22 comments

  • ajkjk 17 minutes ago

    dear god make the music quiet by default

    • saltwatercowboy 2 hours ago

      This is so cool. How are you going to simulate Michel's longing for Provence? Seriously though I adore the trilogy. I started a Mars storymapping project which incorporated Underhill, Senzeni Na, the Moholes etc. a little while back too:

      https://saltwatercowboy.github.io/marsinplace/

      • ch4s3 2 hours ago

        It’s BYO longing for Provence.

      • TIPSIO 16 minutes ago

        Awesome work love it

        • AnotherGoodName 3 hours ago

          Terraforming Mars is a board game that heavily references these novels which i highly recommend.

          • baq 2 hours ago

            It’s great but really needs the expansions, don’t play without

          • pmontra 4 hours ago

            I visited the site on my Android phone with Firefox. It loads and the UI fits the screen, however it seems slow. Words appear at 3 or 4 characters at a time, then there is a pause, then another 3 or 4 characters. Some music when characters appear, then it stops, then it starts again. I muted it soon.

            It looks nice, so I hope to give it a try from my laptop. The Mars trilogy was a great read. When I saw the title of this Show HN I said, oh wow!

            By the way, dust storms could be a plot device but are they really that bad with so low air pressure?

            • ariaalam 4 hours ago

              Thanks for giving it a click! Let me know how it goes on desktop. Actively trying to improve the phone experience now...

            • sointeresting 3 hours ago

              Loud music warning for those wearing headphones.

              • michaelteter 3 hours ago

                You weren't exaggerating! I didn't even have headphones on, and it scared the sh*t out of me when I clicked on the little man.

                • Teckla 2 hours ago

                  The music was so loud from my monitor's speakers that I nearly jumped out of my skin and rushed to close it, and my volume isn't even turned up much!

              • magicmicah85 4 hours ago

                Played for a bit, liked the aesthetics so I bookmarked it to come back to it later and discovered a bug. On mac/chrome, I hit CMD + D to bookmark. By doing so, I setup some kind of autowalk bug where I kept walking to the right. I couldn't stop myself from walking, even pressing WAS temporarily stopped me but as soon as I let go, I kept walking right.

                • ariaalam 4 hours ago

                  Thanks for this, I'll address it now.

                • captn3m0 4 hours ago

                  Got power water and o2 but can’t seem to scroll the list of items to build for food on Firefox/iOS (should also be Safari/iOS) since it selects on tap before the scroll.

                  • ariaalam 3 hours ago

                    Another person just mentioned this to me, looking into it.

                  • 3eb7988a1663 2 hours ago

                    I must have missed something because my HP keeps ticking down until I pass out and get warped back to the command center. Eating food and resting do not seem to change the situation.

                    • personjerry 1 hour ago

                      Had 1000 of each resource, lots of income, landing pads and habitats, but never got more colonists?

                    • mkl 2 hours ago

                      Do you have permission from the publisher for an adaptation? If not, you're taking a legal risk basing it off the books.

                      • cantalopes 1 hour ago

                        It's based on it, it's not an adaptation.

                        Also, this would very well fit within fair use

                        • stevage 1 hour ago

                          That does not match my understanding of fair use at all.

                      • xcf_seetan 3 hours ago

                        I am on Firefox and it does nothing, no movement, just flashing resource monitors with zero values...

                        • ahhhhnoooo 2 hours ago

                          Lovely series. One of the first science fiction series I read that gave a proper anarchist culture a shot. (A big thing most people don't understand about anarchism is that it's not a violent, crime ridden, disorderly society without rules, but rather a society built on the idea that everyone deserves care, and we should all put in some effort to achieve that in a self organizing way.)

                          Loved seeing things like gift economies, self organization and free association, and a general care for both the people and the planet in those books.

                          • CSMastermind 16 minutes ago

                            Not sure who is downvoting you. You're experessing a valid opinion even if I disagree with it.

                            I read this book series as a kid and was enthralled by the sci fi aspects of it. When I reread it as an adult the political undertones completely ruined the series for me.

                            • vogtb 1 hour ago

                              Same. I thought his portrayal of anarcho-primitivism was really cool and interesting as well. Also, other people called it boring but one of my favorite parts was in Blue Mars as they hammer out the Martian constitution.

                            • lazyasciiart 3 hours ago

                              Hmm, I just get a black screen on my iPhone when I click your link.

                              Did you use any existing stuff like the mars-sim project? https://mars-sim.sourceforge.io/

                              • ariaalam 3 hours ago

                                Try it now! And no I didn't but that is very cool.

                                • lazyasciiart 3 hours ago

                                  Much better, now it opens up the game. Is this open source?

                              • jimnotgym 2 hours ago

                                I'm on mobile (Android, Brave), and I can do everything but interact with the people. Am I doing something wrong?

                                • jimnotgym 2 hours ago

                                  Oh and I can't scroll down on the hq menu. The engineer guy only spoke to me after 15 mins

                                • number6 4 hours ago

                                  Great, how did you build it? Also I have to read the books

                                  • ariaalam 3 hours ago

                                    vanilla JS and canvas plus a hefty bit of technical help from Claude.

                                    • lukan 2 hours ago

                                      It seems you draw everything every frame onto the canvas? The result is quite GPU heavy, for your next game I would recommend looking into a graphic libary like pixijs, to make use of the webgl/webgpu .. then it would run smooth even on old mobile phones.

                                      • evilhackerdude 1 hour ago

                                        check out raylib, it should be amazing for this :)

                                    • UltraSane 55 minutes ago

                                      When the mars space elevator was brought down and wrapped around mars TWICE was one of the most memorable moments of any book I've ever read.

                                      • Aeolun 48 minutes ago

                                        Spoilers! But yeah, that was a memorable scene.

                                      • oug-t 3 hours ago

                                        Interesting game, love the design.

                                        Struggled a little before understanding the instructions.

                                        • ariaalam 3 hours ago

                                          are you on mobile? it looks like there's a bug where the opening scene/dialogue is not loading, so the instructions aren't clear. working on it now.

                                        • tantalor 1 hour ago

                                          Surviving Mars (2018) is another really good game in this category.

                                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5djTZfKVIKQ

                                          • deafpolygon 4 hours ago

                                            It’s not really clear how it’s played.

                                            • ariaalam 4 hours ago

                                              Thanks for trying it out. Can you say more? Was it the controls or more about what you're supposed to build/do first?

                                            • Vaslo 2 hours ago
                                              • desireco42 3 hours ago

                                                It is hard to understand and play... maybe make it more obvious. I made a solar panel, it says I should assign staff...

                                                I would love to play if it would work. And music, thank god for the mute button.

                                                • ariaalam 3 hours ago

                                                  are you on mobile? it looks like there's a bug where the opening scene/dialogue is not loading, so the instructions aren't clear. working on it now.

                                                  • Aeolun 44 minutes ago

                                                    I think on mobile it’s natural to walk to the guy and tap on him. Not helped by the fact that the screen shows ‘tap’ over the highlighted tile, which does nothing. You need to walk and position the guy under your cursor, then press ‘act’.

                                                    The position yourself, then long press on ‘act’ to build when you can’t see where to put the building anymore is pretty awkward too. I’d expect to click to build, position it, then press confirm or reject or something.