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.
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.
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[`
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.
They're really overpowered for what they're using atm. I'm just keeping extra capacity just in case. Web server is on a Linode 2048 and Game server is on a Linode 4096 (not even using 15% of the CPUs).
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?
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.)
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Trolling was a fun break between bouts of altruism. On levels like this [1], I'd click until the counter went down to 1 and step away. Right before the cursor I pissed off came to take over the shift, I'd start clicking again.
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.
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.
I think you can solve that one with only three cursors, maybe even two. In some levels you don't need to open the last barrier at all. You can just wait in front of it, and if you have opened the other barriers in the right order, they will close in such a way that you are displaced into the goal.
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.
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.
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
You wrote this 5 hours ago, so it wasn't me, but I had a great time doing that exact thing just a bit ago. The reward you get is whenever someone hearts you back, which happens frequently.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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... =|
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.
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.
'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...
I started poking around with the javascript to see if I could hack it, but it seems to have server-side verification to stop you from moving to places you shouldn't be able to access.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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)
I edited that out because I felt like everyone would just go top and hope someone would save them. By introducing a long path before they can help others, it makes them think "Well, I could just finish the level, or trust that someone will save me and help them..."
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.
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...
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!
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 :-/
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.
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.
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.
[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 :)
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.
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 :)
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???
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.
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?
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.)
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...
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".
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?
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.
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... :)
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.
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.
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.)
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.