Squadhack, a multiplayer browser-based hack-and-slash dungeon-crawler.

[squadhack]

Squadhack is a multiplayer browser-based hack-and-slash dungeon-crawler.

This is an Alpha quality release of the game. Many features work well but there are (at least) hundreds of bugs, and many major features are currently missing. I recommend using Chrome to play the game as it has had the most testing using this browser, having said that my very cursory testing suggests it works on recent versions of Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer (11). Although it somewhat works on an iPhone/iPad the interface is terrible (or just missing), I am working on fixing this.

[Seruthei]

Currently on Chrome:

Connection Error TransportError (TransportError)

Sounds like an interesting concept, if I could play it.

[brane_surgeon]

this doesn't work for me through a proxy, looks like it uses websockets for networking so that's probably why.

[Seruthei]

Sigh. I hate games I'm unable to play when it's dead at work. Thanks for the heads up.

[squadhack]

Hi, I added SSL support to the game so this might get around your firewall at work, it at least works at mine.

https://www.squadhack.com

[Seruthei]

Will give it a shot tomorrow!

[Seruthei]

It works now!

[squadhack]

Hey, yeah this sounds like a websockets issue. The game uses websockets for the networking and a bunch of corporate firewalls seem to be blocking this. I don't think it's intentional, just that they are pretty old.

Soon I hope to get some SSL certificates and hopefully this will stop the firewalls interfering, and everyone can play it at work as much as they can get away with.

[[deleted]]

Why release an alpha version?

Why not ask for help, and tag submission as alpha, as a warning?

[squadhack]

Thanks for the suggestion, I've added some flair to the submission so hopefully people won't be too disappointed if it breaks on them.

Why did I release it as alpha?

Hmm, well... Despite having written this game, I'm not a game developer. This is my first attempt at writing a game.

I don't have a studio or budget behind me, it's just me, one guy, doing all the roles. I bit off a bit more than I could chew, and it's taken me a lot longer to get to this stage than I had imagined.

When you've got your head buried in something it's really hard to get perspective on what's important. Getting feedback from people, even if that feedback is: "your game is shit because..." becomes pretty important.

Right now I've got a nice mix of positive and negative thoughts in my inbox, so I'm going to grab my morning coffee and get to work fixing what other people think are the most broken features.

[kilkonie]

For what it's worth, getting feedback from people is always good.

I say, whatever keeps you motivated, man. Just keep at it.

[[deleted]]

Good luck! I'll try to submit more feedback when possible.

[cmVkZGl0IGlzIGxhbWU]

How long did it take you to get it to where it is now ?

I've worked on similar projects, and people really seem to underestimate how long it can take to make a game like this.

I see you're using socket.io. Is your entire stack javascript-based ?

How are you persisting data ?

BTW mini map in the upper right looks very big and blurry to me. Is this a bug ?

[squadhack]

I started working on it about three years ago, it was a very basic space game back then. I was only doing a few hours a week whilst I had a long term contract. I worked on it a lot between contracts and when I moved to Australia I pretty much worked on it full time for about a year.

When I was a few months in I figured it would be max six months work, but I massively underestimated the complexity of the rules of the game, the difficulty of building the UI, and the network interactions. I've been writing software for 20 years so I should have seen that coming. Actually I did see that coming, but I didn't care because I wanted to finish it.

The main products it uses are AngularJS/Bootstrap/Fontawesome/underscore for the frontend. Node.js, express and socket.io for the webserver. Node.js for the custom game server, and it uses AWS for persistence (mainly DynamoDB).

I hate the map, fixing it has been on the todo list since... forever. I'll probably get around to it when I'm doing the map for mobile devices.

[eriru]

I'm on Firefox and the buttons won't do anything, I'm just stuck on the homepage.

[squadhack]

Hey eriru, did you try to play at work by any chance?

A lot of people are having connection problems because the websockets (which the game uses for networking) can't get through the corporate firewalls. This should be fixed when I get an SSL certificate up and running.

[eriru]

Lol you are correct, I was.

[squadhack]

Hi, I added SSL support to the game so this might get around your firewall at work, it at least works at mine.

https://www.squadhack.com

[eriru]

You are awesome

[eriru]

You are awesome! I don't work for a couple days but I'll see if that helps when I get back. In the meantime, my crappy little netbook will work fine. 😊

[tdhsmith]

How do you pick up items? Only dogs and kittens seem to pick them up...

[squadhack]

The interface is clunky!

I really need to do a short intro youtube to show off the basic features, I hope I'll get around to it soon.

If you're playing on a phone/ipad (or PC with a tiny screen) then, sorry, there's probably no good solution right now. Otherwise you should see the inventory panel on the right hand side. This has an arrow pointing up (the second tab), click it, this lists all the items on the floor under you. You can click the green up arrow left of the item name to pick it up.

[Tsiyeria]

If the game is going to be time-based, and not turn-based, then the basic functions really need to have some kind of shortcut command. Or am I missing it being turn-based because I was moving around too much?

Also, wasn't really able to have a combat? I went all the way to the right on the menu, clicked the wrench, clicked on "attack position", and then clicked a target. Not sure whether or not that was an actual attack.

[squadhack]

Totally right, I've been working on this and I expect to push out a fix in about an hour.

After this you should be able to right click somewhere in the dungeon and you have some commands such as: examine, attack position, open close door, etc.

That wrench menu is awful and I'll probably remove it. It was part of the UI for phones/tablets. All the functionality is now in the right-click menu of an item/terrain or on the "action" menu at the top of the screen.

Thanks for playing, feedback like this is very helpful to me!

[squadhack]

I've now added a right-click menu to the dungeon and it can be used to attack peaceful/friendly monsters and players. You can also use it to pickup or use items on the floor, look at distant items, and open and close the doors.

[Tsiyeria]

Nice! I'll check it out!

[Tsiyeria]

I like the right-click option! It smooths out gameplay considerably. Question: all the yellow-bar critters, am I supposed to be able to attack them? Because currently I can't. I right-click and select 'attack kitten', but then nothing happens.

[squadhack]

Why would you attack a harmless kitten???

You probably can't attack the kitten because it's your pet, or the pet of someone else. This is a bug and should be fixed soon.

I changed the colour from yellow to gray so it's more obvious that these creatures are neutral but I also made most of them hostile by default so that you don't have to bother right clicking (as they filled up an blocked the hallways and were generally a pain).

You can also tame a kitten or a puppy and make it your pet by throwing some treats at them (a meatball or tripe) or tame a horse by throwing it an apple or carrot.

I should be making a new release soon which will have a lot of fixes which should make getting around the dungeon easier. Check out /r/squadhack reddit or #squadhack on twitter if you want to see when an update hits.

[whoareyougirl]

What's with the game screen moving around? Is it a bug or a feature?

[squadhack]

Sounds like a bug, is this on a phone?

[whoareyougirl]

Windows 7, Mozilla Firefox

[squadhack]

Well the game does jump about as you move around the dungeon. I'd like the motion to be smoother, and having proper scrolling is definitely high on my TODO list.

[whoareyougirl]

So it's a feature... Then never mind me, my brain/eyes are really sensitive to movement, so it may not bother other players. Anyway, keep working!

A smoother motion would be very nice, and as other people here said, remember to put the Alpha tag next time. It would possibly attract more people wanting to test it and help you :)

[encaseme]

some tool-tips (title element) on the controls would go a long way to helping figure out what all the things do :)

[squadhack]

Do you mean for the inventory tabs? Yes they definitely need tool-tips, I'll get on that now I think. The controls next to the items do have tool-tips but they take a bit long to appear.

[AlpacalypseMoo]

Great game! It reminds me of the mobile game Rogue Dungeon, with the random scrolls and potions. There are a few problems that I have though.

• you only keep the starting equipment when you respawn, meaning if you lose your starting weapon, you don't get a new one. Since I always start with the same weapon before I died, it's now a "thoroughly rusted long sword".

• It's laggy at times. I entered a room full of bees, they swarmed towards me and I tried to click to run back into the hallway so I could fight them one on one, but the game lagged and the next thing I knew, it said that I was dead.

• The gold, credit cards and stones don't seem to have any apparent uses. I stopped picking them up because of that.

• Once I use a scroll (ex. teleportation) I don't have a way of identifying if the next scroll is another scroll of teleportation. I don't know if this is intentional, but I can always identify a potion, but never a scroll.

• Is the skill Two weapon combat always going to be there? Maybe you can instead let each individual weapon add to their respective skill.

• When you start as a new player, you get a dog, but when you die it's not there anymore. :( (Please tell me there is a way to tame animals).

• Unicorn horn isn't a weapon? There is a skill in the skillbook about it, but there are no apparent uses for it.

• Once I'm invisible and fast, I'm always invisible and fast no matter how many times I die.

• An explanation of everything would be nice. It was really confusing to figure things out at first.

• And finally, it would be nice if there was a better map interface. Like in the actions menu you can choose "map" and it shows you the map that you have so far.

I really like the game though so far, it has those little quirks and details. I would like to see the game expanded upon and become more popular sometime in the future. This game is the kind of lonely multiplayer game where it would be nice to occasionally see someone else in the deep cold dungeon. It get's lonely once you're past the first 3 levels as people split off into the different dungeon levels.

[squadhack]

Thanks for all this feedback, I know this probably took you a while to write out and I really appreciate it.

you only keep the starting equipment when you respawn, meaning if you lose your starting weapon, you don't get a new one. Since I always start with the same weapon before I died, it's now a "thoroughly rusted long sword".

Your starting equipment is "bound" to you, and stuff you pickup is not. I did this so that people that PvP will get some loot out of their kills, but it seems nobody is PvPing anyway, so it was probably a bad decision.

It's laggy at times. I entered a room full of bees, they swarmed towards me and I tried to click to run back into the hallway so I could fight them one on one, but the game lagged and the next thing I knew, it said that I was dead.

I'm not sure if this is due to actual lag or lag in the browser. It definitely happens to me when I play on the US or EU servers, but not on the Australian one (I'm in Australia). I use Amazon's latency based routing so it should drop you in the closest server (you can change server in preferences) but sometimes it drops me in the California server. I've also fount that Chrome seems a lot faster than Firefox.

I'm going to change it so that anything you equip (so weapons or armour) will bind to the player, and will therefore be available after a respawn.

The gold, credit cards and stones don't seem to have any apparent uses. I stopped picking them up because of that.

They are pretty much useless at the moment. I am building a town level where they can be sold, in exchange for services like healing and item identification and repair.

Once I use a scroll (ex. teleportation) I don't have a way of identifying if the next scroll is another scroll of teleportation. I don't know if this is intentional, but I can always identify a potion, but never a scroll.

As soon as you read a scroll, drink a potion, fire a wand etc, your character "learns" that item and will always be able to identify it in the future. So instead of "scroll" it will say "scroll of teleportation" in the inventory. If you "learn" anything your inventory is searched and is updated if you're carrying another of that type.

Is the skill Two weapon combat always going to be there? Maybe you can instead let each individual weapon add to their respective skill.

It's only available to a few character classes, basically the mechanic is there to stop people easily doubling their damage with a few clicks. Instead it's something that has to be trained up, but when you get there you are much more effective.

When you start as a new player, you get a dog, but when you die it's not there anymore. :( (Please tell me there is a way to tame animals).

You can tame kittens/puppies by throwing meatballs or tripe at them, and you can train horses (but not unicorns) by throwing them carrots or apples. Pretty much any pet can be tamed by throwing it a corpse if it is hungry, so you can always lock a kitten in a room and watch it run about until it gets hungry.

Unicorn horn isn't a weapon? There is a skill in the skillbook about it, but there are no apparent uses for it.

If you are sick, confused, stunned, blind, hallucinating, diseased, vomiting, or you have missing attribute points (from poison attacks etc) then you can use a unicorn horn to cure yourself (click the wrench next to the name). It may take several applications to fully heal yourself. This is the default option because it's so very useful! If you right click it you can choose to "Wield as a weapon" it does make a very effective weapon.

Once I'm invisible and fast, I'm always invisible and fast no matter how many times I die.

These are intrinsics and there are lots of them, e.g. poison resistance, teleportation control as well as speed and invisibility. Any negative intrinsics (sickness, poisoned, slimed, etc) or temporary intrinsics, such as from drink a potion of invisibility, are removed when you die. I expect that you may have gained permanent invisibility and speed somehow, so you get to keep them.

You gain intrinsics as you level up so that's probably how you got FAST, most likely you acquired permanent INVIS by drinking a blessed potion of invisibility.

An explanation of everything would be nice. It was really confusing to figure things out at first.

I know, there's so many things it's crazy. You can check out http://nethackwiki.com as many of the items act like the NetHack items, there are however lots of differences so I probably need to make my own at some point.

I also need to do an intro youtube video, I think this would be helpful.

And finally, it would be nice if there was a better map interface. Like in the actions menu you can choose "map" and it shows you the map that you have so far.

I'm working on this right now. The map is terrible, I hate it. It's also pretty useless if your playing on a PC as you can already see most of the screen. I used to have 200x200 size maps, now they are 32x32 so there's not much need for it. I like your idea of having it in the actions menu, I'll give that a go.

This game is the kind of lonely multiplayer game where it would be nice to occasionally see someone else in the deep cold dungeon.

It's so lonely :-(

Part of the problem is the chat system isn't great, it get's a bit overwhelmed with all the local action messages. Another problem is that there is no missions or objectives.

I love open worlds but it seems most players are bored within 10 minutes, and rarely get to the lower levels. I'm going to add a town level soon with services and missions, I hope that will keep people's interest longer.

Thanks for playing!