node.js ko
Gerad Suyderhoud
Founder Fortnight Labs; Co-Creator: Node Knockout; Triathlete
Votes (41)
I took a look at this with Visnu. It looks gorgeous, but we ran into lots of bugs.
Supporting more than just JavaScript would be awesome, and I'd love to see a post receive hook that does this.
snodgrass23
contestantAdding more languages and github hooks are at top of list of new features coming.
This is super useful. I could see running it on a TV and having it always be visible. Sending data with post request is super simple, and a good idea, but it was not immediately obvious that I needed to refer to the documentation when setting up a widget. You should show an example post request for the widget when you first create it.
nickkthequick
contestantYes, one of the first things we did after the tournament on our own in-development version is improve the documentation and clarity. You will also now be able to do a GET request if you'd prefer that option. Thanks for the comments!
Soooo very useful. Amazing technical work.
It'd be nice to pick music off spotify to make it easier.
Total blast. Could have used some sound though. Worked great with multiple players
Seems like it could be useful, but was difficult to understand how to use it. You had lots of great examples though.
I liked the way you could test it and see the object graph on the web.
Totally fun. Buggy though. Multiple people could end up controlling ghosts and ghosts can go through walls.
Hopefully you fix those bugs after Node Knockout, so I can keep playing it!
This seems like this could be super useful, but I couldn't get it working on my phone (parse error after downloading the APK).
Looks great. I really liked the ability to schedule the cards and have friends sign them. Can't wait until Facebook integration and the cards actually send.
Totally fun to play, but had some bugs. Looked beautiful too. Loved the font.
Loved it, so fun to play, and worked great with lots of people.
It would be awesome to see uploading an existing deck, though it was nice you can just use a URL to existing slides on the web.
Can't give you a lot of points for innovation, as three teams did this last year and two did it this year.
This looks like it could be tons of fun, but was buggy when I tried to using it.
This could be super useful. Loved the CSS transitions. Makes it really scary to lose my Twitter API keys.
The $50 a day limit seemed like a very good idea.
Totally fun to play with the ascii. I didn't understand why the effects were only on the front page.
All in all, nice work for not having a ton of hours.
OMG, I remember drug wars on the TI-82. You're totally dating yourselves though. The kids these days have trascended TI calculators I think.
Love the video and the design generally. Unfortunately, I ran into lots of bugs, which made it not as fun. Also, I didn't 100% understand the collaborative aspect of it. Am I playing against real people, or just the computer?
Anyway, I hope you squash those bugs after the competition ends, as I could always use some nostalgic rum running!
Seems like this could be very useful for research. The design seems clean and utilitarian, I really like it. Unfortunately, the site was very slow and very buggy for me, so it probably needs a bit more polish after the competition ends.
Hopefully you can keep working on it! I really would suggest this for news research.
Love the video! The game seemed fun, but I had a hard time getting it to work right. I always got negative points no matter when I buzzed!
It was fun, but I couldn't figure out how to shoot or jump! "Space" and "W" didn't seem to do anything. I could see other people playing though, so it might just have been me, then again nobody else I was judging with could figure it out either.
Hopefully you guys keep working on it after the competition and fix some of those bugs, because I think it'd be a really fun game. :-)
joshontheweb
contestanthmmm, sorry about that. we haven't heard that bug until just now. what browser were you using?
bundy
contestantThanks for stopping by gerad. If you have the time, please try stopping by again. It might've been a combination of the server having to deal with the sudden influx of players or maybe the fact that we only got to test it on Chrome during the 48 hr period.
- geradjudge
I was on Chrome dev channel, but others I was playing with were on Chrome latest... maybe it's a multiplayer bug..
Seems like this could be a useful replacement to Flowdock, which we use for chat right now. In particular I like the way that TODOs and bugfixes are built in.
Unfortunately, I ran into many, many bugs when trying to use it with some friends. We couldn't easily join the same room, and once we joined the room (by sharing the url) we all had the same name. Also things definitely got weird and broken after filtering and clearing filters.
I hope you keep working on it after the competition. Once you squash those bugs, I could totally see myself using this.
balintferenczi
contestantHi, thanks for your detailed vote! Well, we've messed up lot of things during the competition, so now it has more bugs than features :) we're already working on it, follow @metaphor_io for updates.
hollolevente
contestantUnfortunately, we also have discovered similar error with joining. Based on my experience such problems can occur if app used behind a proxy. We managed to figure out why websocket works differently behind a proxy. We are already working on this. Stay tuned for updates.
Wow, what a useful utility. I could totally see myself using this again and again.
I liked the design, it does one thing and does it well. Even though you used Bootstrap, the site did not feel like a typical Bootstrap site.
While it worked great for the flights in the demo, I couldn't get it working for any other flights that I might actually take (VX78, UA477), so I think there's a ways to go before the site is complete.
I noticed that the site didn't gracefully degrade to a mobile experience, which is surprising because Bootstrap should give you this for free. Probably important to add this, as most people will check on flights from their phones at the airport.
I hope you keep providing this valuable service after Node Knockout is over!
Cool proof of concept. Could be useful eventually, but it definitely has a long, long way to go. What do you see that's wrong with ChromeOS or FirefoxOS? Those both seem to be trying to solve the same problem that you're working on...
pksunkara
contestantThey both are trying to store all your data on the cloud. The network cables and latencies are not fast enough for that.
This intends to do everything local. :)
I can totally see myself using this! Seems like a great way to have a fault-tolerant data store that's built in node.
It'd be cool to hear a little more about the algorithms you used. You mentioned "sloppy quorum"...? What happens when reads conflict? Who wins?
I can't believe how much you got done during the weekend. Though from your talk it seems like there's a lot to do, looking forward to see where you take it.
An aside: it'd be nice to have a link to the github repo in the description or judging instructions. :-) Oops! Never mind, it's on the project page.
Oh wow! That was so much fun. Great video. I loved the retro kitsch site. Goes oh so well with the retro kitsch sweater. That being said, I wasn't sure whether the design merited 5 stars or 1 star, so I'm taking an average.
Why did you require an account and login? It seems like extra work and not really needed to get the message across (literally).
Major innovation points for the hardware / software hacking. Are you planning on open sourcing any of it?
Great work! I hope you have an excellent Christmas and the sweater gets lots of use (and hopefully nothing spilled on it! Eeek, electricity + wine probably don't mix).
SaraJo
contestantWe did the login so we didn't get 3423487 messages at once, however, I agree there needs to be a better way.
Man, I can't tell you how many times I've written the code to get feedback emails. Though I personally prefer a big open box at the bottom of the page, see http://monitaur.net/ for an example.
Having a service that does that for me would be super useful. Nice work.
A couple things to think about:
- I noticed that you put a lot of variables in the global space (e.g. "require") you probably want to be careful about that if you want other people to use your widget.
- You probably want to run the script after the dom is loaded. When I included it in the head of my html it didn't work.
- It would be awesome if the script could load asynchronously so as not to block page load. http://css-tricks.com/thinking-async/
Also, FWIW, I never saw my feedback email come through, but I'm sure it was just a hiccup.
Congratulations on building something useful this weekend!
Hahaha totally fun. I love the sound design, and the retro 8-bit feel. I couldn't get anybody to join me racing, but when I opened up another tab and logged in with a different service I could join my race. I guess you can only race 2 at a time? It'd be fun to race more...
Hopefully you keep working on this after the competition ends! :-)
Saves me some typing and software installing. I could see it being useful if I'm away from my dev machine and want to deploy something. I'd be concerned about the more than trivial examples (like how do I point it at my db)?
Cool idea though! Hopefully you keep working on it after the competition. Maybe you can get Nodejitsu to build it into their platform. :-)
niallo
contestantThanks for your vote. Yeah I was hoping to get DB provisioning and also configuration (via env variables and/or editing config files) done but ran out of time.
Plan to continue as open source project.
Are you planning on making this open source? It seems like it could be super useful. Alternatively, you should talk to the http://apiary.io/ people. It seems like it would be a nice feature of their service. They won the utility prize in the first Node Knockout. Ping me if you want an intro.
While I totally get the utility, I was a bit unclear from the site (and the video) how I'd create API descriptions to bundle. I guess I'd expect to see a fork me on GitHub link and then more of a README on how to use it.
All in all though, it looks like you have the beginnings of a super useful tool on your hands. Can't wait to see what you do with it.
dtex
contestantWow, thanks for pointing me to apiary. It looks very cool and I can't wait to try it out. Yes I was planning on open sourcing little SPAS. I have a couple of bugs to iron out and I want to package it (including docs) in a way that folks can use it as a module in their own app or a stand alone service. If it gets used I'll look at setting up a SAAS where people can build their own bundles in an IFTTT style interface.
Really great game! Loved the level design. I enjoyed playing it. I was a guard after every reload though. Do I ever get to be a thief? It seems like that would be more fun. :-)
The multi-player aspect of it was really cool. However, I think it would be better if guards could have a little more interaction. For example, if I could hit space bar when I saw a thief and it would flash my icon on the main map to alert the other guards that I had spotted a thief.
Something similar could probably be done for thieves.
This would help the game feel more collaboratively multiplayer. Right now it kinda feels like multiple people are playing single player games.
One nitpick about the layout... I couldn't see the entire main map on my 11' macbook. There seemed to be plenty of room for it on the side. I'd consider a layout where the main map is to the right of your POV map, and the stats are below.
EndangeredMassa
contestantYeah, we had a lot of ideas for making it more collaborative and fun, but that silly time limit prevented us going any further. Unfortunately, the layout was one of the last things done and it wasn't complete.
I don't know what to say. :-/
It seems like this could be very useful, but definitely needs a bit more work before it gets there (understandable in a 48 hour competition).
I ran into a bug where it asked me to fill in the required fields even though I had already filled everything in.
Looking forward to seeing where you take this in the future.
I think it's a killer innovation to bring node's asynchronous design to online gaming. You made a great demo of at it with this version of Sudoku.
I found a couple things confusing about the design:
- I didn't quite understand what was happening on the first screen. It took me a few moments to realize that the rooms were various puzzles being played.
- Once I joined the room, it took me a few more moments to figure out that I needed to "join" the actual game being played.
- Once I joined the game, it took me even longer to understand I need to "send" my plays during the event loop.
I also found it quite stressful and distracting at the beginning to see the countdown happening while I was figuring out my moves.
Perhaps the game play could be adjusted so that your pieces automatically send when the event loop hits you? I'm not entirely sure how that would work, but I'm sure you'll figure something out... :-)
Looking forward to seeing where you take this in the future!
Editing my vote because it's way more fun with more people playing.
Ack! Somebody was logged in but not playing so it totally shanghai'd my game. There's a similar game called Apples to Apples that I've played before. Good fun. What a great idea to bring it online.
I like the animations of the card movements. While it definitely could have used a visual design pass, it was fairly easy to figure out what was going on. One issue was that I wasn't sure which user I was... I appreciated how low friction it was to get started playing though.
I wonder if there is an easy way to make this game more asynchronous. Kinda like words with friends? That way a rogue distracted participant can't mess anybody else up.
Hey Guys,
I couldn't get this working. Here's a picture: http://cl.ly/image/1T3m1u3Q3Q10
Rating it based on your screencast, but honestly, since I don't speak Cantonese and the screencast didn't have audio, I'm not 100% sure I understood what was going on.
Congratulations on participating in Node Knockout though!
Seems useful. I often wonder how out of date my dependencies are. Unfortunately it doesn't work so well on the nko package.json. :-)
It would be nice (and potentially more useful) if it took npm shrinkwrap files.
I wonder if you get Isaac to automatically include such an infographic on the npm website?
benfoxall
contestantwowzer - we'd not found out about shrinkwrap files, that would make tonnes of sense!
I think something like this would make a great addition to the npm site! We didn't manage to fully realise some of our interface ideas - though you're able to tell quite a lot from where we got to.
Sorry it didn't tell you much about the nko deps!
Nice work creating something useful. I'm often wondering what's going on in San Francisco, where I live, and it's really hard to find a comprehensive list anywhere.
The design seemed somewhat "bootstrap-y," so I can't give you many points for that.
Most of the app seemed like it worked fairly well, but I couldn't figure out a way to edit events or delete them. Also, search didn't work for me.
Congratulations getting a useful product shipped in just 48 hours.
If you want to keep working on this, I think you should concentrate on trying to get a comprehensive list of events in a single city. That could be super useful.
jorgeferrando
contestantThank you! That's the idea. Even the posibility to suscribe to a place like "madison square garden". Or thinks like "send me an email about movies in the cinema if its raining or an email about sports if its sunny"
What a blast! I'm not a huge Tetris fan, but the ability to attack my opponents gave the game a novel twist that made it way more exciting.
It's clear you weren't a team of designers, but you got the basics down. It was pretty easy to figure out game play and understand what was going on. A couple of small adjustments could have made it better:
- I found it confusing that the pieces didn't go all the way to the edge of the screen.
- I never figured out the drop key. I was expecting space bar to do it.
- I didn't see the instructions about which keys to use for attacking until the very end.
I bet a quick splash screen that shows up before the first piece starts dropping would help enormously.
Nice job tastefully using the WebGL in the attacks. It still felt 2d and manageable but the attacks used the 3d nicely.
Looking forward to seeing where you guys take this.
vladikoff
contestantGreat suggestions!
Thank you for your awesome feedback and judging this competition :)
What a gorgeous design!
While text chat is still surprisingly useful in this day and age, there are a number of good solutions out there these days.
As you noted, it's not a particularly innovative idea, but you did a great job making it easy and soo beautiful.
Unfortunately, I've got to take away a lot of points for completeness, due to the XSS vulnerabilities. You need to protect against javascript injection (e.g. "<script>alert('xss')</script>")
I know it can be super frustrating when the technology your counting on doesn't pan out, but you guys did a great job of recovering and still creating a functional and useful app. Looking forward to seeing where you take it.
wangbus
contestantSorry didn't know enough about XSS stuff. Will look into it more! I mostly do backend Node for other projects. Thanks for the review. WebRTC is still on the bleeding edge and I... bled. LOL
This was pretty fun. I'm not a movie buff, but I could see how people could really enjoy this.
I thought the site looked pretty good, and had some nifty animations. There were some pretty easy tweaks I'd make to the game flow to make it more fun though:
- If your opponent guesses correctly ahead of you, then it should skip immediately to the next trailer.
- If you guess correctly, then it should skip immediately to the next trailer.
- It'd be nice if you didn't have to wait for the movies all to load before play began. Is it possible to load just one movie and then load the rest in the background while that one plays.
- It seems like there should be an easier way to hop on the game than by copying and pasting a URL. URLs are definitely great because you can share over email or IM, but what if I don't have anybody that can play with me, it'd be nice just to join in another game that's on the site.
You did a great job with the synchronization, I didn't have anybody to play, so I switched between 2 browsers, and I sometimes was not sure which was which, so things were very in sync. That being said, the bar for innovation is pretty high for this competition, so I can't give you too many stars there.
Finally, while the app was simple, and had a lot of nice things like the leaderboard, I thought the game flow felt incompletely though out, in particular, it just didn't make sense that I would see my friend's correct vote before I cast my own. Also, it'd be cool if it supported more than 2 players.
All in all, it's a great start, and the sync'd video streams are super cool. I hope you keep working on the app.
What a quirky and wonderful idea! How'd you come up with it?
I really liked the random photo and required words. It inspired creativity. Bonus points for innovation.
While it was definitely fun to play, I have a hard time seeing myself coming back to this again and again.
In particular, I found having to think of the haiku one word at a time took away from the fun a bit, I ended up using a lot of monosyllabic words and ending up with incoherent phrasing.
I definitely wanted to delete words, and change words. That felt like a missing bit.
While I didn't get a chance to do the two player mode (nobody was online), from the video it looked like there wasn't any way to interact with your opponent outside of the game play. It'd be nice to somehow be able to praise your opponent (collaborator?) for good word choice, or heckle her/him for poor choices.
Finally, I really liked the simple design, but I felt some bits were a bit too understated. For example, I missed that the syllable count per line was in the circles below until after I completed my first line. Also, the "play again button," "share" call to action and "nice haiku" flash seemed minimally styled and somewhat hastily laid out (totally understandable in a 48 hour contest)!
Also, the syllable count bit was really cool. Did you write your own algorithms for that?
Note: I've just started looking at a few entries, so it's early in the judging. I might come back and revise my ratings after I check out some more.
airportyh
contestantThis is basically a mashup of the three-headed-monster game on whose line is it anyway, haikubes, and mad libs.
Thank you for the thorough review and I appreciate the nice UI suggestions. Yeah, the UI is definitely a bit rough, and that's due to time contraints. The not being able to edit/revise was intentional, you could say this is more of a game then realistic poetry writing. Although, I'd really encourage you to try to get someone else to go on and play a 2-player game, it's really fun!
Wow! This is so useful. I've definitely had this problem many times, and can totally see myself using it again and again.
I think there are two aspects to design, first, the harder aspect, which is creating a simple and focused product, with an intuitive flow. You did an AMAZING job of that. The second aspect is the visual style and polish, and while I totally appreciated the understated simplicity of the design, I was confused by a couple things (e.g. the edit title/description widget) and I thought some things could use a little more visual polish (I found the fact that the gray center area bar ran all the way down to the bottom of the page a little jarring).
In terms of innovation, I think you did a great job of solving a narrow problem in an innovative way, and you tastefully incorporated real-time communication, but the bar is pretty high in this contest as far as innovation goes...
Finally, for completeness, I think you did a great job picking a focused problem, and again, I totally appreciated the real-time updating aspect, and the mobile version, that's a lot of nice polish. I would have liked not to have to create an email and password though. Also forward and back buttons didn't work, which I found myself missing, so I docked you a point there.
Just an FYI, this is the first app I've evaluated, so I might revise my ratings a little as I get calibrated after judging other apps.
All in all, great job! I'm very excited to use this in the future!
This was totally fun to play. I'd love the ability to play against more than two people on the same board. That way you could Chroma shift through others. I hope you keep working on it after Node Knockout.