Do you like silly browser toys with a tangential link to games?

[trjp]

This is a bit cheeky as I've already posted this into the Steam Greenlight thread - but that thread is almost 30 pages or 'heated debate' so I'm guessing a lot of people won't be keeping-up with it?

So, anyway, in an effort to show that you can make voting games onto Steam a lot more interesting than Valve are doing, I created a very silly thing I'm calling the "Wobbly Tower Voting System" - with apologies to World of Goo - you can see it here

http://www.shrewdlogarithm.com/voter

It's meant to be a bit of fun and also to show-off the clever things HTML5 allows us to do in the browser - that's a proper Box2D physics engine (as seen in a certain game involving birds!) we've got there although I'd been used for more impressive stuff I'm sure :)

I'd really like any and all feedback I can get on it - e.g. I'd like you all to be guinea pigs with your various browsers and platforms - you don't have to make a serious effort at voting for anything, you can just try to break it if you like (won't be too hard!)

Note: I'm not really expecting it to work on a smartphone or even a smaller tablet because, if for no other reason, there's a LOT of information going on there - but by all means give it a whirl and send me the error messages :)

TIA!

[icupnimpn2]

I had one of my blocks fall through the floor but was able to pull it back out as part of the chain.

Looks like placing a block at all assigns a score of at least 1, meaning that if you don't like the game you shouldn't use it as a block.

Will global scores be calculated based on relative local scores? That is, does someone really have to build a gigantic tower to put their favorite game on top, or can they just place a single block for their favorite game and leave it at that?

[TillEulenspiegel]

Note: I'm not really expecting it to work on a smartphone or even a smaller tablet

It actually works just fine on an iPad 3 with Safari, though it's not exactly fast. Chrome is predictably slower (it can't use the special Javascript VM), but it still works.

It's even slower on my Galaxy Nexus, but it does work! Dragging games from the list is very laggy, but the physics engine seems reasonably smooth.

[trjp]

Looks like placing a block at all assigns a score of at least 1, meaning that if you don't like the game you shouldn't use it as a block.

That's pretty-much my feeling - but the whole 'weight of vote' thing is something I've not really decided as-yet - we could certainly make "0" count for something over nothing.

Will global scores be calculated based on relative local scores? That is, does someone really have to build a gigantic tower to put their favorite game on top, or can they just place a single block for their favorite game and leave it at that?

Again I'm playing with the idea that more votes have more value - a considered 'tower' is worth more than ticking one 'YES' box - but you certainly have to consider the fact some people will only 'like' one game.

Someone who's really thinking about this stuff could even work with the 'links' people use between games - I'm not really thinking about that myself, but the implication is clearly there.

[trjp]

It actually works just fine on an iPad 3 with Safari, though it's not exactly fast. Chrome is predictably slower (it can't use the special Javascript VM), but it still works.

It's even slower on my Galaxy Nexus, but it does work! Dragging games from the list is very laggy, but the physics engine seems reasonably smooth.

I tried the earlier version on an iPad2 and whilst it worked, it was pretty much unusable.

The problem is partly 800 images (even loaded-on-demand as they are now) although and single-core devices (phones then) seem to struggle to both render AND do the physics at the same time (Android phones have a problem with Box2D in general because of that).

[Logan Booker]

If you have a jailbroken device, you can grab Nitrous from Cydia and enable the faster JVM for any app you think needs it. It costs $US1, so if you're happy with Safari then it's fine to miss.

[trjp]

I'm back with more silliness - again from the Greenlight thread but interesting in it's own right (I hope).

Greenlight has over 8000 screenshots/videos available for the games on there - I thought I'd wrap them all around a 3D tube and try to make your browser/

http://www.shrewdlogarithm.com/tube

Works best in Chrome (or another Webkit browser like Safari perhaps) - slow in Firefox - no support in Opera or IE yet.

Mouse to pan - mousewheel to move up/down - click videos to play them - click screenshots to open the Greenlight site for that game

Have fun - tell me if it borks :)

p.s. motion sickness types may need to hover over the close button ;)

[Pertusaria]

Seems to work fine in Firefox, but I haven't found a way of reliably stacking them without the connections appearing. Games with connections between them are far more precariously stacked than just trying to put boxes on top of one another - it's fine with 3 games but very difficult with 4.

Also, I'm not sure what the mousewheel is supposed to do - scale the tower? Does that mean picking a game from among a big pile? - but is there a way of reproducing it if I don't have a mousewheel?

Possibly related, but if I've stacked ten games and I spot one that I think should be at the bottom or near the middle of the pile, how do I put it there? Do I have to re-do everything?

Thanks - it's a neat gadget, and it doesn't have the problem Greenlight does / did of taking me to a separate screen every time I choose a game and then re-setting all my settings when I go back to the list. :)

[trjp]

Seems to work fine in Firefox, but I haven't found a way of reliably stacking them without the connections appearing. Games with connections between them are far more precariously stacked than just trying to put boxes on top of one another - it's fine with 3 games but very difficult with 4.

The 'boxes' as they appear (because they're that shape in Greenlight) are actually 'circles' in physics terms - as the whole idea came from World of Goo's towers and circles just work better than squares in terms of making 'wobbly' towers.

In World of Goo - the circles would all gravitate to the bottom UNLESS they're connected - but the lack-of-space and slightly more basic physics here limits which spoil that a bit.

The idea here is to make you think about how you stack stuff tho - it's very much a work-in-progress but I wanted people to have to think about how they arrange the games - not just say "all of these should be the lowest and this one here is the highest".

Also, I'm not sure what the mousewheel is supposed to do - scale the tower? Does that mean picking a game from among a big pile? - but is there a way of reproducing it if I don't have a mousewheel?

Mousewheel scales the play-area for the tower - so you can get more games in there OR so that the smaller amount of games you have fills the space (as the higher you go, the better your games score).

No way of doing it without a mousewheel atm - I should probably make it 'CONTROL+MOUSE' or something like that tho!?

Possibly related, but if I've stacked ten games and I spot one that I think should be at the bottom or near the middle of the pile, how do I put it there? Do I have to re-do everything?

I was thinking of putting 'change gravity' buttons in there - which would drag everything to the sides or the top and thus enable adding things to different places on the tower. 'Saving' your tower would reset gravity - so we'd keep the same order of priority for everyone - and that might, in itself, make a game out of this!? :)

Another thought was to enable 'swapping' of games with existing games in the tower but that's technically very, very tricky to do - it would solve your issue tho and so it's on my "to think about" list :)

Thanks - it's a neat gadget, and it doesn't have the problem Greenlight does / did of taking me to a separate screen every time I choose a game and then re-setting all my settings when I go back to the list. :)

Yeah, that alone is the sign that they didn't think this thing through much - here's 800 games, hack through them with minimal assistance from technology which is designed for exactly this sort of thing!

[trjp]

Been a while since I updated this but I've been working on my 3D display-o-tron for all the Greenlight games - adding a load of stuff etc. - so I thought I'd drag more of your views from you!

http://www.shrewdlogarithm.com/tube/

Whilst adding a new 3D mode I encountered some entertaining bugs - I documented these as part of a blog series I'm doing on this - the videos are in this post

http://shrewdlogarithm.blogspot.co.u...t-2a-when.html

The rest of the series explains some of the 'how this works' stuff - for the curious - and the code if, of course, viewable too.

p.s. One of the videos I cheekily left the radio station I was listening-to in - so it probably won't last long but I think it suits the imagery so I'll chance-my-luck until they demand I take it down :)

[RXGX]

Posting rules resumed several stickers?