austinhallock's comments

https://freeroam.app (has BLM overlays)

Mostly vanilla JS/canvas + a bit of https://github.com/Zorium/zorium

My high score is 353. The key is to connect your lines (eg making a square), which is way quicker than trying to do a long line.

Thanks for pointing out the screen resolution and browser history things.

Code for it is up on GitHub: https://github.com/Zolmeister/Zop

It started out as a js1k entry (https://github.com/Zolmeister/Zop/blob/35a428661320ba9ad8e5e...)

It has definitely been an up-hill battle for Firefox OS trying to gain market share, but I think everyone (including Mozilla) expected that. Having played with one of their earlier test units and the newer Firefox Flame with FFOS 2.0, it has come a long way. Even our Android-obsessed designer loves the Flame.

It's a tough situation to be in where they need to improve the quality of the ecosystem, but need users to convince the big-wig devs to developer for the OS. The total user numbers we've seen from them is certainly better than we expected, but still too small to convince a major developer to build for Firefox OS on numbers alone.

If their platform wasn't the web, I'm not sure they'd have much of a chance at success, but being able to convince a developer the values of building for the web is much easier than building for a fairly new mobile OS.

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: [email protected]

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================

We're building Steam for mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile. By leveraging the web we reduce the friction between discovery and gameplay, which we think is key in reaching the next level of viral games.

  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============

Our team is small, and our challenges great. Last month we had 5 million+ sessions, running on 15+ servers, with just 2 engineers (myself included).

See http://stackshare.io/clay-io/clay-io for our stack and to get a better feel for the code we write see https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile

  =========
  Our Stack
  =========

Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Zorium.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: [email protected]

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================

We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile. The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.

  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============

Small team of 3, with large audience of 5,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.

  =========
  Our Stack
  =========

Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Zorium.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: [email protected]

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================

We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile. The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.

  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============

Small team of 3, with large audience of 5,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.

  =========
  Our Stack
  =========

Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Mithril.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: [email protected]

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================

We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile.

The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.

  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============

Small team of 3, with large audience of 4,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.

  =========
  Our Stack
  =========

Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Mithril.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: [email protected]

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================

We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile.

The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.

  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============

Small team of 3, with large audience of 4,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.

  =========
  Our Stack
  =========

Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Mithril.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: [email protected]

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================

We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile.

The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.

  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============

Small team of 3, with large audience of 4,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.

  =========
  Our Stack
  =========

Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Mithril.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io is hiring a full-stack engineer that loves games. This is someone we'll eventually want to shift toward a role of VP of Engineering as we expand the team.

Shoot me an email: [email protected]

About Us -------- We're redefining gaming on mobile. The primary means of discovery for games is through the app stores, which we think is a bad approach... There should be a Steam equivalent on mobile and that's what we're working on. We're already reaching 4 million people every month and just getting started.

We're a small team with a huge passion for games. We're all technical and big fans of open source, so a good chunk of what you write will be public on GitHub.

Our Stack --------- Node.js, CoffeeScript, MySQL, MongoDB, HTML5, Ansible, Docker, Gulp, ...

Openness is still there in the examples of Kik, Twitter and Facebook as new 'browsers' - though less-so with Twitter and Facebook. With Twitter and Facebook you're limited to starting points of links friends post. With something like Kik, you can access any site just like you would in a traditional browser, but it improves 1) the poor retention mobile web generally has and 2) distribution (sharing links has less friction).

People are using apps instead of the web for certain services because they're easier to find (both initially, and for subsequent uses), easier to use, and more polished. The point is, this is all changing in favor of mobile web. Mobile apps can become just as easy to use and have close to the same level of polish, but more importantly, they can become easier to discover. Flappy Bird was successful because of social media, not discovery directly from the app store - the app store just added more friction.

Retention is the biggest potential point of failure for mobile web, and that's something I think Kik has solved pretty well. There are other examples of good solutions for this (eg Firefox OS), but none of them have enough traction to serve as a good proof-point.

Heh, checked iOS, Android, even Windows Phone... but not Firefox - doh! Should be fixed

I noticed we had quite a few Flappy Bird clone submissions varying from direct clones to cool variations. I'm sure there are plenty more HTML5 versions of the game out there as well - these were just the ones developers submitted to Clay.io. A few have already made their round on HN.

It's interesting to see how the indie scene and game devs in general react to something like Flappy Bird.

A lot of these unfortunately don't work on mobile devices :/ I'm working to try and get more folks serious about developing for the mobile web - but it is a much more difficult task than developing for desktop-only.

It's a massively multiplayer bombmerman, so a clone with a lot of cool stuff added to it. My writing tends to have a lot of fluff, so sorry for the extra bulk :)

The point I was trying to make is Bombermine is somewhat of a mix between a website and a game, and it works well for it.

Doh! Overlooked that, but you're right that it deserves to be on the list. Knew I'd forget about something big ;)

Looks good. Would be even better if it had a more fluid mobile experience :)

For performance you're better of with Unity. For distribution you're better off with HTML5. You can get in the app stores & have distribution on the mobile web, have the game instantly playable in webviews, etc...

I think it will affect the supply rather than the demand of HTML5 games initially. Firefox OS has a very small market share in comparison to iOS and Android so while there are more folks playing HTML5 games, it isn't a huge amount. However, big name companies backing HTML5 like Mozilla with Firefox OS and Samsung/Intel with Tizen, they're doing their best to get popular games ported over to HTML5, as well as more new content.

For example, the Tizen App Challenge (https://developer.tizen.org/contests/tizen-app-challenge) is offering some pretty large prizes for HTML5 apps/games.