alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Browser grand strategy game for hundreds of players on huge maps
Hi HN,
I've been building a browser-based multiplayer strategy game called Borderhold.
Matches run on large maps designed for hundreds of players. Players expand territory, attack neighbors, and adapt as borders shift across the map. You can put buildings down, build ships, and launch nukes.
The main thing I wanted to explore was scale: most strategy games are small matches, modest maps, or modest player counts, but here maps are large and game works well with hundreds of players.
Matches are relatively short so you can jump in and see a full game play out.
Curious what people think.
Gameplay:
Discord:
Comments
One of the main challenges has been making the map simulation work for hundreds of simultaneous players without the server becoming a bottleneck.
Most interactions are event-driven and the map state updates incrementally, which keeps things manageable even when many borders are shifting at once.
I've successfully tested this with 4096^2 maps and 1024 players and in those tests framerates were stable at 144 FPS, with the server ticking steadily at the standard 10 TPS.
It is built on Rust and Bevy. I'm happy to answer any questions.
Doesn't seem to do anything on custom game.
It's cool, I love this kind of multiplayer online game that you can play just by opening your browser, it makes me feel like I'm back in my childhood, and since I entered junior high school, I've only played mobile games or Steam
I don't know, looks like OpenFront in a RetroGUI? Based on the left bottom UI element an older version, otherwise remarkably close
> Curious what people think.
About what? The game itself is mildly interesting as some sort of blockchain mega-Risk variant, but without any sort of story about how you came up with the idea, or how you coded it, or a link to your source code, or etc etc etc this seems primarily meaningless/irrelevant here at Hacker News. I see your comment asking us to propose questions that you answer — but where are your own stories, that aren't just replies to the prompts you want us to present you with?
> You agree not to[:] reverse engineer or attempt to extract protected service logic except where the law clearly permits it
Talk about failing to understand your target audience.
I tried a custom game. Received constant errors in the bottom right. Couldn't work out where/who I was. I could right-click and offer alliances to factions, but there was no response at any point. Couldn't work out how to do anything. (Firefox/macOS)
RIP
Can't enter a game, kicks me out of queue.
After seeing this I just think it'd be awesome if there's like...
a Civ 7...
where you can play with 100 people, in a way that's playable, somehow.
Yea, not really thought out but if anyone could make it awesome, it'd be them and I'd love to beta/alpha test it.
If any Civ 7 dev is reading this, my email is in my profile.
(yea I know, a crazy long shot, lol :') I'm doing it for the hype)
The sliders don't respond well, like the server is authoritative but the client isn't properly predicting where the slider will be.
I'm playing on a 144Hz monitor, but the game is struggling to hit over 80 FPS.
I keep getting errors which display in the bottom right of the screen, such as "tick" (tick failed, ZeroInvestment) errors and WebSocket receive errors.
I started a custom game and "things" are just happening super quickly. All I can seemingly do is right click some stuff and do some actions.
There is almost no feedback on the few actions you can do. Nothing much to observe. I don't even know where "I" am on the map.
Sorry but this isn't a game yet. There's no compelling core gameplay loop, too little explanation, and wayyyy too many bugs.
Be honest: is this just an OpenFront clone?
It's fine if it's just a fan-clone, but you really need to be explicit about where the idea (and code) came from if that's what you've done.
Very buggy, so many it's not even worth reporting, since you can't be bothered to test.
I clicked "Play Game" and got a message about a queue.
Maybe that experience can be improved.
Not to be overly dismissive, but this feels like a plastic satire of a war game. Additonally, most civvy wargames tend to be based on the Avalon Hill Civilization boardgame from back in the day (which also influenced Sid Meier's Civilization), which imo peaked with Civ 4 (Civ 7 and Humankind I think is based on "History of the World").
I'd recommend reading some US Navy [0][1][2], Marines [3], and NATO [4] literature on how to better create tactical and grand strategy war games.
Lots of wargaming and intel analyst vets ended up in the boardgame publishing world.
[0] - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1001766.pdf
[1] - https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/research/publi...
[2] - https://www.cna.org/reports/2004/Transforming-Naval-Wargamin...
[3] - https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/Forging%20Wargamers_web.pd...
[4] - https://paxsims.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/nat...
Hmm, it does not seem to work on Edge browser on my Linux OS, but it loaded fine in Chrome in the same OS.
I don't like the mixel art used
Weird clone of OpenFront but with no UI .. ? Custom game doesn't work, tons of errors, can't even see where I am, or understand what is going on.
Doesn't seem like you played your own game before submitting it.