* 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.
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.
I'd wager that even more complex group dynamics could be witnessed if each cursor looked a little (or a lot) different.
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
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.)
Great work!
Stats about one's own selflessness etc would be really cool. Or even aggregated stuff. X% is selfish, Deciles of goodness etc.
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.
Likely excuse! Cue xkcd linkbot.
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.
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.
Noticed the string from the level editor `std::vector<LevelObject*> wallByColor[`
* O: spawn * A/S: change paint color * W: exit? green block
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?
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.
It worked as expected for me in Chrome (then I went back and tried it in Safari after figuring it out).
One of the cursors sat by the real one and danced invitingly until everyone noticed.
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)
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.
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).
for i in $(seq 50) ; do
eesh warp rel 0 -8
sleep 0.1
done
People couldn't keep their hands off the model, though.
Ps: I just realized you can draw something on board. Hint: Press and hold Ctrl.
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.
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?
Surprisingly awesome game tough!
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.
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.
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.
Also funny to witness in the harder levels most cursors getting slower and slower as to avoid having to start again :)
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.
I see just a rectangle with border, when I move cursor to it it disappears, when I move it out it appears again.
[Error] TypeError: undefined is not a function (evaluating 'w.requestPointerLock()')
ma (client_out.js, line 1)
Edit: Ouch, I was disconnected from the server after getting several levels in.
Uh no, you're a cursor, get back out there as a fresh cursor...
"That's me!" "Which?" "That one, with the spots!"
what is the technology behind this. this is amazing.
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.
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.
Good job, mate.
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.
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.
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.
truly great idea. thanks for the game!
These games really are impressive though. I wonder if there's been a good thesis written on them yet.
Props to the dev for creating a simple game that is a huge amount of fun!
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.
Would be awesome to kick cursors who haven't moved off a toggle in x many minutes...
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
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.
(and unfortunately I got "disconnected from server" about 15 levels in)
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.
Source code here https://code.google.com/p/cursorlog/
Is the game server connecting to the webserver via private ip?
I love it.
