We built a multiplayer game last week (like Battleship) and would love feedback

http://www.sinkabuddy.com

by furqanrydhan • 13 years ago

27 44 13 years ago

Toshio• 13 years ago

Love the initiative, don't have a FB account though. Is it reasonable to ask to be able to log in with my GitHub account?

Since I don't have access to the game, could someone explain the part of the game design that goes beyond the concepts of the classic Battleship game?

furqanrydhan10• 13 years ago

Ideally it should be any of the major web sign on methods (fb, google, twitter, linked-in) Github would be cool though. Maybe if we get some time we'll hack that together.

paulwithap3• 13 years ago

Why should I need to sign in at all? Why not give the option to play as a guest?

andreyf2• 13 years ago

Why do you need my real name, facebook profile picture, gender, networks, facebook user id, list of facebook friends, and birthday for me to play this game?

furqanrydhan10• 13 years ago

I guess the logic is to make it easy to connect with a list of friends and be able to play against 'real' people. I do think it makes sense to allow simple registration or anonymous type play, we'll probably add that as we get time.

does the birthday make it more awkward? We thought about removing that permission..

jvrossb10• 13 years ago

birthday seems unnecessary, but otherwise remember that the HN crowd will complain about FB login far more than the general population would.

cpeterso2• 13 years ago

Why not create implicit temporary accounts (tied to some token in a cookie) that will automatically be make permanent when the user registers with email or Facebook? People can play the game and not lose their game history when they register.

andreyf2• 13 years ago

Just give me a unique url I can send my friends. You can provide a link for me to send post it to Facebook without my having to log in.

As someone else pointed out, the HN crowd cares more about our privacy than the public at large. Respecting people's privacy isn't about how many people care about it.

xyfer• 13 years ago

why? because i can. http://oi34.tinypic.com/2w20whk.jpg

furqanrydhan10• 13 years ago

Weird, I know we didn't put any restrictions on the web front end to do that but the backend should reject the setup. I'll have to look through and figure out why it's not rejecting it.. thanks for pointing it out though!

rehashed• 13 years ago

I have the same issue.

paulwithap3• 13 years ago

Also, the graphic design is pretty bad.

tachion• 13 years ago

In addition to the above, A help or introduction to new or changed game mechanics would be useful.

furqanrydhan10• 13 years ago

Def agree here, we need help/how to play sections

jvrossb10• 13 years ago

You should let players save starting configurations so games can get going faster once a matchup is made. I'm now waiting for my buddy to set up. Alternatively don't start looking for players to match me with until I have finished set up. Either way I really really want to start playing and I really really don't want to wait for the other player to get ready.

EDIT: Aaaand when I refresh the page it seems like everything is gone.

EDIT 2: There should be a way to return to my list of games from the game screen.

EDIT 3: I notice there is a way - you click the top bar - but it should explicit, you have the space to include a back button on the side anyway. I also am unclear on how to remove the position of a ship I've already placed, and the error messages need to be polished a little. "You have placed too many lage_ship ships" isn't super user friendly.

furqanrydhan10• 13 years ago

Ok I think that was a known one, it's still saved in the backend just not reflecting.

Saving config would be good, i'll throw that on the list of things for this weekend :). Thanks for the feedback

jvrossb10• 13 years ago

They'll be more once I actually get a game going!

Where are you folks located? Interesting time to post :)

jvrossb10• 13 years ago

On the not showing up after refresh, 2 more quick notes. First, after I've completed setup games in my game list still show up as action:setup. It should say something like waiting for opponent. Second, when I select a game where I have completed setup, even though the game confirms I am waiting on my opponent I can't see any of my ships. So a refresh AND exiting+reentering a game wipe my view of my ships.

shocks• 13 years ago

What about those of us without Facebook? :(

furqanrydhan10• 13 years ago

So far it seems as if facebook connect is a huge fail, even from the early analytics, it seems like a guest option or a way to register w/o facebook is key. I think we'll be adding that as quick as possible! :)

jvrossb10• 13 years ago

Depending on your demographic of players this may be a mistake. HN will complain a lot about Facebook login but take words with friends as an example - you can play the tutorial without logging in and then it's FB login to play for real. Period. Why? Because a major driver of growth for them is Facebook. They've optimized their flow so that the average player invites other players, they used OpenGraph to post a lot when players take in-game actions, basically Facebook allows them to grow their userbase by having each user spread the game to more users.

The fact that so many games have Facebook only login is a sign that when done right, with a demographic of players that accept it (almost all, the SF Bay Area is way more anti facebook-login and sharing than most of the rest of the world), the players you lose by having only Facebook login are made up for by the viral spreading you get from Facebook users.

The caveat of course being that you have to design, from the ground up, for the game to spread through Facebook. If you don't, it's not worth it. But if you don't, you need some other strategy to make the game spread, and there are very very few unfortunately.

columbo• 13 years ago

Here's what I -really- would like to see:

No login, just give me a url (http://sinkabuddy.com/f8jNsh1o) that I can IM to a coworker to start playing with. I don't want to have to require both of us to sign in with Facebook just to play a video game during scrum.

furqanrydhan10• 13 years ago

I think the general theme that we understood from the early feedback is facebook connect isn't really the preferred option. Our stats show the same. We saw 7% of visitors in the last couple days actually click facebook connect. Although the experience in the end is better since it's easier to connect with friends I think it's up to us to show a real use case as to why a user should connect.

The link/guest type signup is something we'll probably do quickly, invite via email or url.

locusm• 13 years ago

You shouldn't have to install Facebook to play any game. So you lost me 5 seconds in.

iso8859-1• 13 years ago

How do you install Facebook? :)

rralian• 13 years ago

Would be nice to have a messaging system or at least a way to prompt the other person. Never know when they've stepped away.

meritt• 13 years ago

As soon as it required a FB login, I closed the browser.

Stop forcing social logins, especially ones tied to networks where there's a high degree of likelihood you'll post random shit "as me" that I most likely don't want to be posted.

This diagram might explain our reaction a bit better: http://i.imgur.com/oXtWdH2.png

cpeterso2• 13 years ago

I've head a similar game idea brewing for a long time: massively-multiplayer Battleship! Think Words with Friends meets Eve Online. :)

We built a multiplayer game last week (like Battleship) and would love feedback

Related Stories