Play snake in the URL address bar
demian.ferrei.ro840 points by macote 3 days ago
840 points by macote 3 days ago
I made a similar thing some time ago, but with the favicon.
Likewise, I did 2048 with the favicon years ago
Guys, you legend. There isnt perhaps an even smaller real estate for a snake game.
I love it. Scored 2144. A reference for the colours might be nice but not essential
Oh, this is lovely. The more retina, the less playable it gets :D
Update: amazing game-over effect!
This is awesome. My only issue is that the character used for whitespace looks janky in my browser, like a bunch of non-monospaced squares. A potential remedy: because Unicode contains all 256 possible 4x2 Braille patterns, why not use ⣿ as the background and carve out the snake/food as negative space, e.g.
⣿⣿⣛⣛⣛⣛⣛⣩⣽⣿⣯⣿⣿⣿
This would ensure uniform spacing and is just as legible.
Yes, i thought of doing that. The problem is that, while it would definitely help on the early game, it would also mess things badly on the late game. As you snake grows, it'll take more and more space on the grid, and you'll start seeing more and more janky whitespace-replacement characters.
The game gets faster as you progress, so it's definitely not a good idea to make it jankyer when you're try-harding it :P
I'd love to know of a way of "fixing" this jankyness issue properly. Without admitting defeat and rendering to some other text-admitting output, like the page <title>, as this oher snake game that was recently posted on Reddit does: https://old.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1n9z77e/snake_in_th...
But, for now, if you're actually trying to get a high score, i think the best approach is rendering the URL on page, by clicking on the "?"
I was pleasantly surprised by how responsive it was, and overjoyed when I clicked back and immediately came back to HN: no messy history. Genius idea!
history.pushState vs history.replaceState
One thing to note about these two APIs is that they affect how the session history (the back/forward stack) behaves, but the global browser history (entries shown in the History tab) is separate.
Most browsers record every change in the global history regardless of whether `history.pushState` or `history.replaceState` is used. The HTML Spec[0] is explicit about session history but does not define how global history should behave.
I can understand why the spec makes no mention of this -- global history is a user-facing UI feature, similar to address bar autocomplete, and it makes sense for browsers to control this behavior. That said, I'm always annoyed when I look into my history tab after visiting a page like this (e.g. Vercel Domains[1]), and see my global history flooded with entries for each individual keystroke I've made, all in the name of "user experience".
In this particular case, it's just a fun gimmick, but for everyday websites I'd much prefer if they just debounced the updates to the URL to avoid cluttering the global history.
[0]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#navigation-and-session-history
Thanks for the feedback, Vercel domain uses nuqs [1] (I'm the author) for URL state, and I agree flooding the browser history is a bad experience.
Is there a way to update the URL (ie: keeping it reactive in the address bar) without creating those history entries, or to ask the browser to squash the last entry it created into the previous one?
[1] https://nuqs.dev
I am not aware of any approaches that work consistently across all major browsers. This matter is nothing new -- there's a Bugzilla report[0] from 13 years ago about this behavior that remains open.
Since there's no spec for global history and it's unlikely one will be introduced, the most practical solution to avoid flooding the browser history would be to debounce the changes.
This is the approach taken by Google Maps -- with maps being a well-known case where URL updates would clutter the history, as noted in the Bugzilla report.
reading the source it looks like for some browsers that rate limit url updates, it has to use a different way that nukes your back button ability.
function drawWorld() { var hash = '#|' + gridString() + '|[score:' + currentScore() + ']';
if (urlRevealed) {
// Use the original game representation on the on-DOM view, as there are no
// escaping issues there.
$('#url').textContent = location.href.replace(/#.*$/, '') + hash;
}
// Modern browsers escape whitespace characters on the address bar URL for
// security reasons. In case this browser does that, replace the empty Braille
// character with a non-whitespace (and hopefully non-intrusive) symbol.
if (whitespaceReplacementChar) {
hash = hash.replace(/\u2800/g, whitespaceReplacementChar);
}
history.replaceState(null, null, hash);
// Some browsers have a rate limit on history.replaceState() calls, resulting
// in the URL not updating at all for a couple of seconds. In those cases,
// location.hash is updated directly, which is unfortunate, as it causes a new
// navigation entry to be created each time, effectively hijacking the user's
// back button.
if (decodeURIComponent(location.hash) !== hash) {
console.warn(
'history.replaceState() throttling detected. Using location.hash fallback'
);
location.hash = hash;
}
}Warning, if you actually use your browser history, play this in incognito mode or equivalent.
Thanks for the heads up, I just cleared the history for the last hour, that works too (but using incognito mode is definitely better).
What a neat little idea lol. It's using the Braille patterns to update the URL with the dots. Love it.
Very cool!
I created a snake game like this on the Tandy Pocket Computer. [0]
I even managed to create a 20 room sub-set of Zork.
Desperately primitive times, required desperate game compression measures.
RIP to your history log in the browser.
Wait, this means that any website can turn my browser history into garbage?
(Looks like a missed opportunity for adtech.)
yes. look up 'ruin my search history' or similar - it floods your history with questionable searches.
Incredibly out-of-the box, whoever made this. Gives me severe eye strain but I am impressed at the creativity here! Awesome.
Btw small suggestion: might make the game more playable if the snake could loop-back around if it went out of bounds. It would make up for some responsiveness issues. Then just have failure being if you eat yourself.
To an average Joe, this might not look like anything but to me this is wild. How do you people even come up with these things...
This is why i come to hackernews. :) made my day
For those that missed it initially, and didn't quite got how it works the first time, there is a small cyan question mark at the top left, which states:
> Use the arrow keys or WASD to control the snake on the URL. Click here if you can't see the page URL or if it looks messed up with some weird slashes
Additionally: you need a browser window where you're address bar is long enough to see the world ;).
Love the concept, it works quite well!
>demian.ferrei.ro/snake#|%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%A0%88%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%A0%A4%E2%A0%A4%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91%E2%96%91|[score:0]
This is too confusing to play on firefox.
Worked just fine on version 143.
Not for me on Android (same version)
Yeah, sorry for that. The game actually used to work decently well on mobile browsers.
If you're brave enough to try on a mobile device, there's a way to see the current URL without escaping on the page: clicking on that "?". The mobile controls are clunky, but you'll be rewarded with the ability to share your highscores with friends! :P
Such a unique, innovative idea. Well played.
Harder than I expected, the extra blank dots all around the snake are kind of distracting, how does it look when they aren't on the page?
This is how it used to look in olden days, before browsers plundered our fun in the name of security: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/epidemian/snake/refs/heads...
Fantastic. I love people finding really creative ways to make things interactive in weird ways. 100% hacker spirit. Good job.
Very interesting. What inspired you to build this, I'd love to hear the story behind this.
> What inspired you to build this, I'd love to hear the story behind this.
Actually, i don't remember! Sorry, it's been a while (a decade, it seems... oh well)
This is probably my mind retro-creating a story, but i think this started with me wondering about how the Braille system worked. Like, did each Braille symbol map to a single letter, or to a whole syllable, or even a concept? Or, were more than one Braille symbol needed for some letters, like Morse?
Turns out each Braille symbol fits within a 2x4 grid of points. That's 2 possible states (point is on or off) for each of those 8 points. So 2^8 = 256 possible values. That's a byte! And luckily, Unicode encodes all those 256 possible values, and maps them to codepoints in a very systematic way.
So obviously, i started to wonder what kind of things could be represented on these Braille grids. The snake game was a natural fit, and a fun programming experience. But i also considered other things, like a horizontal Tetris. Or a Game of Life rendered on the URL, which i actually implemented(1), but i didn't find as entertaining as snake, because the 4-tile height restriction impeded any interesting patterns, like gliders (even with wrap-around logic). I think i even made some brute-force searching for horizontal or diagonal gliders trying out different born/survive rules(2), but couldn't find any interesting patterns, other than still life, blinkers, and some "moving walls" kind of things.
Anyways, that's for the Braille part. The idea of using the address bar to render the game, i have no idea where that came from TBH. Maybe i stole the idea from some other animated or pretty thing on URLs? I wish i remembered.
(1): https://github.com/epidemian/URLife
(2): See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-like_cellular_automaton. The Game of Life rabbit hole goes deep.
This actually sent me into a fit of laughter at the sheer absurdity. This is incredibly cool.
I'm looking for snake that can be played with voice commands.
I tried to program flappy bird on that, back then the delay on Android made it impossible, as you need quick feedback.
Scoping it down and making a side scroller where the characters runs on the floor and only has to jump iver obstacles made it more mearable!
ChatGPT can't invent this :-) . Love the creativity.
next time doom please :)
I've actually thought about rendering DOOM on the favicon. I don't see why it shouldn't be possible. Maybe @Franciscouzo could tackle that challenge! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45408825
What the hack, this is absolutely awesome! Pun intended.
made my day. didn't know this was even possible.
Mind it, mobile browsers seem to be having hard time with this, which is probably expected
Is there a demo somewhere for those of us without the intended browser/os combo?
Edit: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/epidemian/snake/refs/heads...
Not on mobile you dont
This is really creative! Very well done. Surprisingly fast too.
I just see the address? Safari on iOS.
See closely there should be snake in the bar as well, which responds if you use the arrows.
Definitely nothing there on iOS Safari.
And in MacOS Safari, I see the game, but no clue how to play it... no matter what I do, it appears to reset to 0 points with the snake coming from the left?
HAHAHA looool!! this is awesome
Very clever, and playable! Thanks.
This is fun!
10/10
Very cool, would love to see source code. For what its worth no AI was able to replicate this.
The source code is not minified or anything, ctrl+u is your friend :)
IDK about the AI claim tho. The game has been there for like 10 years, so it's probably in the training data of these things. The bots might be able to replicate it, but they surely won't be able to enjoy it! (for now at least)
wow- do doom next
It's not Doom but it allows to walk in a 3d world environment https://matthew.rayfield.world/articles/games-and-graphics-i...
this is the most cursed thing i've seen
This is cool
Now make it multiplayer!
This is so fucking cool - took me a bit to figure out how the rendering/movement worked but fun after that.
nice i enjoyed it
it took me a while to understand how to play it, but holy shit this is impressive! nice work
Bro the game is intense!
.... time to port doom ?
Wow! It's such a surprise to see this old project of mine here on HN front page!
I must say, if you're experiencing any issues playing this, it's probably because it was designed to be played on the browsers of 10 years ago hehe. Here's how the game used to look and play in its former days of glory: https://github.com/epidemian/snake/blob/master/gameplay.gif?...
Since then, browsers have made some so-called "security" "improvements" that heavily hindered the capabilities of addressbar-based videogames. You can see traces of this on the game source code, and on the commit history.
At some point, pushing things to `history.replaceState()` got super rate-limited on Chrome, to something like tens of updates per minute IIRC, which totally wrecked the playing experience. I think i got around this by falling back to using `location.hash` directly. I think Chrome later rose this throttling to something more sensible. IDK if enough to play Crysis at 60fps on the addressbar, but enough for a snake game. And if not, sorry for messing up your Back button!
The worst of these security-excused changes was Firefox and Chrome starting to escape all whitespace characters (and others) on URLs. The game uses Braille characters to "render" its grid world, and blank Braille characters are abundant, especially on the early game. I think i made some comments on the browsers' issue trackers, and even received some sympathy from the developers (or maybe this was on the throttling of history, i don't remember). But of course, and as usual, "security" trumps over fun.
I ended up trying to counteract this URL escaping mechanisms with some horrible, really really horrible, indefensible, shameful, canvas-based font-measuring hack to replace blank Braille characters with some other character that doesn't get escaped and is more or less the same width, and as blank as possible. See https://github.com/epidemian/snake/blob/e9d5591a613afabc7e11.... If you have any idea of how to do this in a less soul-damning way, please let me know!
I think the game never worked properly on Safari. I know the browser used to hide the URL fragment, or maybe everything other than the domain name. I've no idea what it does now; does it even allow users to visit random webpages or does it mandate a separate app for everything? /s
In case my pile of hacks fails thoroughly, i resignedly added a way of showing the intended URL on the actual page content, by clicking on the "?"
Anyways, i should probably write a blog post about this little silly thing. Thanks for playing! :)
https://github.com/epidemian/snake/blob/master/gameplay.gif?...
that looks a lot better. i am seeing the address bar filled with black and white pixelated block characters (U+2591 light shade). it still works though.
This is very very cool. And also the second worst abuse of the browser I've ever seen ;) I doff my hat to you!
[dead]
[dead]
Why do people don't work on useful things. Stop mis-using the internet.
A learning experience (by making this game) is useful to the person making it. Honing one's skills (by making this game) is useful to the person making it. Taking breaks from work (by playing this game) is useful to those who need a break. Learning (by looking at how this was made) is useful to those who wish to learn.
Does it solve world hunger? No, not at all. But it is indeed still useful to some people.
Very useful thing you are working on here
Why would you turn the discussion on me. I am simply informing citizens.
But you could be working on something useful instead. "Informing citizens" that you hate fun isn't useful.
If more people simply didn't promote this kind of nonsense, and worked on proper educational content, world would be a more useful place. But here we are. I simply don't attend. I am more useful than the rest of these people.
