[HN Gopher] Downpour: A game making tool for phones
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Downpour: A game making tool for phones
 
Author : homarp
Score  : 102 points
Date   : 2022-03-30 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
 
web link (v21.io)
w3m dump (v21.io)
 
| simlevesque wrote:
| That looks absolutely awesome.
 
| homarp wrote:
| 1) you take photo
| 
| 2) you create 'clickable' zone(s) on the photo
| 
| 3) you link the "zone" to another photo
| 
| sample games: https://twitter.com/v21/status/1477220587080724480
 
| danShumway wrote:
| That is such a clever input method.
| 
| I also love that the example games work in a browser, because the
| ease of sharing stuff like this is a big part of it -- it's not
| just that if you're a kid you can bang out something interactive
| with a stack of papers and some pencils, it's a big thing if also
| once you're done you can just text someone a link or paste it
| into a group chat.
| 
| Hosting games is still kind of an annoyingly unsolved problem,
| but it's at least a lot easier to do with web games. It would be
| really cool to set a bunch of kids up with Itch accounts and have
| some kind of API integration with this tool where they could just
| start sharing web games back and forth, where the program just
| auto-uploads new builds over the API whenever they hit a publish
| button.
| 
| This just looks really delightful, I'm excited to see where it
| goes.
 
| munificent wrote:
| My first thought reading the headline was, "But how do you author
| on a device where user input is such a chore?" Using the camera
| as the primary way to create content is brilliant. I love it.
 
| robterrell wrote:
| Very cool. I get the vibe of those old HyperCard games (Myst, The
| Manhole, Inigo Gets Out). HyperCard was simple enough anyone
| could hack a game together, lowering the bar for creators. I bet
| something great comes from this. Kudos!
 
| mikechalmers wrote:
| How come this person's blog isn't responsive / mobile-friendly?
| I'm sure that they're capable so I think it might be a choice,
| but would be interested to hear why.
 
  | eloeffler wrote:
  | Huh! I didn't even notice that it isn't until I saw your
  | comment.
  | 
  | Looking back at it again it feels quite comfortable to zoom in
  | and read/scroll. But maybe that is just my phone being the
  | right size (it's an S9).
  | 
  | I'd say the page is mobile friendly in a sense, even though
  | it's not responsive.
 
| jtvjan wrote:
| I remember reading about the "Hot-Spot Mode" on the Game Boy
| Camera, and I wanted to imitate it using the digital camera and
| the PC I had. I discovered HTML Image Maps, and while it did
| work, making them was such a hassle that I never got past making
| a few pages. Great to see there's a proper tool for it now, that
| I could've figured out how to use had it been available back
| then.
 
| petercooper wrote:
| This is cool. I can definitely imagine my kids having a lot of
| fun with something like this which wins me over immediately.
| 
| However, it also got me thinking about how resistant I've been to
| digital note taking, simply because I like the physicality of
| writing and notes on paper. Yet they get super disorganized,
| lost, whatever. The idea seen here could work as an interesting
| way to digitize and "link" together paper notes too, perhaps!
 
  | kej wrote:
  | You might like the Rocket Book notebooks. You write with a pen
  | on paper, but then you use the app to scan your notes to email
  | or cloud storage, and then you use a wet cloth to wipe the
  | pages clean. You get digitized notes like an expensive note
  | tablet, but also the feel and replaceability of a plain old
  | notebook.
  | 
  | (Despite making variants of this comment multiple times, I have
  | no affiliation with them beyond happy customer.)
 
    | omarhaneef wrote:
    | Adding the extra step of taking a picture loses a lot of the
    | productivity gain.
    | 
    | I think the remarkable tablet is the right balance in 2022.
    | It automatically pushes notes into the cloud.
 
    | petercooper wrote:
    | That's the sort of response I was hoping for - interesting
    | lead, I'll check it out! :)
    | 
    | (At first glance, I think one aspect of the OP post that I'd
    | still be missing is the ability to link different parts of
    | notes together with other historical notes, perhaps. That
    | "image map" type feature in the OP link is very compelling.)
 
| svnpenn wrote:
| Save you a click:
| 
| > It is a game making tool for phones
 
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Very cool! I would have loved this as a 12 year old. I used to
| play with Hypercard in a similar kind of way as flatgames.
 
| eloeffler wrote:
| Sounds and looks nice!
| 
| Are you planning an Android version as well?
| 
| (Asking because it only mentions iOS on downpour.games which is
| linked in the provided post)
 
| lucasmullens wrote:
| I really like this. As a kid I would make "flatgames" that were
| just Word docs that linked to each other, which in some sense
| inspired me to learn to code to make "real" games.
 
  | lynndotpy wrote:
  | I did this but with folders! Then I learned about HTML maps
  | (which seem very similar to Downpour) from Neopets, which is
  | where things get real cool.
 
  | James-Livesey wrote:
  | Same, but with PowerPoint! It's amazing how versatile the
  | Microsoft Office suite is for purposes other than
  | productivity...
 
    | procinct wrote:
    | Same here! I had a basic game where an enemy moved across the
    | screen towards the character and you had to shoot it.
    | Clicking the enemy would hyperlink to a slide where you shoot
    | the enemy, the enemies animation finishing (when it touches
    | the character) would link to a slide where you died. Working
    | out how to do conditional logic in PowerPoint at 11 opened up
    | a lot of exciting ideas for PowerPoint games for me. Though
    | it lead to a lot of slides...
 
    | nathancahill wrote:
    | I built Tictactoe in Excel by creating every possible board
    | state and then hyperlinking between them. I fixed the window
    | size to 3x3 so the window would scroll to each state. Later
    | learned AppleScript to automate parts of this process and
    | eventually got in to HTML.
 
    | ketzo wrote:
    | I feel obligated to note here that PowerPoint is Turing
    | complete. It's pretty radical.
    | 
    | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8
 
| guyomes wrote:
| This looks lovely! One nice addition would be the ability to
| record sounds and link them. This feature in ScratchJr [1] allows
| children to make animations with cute voices.
| 
| [1]: https://www.scratchjr.org/
 
| mc4ndr3 wrote:
| There's already an audiobook app with the same name. Google
| before writing code.
 
| allenu wrote:
| I followed the link to the flatgame game jam and tried a few of
| the submissions. I really like the aesthetic. There's something
| comforting about its non-digital art.
| 
| It's always nice to see creative projects like these, so thanks
| to whoever posted it.
 
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(page generated 2022-03-30 23:00 UTC)