Multiplayer tanks that demolish real buildings from OpenStreetMap (worldstrike.fun)

129 pointsby n4ze3m8 hours ago76 comments

croniev 5 hours ago

Just me or is this a bit cynical? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the gameplay is fun and everything. Just the concept makes me really uneasy, especially as I have a friend who's house was destroyed recently in war...

n4ze3m 5 hours ago

I'm really sorry about your friend's home. I never meant it that way. It started as just a 3D map that you could drive around. Then I added collisions, then a tank, and it grew into a game from there. None of it came from anything in real life. But I understand why it feels uneasy when war is real for people you know.

AspireOne 5 hours ago

I think it's fun, not cynical at all. I'm sure if my close one was shot, I'd be uneasy playing call of duty, and so on.

I'm sorry for your friend.

yesco an hour ago

As someone who was personally a victim of a violate car accident when very young, causing permanent facial scarring; I give everyone permission to play GTA, Wreckfest and Burnout 3.

I would hope my friends would never use me to say otherwise.

tokai 5 hours ago

You are overreacting. Its not cynical.

sd9 5 hours ago

I'm surprised by the comments defending this, I also think it's in poor taste. I wouldn't say cynical, in my opinion it's worse than that, it's too real.

tokai 4 hours ago

This kind of outrage takes away from things that are actually distasteful and cynical. Conflating unproblematic things with actual harmful things is a you problem. Policing tone, while people are actually dying out there, is more cynical that this game. The only outcome here is there you guys feel better about yourself.

bemtevi 4 hours ago

I don't think that quite makes sense. Sometimes it's useful to point out/shame unsettling things that happen in society, even if it doesn't directly cause harm.

hlynurd 3 hours ago

I both think this is allowed to exist in addition to finding this tasteless.

1shooner 3 hours ago

Having a negative opinion is not policing. If you want to spend your free time simulating destruction, that is really your thing. It's common entertainment. It doesn't mean others can't share a different perspective on it.

brenschluss 3 hours ago

It sounds like you yourself are outraged and policing how people feel about this game?

sd9 37 minutes ago

It's not really outrage, I just think it's in poor taste. Unproblematic is a matter of opinion, which we're each entitled to.

thedellmonitor 2 hours ago

NO FUN ALLOWED

latexr 36 minutes ago

Fun is very much allowed. But people are also allowed to question if one person’s fun is another person’s pain.

Like, if a bunch of kids caught a stray cat, tied him up, and started shouting in his ears and laughing, would you stop them? And if they complained “no fun allowed”, would you think that was fair? What about if there was a video game in which you beat to a pulp deepfake representations of your friends and family? Do you not agree it would be reasonable for some people to find that in bad taste, including those who have suffered from domestic violence in real life?

You may say that this is just a game, but media affects people too. There are thousands of games where you can shoot at fictional infrastructure, is there really that much to gain from destroying representations of real buildings?

Grimburger 2 hours ago

If it makes you feel any better tanks are almost useless now in modern war.

They can't at all compete with some off the shelf kids toy costing $30 with a HEAT round attached. The cost differential here with a 35 million euro tank is beyond pale.

OsrsNeedsf2P 28 minutes ago

You're on HN, where people celebrate YC companies that in "defense". The majority of people in our networks would bomb a house if it completed their next round. Let's not pretend that we're surprised people defend this.

latexr 5 hours ago

I had a similar thought.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50390997

If your friend would be willing to share their thoughts, I’m interested in learning. Of course, if they don’t want to share or you think it would be disrespectful to even ask, don’t. I’m just thinking the perspective of such people should not be ignored.

bemtevi 4 hours ago

I think it's rather poor taste to code something like this. Usually when buildings or other things are destroyed in movies or even a game, it's to tell some kind of story. In a way telling the story brings the justification because the destruction in the story is usually counterbalanced by someone trying to stop it, which brings the story to the level of good being done.

This is just wanton destruction and has nothing good in it.

ndriscoll 3 hours ago

I mean, technically, Blast Corps had a story (you needed to pave the way for a runaway nuclear missle to not crash and explode or something), but then you'd get medals for thoroughly destroying everything anyway, because really it was about knocking down buildings and the "story" was a silly pretense. And it was great.

Rampage and its sequels were pretty much also just "destroy buildings, the game," and also great.

My kids enjoy building with tiles and then knocking it down.

If you've ever shot a gun or detonated some explosives in real life, you'll know that's fun too despite these things being used to hurt people also.

sheepscreek 4 hours ago

Not just you. With a fourth of the world in an actual war, it doesn’t sit well with many of us.

That said, whoever made it might not be thinking about that. A kid could vibecode a game these days. I wouldn’t hold it against them.

Moreover, many AAA games glamorize war (Call of Duty, Far Cry, Battlefield…) or crime (GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Payday, Hitman…).

wvh 3 hours ago

Almost everything fun doing is going to have a naughty element that's bound to upset somebody.

user43928 3 hours ago

I wouldn't say so, since shooting at mini tanks and buildings that look like cardboard on a gray street map doesn't seem connected to real events.

That said, I did not find the game fun. It was laggy, UI elements seemed a bit sloppy and cut off, and the purpose of buttons wasn't very clear. Also, I saw mostly brown tiles rather than buildings, maybe it was already all destroyed.

n4ze3m 3 hours ago

Thanks for the honest feedback. The lag was the server struggling with today's crowd, and I've shipped fixes for it over the last hour. The brown tiles are rubble from earlier players. Pick a city further away and you'll find it untouched.

pipe01 3 hours ago

Reminds me of the kid that got expelled for modelling his school as a Counter Strike map

dsdungeon 2 hours ago

I think it’s the particular design choice of leaving emoji on the rubble you destroyed, with options like a skull, fire and so on.

The Call of Duty series gives a much more detailed view of the battlefield, with a lot more blood, and it doesn’t get a reputation for being cynical because it doesn’t force your hand with a choice that feels like mockery of the situation. This game’s emoji defaults slightly do, whether it was intentional or not.

behole 2 minutes ago

FUN. Tanks are not my "thing" but it was fun to cruise around LA shooting at stuff. I have always wanted to make a racing game with real roads around you. Make segments like from the house to the store and see who can drive em the fastest in game. Good inspo from worldstrike! TY

heggy 6 hours ago

Fun idea but horribly laggy. Just driving down a street and I would get bounced back constantly and make very little progress. Ping was showing up as much as 5000ms

n4ze3m 5 hours ago

sorry, that's on me! Way more people showed up than I expected and the server couldn't keep up. When it falls behind it drops your inputs and yanks your tank back, so that's the bouncing. I found the culprit (collision checks looking at way too many buildings)

TheSkyHasEyes 26 minutes ago

Still same lag for me. But love the effort. :)

Glyptodon 9 minutes ago

Keep getting "lost the convoy."

vfosnar 8 hours ago

as an active osm contributor and community member and io games enjoyer i love this.

if the author is readin this by any chance pretty please improve the attribution placement, projects like this are whats bringin interested people in to help us build a better open map for everyone <3

n4ze3m 7 hours ago

Thank you! You're right, it was buried behind a tiny ⓘ. Fixed now, so the OpenStreetMap credit is always visible in-game and on the home screen.

pjmlp 2 hours ago

Neat idea, however in my home town it quickly gets stuck on the streets, maybe the collision testing isn't that great.

dasyatidprime 3 hours ago

I can't load the thing, but the idea reminds me of the trope of adolescents playing early FPSes and making maps based on their homes and schools, for good or for bad…

jaapz 7 hours ago

5 minute respawn timer after being shot is a bit excessive

notcrazylol 7 hours ago

yeah i just started and someone shot me. Now i gotta wait 5mins?

n4ze3m 7 hours ago

Fair point, Just cut it to 30 seconds.

chiph 3 hours ago

For US addresses, can you include the state in the search? It's common for the same city name to be reused. For example: Dallas North Carolina (small town) vs Dallas Texas (metropolis)

fixitplz 5 hours ago

I want to try this but every time I try to join either from my mobile or desktop (both on WiFi), I get this error: "That callsign belongs to another player. Pick a different one." that comes from the Railway-hosted wss://worldstrike.fun/ws

Here's a full response with headers:

HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols Connection: Upgrade Sec-Websocket-Accept: GeKaJfsfiYd9s2vROz7kMU3RDWA= Sec-Websocket-Extensions: permessage-deflate; server_no_context_takeover; client_no_context_takeover server: railway-hikari Upgrade: websocket X-Railway-Request-Id: UA8DKXk_TKiusD2aYqVb7A x-hikari-trace: lhr1.7mfs x-railway-edge: lhr1

{"type":"error","message":"That callsign belongs to another player. Pick a different one."} Connection Closed: 1005

n4ze3m 5 hours ago

sorry thats confusing names are locked to the first browser that users them, so someone else probably took it

glibg10b 7 hours ago

It keeps saying "Your connection dropped. Let’s get you back out there." after a few seconds, then returns me to my spawn point. I don't see any bad HTTP status codes in the network tab

Can you make it a little more resilient on Wifi + 4G? I would really like to try this, it seems fun

Also, incorporating elevation data would also be really cool

n4ze3m 7 hours ago

thanks, found it! The server was kicking laggy connections. Fixed, and it auto-reconnects now.

glibg10b 7 hours ago

Hah, I thought it just randomly started working. But no, you fixed it :)

ByThyGrace 6 hours ago

This thing just crashed my whole DE. My GPU reset. Haven't had one like that in years.

n4ze3m 6 hours ago

Sorry! It's WebGL, so it shouldn't be able to do that. Which browser, OS and GPU? I'd like to track it down.

anonymous908213 6 hours ago

This happens on every shitty vibe coded 3D webapp that makes it onto HN. I don't know what the fuck they're feeding these bots.

rescbr an hour ago

Eh, the browser sandbox shouldn't allow random web pages to crash the whole desktop environment.

jimmydddd 3 hours ago

I can't see my tank because the status box takes up most of the screen?

discoinverno 7 hours ago

Nice! Are tanks spawned at the last picked location? I picked my hometown as I wanted to demolish a friend's house, and I was surprised to find 2 tanks there (it's a random small city in Europe).

I also have the bug where it keeps respawning me to the starting point after ~30 seconds

n4ze3m 7 hours ago

They're real players, no bots! The 30-second reset was a connection bug, fixed now.

netsharc 6 hours ago

I guess I wasn't the first to have the idea to flatten the White House...

Bye bye, ballroom!

u03c6 an hour ago

of all the fun things you could do based on OpenStreetMap choosing to destroy cities says a lot about the values of our times

NDlurker 2 hours ago

Anyone else immediately think of San Diego?

igleria 7 hours ago

I don't get it, how is it possible people are in my local town? or is this more populr than this thread? fun stuff nevertheless.

n4ze3m 7 hours ago

Real people, no bots :) If you join with the default option, you're dropped near where other players are already fighting, so you'll usually find company

igleria 6 hours ago

but I chose Drogheda! (random ass town in Ireland)

nothingnix 6 hours ago

The others probably chose to spawn "near players", so that's how they ended up in your random ass town in Ireland

Den_VR 5 hours ago

I can see the potential already for an acquisition by Match Group.

brontosaurusrex 6 hours ago

Is there a way to change viewing angle?

n4ze3m 6 hours ago

Yes! Press C to switch between the chase and overhead camera, and scroll (or pinch on mobile) to zoom.

brontosaurusrex 6 hours ago

I understand. I meant, can i get rid of this top-down view? I like the lowpoly model btw, is that something you modeled or ai creation?

jagged-chisel 4 hours ago

Would love to see some stats on what people decide to destroy …

n4ze3m 4 hours ago

about 7500 buildings have been destroyed since this was posted. most are houses, shops, restaurants and offices. I'll add a stats page soon so anyone can see it.

indrex 7 hours ago

Saw no buildings. Fired at the next tank.

n4ze3m 7 hours ago

tanks can fight each other too! Press M and drive somewhere new for buildings nobody has flattened yet

cowlevel 3 hours ago

Hi there! My name is Ender, and I'd love to play this game.

RicoElectrico 7 hours ago

Similar in spirit: https://kaijumietz.de/

latexr 5 hours ago

I am genuinely interested in the opinions of people who live in or fled war-torn countries. Would they find this in poor taste? That it trivialises ongoing struggles? Have they tried looking into their own cities? Do they not care? Do they think this is somehow useful? Does it surface memories? Are they more bothered by the execution?

Of course, we’d need more than one or two data points. If you know someone (or are you yourself) in that situation, I’d welcome learning your thoughts. No judgement or ulterior motive, just looking to understand another perspective.

Edit: And, of course, the downvotes are already coming. Don’t know why I bother with this community anymore. Call for exploiting and exterminating other people (I’m not talking about this submission) and you are celebrated; but try to be empathetic and learn about others, no sirree, can’t have that, that’s a grave offence to the great hacker blowhards who frequent the big AI News network. This community has become putrid.

m00dy 7 hours ago

it's missing interpolation on position estimation.

n4ze3m 6 hours ago

It was timed by server ticks, which fell behind under today's load. It's fixed now, so refresh and it should be smoother.

m00dy 5 hours ago

add some bots.

n4ze3m 4 hours ago

I actually built bots today for load testing. Maybe they'll get to play for real some day.