Equinox.space

https://equinox.space/

by fragmede • 2 years ago

1639 326 2 years ago

equinox.space

guigui21• 2 years ago

Author here. Happy to answer any questions!

Some background info on the project: https://littleworkshop.fr/projects/equinox/

fragmede• 2 years ago

I'm blown away by being able to drop in on it on my smartphone seamlessly! My phone got noticibly warm during play.

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thank you! Yes, making it available on mobile devices was one of our priorities from the start (even though the desktop experience remains the best one). Phones do tend to heat up when rendering complex WebGL applications.

petepete• 2 years ago

It's amazing, thank you. I really struggled without mouse inversion but got there in the end.

Broussebar• 2 years ago

Looks awesome, nice work. I have an unrelated question, on little workshop's website I can see a pétanque game that I couldn't find online. Is there a way to play this game or was it available only during an event?

franck22• 2 years ago

Thank you. The petanque game was only available for an event and not publicly anyway, only for the client company's employees.

felixarba• 2 years ago

This is beautiful and very fun

izolate• 2 years ago

Excellent! I had originally planned to give it a quick glance, but I was so captivated, I had to see it through the end.

For those aspiring to become creative developers, could you share any tips on which areas they should focus on?

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thanks! Congrats on making it to the end. This is too broad a topic to cover here, but I'd say the most valuable skill is the ability to constantly learn new tools and techniques.

davedx• 2 years ago

For me babylonjs was a bit of a leap forward. Great engine + tooling. Nice documentation with tons of examples for how to do things. Besides that, experiment lots and lots! Be very curious. And don't be afraid of 3D math.

supermunny• 2 years ago

This experience was created with Three.js, if you'd be interested in learning that then this is a great resource https://threejs-journey.com/

larschdk• 2 years ago

Could you put in an invert mouse Y-axis for us old farts?

ta12433• 2 years ago

What do you mean? I move the mouse (well trackpoint) up, and I see the ceiling, same with the trackpad

guigui21• 2 years ago

Yes, sorry. That's one of the many little features that we wanted to add but didn't make the cut. We may add this in a future update.

tambourine_man• 2 years ago

Excellent work, works great on mobile, which is rare for a web game

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thanks, making it available and actually playable on mobile was definitely a challenge. One of our inspiration for the mobile controls was the iOS version of the game The Witness.

cloudking• 2 years ago

Amazing work! How did you get the 3D engine to work so smoothly? Is this three.js?

guigui21• 2 years ago

Yes, it's running on Three.js. This comment from co-author Franck roughly sums it up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114297

iainmerrick2• 2 years ago

I’m really impressed by the visual and audio design, and the graphics and audio implementation too. It’s great that it loads quickly - far too many online 3D games are stuck behind lengthy loading screens.

How big was the team and how long did it take to make it?

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thanks, this was done by a team of only 2 people over a span of 1.5 years, working on it intermittently between client projects, totaling approximately 5-6 months of work.

Jugurtha• 2 years ago

I booked first class but your system is buggy and put me in economy; now I'm stuck because I wasn't in the escape pod!

Someone should start a space ride hailing service. I bet the pod was yellow.

leetrout2• 2 years ago

Lots of great projects. How can I experience TRACK in VR? I opened the site in my Quest 3 browser but it says webvr not supported.

franck22• 2 years ago

About TRACK, sorry, the experience was released in 2018 and we need to update it so that it works with the WebXR API.

donbrae• 2 years ago

Ah, you also did the Transmit 3D truck for the Panic website. Nice work!

franck22• 2 years ago

Thank you!

modeless2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately it is very stuttery on my Pixel 7 Pro, looks awesome though

guigui21• 2 years ago

Sorry to hear that. That's weird, because we tested on a Pixel 3 and had decent performance.

BHSPitMonkey• 2 years ago

Seems great on my 6 (Firefox).

Gr4phTh3ory• 2 years ago

Could you increase the range for the mouse sensitivity option? I'm finding that even maxing it out results in painfully slow look speed.

kevincox• 2 years ago

I've found that `localStorage.mouseSensivity = 4` (the default max is 1) seems to set it to about the right amount. However mouse movement is now very jumpy. It seems that individual mouse events are visible and mouse acceleration curves cause very unpleasant behaviour.

Maybe it is something to a high resolution screen, so one CSS pixel is actually quite large?

RDaneel0livaw• 2 years ago

Same here! My mouse arm is getting a workout lifting and recentering 5 times per turn lol.

aledalgrande3• 2 years ago

I guess it depends on your system settings. I have my Logitech set up to almost max speed/acceleration so it felt very natural to me.

jlund-molfese• 2 years ago

On a Mac/Safari, I noticed that looking around while holding the left mouse button down made it normal

paulrouget• 2 years ago

Hey :) I see you guys everywhere nowadays. Congrats, and happy to see you keep on doing amazing things!

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thanks, old friend. Always a pleasure to build cool stuff for a web browser, like in the good old days. ;)

franck22• 2 years ago

Merci Paul :) happy to see your comment!

russdill2• 2 years ago

On Linux/Chrome mouse look keeps snapping back. It's really frustrating and makes it unplayable for me

loeg• 2 years ago

I'm also on Linux Chrome but not experiencing that.

guigui21• 2 years ago

Sorry about that. Does it happen also on this three.js example? https://threejs.org/examples/?q=pointerlock#misc_controls_po...

You can try to change the controls mode in the in-game menu (ESC key).

tkunk• 2 years ago

I'm on ubuntu 20/firefox using WASD controls, and the mouse always wants to look down unless I'm already staring straight down.

Great game!

smarri2• 2 years ago

Love the project. How long did it take for you to conceive and launch? What tools or platforms would you recommend to use for anyone interested in a similar project? Thanks

guigui21• 2 years ago

It roughly took 5-6 months in total over a span of 1-2 years (we paused development several times to work on client projects). I recommend diving into Three.js (or other WebGL libraries), and learning Blender or similar to create your own 3D scenes.

iamcreasy• 2 years ago

Thank you for building it. Did you guys use Unity? The startup time is very low.

guigui21• 2 years ago

The project runs on Three.js, a JavaScript WebGL library, which explains the low startup time.

Operyl• 2 years ago

No, they used Three.js among other things. Startup time was fast here, it’s probably just how long it takes you to download the game assets that determines speed in the end.

drittich• 2 years ago

Someone else mentioned babylon.js in this thread. Did you evaluate that and choose three.js over it?

guigui21• 2 years ago

Babylon would have been a perfectly good choice to build this experience, but we have a preference for the three.js API.

rkagerer2• 2 years ago

Played on Chrome on my Android phone in portrait mode, and the whole game I felt it was too zoomed in.

I was suspicious of that AI the whole time. Like, did it get sent into this asteroid field on purpose to destroy it because it was a threat? Were there other unconscious passengers locked in those rooms and if I died following some risky instruction would it simply wake the next one up? How could it practically see through my eyes and would I turn out to be an automated drone?

Would have liked a bit more subplot to explore. Eg. Fix the spinning satellite to utilize the Comms station. Gain access to the third floor in the lift. Poke around the AI control room to uncover sabotage.

Maybe I just missed some discoveries on my playthrough.

guigui21• 2 years ago

All valid points, and I completely agree that the narrative could have a bit more depth to it. I really wish there were more puzzles to solve. However, at the end of the day, we had to keep the scope under control, which was already quite large for a two-person team.

GuB-42• 2 years ago

I also found the AI suspicious for a different reason. That is that it has its own agenda and is using me to do what it is not allowed to do. For some reason, the AI is not able to initiate a hyperspace jump, cannot bypass access, but can maneuver the ship through an asteroid field. As if it was not completely trusted.

And now, everyone else is gone, and I am getting ordered around by an AI, maybe because the AI considered me the easiest one to manipulate, maybe the AI deliberately entered the asteroid field to that goal.

Edit:

And I don't think the game really needs more content. It is not a big budget AAA production after all. What it could benefit from however is maybe some hints to something bigger. Things like personal items, messages on screen, maps, ads, writings on the wall, etc... It doesn't have to connect to a big story, but just hint that there is something, even if it is all bluff.

csunbird• 2 years ago

The AI gave me the vibes of Umbrella Corporation, they are randomly kidnapping humans and replacing their recent memories with memories of this journey and testing the human behavior and competence through these subjects

dcormier• 2 years ago

I enjoyed it, but in Safari on iOS there was no sound at any point. I checked my device volume. I toggled the game option for sound on and off.

It just occurred to me that it may be because I have my phone ringer set to silent. That is indeed what caused it, which is not great as I don't want notifications to be making noise.

It also felt slightly too zoomed in (I even attempted to zoom out using my fingers).

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thanks, we'll keep this in mind for a possible future version.

joemi2• 2 years ago

It just occurred to me that it may be because I have my phone ringer set to silent. That is indeed what caused it, which is not great as I don't want notifications to be making noise.

I'm pretty sure that's the way it should be, isn't it? Whenever I want something/anything/everything to not make noise on my phone, I set it to silent. It's been that way since the very first iphone I ever owned (I think it was the 4).

gr8r2• 2 years ago

fantastic work!

also game is tough? waiting for the walkthroughs lol

armanr7• 2 years ago

Super impressive. I wish I could play any video game on the web like this. How long did this take to build?

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thank you. Answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114774

sgt2• 2 years ago

I can't wait 2500 years, are there hibernation pods anywhere on the ship?

winnie_ua8• 2 years ago

Nope, but there is cafeteria :-P

grdeken• 2 years ago

Really impressive, congratulations. How many hours of TLC went into building this?

b112• 2 years ago

Running firefox + linux. Mouse works fine in mouse only mode, in gamer/keyboard+mouse, the mouse is out of control. Often, moving the mouse in any direction, moves the mouse continuously left (for example). Other times, the tiniest twitch moves the screen in crazy flying loops.

Tried the speed setting down to 10, barely made a difference.

Not sure if other FF users are experiencing the same thing?

edit:

Just finished it... Good game! I hope you expand it, because you've definitely got something fun here.

yetihehe• 2 years ago

Tried it on firefox on linux and windows, both work good in gamer mode.

GiorgioG• 2 years ago

That was fun - thanks!

FrustratedMonky• 2 years ago

Really nice, smooth. If this is hobby project, it is amazing. It is pretty good for an indie game. Real half-life/portal feel.

adamredwoods• 2 years ago

Super cool escape-room-esque game! I wish though, that the click-to-walk was a bit more pre-defined paths. For example, If I click on a spot thinking I could interact with it, I walk to the wall and am now so close to the wall that it becomes disorientating, and I have to click back to view the room.

quicon• 2 years ago

Congratulations, I really enjoyed it. I never play videogames and I'm on mobile, but I engaged instantly.

windowshopping• 2 years ago

Maybe you should play videogames....seems you would enjoy them.

bdastous• 2 years ago

Please add a "reverse y-axis" option for mouselook!

qwertox• 2 years ago

This was awesome.

I was concerned that it would continue after the warp, because I knew I would not have been able to stop playing. 100% pure fun while it lasted.

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thank you, glad you got to enjoy our little warp visual effect!

_HMCB_• 2 years ago

This is the most amazing experience I’ve ever had on the web. Bar none. I’m blown away.

franck22• 2 years ago

Thank you for your kind words, we really appreciate it.

wkat42422• 2 years ago

Thanks for sharing this here! I'll try it tomorrow as it's late night here.

Sorry to see this post is getting spam bombed for some reason :( Because it's one of the most interesting things I saw in the last days

BalinKing• 2 years ago

A bunch of other posts on the front page are getting bombarded with these spam messages too... I figure dang is probably aware by now (although idk what specific measures HN has against this sort of thing).

appel• 2 years ago

I'm probably showing my age, but I'm just at awe what is possible in a browser in this day and age. Well done, OP. I'd love a hashed out, full length version of this, but with the same vector graphics.

torginus• 2 years ago

I mean, WebGL was released in 2011, so this kind of thing was possible for like 13 years. If you go back once again as much, to 1998, the web has barely existed back then.

There were things, like Epic Citadel, a full port of Unreal Engine to the browser (using asm.js, a technique of compiling assembly to Javascript) a decade ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9KRBuVBjVo

And yeah even that somehow feels futuristic today.

nickjj• 2 years ago

I especially liked the "Connecting..." sound. It's inescapable even in the future!

aledalgrande3• 2 years ago

It was such a big let down. How could the AI make a mistake in the route calculation?!

Seriously though, amazing implementation and vibe! (and a lesson to not let GPT drive your spaceship)

ellis0n• 2 years ago

Amazing demo! This reminded me of the spaceship my friend and I made in the level editor of Duke Nukem 3D. Unfortunately, my legendary map got lost along with my old disk.

elorant• 2 years ago

I'd like it to save my progress with some cookie instead of having to play it all from scratch every time.

remram3• 2 years ago

It's 10min long...

natkiny• 2 years ago

Nice work !!

hackton2• 2 years ago

I am very much impressed by this project. The smoothly rendering on the browser, stunning graphics and captivating music create an immersive journey. And I always love to discover some Easter eggs. Bravo!

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thanks hackton. Really appreciate it!

While creating Equinox, it frequently felt like we were working on tiny details that hardly anyone would notice. But ultimately I believe that immersion largely relies on the accumulation of all these small additions.

desdenova2• 2 years ago

The sarcastic remarks from the computer were definitely great.

timClicks• 2 years ago

The dial-up modem sound was gold.

the_real_cher2• 2 years ago

very cool! it delayed me getting out of bed for 15 minutes. worked great on android phone.

great atmosphere music graphics and sense of humour.

is 3js the only technology you all used to make this?

franck22• 2 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! We used the Three.js WebGL library and a custom-built game engine for the various interactions, pathfinding and game logic. We modeled the scenes in Blender and SideFX Houdini, and also baked lightmaps with Blender.

abj• 2 years ago

Amazing job! Any specific settings in Three.js you used to get the great mobile performance? Really interested in seeing anything you'd like to share about how you optimized performance. Amazing work!

the_real_cher2• 2 years ago

Awewome thx for the info. Its inspiring.

winnie_ua8• 2 years ago

I've noticed that pathfinding works on mobile mode!

I was impressed that it is present there. I would expect camer to fly directly to target location.

ryukoposting• 2 years ago

At breakfast so I can't play right now, but those are some buttery-smooth animations on a new Android running Firefox. Nice work.

mikae12• 2 years ago

The only thing I'm seeing is a spinning globe on FF for Android. Smooth, but I guess I'm missing something...

KineticLensman• 2 years ago

I had to switch to Edge to get it to work.

Can't find that damned access token though.

franck22• 2 years ago

Thanks for the bug report. We'll have to figure out what could be causing this issue.

alje• 2 years ago

That was also the case for me (FF for Android), and I eventually found that I have WebGl disabled by default. Everything worked as expected after I resumed. FF animations run quite smoothly. Good work for developers.

reaperman• 2 years ago

Delightful experience from start to finish. Thanks for showing what web apps are capable of at the moment. It would make sense to title this "Show HN: "

asicsp• 2 years ago

Show HN is for authors submitting their own work...

franck22• 2 years ago

Thanks! About "Show HN:", we would have done so but someone else posted it so we have no control over the title.

echoangle• 2 years ago

It would only be Show HN if OP were the creator, which they are not, I think.

carlnewton3• 2 years ago

This is amazing! The visual style is stunning. This actually comes very close to a style of game I've wanted to exist for a long time. The premise being this: You're on a ship going between destinations, but there's no light-speed shortcut, or jump-cut to the destination. Instead, you have to maintain the ship for the entire duration of the journey. Making sacrifices in power and computing ability to resolve problems that occur throughout the ship.

ta12433• 2 years ago

Just had a few seconds, A/D is strafing as I'd expect

carlnewton3• 2 years ago

I just opened it again to make sure I wasn't imaginging it. Oddly enough, A works to strafe left for me, but D doesn't work to strafe right. I'm using Firefox 121.0.

Edit: ignore me! It's one of my plugins!

franck22• 2 years ago

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! I like your idea a lot, I would definitely play this.

peddling-brink• 2 years ago

That sounds similar to a sub-plot in Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Very interesting book!

carlnewton3• 2 years ago

I've never heard of it, but I'm on the lookout for a new sci-fi read, so I think I'll get it! Thanks!

RA2lover• 2 years ago

See Tharsis (https://store.steampowered.com/app/323060/Tharsis/) and Seedship (https://johnayliff.itch.io/seedship).

winnie_ua8• 2 years ago

Wow. I didn't know that Seedship is available in browser.

Played it on Android long time ago.

rom16384• 2 years ago

This game reminds me of the 90's FMV game Mission Critical [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Critical_(video_game)

FragmentShader3• 2 years ago

you have to maintain the ship for the entire duration of the journey. Making sacrifices in power and computing ability to resolve problems that occur throughout the ship.

There's a multiplayer game where you get in a match and play tiny minigames where you fix the issues of the ship, and once you fix them all, you win.

The twist is, there is an assasin among all players, and his goal is to sabotage your ship even more and to kill everyone, without getting caught. So the duration of the journey is only based on how quick you either fix the ship, find the impostor or die.

Wish I could remember the name, it was pretty popular during the pandemic.

TimSchumann• 2 years ago

I think you're thinking of Among Us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Among_Us

daelon• 2 years ago

https://spacestation13.com/ maybe?

0xEF2• 2 years ago

Are you thinking of SpaceTeam? We had a ton of fun with this game at a previous job.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sleepingbe...

rkagerer2• 2 years ago

Among Us.

I tried it once and was looking forward to it, but it was just a bunch of kids running around with no coordination whatsoever killing each other. After a few plays I asked Steam for a refund. Maybe I was doing it wrong and should have tried it with friends.

michaelmior• 2 years ago

Not the game you were thinking of, but Spaceteam is a very fun game with a related premise. You're flying a ship and the ship is breaking down so you need to activate the right controls to keep it moving.

The ship will tell you what controls need to be activate, but the catch is that each player only has access to a portion of the controls, but will receive instructions for all them. Cue lots of yelling back and forth to try to communicate the appropriate directions :)

FrontierProject• 2 years ago

Space Station 13 is a much deeper take on a similar premise.

nmarinov• 2 years ago

FTL: Faster Than Light is sort of similar to your premise but the style is very different - it's a roguelike RTS.

https://subsetgames.com/ftl.html

In FTL you experience the atmosphere of running a spaceship trying to save the galaxy. It's a dangerous mission, with every encounter presenting a unique challenge with multiple solutions.
What will you do if a heavy missile barrage shuts down your shields?
- Reroute all power to the engines in an attempt to escape?
- Power up additional weapons to blow your enemy out of the sky?
- Or take the fight to them with a boarding party?

Matumio• 2 years ago

Warning, FTL can be addictive. It has a heavy luck dependence that makes you want to try again.

That said, the game mechanics are really well done and give you options for creative problem solving. For example your pilot increases the chance to evade missiles. Unless he is busy extinguishing a fire in another room. So instead you can open a door to space and power down your own oxygen supply. And use that power to charge a second weapon.

jrrv• 2 years ago

I have pages of notes for a game like this that I've been thinking about since university, largely inspired by Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse. This game reminded me of it too, maybe I'll get to it one day.

buzzy_hacker• 2 years ago

You're on a ship going between destinations, but there's no light-speed shortcut, or jump-cut to the destination. Instead, you have to maintain the ship for the entire duration of the journey.

Neptune's Pride [0] is a fantastic real-time strategy game that has this feature without the maintenance part. You play the game over the course of days instead of minutes or hours. And it may take hours for your ships to reach their destinations. A ton of fun with friends.

[0] https://np.ironhelmet.com/#landing

gr8r2• 2 years ago

had my vote at the landing page

davidw• 2 years ago

the entire duration of the journey

Sounds a bit like 'Desert Bus'

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/desert-b...

LanternLight83• 2 years ago

Sunless Seas and Sunless Skys are two narrative-driven games in the Fallen London universe which otherwise hit a lot of these beats.

taink• 2 years ago

I can recommend Tin Can, which is somewhat similar to what you're talking about.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1315980/Tin_Can/

You maintain an evacuation pod for as long as you can to survive the small journey (I think it can take as much as 30 minutes?) between the ship you're escaping and safety.

It's not perfect but it might scratch your itch.

alisonatwork3• 2 years ago

You might enjoy FAR: Lone Sails. I was a bit frustrated by having to spend most of the game running around fixing stuff, but if that mechanic appeals to you then it's surely one of the prettier running-around-fixing-stuff games there is.

I also started a game a while back called Still There which seems like that's what it's going to be, but I haven't completed it yet so don't want to pass judgement. You're on a space station and not a ship, though, and it's point-and-click.

Gulthor• 2 years ago

A finely crafted piece of art. Out of curiosity, do you plan to make this project open source? I'd be curious to learn about some the technical details.

franck22• 2 years ago

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. We have no plans for open sourcing it at the moment. We'll tweet more details on how we made it, soon-ish.

desdenova2• 2 years ago

Looks amazing, great work.

One suggestion: add the option to invert the touch camera controls. It feels weird to rotate the world rather than the camera in a first person game, and I'm constantly rotating in the opposite direction than intended.

franck22• 2 years ago

Thank you! This is a feature we are planning to add in the near future. We used the same controls as Google Maps street view but perhaps for a game it can feel a bit weird.

gamebak• 2 years ago

amazing to see this working with decent frames in the browser, congrats!

ydnaclementine• 2 years ago

Really good, and the music after the first thing that doesn't go as expected is particularly good.

franck22• 2 years ago

Thanks for the music appreciation, it means a lot!

soci3• 2 years ago

awesome piece of work. ai can’t find the cockpit though.

franck22• 2 years ago

Thank you. Hint: look for a door which doesn't look like the others in the central hub.

addandsubtract• 2 years ago

It's not in the hub, though. You have to go past the hub first.

enigmashot• 2 years ago

i found the little yellow thing in that room and i was expecting it to enable the elevator but no luck.. what am i missing?

soci3• 2 years ago

Thank you. While I really want to check your hint, I won't. Since there's no way to save progress this would be my fourth attempt to play the game from the start [1]. Maybe saving status would have it make it different for me. Please, don't take me wrong, the game looks amazing, reminds me of the old times of Mac Classic gaming, but I'm no gamer.

[1] I'm on an iphone, and I always tapped back to get to HN again so I lost progress every time I tried your game.

tmilard• 2 years ago

Very nice graphics and design. I wonder who would ne the client for such a 3D game. And how much (about) it cost to build such a game.

tarr11• 2 years ago

here’s another one by the same studio

https://demos.littleworkshop.fr/infinitown

promiseofbeans• 2 years ago

Wasn't this on the front page of hn a day or two ago?

hammock• 2 years ago

Hollywood level storytelling ,visual and sound design. Nice job. The music was great

jordemort3• 2 years ago

I'm sure it's not the fault of the game, but this straight-up crashed my machine after about a minute of play. Screen froze, everything went unresponsive for a couple seconds, then I got about half a second of a pure magenta screen, and my machine rebooted. M1 Pro Macbook Pro, Sonoma 14.4.1, Firefox 125.0.1.

jordemort3• 2 years ago

Doesn't seem like the crash is repeating itself. Now it is running fine. The first time through, it died right after I was told to open the door but right before the door became openable.

rafram• 2 years ago

then I got about half a second of a pure magenta screen

That's an Apple hardware classic. Sorry to report that your GPU might be shot. (Hopefully it was just a one-time fault, though.)

Ono-Sendai• 2 years ago

Nah probably buggy Mac OpenGL drivers

jordemort3• 2 years ago

It would be a shame, just a tragedy, if this machine suffered catastrophic hardware failure with 3 months left on my AppleCare contract :)

rvba• 2 years ago

Reminds me a bit by "mystery of time and space" flash game. That someone is rewriting in html5

https://github.com/calculuswhiz/HTML5-MOTAS

jeroen79• 2 years ago

very nice concept!

elwell• 2 years ago

Music reminded me slightly of Perfect Dark.

Waking up on a spaceship reminded me of The Journeyman Project.

mare5x• 2 years ago

The music reminded me of Super Hexagon.

franck22• 2 years ago

Oh I loved the Journeyman Project as a kid and I didn't think of it at all when creating Equinox, but thanks to your comment I'm now starting to think it had some unconscious influence!

whitepaint• 2 years ago

I never play games but this was actually fun. Are there PC games that have a similar concept that can run on not a very powerful laptop?

degenerate• 2 years ago

You would likely enjoy Myst: https://www.gog.com/en/game/myst_masterpiece_edition

timnetworks2• 2 years ago

Stanley Parable / Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist are two (from the same devs) that stand out in recent memory. Myst (and Riven and there are like six total ending with a fully 3d Obduction) are cult classics and already referenced.

qingcharles2• 2 years ago

There's a few like this on Sandbox that work fine on my 13 year old Lenovo PC:

https://sandbox.game/

alisonatwork3• 2 years ago

Depending how powerful your laptop...

- Californium

- Electric Highways

- Fugue in Void

- NORTH

- Off-Peak (and sequels)

- The Station

- Tacoma

- They Came From A Communist Planet

- TIMEframe

These are all sci-fi walking sims, which is the genre of "wander around a strange place trying to figure out what happened and/or how to get out". Some walking sims have more of a traditional narrative and some have less, some are short (under an hour) and others are longer, some are comedic and some are more serious. There are lots and lots that aren't sci-fi too.

Probably the most accessible here is Tacoma, but it can get pretty rough on Intel graphics. If you want a free one you could try Electric Highways or Off-Peak, or if you don't care that they're not sci-fi you could try Gravity Bone, A Bewitching Revolution or Dr. Langeskov (suggested in a sibling comment).

nexoft• 2 years ago

bien joué!

workingdog• 2 years ago

When I learned my fellow passengers had escaped, I knew this game was for me. I love a bit of fun without ghoulish death.

ijontic• 2 years ago

That's so good! I haven't played a computer game in ages. But the atmosphere here, the graphics, the sound captivated me from the beginning. And soon enough, I felt that desire again, to solve the next puzzle... just like the last time in the 90s... um... with Simon the Sorcerer. Thank you for that!

franck22• 2 years ago

Wow thank you, this comment made my day. Really glad that our little project could make you experience that feeling again! Adventure games from the 90s definitely played their part as an inspiration for this.

the_duke• 2 years ago

If this was a demo for a full-fledged game, I would have bought the game immediately.

duckmysick• 2 years ago

Simon the Sorcerer

Well done, I haven't heard that name for close to 30 years. Brings back good memories.

thomasfromcdnjs• 2 years ago

Exactly the same for me.

ikt2• 2 years ago

this is amazing

anyone have a solution for turning the power generator on? I matched the squares with the tetris style symbols on the power generator but then nothing happened :S

jasonsb• 2 years ago

You have to match the colors as well.

ikt2• 2 years ago

ty!

SamBam3• 2 years ago

It's a classically-done puzzle with a classic hint. One of the colors is correct, so if you just put in all the shapes that are in front of each console, one core starts spinning. That triggers you to understand that you're part-way there but are missing something.

It's nice when puzzle creators take the time to scaffold their puzzles.

linuxguy2• 2 years ago

Did you match colors too?

simne3• 2 years ago

I've tried few things, even written script to show all possible configurations.

But once, I seen tetris style symbol on sector illuminated by red color.

I remembered symbol and check consoles until found red console, and enter there shape....

simne3• 2 years ago

BTW just for fun, my perl script:

perl -e 'for ($num = 0; $num <256; $num++) { $width = 8; printf("%*b\n", $width, $num) }'

harpiaharpyja• 2 years ago

It sounds like other people have gotten this to work. For me it just hangs on "Launching..."

stockhorn• 2 years ago

I had to reload the page on Android FF, then I got past "Loading"

Oras• 2 years ago

That modem sound!

lxe• 2 years ago

Very polished throughout. I wouldn't mind playing a full length puzzle adventure like this in the browser.

ilvez• 2 years ago

Was playing in mobile and constantly wanted to zoom out, because the view was too narrow.

jasonjmcghee• 2 years ago

Bug report:

On iOS, I rotated to landscape and then portrait and it became permanently zoomed in. (even when I rotated back to landscape)

guigui21• 2 years ago

Thanks, we'll look into it.

justsomehnguy• 2 years ago

Got me Von Braun flashbacks.

4k rendering is slow on the integrated Ryzen 3 machine. Any way to lower rendering resolution?

Mobile FF just hangs after trying to load.

999900000999• 2 years ago

Great performance running on Android mobile!

I'd legit pay 10$ for this, let it be an episodic adventure!

nathell• 2 years ago

Where do I donate to the authors?

timnetworks2• 2 years ago

Runs right in a browser, Linux/Firefox. Game devs, take note!

nharada• 2 years ago

Really awesome, well done!

thelittleone• 2 years ago

Oh damn.. I played it out... got me invested in this guys soul.... and ready to hand over some $. Was engaging and fun. Super inspiring.

maerF0x0• 2 years ago

Sierra/Vivendi/Activision/Microsoft should revive the Space Quest brand and make something like this.

Edit: also have you considered doing a how I made / tutorial series on youtube ?

guigui21• 2 years ago

We sure hope that game publishers/studios will find Equinox inspiring.

We're working on some behind-the-scenes content that will most likely be published on X and LinkedIn. You can follow us if you're interested: https://twitter.com/glecollinet

masterkram• 2 years ago

amazing, reminds me of the opening scene of jedi knights of the old republic.

sonicrocketman• 2 years ago

I thought exactly the same thing.

benreesman• 2 years ago

This thing runs hot shit on a generation-behind iPhone.

That’s tight code.

ambicapter2• 2 years ago

Every time I hit 'W' Firefox highlights the letter, meaning the help menu comes up.

Perseids• 2 years ago

You probably have Find As You Type enabled? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Accessibility.typeaheadfind

It's probably pretty rare nowadays, since it's off by default and rather hidden in the settings dialog ("Search for text when you start typing"). I had it activated up until (quite) a few years ago, and I think I switched it off, because of bad JavaScript interactions.

ambicapter2• 2 years ago

That's weird, I don't think I've ever turned it on. Thanks!

mcoliver• 2 years ago

"if only your economy pod included an escape pod"

lagt_t• 2 years ago

I'm surprised by the performance, I've seen lighter 3js projects slower than a powerpoint.

todotask• 2 years ago

Adding a torch light would be helpful, especially if you work in these situations.

devmor• 2 years ago

That was so fun and cool. I found myself wanting more. I would kill for a Myst-style game with this setting and feel.

Klonoar• 2 years ago

Probably the most impressive browser-based game I've played in my 20+ years of being on the web. Hats off to the creators, very nicely done.

Parts of it gave me Metroid Prime vibes that I haven't felt since I was a kid.

franck22• 2 years ago

Thanks a lot for your kind words! Metroid Prime wasn't a direct inspiration but it may certainly have had some influence on us, as we loved playing that game when we were younger.

steve_adams_86• 2 years ago

I really want to keep playing. Well done! That was a lot of fun.

TimCTRL• 2 years ago

How are y'all turning on the generator? I'm stuck.

pmx• 2 years ago

The patterns

qingcharles2• 2 years ago

What patterns??

Edit: I see them now. Tiny little embossed patterns on the round parts with the lights inside the generator.

mikebrockman• 2 years ago

excellent job making an intuitive game map! I was nervous I was going to get lost looking around the ship

darkwizard42• 2 years ago

Wow, what an amazing escape game!!!

ed_mercer• 2 years ago

Alien Isolation flashbacks…

not_a_dane• 2 years ago

good game :) I just initiated the warp system but had no time to play more.

SamBam3• 2 years ago

That was the end (as far as I can tell).

yreg• 2 years ago

This is beautiful.

I noticed something: The player character feels really tall to me. Or perhaps the doors are short? I subconsciously kept looking downward. I'm not a particularly tall person, but I don't remember feeling this way in a game before.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

franck22• 2 years ago

Thanks! About the character height, it's set at 1.6m and all the environment is supposed to be at the right scale, but perhaps we made the doors a bit too short. We tried to convey a bit of claustrophobic feeling, especially in the lower level, as you would expect in this kind of spaceship.

iamsanteri• 2 years ago

The craziest thing is that those AI assistants coming up early in this game don't feel so far off anymore...

winnie_ua8• 2 years ago

That's amazing!

And it weights only 45 MiB! How did you achieve this? And most of it is sounds, what looks like.

It's built with babylonjs?

guigui21• 2 years ago

Three.js.

Why it weighs only 45mb: the 3D environment isn’t that detailed, and we use Draco compression on the model files which has huge benefits in terms of file size. In addition, the art style requires few textures, and we use KTX2 compression. The audio files are indeed the largest assets.

winnie_ua8• 2 years ago

I really liked art style!

Looks great with minimum textures :)

Great job!

SuperHeavy2562• 2 years ago

If this is your idea of "isn't that detailed"... please make a full game that isn't that detailed.

More detail would actually subtract from the experience. Keep it like this. This feels just right.

simne3• 2 years ago

Cool.

I only could suggest, for hackers don't show hints of code shapes (for engine consoles), just make less buttons, so for example, just 64 possible variants, so real hacker could just find code by brute force.

Other possible idea, sough harder to implement, to use rotating dials and issue some shake of screen when approach right number on some dial.

chrisan• 2 years ago

manual brute force doesn't really sound like a fun way to "hack"

winnie_ua8• 2 years ago

That was a point, for player to notice code.

Brut-forcing won't be fun.

To be honest I didn't notice glyphs at first.

arcastroe• 2 years ago

This is amazing. The movement is very similar to movements in VR worlds. Would be awesome to integrate with the VR web apis to play this on an oculus as well.

franck22• 2 years ago

Thanks. I guess a potential issue would be rendering the outlines because it's implemented with post-processing and I'm not sure how it would look in VR.

winnie_ua8• 2 years ago

With that art direction you can release game on Steam!

There are some games made in JS with Electron.

And I wish your team luck with your consultancy bussines and making interactive experiences.

But I think you can achieve something in game dev as well!

franck22• 2 years ago

Much appreciated, thanks! Releasing a successful game on Steam would be amazing of course but it's not easy, to say the least. I hope we'll manage to do it some day!

vendiddy• 2 years ago

Want to give this a try later but just wanted to say the artistic style is beautiful. Good work!

aetherspawn• 2 years ago

Well done, the aesthetic is excellent.

reimertz• 2 years ago

amazing work, I could not stop playing. I wish there was more after the warp.

franck22• 2 years ago

Thanks a lot. I wish there was more too, but we unfortunately had to keep the project's scope under control! Lots of puzzle ideas and content were cut.

winnie_ua8• 2 years ago

Only bug I've noticed -- you can move through doors before they fully opened. (using keyboard and mouse mode)

Cockbrand• 2 years ago

This is a thing of great beauty, even on a phone. Congrats!

yayitswei2• 2 years ago

This is a hit, congrats on your success! My favorite part is sound and music design: the SFX and music mesh well, the transitions are seamless and intentional e.g. when the warp stalls there is also a breakdown on beat.

rangerelf• 2 years ago

I absolutely loved it, thank you so much :-D Had to close the window tab because if I didn't I'd still be there, too immersive, so much fun.

Again, thank you!

akaike• 2 years ago

Amazing small game, visuals and sound! Love it. 11/10

lacoolj• 2 years ago

Imagine if a company used something like this to advertise their product.

Not sure ROI would be there but maaaaaaaan would it be a cool ad to play with

jomsk1e• 2 years ago

Nice! I'm drowning in a sea of backlogs and this is the first thing I saw this morning. Totally worth it! Only thing I can feedback is to add a jump action using spacebar. Overall, it is awesome!

SuperHeavy2562• 2 years ago

I love, love, love the visual style of this game. It's so aesthetically pleasing!

But even more than that, the game felt crisp. Movement, Mechanics, Voice Acting- all done fantastically. Just a 10/10 demo.

Now make a full game like this! I assure you, it'll take the internet by storm.

seoulmetro6• 2 years ago

It's just standard cel shading? Maybe I didn't play enough but it just seemed like a standard game. The mouse movement was good though.

lukejagg• 2 years ago

Wow, this is an amazing project. The 3D rendering runs so well. I'm curious how they got it to look so good with high performance on web.

SushiHippie• 2 years ago

Really awesome! Normally when games are posted on HN I don't give them much attention, but for this one I grabbed my headset, and I' do it again!

One nitpick, the mouse speed is IMO too slow, I've set it to 100 in the game settings but I still needed to drag my mouse way further than normal to rotate the player. I grabbed my trackball mouse so I don't need to move the mouse itself that far and then it was a bit more playable.

Would it be possible to increase the mouse speed further than 100?

xvfLJfx9• 2 years ago

Very cool! I hope you expand on this, maybe by introducing some sort of alient threat that is aboard the ship? Great demo, I enjoyed it!

xyst• 2 years ago

webgl is truly under utilized. this is a great display of what is possible, especially for games.

xwowsersx• 2 years ago

This was absolutely incredible. I was completely immersed. Now sitting back and enjoying the cafe.

anonzzzies• 2 years ago

Very well done! Enjoyable and just short enough to do before work!

system2• 2 years ago

Incredible work. Reminds me of the VR Game holoball, mixed with Star Trek and Elite Dangerous. This was amazing. Sucks that I am stuck at the cafe for a long time though. :D

lynguist• 2 years ago

I don’t know how to activate the power using the three colored 3x3 fields…

Edit: The correct symbols are right in front of you when you face the 3x3 fields.

siraben• 2 years ago

Smooth experience! I loved the details such as the assistant getting a bit annoyed when you go to the vending machine for a drink or “I regret to inform you…” when you try to use the internet terminal on board.

sebastianconcpt• 2 years ago

I loved it! The ambience, music voice acting and rendering style. Fantastic work!

wishfish• 2 years ago

That was quite nice. Would love to see a full game in this environment one day, but I'm also happy this particular one was short. Perfect length for showing off this team's talents.

It's funny how many of us distrusted the AI. I guess games + movies have taught us the AI is always up to something.

guhsnamih• 2 years ago

Loved everything except the controls. I must be the only one who found it impossible to navigate.

artemonster• 2 years ago

why is this lagging in chrome, but works fine on phone and firefox? do I have something wrong with settings?

agnosticmantis• 2 years ago

For a moment I thought Andrej Karpathy was the voice actor for the AI Assistant in the game.

baobabKoodaa• 2 years ago

I have never seen a ThreeJS project as polished as this one. Everything was spot on! Pacing of the storytelling, difficulty of the puzzles, art style, synchronization of audio to events in the game... everything was just so good. As other commenters have noted, I do hope you move from corporate advertisements into game development! (No judgment on corporate advertisements from me, it's just that I would love to play games made by you.)

ezekg• 2 years ago

Did anybody find a credit for the vending machine? I was hoping there was one somewhere, or another easter egg, but I couldn't find one. Regardless, great job. I was captivated through multiple play throughs. Reminds me of another short game called Xibalba[^1] that I enjoyed just as much.

Makes me want to give Bevy another spin and try doing a short story-driven FPS as well.

p.s. it's impressive that this was written in THREE.basic, judging by the cockpit monitors. :)

[^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8098464

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