Hello HN! We’re a small creative studio specializing in real-time 3D experiences. Netlify approached us to design and build an interactive experience to celebrate reaching 5 million developers.<p>Inspired by the classic game Marble Madness, we created a gamified experience where users control a ball through playful, interactive levels. The goal was to blend marketing content with the look and feel of a game to engage users.<p>The app is built with Three.js [1], using our custom render pipeline and shaders, and uses Rapier for physics simulation [2]. The 2D content is overlaid on the WebGL view using CSS 3D transforms for a seamless integration with the 3D view.<p>We’d love for you to try it out and share your thoughts!<p>[1] <a href="https://threejs.org" rel="nofollow">https://threejs.org</a><p>[2] <a href="https://rapier.rs" rel="nofollow">https://rapier.rs</a><p>EDIT: More info on this project here: <a href="https://www.littleworkshop.fr/projects/5milliondevs/" rel="nofollow">https://www.littleworkshop.fr/projects/5milliondevs/</a>
I'm one of the developers who worked on this project. Happy to answer any questions.<p>More info on the project here: <a href="https://www.littleworkshop.fr/projects/5milliondevs/" rel="nofollow">https://www.littleworkshop.fr/projects/5milliondevs/</a>
This game is way better than it needs to be for a quick burst of advertising. Not only is the implementation fantastic, with perfect controls, but the level design is also great. I really enjoyed the multiple routes and the fact you can skip most of the advertising displays.<p>It seems such a shame that this isn't a full game. Removing the advertising and adding more complex levels with puzzles would make for a perfect little distraction.
I think this is the first time I've ever seen an online game correctly tell me to use WARS keys for movement. Big props for handling non-qwerty layouts.<p>Great job optimizing too. Runs totally smooth on my 2012 macbook and its decrepit HD 4000 iGPU, which is no small feat for web-games these days.
That was enjoyable. I wasn't at all interested in any of the "Netlify facts" but it was fun to push the marble around and I'm impressed by how smooth the experience was. Well done!
I can't find anyone else mentioning this here, so interesting fact, marble madness was designed by mark cerny<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Madness" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Madness</a><p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cerny" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cerny</a><p>Who is better known for designing the PS4 and PS5.<p>Edit: can someone explain what netlify does? I visited the site, and while I appreciate it can be difficult to explain these things in marketing blurb, I really came away none the wiser (I work as a programmer so maybe I'm not quite the target market)
Kind of off topic, but Marble Madness was a large part of what inspired me to start programming. My dad played it when he was a kid and it made an impression on him, so he had me play it on MAME as a kid. I was blown away by the fact that computers can simulate (fairly complex) falling objects in an isometric space, but I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to reproduce that in Game Maker 7 at the time. When I got better at math, it influenced a project in my teens that's on my resume to this day.
Beautiful work, well done.
It also made me remember a game I played a long time ago called Ballance[1]. Weird how memory works like that.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballance_(video_game)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballance_(video_game)</a>
The controls don't seem to work for me. AWSD, only up and down work, unless I try to go diagonally, then it just gets "stuck" moving forever. Arrow keys no directions work unless I hold multiple keys down at once, then it also gets stuck moving.<p>M1 macbook pro, Arc browser
That's quite fun! I didn't know about "Marble Madness", but it reminded me of Cuboro [1], a (hardware!) toy that consists wooden blocks and allows people to create quite complicated marble runs that look very very similar to this game.<p>[1]: <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuboro" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuboro</a>
This is absolutely amazing! Very well executed, congrats!!<p>I was absolutely terrified at first that falling off would have me start again from the beginning, so I was very careful. Once I did fall and come back where I was I grew bolder which made it more fun. Maybe that should be advertised somewhere.<p>(I'm still unsure what Netlify exactly is or what it does but this will make me want to find out!)
Interesting. This consistently crashes my chrome browser whenever I get to the first glowing white checkpoint. But it's not like any crash I've seen before, the page reverts to a google search result I was on this morning. And the whole page is flickering white. That tab was closed long ago, but it seems something in this gets back to that state in memory, maybe a buffer overflow somewhere or something?<p>While on the google search result, the music from the game is still playing. If I open a new tab, the title of this tab changes from the google title to the netlify one, and vice versa if I change back.
I am very curious how the physics feel realy-wordly for the most part at the mathematical level. Are there existing algos that define the gravitational pull of the "Facts" spots or was there a lot of tweaking?<p>The 45 degree rotation does require more dual input than I care for which makes me wonder if that is a design choice.
I've been enjoying the quality and aesthetics of your studio's work. I would love for you to build a complete game or a longer experience, rather than only for marketing. I love where art and programming intersect. I would love to be able to create experiences like this myself one day.
Thank you so much. This is a great game for my 6yo, it made his day! He loved it. We spent months looking for web games for 6yo without ads, dark patterns and distracting details, but this was the first one that really fit. I wish there would be more similar games.
On iOS, sometimes it scrolls the page and pressing and holding opens a weird right click magnifier and releasing it a share option on the top left?<p>Those jarring little things seem to just never disappear from modern browser games.<p>Beyond that it‘s amazingly fluid.
Wow, this is nice. I don't know, but is it possible for us to study code for this? I would love to see how all of this is built.<p>I can understand you might have commercial obligation, so hoping Netlify can make this public :)
Got stuck in a re-spawn loop : some collision detection failed in level 4 at the start of a standard 30° incline, the ball fell through, and was re-spawned at the same place resulting in falling again, locking me in loop.
That is very cute. But even after hitting all the white dots, it's not clear what their product is? A web framework? Hosting? Cloud services?<p>15 mins 31 secs, including reading all the promo material.
On chapter 2 I liked figuring out how to skip an entire section.<p>On chapter 3 I fell through the checkerboard immediately the first time; this seems like a bug.<p>On chapter 4 there are enough paths that it's possible to get slightly lost and not know which way you're supposed to follow the line.<p>On chapter 5 it's possible to fall onto an isolated island (the pink cube, under the lip) and get trapped forever. I would suggest making "only blue saves your position" a consistent rule rather than the current randomness. At this point I gave up and didn't want to try again from scratch.
Anyone who wants a full game of this, try Ballance:<p><a href="https://www.gog.com/en/game/ballance" rel="nofollow">https://www.gog.com/en/game/ballance</a>
There's an easy shortcut in the second level past the climb on the pink pipe and before you climb the ramp where you can jump to the semi-circle on the lower platform on the other side. Love it!
Great implementation, very enjoyable. Any chance that you will use this foundation to make an actual game (I mean, challenging, with scores/time/etc., and without the marketing component)?<p>I have always missed a worthy sucessor to Marble Madness. I have tried several partial implementations or demos inspired on it, like this, but never an actual full game with the same philosophy (maybe there's some I'm missing, in which case I would like to know, of course).
That's really great!<p>The one game that I used to love, but never got translated into the modern world, is Oxyd[0], which was later re-released (in a fashion) as Enigma[1].<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyd" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyd</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.nongnu.org/enigma/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nongnu.org/enigma/</a>
Great game! On mobile, feels like the joystick is a bit too sensitive. Ie: I move my finger a tiny amount and the ball goes flying.<p>What's your company called?
Hopefully constructive: Touch controls. If finger is lifted off, even for a second, new "center" is registered, which makes it quite hard to control without looking where the"center" is. Nice soundtrack, quite relaxing.
I wish I had code access to this, I would make a multiplayer mode using <a href="https://docs.joinplayroom.com/usage/threejs" rel="nofollow">https://docs.joinplayroom.com/usage/threejs</a> (my project)
Fun game, but I soft-locked myself <a href="https://imgur.com/a/DHDSzPW" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/DHDSzPW</a>
Took a few tries to get there, but I don't think there's a way out
That’s incredible!!<p>Btw, how did you started making a creative tech studio? That’s something I want to do but I’m kinda lost on the selling part. How do you sell to a business that earned media is worth it?
I have to say, this is perfect execution. Now, if cloudflare made an equally great Oxyd inspired game the marble game sentimentalist edge computing nerds among us would be content.
Gives me nostalgia for Gyroscope: <a href="https://youtu.be/T3RtojpRc2M?si=nkDpJtJ_lzs5xOP8" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/T3RtojpRc2M?si=nkDpJtJ_lzs5xOP8</a>
This is so cool, it feels great! The ball has the "feel" of a putty ball, bouncy but not a lot just enough. Probably a lot of thought went into this and it shows.
i got a few questions:<p>- you say it's built with three.js but you also use rapier. How does that work / integrate? I see one is JS frontend thing, the other rust engine<p>- how did you design levels, with what?
I got stuck in the second chapter. Went into a tube leading to a spiraling green slide and my ball reset... to the interior of the block. Oh well, cool project.
Could you explain more on:<p>> The 2D content is overlaid on the WebGL view using CSS 3D transforms for a seamless integration with the 3D view.<p>Maybe a simple example of this with code?
does anybody remember the name of the board game that you turned knobs on the outside of the box to tilt on the x/y axis to drive the marble around the board?
So uh, don't try to make the jump from the pink elevator to the solitary pink cube on the last level. If you make it, you're stuck there forever! (I thought it would be a skill jump to an easter egg)
Well, I'd love to know what Netlify does, but...<p>#1. I could not find pricing anywhere.<p>#2. The "ROI calculator" steered me to enter in my name, e-mail, and phone number. I don't want to sign up to get spam from a salesman just to find out the basics about some tool or platform.<p>#3. Wikipedia's page for Netlify has a content warning that the content appears to be an ad brochure, but at least it said this:<p>"Netlify is a remote-first cloud computing company that offers a development platform that includes build, deploy, and serverless backend services for web applications and dynamic websites.<p>The company enables building, deploying, and scaling websites whose source files are stored in the version control system Git and then generated into static web content files served via a content delivery network."<p>Still have no idea what Netlify does (beyond what I can already do with git with a few clicks), or if it's right for our team, or if we can even afford it.<p>The Marble game was quite fun, however...<p>#4. The main thing that stuck in my mind from the little "milestones" about Netlify was that they changed their logo. This may seem significant to the Netlify team, but is completely irrelevant to the rest of us.<p>#5. The second thing was that they "bought Squirrel, an open source"... it is rather dystopian to hear that someone "bought" an open source platform.<p>Since we have a few Netlify people posting here, please feel free to correct my ignorance or point me in the right direction.
Netlify CEO here.<p>I spotted Little Workshop when I saw <a href="https://equinox.space/" rel="nofollow">https://equinox.space/</a> on Hacker News and noticed it was running on Netlify. Loved the fluidness, speed and art direction of a game running directly in the browser and working smoothly on my phone.<p>Immediately thought of them when we started thinking about a 5 million developer celebration and reached out. Love the result :)
So i have to say i saw the headline on the frontpage and clicked the game before reading the post.<p>I have no idea who netifly is... and thought lets have a fun time playing.<p>While the game is visually well made, i gave it 3 attemps and all 3 times my ball dissapeared at some point into the floor and got permastuck. :/