[HN Gopher] Downpour: A game making tool for phones
___________________________________________________________________
Downpour: A game making tool for phones
Author : homarp
Score : 102 points
Date : 2022-03-30 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (v21.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (v21.io)
| simlevesque wrote:
| That looks absolutely awesome.
| homarp wrote:
| 1) you take photo
|
| 2) you create 'clickable' zone(s) on the photo
|
| 3) you link the "zone" to another photo
|
| sample games: https://twitter.com/v21/status/1477220587080724480
| danShumway wrote:
| That is such a clever input method.
|
| I also love that the example games work in a browser, because the
| ease of sharing stuff like this is a big part of it -- it's not
| just that if you're a kid you can bang out something interactive
| with a stack of papers and some pencils, it's a big thing if also
| once you're done you can just text someone a link or paste it
| into a group chat.
|
| Hosting games is still kind of an annoyingly unsolved problem,
| but it's at least a lot easier to do with web games. It would be
| really cool to set a bunch of kids up with Itch accounts and have
| some kind of API integration with this tool where they could just
| start sharing web games back and forth, where the program just
| auto-uploads new builds over the API whenever they hit a publish
| button.
|
| This just looks really delightful, I'm excited to see where it
| goes.
| munificent wrote:
| My first thought reading the headline was, "But how do you author
| on a device where user input is such a chore?" Using the camera
| as the primary way to create content is brilliant. I love it.
| robterrell wrote:
| Very cool. I get the vibe of those old HyperCard games (Myst, The
| Manhole, Inigo Gets Out). HyperCard was simple enough anyone
| could hack a game together, lowering the bar for creators. I bet
| something great comes from this. Kudos!
| mikechalmers wrote:
| How come this person's blog isn't responsive / mobile-friendly?
| I'm sure that they're capable so I think it might be a choice,
| but would be interested to hear why.
| eloeffler wrote:
| Huh! I didn't even notice that it isn't until I saw your
| comment.
|
| Looking back at it again it feels quite comfortable to zoom in
| and read/scroll. But maybe that is just my phone being the
| right size (it's an S9).
|
| I'd say the page is mobile friendly in a sense, even though
| it's not responsive.
| jtvjan wrote:
| I remember reading about the "Hot-Spot Mode" on the Game Boy
| Camera, and I wanted to imitate it using the digital camera and
| the PC I had. I discovered HTML Image Maps, and while it did
| work, making them was such a hassle that I never got past making
| a few pages. Great to see there's a proper tool for it now, that
| I could've figured out how to use had it been available back
| then.
| petercooper wrote:
| This is cool. I can definitely imagine my kids having a lot of
| fun with something like this which wins me over immediately.
|
| However, it also got me thinking about how resistant I've been to
| digital note taking, simply because I like the physicality of
| writing and notes on paper. Yet they get super disorganized,
| lost, whatever. The idea seen here could work as an interesting
| way to digitize and "link" together paper notes too, perhaps!
| kej wrote:
| You might like the Rocket Book notebooks. You write with a pen
| on paper, but then you use the app to scan your notes to email
| or cloud storage, and then you use a wet cloth to wipe the
| pages clean. You get digitized notes like an expensive note
| tablet, but also the feel and replaceability of a plain old
| notebook.
|
| (Despite making variants of this comment multiple times, I have
| no affiliation with them beyond happy customer.)
| omarhaneef wrote:
| Adding the extra step of taking a picture loses a lot of the
| productivity gain.
|
| I think the remarkable tablet is the right balance in 2022.
| It automatically pushes notes into the cloud.
| petercooper wrote:
| That's the sort of response I was hoping for - interesting
| lead, I'll check it out! :)
|
| (At first glance, I think one aspect of the OP post that I'd
| still be missing is the ability to link different parts of
| notes together with other historical notes, perhaps. That
| "image map" type feature in the OP link is very compelling.)
| svnpenn wrote:
| Save you a click:
|
| > It is a game making tool for phones
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Very cool! I would have loved this as a 12 year old. I used to
| play with Hypercard in a similar kind of way as flatgames.
| eloeffler wrote:
| Sounds and looks nice!
|
| Are you planning an Android version as well?
|
| (Asking because it only mentions iOS on downpour.games which is
| linked in the provided post)
| lucasmullens wrote:
| I really like this. As a kid I would make "flatgames" that were
| just Word docs that linked to each other, which in some sense
| inspired me to learn to code to make "real" games.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| I did this but with folders! Then I learned about HTML maps
| (which seem very similar to Downpour) from Neopets, which is
| where things get real cool.
| James-Livesey wrote:
| Same, but with PowerPoint! It's amazing how versatile the
| Microsoft Office suite is for purposes other than
| productivity...
| procinct wrote:
| Same here! I had a basic game where an enemy moved across the
| screen towards the character and you had to shoot it.
| Clicking the enemy would hyperlink to a slide where you shoot
| the enemy, the enemies animation finishing (when it touches
| the character) would link to a slide where you died. Working
| out how to do conditional logic in PowerPoint at 11 opened up
| a lot of exciting ideas for PowerPoint games for me. Though
| it lead to a lot of slides...
| nathancahill wrote:
| I built Tictactoe in Excel by creating every possible board
| state and then hyperlinking between them. I fixed the window
| size to 3x3 so the window would scroll to each state. Later
| learned AppleScript to automate parts of this process and
| eventually got in to HTML.
| ketzo wrote:
| I feel obligated to note here that PowerPoint is Turing
| complete. It's pretty radical.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8
| guyomes wrote:
| This looks lovely! One nice addition would be the ability to
| record sounds and link them. This feature in ScratchJr [1] allows
| children to make animations with cute voices.
|
| [1]: https://www.scratchjr.org/
| mc4ndr3 wrote:
| There's already an audiobook app with the same name. Google
| before writing code.
| allenu wrote:
| I followed the link to the flatgame game jam and tried a few of
| the submissions. I really like the aesthetic. There's something
| comforting about its non-digital art.
|
| It's always nice to see creative projects like these, so thanks
| to whoever posted it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-30 23:00 UTC)