Show HN: Axis - a React.js multiplayer math game | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Axis - a React.js multiplayer math game

axisthegame.com

110 pointszan243449 comments

It would be nice to have a beginner version where we can choose functions from a menu and get an idea of what the curve looks like. Then, once I am back up to speed I can play for real.

If you have OS X, you could probably pop open Grapher and try a few curves there. But if you don't, I'm sure there's some web app for visualising curves as well.

Wrote a script which you can use to kill all your opponents in one turn.

http://pastebin.com/FYXcdmpi

- Shariq

In the general case that is not possible. If there is a block vertically in between of two opponents you can not destroy both in one turn.

Fantastic. Awesome game!

Few suggestions:

1. Show me a ghost path for the previously fired missile

2. Have a library of functions to choose from with an idea of what the curve looks like

3. Reduce the waiting time.

or add some documentation in your readme / some contribution notes and I'll be glad to send in PRs

4. Add a 'team' option

Great game!

Just played this and it is great. However the other player (in the chat) was saying that he could not fire sometimes.

And later on I was also unable to both post messages and to use the FIRE button. Never recovered. Server problem perhaps?

In any case I will be bookmarking this. This would work wonders to explain math :)

You might have been playing with me. I hit you with an exponential function?

I think the game crashed when I hit one of your locations.

ah yes! :) Sounds like it was you.

Oh by the way. I think I had 2 players and you had one because you could have hit your other one since the beginning. After you hit one of mine, it was disabled and I was just with one playable Player left.

Yes, it took me a while to figure it out!

This is awesome. I wish turns were simultaneous, so that there was less time spent waiting.

source here: https://github.com/igul222/Axis

Should probably put a license, readme and maybe some contrib guidelines up.

I was surprised to see that many people didn't know how to define a step function. One way to do it is: size_of_jump*max(0, sign(x-position_of_jump)). Also, max(0, sign(x-position)) allows you to switch on and off other parts of your function like a high frequency sine that can spray an area.

Its easy to write a tool that produces a function in every round using step functions that kills the maximal number of enemys. I love this kind of game so I think its very sad that I don't see a way to rescue it. Even if you would restrict the available operations just to addition and multiplication its still quite easy to write a tool that produces functions that are arbitrary close to any curve that could be defined with step functions.

Yeah, step functions really break this. I think I was in a game with you or some else with the same general idea, they won on the very first turn with the sine wave trick.

Agreed, functions should be continuous and no step functions.

Even heavily restricting the function to only use addition and multiplication doesn't solve the problem.

But it almost impossible to write a polynomial in under 60 seconds without any tools, that follows the desired path.

I assume it to be not doable but that in no way fixes the problem that its easy to write a tool that plays perfectly.

There are simple ways to make that very hard. The first one is to remove copy paste.

You can just analyze the graphical output of the browser and hence make your hack useless. The underlying problem of this game is just too easy to solve.

You can always make the game itself harder on top of all the anti-bot tricks.

The game has to be only hard and expensive enough to hack so that the effort isn't worth the result.

Of course with unlimited resources you can pretty much solve anything, if you assume those, then everything is easy to solve. But assuming that is simply ignorant.

@readerrrr: I'm commenting here because HN doesn't let me comment your comment.

> You can always make the game itself harder on top of all the anti-bot tricks.

You are implying two things here. Firstly, that its' always possible to make the game harder and, secondly, that anti-bot tricks can solve this issue.

I'm skeptical about the first part and strongly disagree with the second.

In regard to the first part I'd say that it's hard to make the game harder without making it unenjoyably to play. How'd you integrate a sufficient amount of complexity into this game without ruining the fun? That it's in principle possible shows Go. Interesting problem.

In regard to the second part I say that it's just adding (futile) noise and not tackling the fundamental problem. The player has to see at least the map. He then draws a graph in a program that produces a function that has nearly that graph and gives a string defining that function. The user just copy and pastes it into the game.

Copy paste is disabled remember...

As for the rest, that is up to the developer with more resources than his opponents.

> Copy paste is disabled remember...

s/The user just copy and pastes it into the game./The user emulates his keyboard typing that string.

I don't see the point in this. It's just adding noise instead of talking about the real problem.

> As for the rest, that is up to the developer with more resources than his opponents.

If it were like that, I'd be happy. Right now it's trivial to completely solve the game.

Even though the game is not suited for competitive gaming it is great to teach some math.

Just impose rules that are trivial for humans to solve reliably and not for computers.

Can you give an example for such a rule?

Very nice concept. Reminds me a lot of my TI-83 graph calculator days with a small dose of Scorched Earth :).

Yeah. I loved playing with the graph function. I felt so powerful to define curves and can see them being plotted.

Looks like it's gone :( but it was great fun

It is crashing all the time, it should be back soon.

Even with all that I still keep coming back.

Really great idea, too bad it freezes almost every game.

I think it just died...

Good job. I played this game way more than I should have last night.

Great concept, but it takes too long to plan shots. It means that people drop out of games quickly.

Having a library of functions available would definitely help with this.

Someone just rocked me with a step function. I'm intrigued.

That surprised me as well.

After some thinking I came up with min and max. If, for example, I want to change direction after x==4 I can do use

    -1.5(max(x,4)-4)
    
    0    4
    -----,
          \
           \

Maybe there are more tricks like that?

I am not sure if this is a step function, but I saw someone pretty much do an octagon shape to hit someone. How?

(x+1) * max(0, sign(x)) * (1-max(0, sign(x-1/sqrt(2)))) + (1+1/sqrt(2)) * (1-max(0, sign(x-1/sqrt(2)-1))) * max(0, sign(x-1/sqrt(2))) + (-x+sqrt(2)+2) * max(0, sign(x-1/sqrt(2)-1)) * (1-max(0, sign(x-sqrt(2)-1)))

As odd as it sounds, I think this game caused my Mac to run out of memory.

Looks great but neither buttons start a game for me.

It appears some of my functions just vanish?

Is there a link to the source code?

An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.

just added function previews to make playing easier!

Remove it!

At the very least give us the option to create games with/without previews.

This looks awesome!

awesome!

and it's down

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