{"id":63025,"date":"2018-11-16T22:42:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T22:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/330937"},"modified":"2018-11-16T22:42:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T22:42:00","slug":"the-devs-behind-experimental-1d-address-bar-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/11\/16\/the-devs-behind-experimental-1d-address-bar-games\/","title":{"rendered":"The devs behind experimental 1D address bar games"},"content":{"rendered":"

“When you think of it, most video games take place inside a 2D or 3D space, so playing a game taking place inside a single dimension is very disturbing for both players and game designers!”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Dr. Ludos discusses the novelty of creating 1 dimensional\u00a0address bar games.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Rock Paper Shotgun recently published<\/a> an interview with some developers who create address bar games, which are meant to be played entirely within a website’s URL.<\/p>\n

This is a neat\u00a0example of developers thinking outside the box,\u00a0introducing\u00a0a genre\u00a0of niche, experimental games worth exploring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the most well-known examples of an address bar game comes from Corey Johnson, who developed URL Hunter<\/em> using JQuery back in 2011, initially\u00a0by accident.<\/p>\n

“I was working on some code and I accidentally created a bug that caused the URL address to rapidly change characters,\u201d Johnson explains. \u201cI kept thinking about it on my way home, so I stayed up that night fooling around with it until I had created URL Hunter<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson credits the inherent\u00a0restrictions of the medium as its biggest appeal. “Seeing if I could make a game with these extreme limitations was the most interesting part of creating it,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You can\u2019t program it like a terminal-based game because the address bar doesn\u2019t use a monospaced font, so replacing a character causes all the other characters to move slightly. You have to be clever with how you do movement. Back in 2011, I could only get around 10 fps, which was tough to make look good.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, Ludum Dare 42 (a competitive 48 hour game jam) produced the\u00a0address bar game\u00a0Outrunning Space<\/a>, <\/em>an endless runner which pushes players back by every obstacle they fail to jump over until a game over is reached.<\/p>\n

Its developer, who goes by Dr. Ludos, reveals that the limited amount of time he had to work on a game for Ludum Dare pushed his creative boundaries.<\/p>\n

“It forced me to go all the way into minimalism. I chose to make an address bar game because it takes place in a 1D space. It\u2019s quite a challenge to come up with game ideas that can function inside a screen of only 23 characters of width for a single unit of height!\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Ludos\u00a0is convinced that address bar games have an incredible amount of potential ripe for other developers to explore.<\/p>\n

“Address bar games are an under-explored field, so I think many designers could invent new kinds of 1D games if someone would like to organize a jam or competition centered on that theme.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two were having\u00a0a larger conversation around address bar games, so sure to read the entire piece over at Rock Paper Shotgun<\/a>, it’s well worth the read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“When you think of it, most video games take place inside a 2D or 3D space, so playing a game taking place inside a single dimension is very disturbing for both players and game designers!” – Dr. Ludos discusses the novelty of creating 1 dimensional\u00a0address bar games.\u00a0 Rock Paper Shotgun recently published an interview with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}