Cursors

http://cursors.io

by alloyed • 12 years ago

1032 236 12 years ago

cursors.io

prezjordan• 12 years ago

This is way more interesting than I thought it'd be. I bet it was a blast to build, too.

joshmn• 12 years ago

My head hurts.

I love it.

SethKinast• 12 years ago

The level that really made me smile was one with about twenty "exits", only one of which was real.

One of the cursors sat by the real one and danced invitingly until everyone noticed.

macu2• 12 years ago

Community spirit <3

eclipsor• 12 years ago

My big smile moment was in the level with a torturously long path between blue barriers that snaked around... UNLESS someone was on the blue barrier.

At that point, everyone was free to go straight to the exit (except the kind soul, who had to wait for someone to hit the cyan trigger and let them out)

Math_Nerd• 12 years ago

I'm actually the guy that designed that level and was lucky enough to have the dev put it in.

My design let you go from spawn directly to the obstacle removal button, but the dev edited that part out.

I really like trust exercise levels, even though an entire heard of cursors left me in the box once.

RoboTeddy2• 12 years ago

Did they figure out which was the real one, and then restart the game and get to that level just to point out the correct answer?

bentcorner• 12 years ago

I did that for a bit - you can observe that people's cursors don't warp to the beginning at that exit.

dsl2• 12 years ago

When I got to that level a cursor was drawing an arrow to a false path. I couldn't figure out how to draw, so I assume a "fake cursor" was part of the level.

macu2• 12 years ago

"Warning: Next iteration in a genre of basic addiction games."

These games really are impressive though. I wonder if there's been a good thesis written on them yet.

Aaronneyer• 12 years ago

So much fun, great to see how people work together to help each other win.

I gave up on the one where you had to squeeze through a bunch of narrow red pathways, it's not so easy on a trackpad.

garrettgrimsley3• 12 years ago

I was staring at that one so intently that the walls started morphing.

fphhotchips• 12 years ago

I started seeing green where there was none. :D

raquo• 12 years ago

Not to sound snobby, but it's easy on a good trackpad :)

aaronem3• 12 years ago

Mine's at least as good as yours. It's not.

vacri• 12 years ago

'Cheat' to get you past thin red pathways: line yourself up with the pathway, and jam yourself against the wall opposing the path. Take your cursor outside the game box, then bring it in from the opposite side. Your cursor will snap across to the wall opposite where it currently is. My hand is a bit too wobbly for those paths, so I had to 'think outside the box' to get past them...

Robadob• 12 years ago

I just turned on mousekeys (on windows) and then used the number pad to travel vertically/horizontally.

shpx2• 12 years ago

or command option F5

lenocinor• 12 years ago

It's doable on a trackpad (Macbook Pro) since I did manage to beat the game, but it was hard!

Tideflat• 12 years ago

Scoot your finger down the edge of the track pad (so that your finger is half on, half off) to go straight.

jaktet2• 12 years ago

Has anyone finished?

RoboTeddy2• 12 years ago

Yep! https://roboteddy-img.s3.amazonaws.com/051583a403c58c10a87d3...

jaktet2• 12 years ago

Woo http://i.imgur.com/4RN9UN0.png

hanief2• 12 years ago

I love it. I learn to be sometimes sacrificing myself and sometimes to be selfish enough.

Ps: I just realized you can draw something on board. Hint: Press and hold Ctrl.

aganders32• 12 years ago

Ahh, that's what the "Area too full, drawing is disabled" was for. I saw some drawing in a later level and didn't connect the dots.

hanief2• 12 years ago

I think no, that is the message from the server whenever it was overloaded. The drawing is not persistent. It goes away after a while.

NaNaN5• 12 years ago

Hold Shift on Mac

tux1968• 12 years ago

Everyone seems to be loving it, but doesn't work for me. I don't control any of the cursors. There's a message in the bottom corner "Area too full, drawing is disabled". Latest Firefox.

jaredandrews• 12 years ago

Same here. Intriguing though.

aganders32• 12 years ago

The control is hard if you disable the cursor lock, which I had to do to get it to work in Safari. If you lose track of your "game" cursor, you get the red circle around your "real" cursor until you link them back up.

It worked as expected for me in Chrome (then I went back and tried it in Safari after figuring it out).

bandwevil• 12 years ago

Firefox's cursor hiding breaks it, won't let you move the cursor, so don't enable it. Red circled cursor is your actual mouse position, grey circled one is the 'ingame' cursor that's blocked by walls. Move the red onto the grey to start.

bjz_• 12 years ago

I found disabling the cursor lock on FF helped

Maken2• 12 years ago

FF 33.0 here, no problems so far, it even asks you politely if you want your cursor to be trapped when you enter the webpage.

mirkules• 12 years ago

Doesn't work on Safari either, same problem. Tried every combo of checkboxes.

reledi• 12 years ago

On Chrome I get "Area too full, drawing is disabled". The site disables my cursor (if I give it permission) and then I simply can't move my cursor, but I can click which creates a ripple around my cursor.

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

There was a bug with firefox. Should work now.

thethrows• 12 years ago

And it's dead.

grepper• 12 years ago

And we were so far along, too :( crosses fingers for persistent state

flyrain• 12 years ago

Cool game, love it.

waitingkuo2• 12 years ago

I got a "Lost connection to server" Anything went wrong?

kevinchau2• 12 years ago

too much load

bevenky• 12 years ago

A simulated social experiment it is. This is pretty much how societies will need to be like. WIN - WIN - WIN!

sillysaurus3• 12 years ago

I went AFK after reaching a particularly hard level, and came back to "Lost connection to server." Apparently it boots you if you're AFK for more than a minute or two.

A bit frustrating, considering how much "work" I put in to get to that point.

It's hands-down the best HTML 5 game experience I've ever had. I look forward to more.

garrettgrimsley3• 12 years ago

I have that message too now, I think the server simply went down, as I was not AFK at all.

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Dev here, yep. Server was restarted.

Zarel• 12 years ago

Nah, I lost connection to server even though I was actively playing. I'm pretty sure it's just high load.

zephjc• 12 years ago

Got to big maze and... "Connection Lost"

j_lev• 12 years ago

Thanks to this game I finally decided to upgrade my ball mouse to LASER.

(and unfortunately I got "disconnected from server" about 15 levels in)

dsl2• 12 years ago

"Connection to server lost"

I had myself convinced for a few minutes it was just a clever way to end the game when you got to the last level.

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Dev here. There's an editor at http://cursors.io?editor, but it can't submit the level to me yet. But you can type "generateCode();" and put it on pastebin and email it to me at me [at] m28.io and I'll put it in game if I like it.

My server is getting hammered pretty hard, that's the reason for the disconnects. The spike caused by hn: http://d.m28.io/ZCWdy0m1DHOG.png

I'm gonna sleep now but ask anything and I'll reply when I get up.

Edit: Sleeping is not an option anymore, the server is having some... troubles.

bcjordan• 12 years ago

Curious what the tech stack and data flow looks like for this, is the server running a C++ game representation and pushing updates to the javascript clients via WebSockets?

Noticed the string from the level editor `std::vector<LevelObject*> wallByColor[`

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Yep the server is in C++. The level editor is mostly for personal use right now, so it just generates the C++ code that I need to paste into a file. I plan to make the editor public and make an easy process to submit levels so maybe some day no one will ever be able to reach the end.

Achshar2• 12 years ago

Seems like you already have this on your to do list but it would be nice to save state on local storage or something like that so that it doesn't reset every time the connection is lost.

touristtam• 12 years ago

Keybind found so far:

* O: spawn * A/S: change paint color * W: exit? green block

wolfgke• 12 years ago

Z undo.

dvorak42• 12 years ago

More Keybinds from Code:

* A: Prev Paint Color

* S: Next Paint Color

* B: Create Click Button

* Z: Undo

* W: Add Exit Block

* O: Move Spawn Point

* N: Create Hover Area

* Arrows: Change Size

Eiriksmal2• 12 years ago

You, sir, have crafted a beautiful, wonderful experience. I was playing with ~700 people, a figure that jumped to nearly 900 before I turned back to doing real work for the day. (Your Reddit posts must be gaining steam.)

The thrill of messing with people on the level with the large spiraling maze with red blocks, the agony of waiting for someone to come relieve you on the "go out of your way to man button clicking stations" levels... It's almost shocking how much depth can be pulled from such an incredibly simple concept.

It makes one wonder if you've inadvertently stumbled across the Holy Grail of game design: Did, through the game mechanics themselves, you create True Art?

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Let's say it was absolutely completely 100% intentional and I surely knew what I was doing.

The game seems to have gotten popular on /r/webgames, but if it gets popular on /r/gaming or something, then it's gonna explode.

kevinchau2• 12 years ago

Lost connection to server a couple times now. Gets old trying to get through the beginning levels.

waitingkuo2• 12 years ago

I think we need a save/load button or the auto-save feature

xnxn• 12 years ago

I started playing this while some code was compiling and ended up getting completely sucked in.

That giddy thrill of enabling a restless mass of fellow cursors to rush through a gate, or the temporary, unspoken bond between the lone cursor selflessly manning a button and the new arrival sidling up to them to see if they want to change shifts... there's a lot going on in this seemingly simple game. I'm glad I got to play while it's at critical mass.

(Developers, are you logging the cursor movements? This would be fascinating to analyze later.)

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

I am not logging anything at the moment. I started writing this a few days ago.

vegabook• 12 years ago

This is going to be H U G E.

Stats about one's own selflessness etc would be really cool. Or even aggregated stuff. X% is selfish, Deciles of goodness etc.

dietrichepp• 12 years ago

You should play "Trappy Tomb", if you haven't already.

libria• 12 years ago

There's potential for a really neat prisoner's dilemma study here. Should be an exercise for many a philosophy course.

comboy• 12 years ago

And I thought it was some social experiment where I'm going to see how egoistic I am.

archagon• 12 years ago

Arrgh, how do you guys write these awesome, complex projects (with networking! and built-in tools!) in just a few days? If I tried my hand at making this, it would take me, like, a month. What is the trick that lets you leap across this order-of-magnitude-sized time gap?

Great work!

srijankedia2• 12 years ago

The game is really creative and addictive! I am a Ph.D. student and I would like to use the game as a platform for research. Do you plan on making the logs available any time?

Reef• 12 years ago

This is, hands down, the most awesome game I have ever played through a web browser!

Please start logging as soon as possible. Simple heat maps of cursor positions, draw areas and pings would be awesome to look at. It could be shown to players in the end of the game.

If you collect data, I will help you process it. I am especially interested in measuring the percentage of players who volunteer to change a poor soul trapped far away, just because it is a nice thing to do. Percentage of players who never do that would also be interesting, just as players who figure out that they can click 2 or sometimes 4 buttons by oneself, freeing several cursors.

willvarfar• 12 years ago

I started playing this while some code was compiling

Likely excuse! Cue xkcd linkbot.

namuol• 12 years ago

Reminds me of cursor*10[1]. I always wanted an actual multiplayer version of it -- awesome!

[1] http://nekogames.jp/g.html?gid=CURSOR10

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

That's actually from where I got my inspiration! Thanks for noticing

comex• 12 years ago

Broken in Safari -

    [Error] TypeError: undefined is not a function (evaluating 'w.requestPointerLock()')
    	ma (client_out.js, line 1)

(As the error suggests, checking the 'no pointer lock' button fixes it, but it shouldn't be silently failing.)

Edit: Ouch, I was disconnected from the server after getting several levels in.

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Thanks for the bug report, should be fixed now.

hkailahi• 12 years ago

Playing this was a mistake on my part considering I have plenty of networking HW due tomorrow, but then again looking at HN was the first mistake. Great job! It's a simple game that ended up being significantly more fun than I thought it would be.

iamwil• 12 years ago

I really wanted to see how many people were at each level, to get a sense of how far up the tower this goes, and how many people were up top, and how soon I'd get there.

It'd also be cool if the higher up you go, you can see a previous level, and affect it in some way, like helping more cursors get up to your level, or hinder them to be evil.

PavlovsCat• 12 years ago

I get nothing either in Firefox or Chrome :(

Firefox says:

SecurityError: The operation is insecure. client_out.js:30

Chrome says:

Uncaught SecurityError: Failed to read the 'localStorage' property from 'Window': Access is denied for this document.

krzyk• 12 years ago

Doesn't work for me on Firefox Aurora, console shows: ReferenceError: WebSocket is not defined

I see just a rectangle with border, when I move cursor to it it disappears, when I move it out it appears again.

jjallen• 12 years ago

How many levels are there? I played until about 12

sturmeh4• 12 years ago

Not that many, 23 or so. Finish it, it's satisfying.

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

About 40 at the moment.

aw3c2• 12 years ago

Some indicator would be great. Maybe even of "cursors in the earlier levels that might come soon". Is there branching? I was stuck with 3 people in a room where we needed 5-6 (or super good clickers) to proceed and gave up waiting for new cursors after several minutes. (The spiral with 5-6 "5 click" buttons that were all blocking the exit in the lower right.)

stepstep• 12 years ago

I love it. :) Small suggestion: make the cursor slide against walls rather than getting stuck (at least it gets stuck on walls for me in Chrome).

cheeaun• 12 years ago

This reminds me of an app that I built ~6 years ago http://cursorlog.appspot.com/ - it's not working now, some JS error with `this.hidden` :(

Source code here https://code.google.com/p/cursorlog/

olegbl• 12 years ago

Teasing people after hacking in noclip is quite fun.

bhhaskin• 12 years ago

Thanks for this! It was a blast!

arms• 12 years ago

I just finished a long coding session (it's 3AM here), and was about to go to sleep before I saw this. Looks like I won't be going to bed for awhile longer... :)

iammyIP• 12 years ago

Nice game! I did not think i would finish, but it kept me hooked. The cooperation mechanics were fun.

iopq• 12 years ago

Lost connection to server??? NOOOOO

imarihantnahata• 12 years ago

Start again? :-o NOOOO

Lrigikithumer• 12 years ago

Just a heads up, I'm on a touch screen and can abuse those pink parts pretty easily by just tapping the screen on the other side of them.

sturmeh4• 12 years ago

I got frustrated with them and just used a game-pad to move perfectly across them. :)

eterm• 12 years ago

You can do this with a normal cursor too. Get the cursor to the edge opposite the one you want to get to. Press escape to go into loose lock mode (not sure how to describe this).

By taking your cursor down outside the box, it doesn't register as being too far away (stays yellow). You can loop your mouse around to the other side outside the window and instantly your cursor catches up when you re-enter on the opposite side.

samim• 12 years ago

We did a quiz game with cursor sharing earlier this year here: http://artefutureplay-20905.onmodulus.net/play/p (DE/FR lang only)

jhsu42• 12 years ago

Ugh, as soon as I get far I get disconnected....

sturmeh4• 12 years ago

This is awesome, you totally need to make cursor RPG.

KhalilK2• 12 years ago

The only downside is when disconnection occurs, the game gets reset, frustrating :(

Achshar2• 12 years ago

The experience is so good! Though I wish there was some way to save state after connection lost. I have lost it a couple of times now probably because of load and it starts over every time.

NaNaN5• 12 years ago

+1 Also "clear state".

NaNaN5• 12 years ago

I want to buy this game now. <3 The server hurts.

edent• 12 years ago

Just completed the game. Amazed me how "selfish" some players were. Although it's hard to communicate actions - and harder still to differentiate players - it did seem that I spend much longer helping players who just camped by the exit.

iliis• 12 years ago

There's an end? Aw, man! I tought it was just big bunch of randomly chosen levels. How about a counter? Something like 'this is level 123 from 444'?

Surprisingly awesome game tough!

Dewie2• 12 years ago

That's what I don't like about these "throw you into our world" games/websites. Sure, it's kind of adventurous to just be thrown into some game you don't know what is about or for, but it's not good for the web surfing procrastinator in me. OK, nice game and all, but is this going to be taking 5 minutes or two hours to complete? (Yes, I did finish this particular game. Someone pointed out how many levels there were, in one of the comments.)

stinos• 12 years ago

Played yesterday and there were a lot of people with the same mindset as I had: help a couple of others, then be helped and get out. Awesome experience.

Played again today and it was messier and there seemed to be more selfish ones (sometimes can be very obvious in levels with only a couple of cursors). People just entering a level and waiting at the gates. Really had to push them to come switch places. Sometimes got stuck more than 5 minutes in a level (which led to funny chatting with others though)

tldr; just like in real life.

sidenote: I don't know much about web programming, but when are the bots coming to this one? E.g. for entering text easily?

eperfa• 12 years ago

The band Kilo had a "crowdsourced music video" based on the same concept: http://donottouch.org/

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

That was also one of my inspirations! (That and cursors*10)

protester• 12 years ago

Do you know 5xman. It's a lot of fun. It's a flash game you can play in armor games and kongregate (I don't know for how long this link will be valid, but anyway: http://armorgames.com/play/6819/5xman)

aye• 12 years ago

The "form a smiley" made me smile. It's pretty neat to see such clear cooperation.

People couldn't keep their hands off the model, though.

mythz• 12 years ago

Loving the anonymous "mob psychology" patterns that can be seen whilst playing the game, the cursors makes it look like we're observing a swarm of (intelligent) flies :)

Also funny to witness in the harder levels most cursors getting slower and slower as to avoid having to start again :)

DonHopkins• 12 years ago

I was trolled by a very mean cursor who relentlessly cyber bullied me and made some very NSFW gestures! I captured a screen snapshot, reported it to the FBI, and described the cursor who assaulted me to a sketch artist, but they said they could not do anything about it unless they have more evidence as to the rogue cursor's identity. What am I to do???

aaronem3• 12 years ago

Be more subtle.

pmontra• 12 years ago

Interesting but it lost me when I had start to have to do pixel accurate manoeuvring. That was challenging when I was 16, but it feels so pointless now (30 years later).

By the way, apparently it doesn't work with the ad on the bottom turned off by either NoScript or Adblock (connection to server lost).

chris_overseas2• 12 years ago

On the narrow stretches you can cheat by right-clicking at the entrance (so you have a context menu and the game cursor freezes), then moving to the far end of the narrow section and left-clicking to release the menu. The game cursor will jump to the new position.

tokenizerrr2• 12 years ago

Agreed. Fun game, but these levels absolutely kill it for me. Wound up enabling mouse keys in windows to use my numpad to move the cursor in a straight line...

josephagoss• 12 years ago

I used Ease of Access Center in Windows to control the mouse via the numpad to get past the really annoying ones, getting past those parts was worth it.

pdkl95• 12 years ago

    for i in $(seq 50) ; do
        eesh warp rel 0 -8
        sleep 0.1
    done

// yes, I still use e16

KhalilK2• 12 years ago

Finally finished it, now I can get back to whatever I was doing a couple of hours ago.

http://i.imgur.com/ZUTUZ6L.png

boyaka• 12 years ago

I happened to see this post while randomly refreshing /newest last night, 0 comments at the time. PST time zone. Says it was posted 10 hours ago which is about 9pm PST. I promise I wasn't selfish! I definitely helped people out. Also had no lag issues at that time but some levels I did have to wait 5-10 minutes for more people to come through.

http://i.imgur.com/STilfzp.png

congdv• 12 years ago

awesome

Walkman• 12 years ago

The challenge is not to simply finish the game, but to finish the game before it disconnects :D

pimlottc• 12 years ago

Yes, some means of saving your progress via the history API or localStorage or something would be very appreciated.

agumonkey• 12 years ago

This gives RSI faster than Emacs

rhapsodyv• 12 years ago

Hey! It needs save the progress!! :-(

smrtinsert• 12 years ago

This is soooo addictive.

potomushto• 12 years ago

Ooof, it's over. Some levels is more tragic and ironic than Hollywood movies. I've known a cursor who always clicking as if he cheering to everybody. Funny guy. There was two friendly cursors at the maze and they never stoped to draw a lines and moved together, side by side. "Leave me, save yourself!" - I said to other brave cursor, but he stayed on the blue square and didn't want to escape the level.

fifthesteight• 12 years ago

Interesting CPU performance in Chrome on Ubuntu!

Relating to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471049 (Google chrome helper amok in OSX HN thread)

While playing Cursors my chrome CPU usage went through-the-roof! Just like OSX 60-80%+ CPU usage on that page. Side-by-side comparison with a mac at cursors.io had identical CPU (so may just be the load of the app).

Just did a side-by-side comparison with Mozilla in Ubuntu showed no higher than 15% for about 90 seconds, but actually ended up jumping to 100%

*Edit: The mozilla cpu jump was related to cursor hiding. Otherwise the crazy cpu usage is entirely gone. The issue persists in chrome.

Ghoy• 12 years ago

Lots of fun, most fun is at the end of the game. A lot of drawing took place on the end level, was fun :D

msthomaa2• 12 years ago

Anybody figured how to get gold in "You can't get always what you want"?

Kequc• 12 years ago

I can't see any way to do it I think the solution is it's impossible.

msthomaa2• 12 years ago

I've been there for a while and tried everything... Nothing worked so far.

afatc• 12 years ago

This was a lot of fun, well made!

chrisdone• 12 years ago

Wow! There is so much going on here. I can't believe you're not logging!

* First it starts out as a simple maze puzzle game.

* Then it there're weird layouts where people are clicking stuff, and pathways are opening up randomly.

* Then you realise it's not random at all, people have to click things for pathways to open.

* Then you realise someone has to stay behind and sacrifice themselves for other people to go through.

* Then there're levels where multiple people have to coordinate and click at the same time to open n layers gates.

* Then there're levels where not only do you have to stay behind, you have to go out of your way to do so. So you'll be letting people through for a while, you realise, as it's more efficient for the group as a whole. At some point you have to decide you've taken your turn and you move towards the main gate and wait, and then new people come and then they have to realise to go to press the key.

* So next level you see someone sacrificing themselves and you decide instead to go take their place and wiggle your mouse to tell them to go. "I got this", you indicate.

* Now some people have got it into their head this is all about cooperation and selflessness. So you can be waiting in one of these buttons in the middle of nowhere, letting people through for a minute, and a new guy will start making their way towards you to let you go, and you draw "thanks" on your way out, they wiggle their mouse to say "welcome" and off you go, leaving them behind.

* On some levels, not only did people have to coordinate at the same time, but things had to be done in sequence. On one, there wasn't enough people to hit all buttons at once, so we coordinated where you would unwrap the "outer" layer of wall protecting the exit, and a couple people would move inside, then you'd unwrap another inner layer, and so on, until they could get out. Finally, you'd decide your turn was over and go wait the same way. It took quite a while before this was figured out collectively -- but once newcomers saw how it was done it went in one smooth operation until I got out and onto another maze.

And that's to say nothing of the selfish people who just passed through maze after maze. In one maze people were waiting, and I and another were at the buttons, but there was one other. One of them had to realise they needed to sacrifice themselves. We were both wiggling our mouses to indicate so, but they didn't see it.

There's also the way people will follow you in the maze if you look confident, and the way people will draw on the right exit to help people out. I'd try to leave a trail if I'd had the right exit cracked in the maze.

In a way I think the inability to write and communicate is fantastic: you can't just tell someone "do this". They have to figure out that they need to collaborate, they have to have some kind of intuitive social empathy that puts the needs of the many against the needs of the few.

Genuinely, mate, this is the most fascinating "game" I've played in a long time. And I can't believe you're not logging it all! I'm sure game theorists and psychologists would love to get their hands on this kind of data. I thought it was a real experiment done for research.

Glad I got to play this while 700 people were on it, I think that really made for some great interactions. It felt like being part of some kind of military team.

anon4• 12 years ago

I just drew dicks everywhere.

switch_nand• 12 years ago

So that was you... greeting from the guy drawing hearts and "spreading the love"

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Me too. And I'm the dev...

scribu• 12 years ago

Yep, it's a fantastic game!

I'd wager that even more complex group dynamics could be witnessed if each cursor looked a little (or a lot) different.

tokenizerrr2• 12 years ago

It's great, the second time I played it I started drawing arrows at incorrect exits at the one level where you have to pick the correct one or be sent back. When I started there were about 10 people in the level and everything went quite smoothly since there was the occasional person pointing an arrow at the correct exit. By the time I was done there were at least 50 cursors in the room and it became completely chaotic. People started crossing out my arrows, and others joined me in my effort of drawing false arrows.

bbrks2• 12 years ago

IT WAS YOU!

Ideka• 12 years ago

Hahaha. That level is so much fun to troll people in.

Someone was drawing an X on the correct exit, and I started drawing a checkmark on the one next to it. When they realized, they tried to cross it out.

emotionalcode• 12 years ago

I thought it was a lovely simplification of the mechanics of communication and social intelligence.

It's also extremely interesting from an artificial intelligence perspective, or even from the perspective of the definition of intelligence.

A language essentially develops from the constraints the mechanics of the game imposes (and this might be temporary, or with multiple meanings associated to the same gestures, to be evaluated contextually within different successive state evaluations).

This game delighted me from an artistic perspective, in that it demonstrated interesting ideas to me about social abstraction and social adaptability.

mxmlz• 12 years ago

It reminds me of Way [1], a great game (but unfortunately abandoned) where you have to solve puzzles with a random partner and you can't communicate besides some gestures.

[1] http://www.makeourway.com/

graup• 12 years ago

I have a nice story from this level: http://imgur.com/0uunnrU

In the end, between start and goal there is only a single block. I was the one opening that block, everybody went through, and I was trapped. One arrow, however, stayed behind, tried to help me get out, was stuck with me for some time, and told me to not clear that last block in order to have other people help me out without just going through.

Whoever you are, thanks <3

NaNaN5• 12 years ago

Maybe me. XD That is one of the most challenging levels. I hope to solve it with other four cursors together (Rush for fun!)

z-e-r-o• 12 years ago

After playing the game and reading this, I've realised that drawing cursors must have been an amazing experience. Unfortunately by now, the game is so popular that drawing cursors are disabled, and my experience has been "just a bunch of random cursors moving around without cooperation", unlike the parent's where communication played such an important part. I hope the dev can raise the "room full" limit or split the game to smaller rooms, as by now all players are only experiencing the drawing-less mode of the game.

jml7c5• 12 years ago

I suspect you would quite enjoy the game Journey[1]. You're paired up with another person but given only a rudimentary form of communication.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UQ7KKoYfeU

levifig• 12 years ago

I too thought this was an actual experiment. I can't believe you're not logging stuff… I bet a "game" like this would totally be a gold mine for psychologists/sociologists and behavioral scientists alike… :D

Nyarglebargle• 12 years ago

Trying to get it on reddit too: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2jowld/cursors/

alexvr• 12 years ago

Are there any safeguards against bots? Or could someone just sit on a # tile while auto-clicking?

jasonkostempski• 12 years ago

I love how there's no way to stick out from the crowd, you could be selfish or selfless when ever you want and no one will be able to recognize you as soon as you blend in with the other cursors. Only you know how you behaved.

I decided to be one of the dancing cursors pointing to the right exit on the early stage, it was so fun to watch the difference in throughput when someone was dancing vs not. Almost everyone went straight for the dancer if there was one and just went 1 by 1 otherwise.

anmonteiro90• 12 years ago

Very nice game, I just wasted a bit of my time trying to get through the levels :) which is always a good indication if you ask me.

On another note: 1) can you provide 1/2 links to the JS cursor API behind the game? 2) Do you plan to open source it?

Keep up the nice work

singularity20012• 12 years ago

To 'skip' the narrow passages: google "Move mouse with cursor keys" ;} programmatically: CGWarpMouseCursorPosition on mac

Hello71• 12 years ago

or do the ol' impossible quiz trick

cturhan• 12 years ago

Is that gold thing real? Any way to go in?

TEDSON• 12 years ago

Press alt + F4 to get gold.

spacefight• 12 years ago

Thank you so much for releasing this not on a weekday :)

singularity20012• 12 years ago

any cheat page yet?

Oculus• 12 years ago

You have to love the game theory behind this. In order to get through the later levels you have to be a bit selfish and take the oppurtunity of going for the green square at other people's expense. The most interesting part is once you get to the last few levels where everyone is selfish. Makes for difficult times passing the level :)

Props to the dev for creating a simple game that is a huge amount of fun!

blackjack48• 12 years ago

Curiosity killed the mouse...

gmaslov• 12 years ago

I went to the more-difficult-to-reach exit and was sent all the way back to the beginning of the game :-(

chris_overseas2• 12 years ago

[Spoiler Alert] I did this on the first play through too. I played through again and it turns out that's the last level anyway. If you take the easy option you end up in a blank level where all the winners can hang out and just draw pictures. When I was there it was 50% people expressing their joy in finishing, and 50% dick pics :)

darekkay2• 12 years ago

Helping other people to beat this level = trolling level over 9000 :D

jmcejuela• 12 years ago

This is pure genius. I was amazed at the self-emerging cyclical selfish & altruist behaviors.

Good job, mate.

zirco• 12 years ago

Now it's stuck in a stage forever :/

bbrks2• 12 years ago

This level is impossible to get past if somebody leaves the exit area.

http://i.imgur.com/wBK3pKo.png

marco1• 12 years ago

How did you solve the chicken-and-egg problem of getting your first dozens of concurrent users, author?

tlammens• 12 years ago

Hacker News? :)

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Threads. Lots of threads. Heh, just kidding. But really, since there are no communication between levels, it's pretty simple actually.

patcon• 12 years ago

Ugh. Two cursors are trolling the first level. They put their cursors on the block that can't have any on it, and so it prevents anyone playing from moving on :/

Would be awesome to kick cursors who haven't moved off a toggle in x many minutes...

NigelTufnel• 12 years ago

This is so much fun. It's kind of like RPG. There are 3 character classes. 1. Asshole: just goes straight after the green square. 2. Prankster: draws arrows pointing to the wrong exits. 3. Batman: stays on the button and clicks.

I've tried all three characters. Playing prankster is fun (I was a true trickster and sometimes drew the right arrow). Playing asshole is boring. Playing Batman is ok.

My apologies to all the guys/gals who followed the wrong arrow.

Many, many thanks to the author.

Also, I haven't seen so many poorly drawn dicks and swastikas since grade school.

tbirdz• 12 years ago

Unfortunately I got the message "Lost Connection to Server", after I had made significant progress, and had to start over.

But all in all, I think it's a very interesting (and fun) game. The only part which concerns me is the fact that it's multiplayer only, which means as people lose interest over time it simply won't be playable. But, then again I don't see how the mechanics would translate to single player only, unless the other mouse cursors were controlled by bots with different algorithms to simulate various humans playstyles.

lfottaviano• 12 years ago

Wonderful Gamee! Would you tell us which technologies & APIs have you implemented? thx!

antimora• 12 years ago

When I open the link it says "Lost connection to server". Is anyone getting the same message?

GhostCursor• 12 years ago

Definitely a Titan game! I like that people are requesting saved progress.

Uh no, you're a cursor, get back out there as a fresh cursor...

Psylocyber• 12 years ago

I agree! Fun to see people 'claiming' anonymous cursors.

"That's me!" "Which?" "That one, with the spots!"

srijankedia2• 12 years ago

Dev - The game is really creative and addictive! I am a Ph.D. student and I would like to use the game as a platform for research. Do you plan on making the logs available any time? Would you be interested in this direction?

devindotcom• 12 years ago

This is insanely fun. Thanks so much.

darekkay2• 12 years ago

The Ending screen is the best thing since using Paint on Windows 3.11 :D

danbruc• 12 years ago

This was fun, thx! Nicknames or custom colorable cursor might be a nice addition so you can identify your peers. Or it may ruin it, not sure.

AYBABTME• 12 years ago

In that level where the buttons are deep into a maze, I punished jerks who wouldn't do their part by clicking the button until it reaches 1, but no more. For a good 30s, there was a group at the gate drawing hateful messages to me. I'd been there for a good 5 min helping people out, and letting others through. The ones that were waiting had not travelled anywhere close to a button, they'd only been waiting at the gate for others to sacrifice themselves for them. Then one of them eventually gave up and came to replace me. What a bunch of assholes.

That's not everybody of course, but the later in the levels you go, the higher the proportion of jerks you'd meet. This, I guess, because the ones who aren't jerks take more time to move forward in the levels, while jerks move faster.

So while jerks can't reach the next level without the presence of good-doers, there still less and less good-doers as you progress forward. There's also attrition in good-doers along the way from:

    - Connections timing out or otherwise erroring.
    - People giving up.

And the further you move in the levels, the higher the jerk proportion so the longer it takes a good-doer to move forward, increasing the probability that one of the two attrition causes occur.

So it's possible that good-doers never make it to the end of the game (and thus nobody). In fact, if the game has enough levels, I'd be surprised if anyone ever managed to finish it without deliberate coordination by a group of good-doers.

All that to say, this game is really interesting.

maxerickson2• 12 years ago

On some levels I was a jerk, on other levels I was a do gooder. I had to do the punishment thing, but it took ~10 seconds for somebody to realize I thought it was my turn to move on.

kbart• 12 years ago

Actually my experience is opposite -- the further you go, the more people have already realised the importance of teamwork and it's easier to cooperate, while at the beginning everyone just rushes to the next level. Anyway, very interesting idea and also could be put to the use for psychology students etc.

notastartup4• 12 years ago

Omg! I couldn't stop playing.

what is the technology behind this. this is amazing.

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Just a bunch of hamsters and a few spinning wheels. It was kinda hard at first but once you figure out the right food, they won't stop running.

amatai• 12 years ago

Simply amazing. Shows team work, sacrifice, cooperation. Nice!!!

Vecrios• 12 years ago

Wow! First impression: this is stupid. Played for two minutes, couldn't stop for a 15 minutes. Congrats on creating a truly fun game from a simple idea.

CyberShadow• 12 years ago

Crashed twice on me now (other players stop moving, and the game stops responding to input).

IndexSizeError: Index or size is negative or greater than the allowed amount

Somewhere on line 18 of client_out.js, which is probably not very helpful because the source is minified.

undershirt• 12 years ago

recorded a video of my experience (1h40m with level bookmarks in description):

http://youtu.be/vtuZlufpfag

truly great idea. thanks for the game!

cyanfrog• 12 years ago

WTB tutorial :D

wingworks• 12 years ago

This is the best game!

asdfasdfasdf11• 12 years ago

Interesting game, and nice little "success" with the amount of concurrent players. Any ideas how to monetize something like that?

smcl2• 12 years ago

OK can someone describe what on earth this is. I've tried twice - once I ended up in a maze with a load of other mouse cursors and no indication of what to do (I spent a couple of minutes moving around towards some coloured squares but ultimately nothing happened). The other time I was in a white screen that said "press shift and click to draw" but doing so did nothing :-/

joshvm• 12 years ago

Get to the green square. You're the cursor with the yellow halo around it. Figuring out the rest of the problems is part of the fun :)

smcl2• 12 years ago

Guess I've having issues then, I made it to the square when I tried before and now I'm getting a blank screen and a message about losing connection. Oh well.

zniperr• 12 years ago

So, I just completed the "curiosity killed the mouse" level, took 3 people a while to realise what was going on, but after a few minutes we got to the non-obvious solution, and I got sent back to the first level. I feel a bit screwed over now... =|

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Don't worry, it always comes right before the last level, so you didn't lose much.

Eiriksmal2• 12 years ago

Is that still true, Magnificent Cursors Creator? This morning, I finished it and, if I'm remembering my pre-coffee activities correctly, a few more stages after it and never reached the end.

ponyous• 12 years ago

Loved the game. There is one level where you have to push 4 buttons to open barriers. But 1 player if fast enough can push 3 of them and you get glitched through last one. So I was trying to get one cursor through, clicking every button 5 times, but I was just a bit too slow. Then he just came to my place and wiggled "hey move on its my turn to help". He was fast enough and I moved on...

Fuzzwah• 12 years ago

I was going to post asking for level numbers to be displayed, but then I read through the comments here and actually enjoyed reading people's stories about levels and having to describe them in terms other than "level #53".

ForFreedom• 12 years ago

why is there a lost connection with the server?

Is the game server connecting to the webserver via private ip?

zmk_2• 12 years ago

I just made a bunch of people go crazy drawing on one level. It took me 30 minutes trying to get someone draw anything.

emerongi• 12 years ago

I tried that in the end. ALMOST made a mickey mouse. Almost.

zmk_2• 12 years ago

The end level I actually did that with some help. ;)

I tried to get people draw things at the point where if somebody stepped on a button all walls disappeared.

mycookie• 12 years ago

Awesome, reminds me of Antichamber, especially the little hints given.

Matheus2822• 12 years ago

Yeah I played that game too. I remembered it when writing the hints... I guess that counts as inspiration.

xs• 12 years ago

I would like the cursor to change color slowly as it ages on each level. This way you can see who's been in that level for a long time and who's just arriving.

cel• 12 years ago

Awesome app. It reminds me of a thing I made, http://www.theinfinitemaze.com/

One thing I did on that site which could be useful here: aid the mouse movement with a A* search with limited depth, so that the game cursor moves toward the actual cursor a little more instead of blocking when there is a wall in the way.

hellodevnull• 12 years ago

For the first five minutes I kept worrying it was going to be a scream (see Maze Game).

dkurbz• 12 years ago

Have you made any changes recently/do you have a changelog?

Cursors

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