Snowman Race by Chris Mondok

[raw]
made by Chris Mondok for LD31 (COMPO)
Does not work in IE. Does not work on iOS.
If you are on Chrome or Firefox, and you see an error, please let me know what it says in the comments so I can fix it!

In this local-multiplayer next-generation snowman racing simulator, use your cell phone to guide a frozen creature to the end of an icy, treacherous path!

Snowman Race is a game for 1 to n players, where n is the number of people you are comfortable sharing a room with. You'll need a compatible browser and a compatible smartphone (or another computer with a compatible browser).

How to play:
1. On your largest screen, (preferably a TV) load up the game.
2. Each player scans the QR code with their smartphone. If they don't have smartphones, visit the URL on another computer, enter the code, and play with the arrow keys.
3. When all players are ready, they hold their phones in landscape format.
4. All players look at the large screen (the entire game is on one screen).
5. Navigate a pseudo-randomly-generated maze of rocks and grass, and collect powerups to thwart your enemies.

Players can join and quit, even while there are games in progress, and after the first five levels, the game will continue to generate random ones.

Known bugs:
- Level generation can be pretty slow. You might be asked to kill an unresponsive script. It'll return eventually, please don't kill it.
- The game doesn't work at all on browsers that don't support WebRTC. AFAIK, this is pretty much just Internet Explorer and Safari for iOS.
- If the game is paused, but all players are holding their phones in landscape, have everyone move their phones to portrait and then back to landscape.
- If a player closes the controller page without hitting quit, you'll have to click "Drop Disconnected Players" on the game screen.
- Carrots are silent.

The game is tested and working in Chromium, ChrOpera, and Firefox.
The controller is tested in Chrome, Opera, and Firefox for Android. On Firefox, however, players cannot pause.

Ratings

Coolness 45% 1550
Overall 3.17 587
Audio 2.21 804
Fun 3.00 636
Graphics 2.39 996
Humor 1.90 871
Innovation 3.82 141
Mood 2.00 1092
Theme 3.24 950

Feedback

wer2chosen
08. Dec 2014 路 14:05 UTC
My browser IE was not supported.
stray
08. Dec 2014 路 14:07 UTC
Chrome... Error
馃帳 Chris Mondok
09. Dec 2014 路 01:28 UTC
I know that the game won't work in IE, nor on iOS. If you get an error in chrome, though, please let me know what it said!
frenzyasii
09. Dec 2014 路 01:39 UTC
not working :/
BKGH
09. Dec 2014 路 01:40 UTC
Incredibly interesting game!
It's not often you see multiplayer in Ludum Dare.
harley77
09. Dec 2014 路 13:21 UTC
OSX Safari not supported :(
Tasteslikefuture
09. Dec 2014 路 13:43 UTC
Hey, tried opening game in Chrome (i'm on a mac) and got this error:

Error connecting to signaling server: {"type":"browser-incompatible"}

Hope you get the kinks worked out, looks like a cool game!
ben_pxlplz
09. Dec 2014 路 19:58 UTC
Hey Chris, no luck on Chrome on a mac.
Aden Manson
09. Dec 2014 路 20:13 UTC
There was an error, but it worked! :D Very tech-y ! LIKE IT !
TriSquare
10. Dec 2014 路 03:02 UTC
Not supported
Antworks Studio
10. Dec 2014 路 03:27 UTC
I felt pretty lonely playing this alone and hearing "you've won" haha. I loved the concept of using the smartphones as controllers!
馃帳 Chris Mondok
10. Dec 2014 路 03:33 UTC
Sorry Mac users, I don't know if it's PeerJS or if it's WebRTC in general, but it doesn't look like there's much I can do to get it to work on OSX.
Virtually Competent
10. Dec 2014 路 03:42 UTC
Wow! This is incredible. I'm a really big fan of this sort of BYOD multiplayer stuff (in fact, I'd be creating a lot of games like that if I had any idea where to start), so I'm pretty impressed with this.

I'm sure getting iOS devices to work is probably not an arbitrary task, but I'd love to see it happen (my roommate and I both have iPhones, but luckily I bought an Android tablet recently so I was at least able to try it out). How many players have you been able to get together in one game?
hazzahazzam
10. Dec 2014 路 06:30 UTC
Multiplayer in 48hrs is no easy task, yet you managed to do it and that alone is what made me love this game.
RobustInteractive
10. Dec 2014 路 06:31 UTC
its so much fun when your friend tries crazy things on you! :D
Shampop
10. Dec 2014 路 22:08 UTC
Idea is REALLY cool ! Don't have the materials to really try, but i would LOVE to play this kind of stuff with some friends !
Wertle
10. Dec 2014 路 22:28 UTC
Super props for doing a networked game for compo. It was fun trying to get people in the stream to join, however, we had some problems where only one person could actually move (we did two on the phone, mine worked but the other did not). I liked that there was some vibration feedback when using the phone. There's a lot of bugs to work out but something like this would be really cool in an installation setting, where people could just wander up and play with their phones. Nice work!
Rodaja
28. Dec 2014 路 22:09 UTC
The characters move a bit too slow, and it is sometimes a bit unfair to get in a place you can't get out of.

Connectivity for the multiplayer is wonderful, the reactions are really fast and having sound on each device and vibration go a long way.

Though it adds to the game, when a race is too long it no longer is a game entirely in one screen.

It is fine that players find different objects in the path, but they should be in different places, because it is too common that you are about to pick something but someone else got something that affects you.

nice entry over all, good job!