder if you could create some folders on the server where sounds should go, ones for footsteps, indoor ambiance, outdoor ambiance, weapons, etc. Then possibly make a web uploader that I could upload sounds to. It would have a section to choose a file, then a folder where that file should go corresponding to the folders on the server. But it would be solely for that and wouldn't grant additional access to the server itself. You can also encounter sounds that are pretty decent, but require just a bit of processing to take them to the next level. Also, if not a web uploader, what about an sftp server that jails you into the sounds folder. You wouldn't be able to back out, list other directories, or anything. You would only be able to access the root sounds folder and any subfolders under that. Also probably make new ones as well just to organize things. Believe me, if we get a decent bit of sounds in there, they will need to be organized or we'll have one hell of a time finding the one we want among all the others.

Something else, is there a reason home and end don't take you to the first and last item in a list? Usually it'll say something and then any further presses angrily squawk at you.

Oh yeah, I just remembered. With the tile size control in sections, there's a bug because the box always truncates to 1, even if you put 1.000. This is a problem, because you get an error about mixing ints and floats if you try to upload that.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2020-06-23 12:42:37

OK, I've got a fairly busy day, but I'll look into the bugs you describe at some point.

The delete item for sections is right at the bottom of the "ucrrent section" menu, below reset.

Walls can be deleted with the shift w menu.

There are no pingable walls between sections, but a normal character can't walk there because there is no section to walk on.

Finally, an SFTP server is a great idea. No point in me writing a web uploader when SFTP works just as well. If you're proposing to upload sounds, I'll give you access. If you can email me, we'll sort it out.

Sorry this post is a bit brief, but I hope I've addressed all your points.

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I have code on GitHub

2020-06-23 19:02:42

OK sent email.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2020-06-24 01:11:31

Thought of a new idea. When moving coordinates for settings sections, general sounds for each movement, but if you cut over another section's tiles, a sped up version of that sound to serve as a preview of sorts. That way you can be certain that you aren't overstepping something unless you mean to.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2020-06-24 14:10:14

But what with firefox error?
I can play it, because I dont using hrome.

meow meow.

2020-06-30 11:12:39

When I will be able to play the game using my favourite browser?

meow meow.

2020-06-30 11:21:20

the game does not work with my macbook mac os 11 bigsur safari 14

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.