Huge UI Progress

diff from last devlog to this one

I’ve been working a lot on the Hadronize UI. Last devlog, all that it could do was render all of the quarks into a big overlapping heap and you could drag around one specific quark. Now, you can play a full game in the UI from start to finish, and it’s reasonably polished.

How to play the UI prototype

1. Visit https://ethmarks.github.io/hadronize/play.
2. Make sure that you’ve read the game rules in the README.
3. I haven’t implemented a setup flow in the main UI yet, so right now it’s pre-configured with two human players named Arthur and Ford, one bot player named Marvin, and seed 42.
4. On each human player’s turn (their name will be highlighted in yellow), click and drag the superposed quark to the chamber of the player who you want to observe it.
5. The superposed quark will collapse, get added to the chamber you selected, possibly react with existing quarks, and then play will proceed to the next player.
6. Continue this until someone wins. It will probably be Marvin. Refresh the page to play again.

Playtest

I also conducted the first playtest with a few friends. Nothing broke during the playtest and they all liked it and gave positive feedback, which was really encouraging. We all got absolutely crushed by the expected value driver I built last devlog.

Next Steps

It sounds hyperbolic to say that this UI is the messiest code I’ve ever written, but I legitimately can’t think of any other contenders. Of the 800+ lines of code in the UI, about 570 of them are in one massive Game.svelte component. This component handles state tracking, mouse movement, the main game loop, and most of the geometry to position the quarks. The very next thing that I need to do is massively refactor the UI code.

After that, I have a few ideas:

• A setup flow that lets the user choose the seed to use and configure the players.
• Sound effects, UI indicators (e.g. “you formed a baryon!”), and other game juice.
• Proper mobile support. Right now it kind of works on mobile, but the layout gets really cramped.
  I’ve been working a lot on the Hadronize UI. Last devlog, all that it could do was render all of the quarks into a big overlapping heap and you could drag around one specific quark. Now, you can play a full game in the UI from start to finish, and it’s reasonably polished.