Most active commenters
  • sclerek(5)
  • (5)
  • AtlasBarfed(3)

Show HN: Editable Games

(playscl.com)
142 points sclerek | 36 comments | 10 Mar 25 15:31 UTC | HN request time: 1.495s | source | bottom

I made an animation programming language that you can type into a textarea. I make little games with it. Now other people can customize the games I make with it.

I've been working on canvas language for 15 years now. Not very successful, but editable gifs turned out okay. Since it's my passion, I keep trying, and my latest is editable games - I'm not officially calling it that though.

I've had some interest in advergames and this would allow designers to easily customize games for their clients - the hidden objects game being the best example for this, and the only one made specifically for the purpose.

Anyways, games are interpreted at runtime by JavaScript. To publish, for example on itch or your own website, you need to submit your project file (download it from the dev studio) and wait a few minutes. You'll get back a JS file that contains your game.

ngl, although a passion project, I'd like this to one day be profitable - trying to work that out.

If interested, the main project site is https://canvaslanguage.com

I'd love to get some feedback. Although to be honest, I just want to show somebody my newest creation :)

Thank you.

1. lacoolj ◴[10 Mar 25 16:29 UTC] No.43322258[source]▶
Anyone else misread this is "Edible Games" at first? Got kinda excited
replies(6): >>43322334 #>>43322595 #>>43322711 #>>43323393 #>>43323679 #>>43323992 #
2. jagged-chisel ◴[10 Mar 25 16:37 UTC] No.43322334[source]▶
yes ... I blame my old eyes
3. Tistron ◴[10 Mar 25 16:48 UTC] No.43322427[source]▶
I really liked stars and snargs, challenging and fun.
4. AtlasBarfed ◴[10 Mar 25 16:53 UTC] No.43322466[source]▶
Want some fun as a programmer?

Download an open source roguelike and get it working in an IDE.

I am hacking frogcomposband right now with shitty old Eclipse CDT IDE, and having a blast.

Mass dissolve? No pet mana cost? Never need food? Cast spells from books that are in your home and not waste inventory? Access your home from anywhere in the dungeon? Teleport towns from anywhere in the overworld? Find anything annoying? Code it away.

Remnants of the Precusors (a Master of Orion super-remake) is great too. Doomstar super-sized ships with certain tech combos? Ultralarge worlds? Mark artifacts and mineral worlds in a radius from you because you are a xenoarchaelogist? That is plain old Java so you can IntelliJ away.

Of course with any IDE there is the old breakpoint and modify values hacking, even if you don't change the code.

I want to do Cataclysm DDA next but the git clone is bombing every time. Maybe it is too big.

replies(5): >>43322524 #>>43322754 #>>43323199 #>>43323999 #>>43326465 #
5. 6stringmerc ◴[10 Mar 25 16:53 UTC] No.43322471[source]▶
Not that I’m the person to do it, mind you, but for your own safety and liability purposes I advise caution allowing uploaded images to be used.

As in, it may have the potential for content that you find disturbing, inappropriate, or illegal. Between stories/concepts like NEDM and Rule 34, the potential for misuse, if unregulated, could be exploited by an opportunistic bad actor.

At the bare minimum, use of Copyrighted material could foreseeably result in a view that your project, even at the free stage, is a form of enabling unauthorized derivative works…and result in litigation.

replies(4): >>43322656 #>>43322707 #>>43323633 #>>43324007 #
6. grimgrin ◴[10 Mar 25 16:58 UTC] No.43322524[source]▶
You could try a shallow clone at first, “git clone —depth 1 …”

Later you can pull to get all of it

replies(1): >>43339276 #
7. asadm ◴[10 Mar 25 17:04 UTC] No.43322595[source]▶
yup, maybe it's the fasting.
8. Etheryte ◴[10 Mar 25 17:10 UTC] No.43322656[source]▶
I don't really see how this is an issue? As far as I can tell, the above product does not host what you make, you have to find a place and upload it yourself when you're done with the editing.
9. birthdaywizard ◴[10 Mar 25 17:14 UTC] No.43322707[source]▶
I've also read about various image hosting tools, such as apps for creating wallpapers, being overrun by pornography because communities where pornography is banned found it bypassed various automatic censors. If arbitrary image hosting is a subset of your functionality, it can be used as such.
10. MaikaDiHaika ◴[10 Mar 25 17:15 UTC] No.43322711[source]▶
Yeah haha
11. Jotalea ◴[10 Mar 25 17:18 UTC] No.43322754[source]▶
Modding games was the first reason why I started to learn programming. From modifying a TXT file inside an APK, to injecting DLLs, and replacing strings on a Hex editor, it just feels so great.
replies(1): >>43327845 #
12. kurokikaze ◴[10 Mar 25 17:23 UTC] No.43322819[source]▶
PICO-8 is very cool for that matter. You can always view the Lua source code of the cartridge, and the size of the game is inherently limited, so you don't have too much code to dig through.
replies(1): >>43323997 #
13. peterjaap ◴[10 Mar 25 17:47 UTC] No.43323190[source]▶
Playpen IRL!
14. debo_ ◴[10 Mar 25 17:48 UTC] No.43323199[source]▶
You cannot avoid the ballyhack.
15. ciroduran ◴[10 Mar 25 17:58 UTC] No.43323393[source]▶
Slightly OG-offtopic, but there is a very good book about edible games! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Edible-Games-Cookbook-Play-your-ebo...
16. sclerek ◴[10 Mar 25 18:10 UTC] No.43323633[source]▶
I'm weary of this as well, but without traffic, its a problem I'll deal with later.

For now, I don't host much, and if the time comes, I'll add that google (or is it aws) service that scans inapprop things.

17. sclerek ◴[10 Mar 25 18:12 UTC] No.43323679[source]▶
I misread that too when I got the domain name for EditableGIFs, and I think I even bought EdibleGIFs at the time to just reserve it. I let it expire though.
18. ◴[10 Mar 25 18:29 UTC] No.43323992[source]▶
19. ◴[10 Mar 25 18:30 UTC] No.43323997[source]▶
20. ◴[10 Mar 25 18:30 UTC] No.43323999[source]▶
21. ◴[10 Mar 25 18:30 UTC] No.43324007[source]▶
22. flybarrel ◴[10 Mar 25 19:04 UTC] No.43324534[source]▶
For some reason I read "edible games" and was super duper curious...
replies(4): >>43324725 #>>43324941 #>>43324990 #>>43325108 #
23. herpdyderp ◴[10 Mar 25 19:18 UTC] No.43324725[source]▶
It took until reading your comment for me to realize I was misreading it as well
24. InsideOutSanta ◴[10 Mar 25 19:31 UTC] No.43324908[source]▶
"Not very successful (...) Since it's my passion, I keep trying"

The technology you've built is very impressive, but I suspect the way it's presented won't appeal to your target audience. It's very programmer-art-y.

It might be worthwhile hiring a designer and having them go over everything for you, both making sure it looks like a professional tool aimed at an audience that values sophisticated visuals, and also that the examples you have look premium.

replies(1): >>43333069 #
25. baobabKoodaa ◴[10 Mar 25 19:34 UTC] No.43324941[source]▶
I was also confused for the same reason! And hungry.
26. kvirani ◴[10 Mar 25 19:37 UTC] No.43324990[source]▶
Was just about to write this. Glad I'm not alone.
27. ◴[10 Mar 25 19:45 UTC] No.43325108[source]▶
28. tmtvl ◴[10 Mar 25 21:47 UTC] No.43326465[source]▶
Starsiege Tribes modding was pretty accessible. Everything was just a bunch of .cs files, Tribes RPG was a fun thing to check out and play with. An example would be the Shifter mod: <https://github.com/BHare1985/Tribes-Shifter>
29. totetsu ◴[11 Mar 25 00:27 UTC] No.43327845{3}[source]▶
For me it was Worms 2. There was a plain text file controlling all the explosion sizes etc for the weapons.
30. kelseydh ◴[11 Mar 25 04:05 UTC] No.43329056[source]▶
I love the syntax of that SCL programming language, very intuitive and clean. Much nicer than Javascript.
replies(1): >>43333013 #
31. sclerek ◴[11 Mar 25 14:50 UTC] No.43333013[source]▶
Thank you....and you can thank SQL for that. I wanted something declarative that just seemed best to me. I was, in my head, contrasting it with Lingo which I found confusing and overwrought. I didn't want to just copy Javascript interpretation into a textarea, and at the time 2008, I thought non-programmers might want a way to use the new canvas element. Now I see lots more possibilities than that.
32. sclerek ◴[11 Mar 25 14:55 UTC] No.43333069[source]▶
I'm not in a 'hiring' position at the moment, but I appreciate your comment. I've struggled with artwork from the beginning. First I did my own (badly), then I hired off fiverr, then I used publicdomainpictures.net, then I used AI, now I use publicdomainpictures created with AI.
33. AtlasBarfed ◴[12 Mar 25 02:11 UTC] No.43339276{3}[source]▶
I thought I tried that, but maybe I tried any of git's innumerable other options.

It might be a large blob that is bombing it regardless of version files. It seems to bomb in the exact same spot each time.

replies(1): >>43350631 #
34. AtlasBarfed ◴[13 Mar 25 05:31 UTC] No.43350631{4}[source]▶
The resolution to my git problem:

    git config --global http.postBuffer 1048576000
35. melvinroest ◴[16 Mar 25 00:18 UTC] No.43376061[source]▶
I always thought if I'd create an editable game or app I'd grab Pharo for it. But now I have 2 languages to pick from!

Well, probably Lisp would work too. So 3 really.