alt.hn

3/16/2026 at 8:51:10 AM

Show HN: Browser grand strategy game for hundreds of players on huge maps

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 5:11:19 AM

> 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.

by altairprime

3/20/2026 at 11:31:59 AM

Well, the purpose of this initial post was to just let people know it exists. I agree that those topics could be interesting and I might write them up in a blog.

The game doesn't really force any blockchain usage on you, but it will be optional in the future to play matches where you can win money.

Also, those terms were more or less vibed into existence so bear with me as I refine them into something solid in the near future.

Thank you for the feedback.

by sgolem

3/16/2026 at 8:54:25 AM

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.

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 4:54:34 AM

How did you test with 1024 players - were they real? Often synthetic loads are very different to those caused by real players.

by reitzensteinm

3/20/2026 at 10:52:59 AM

Bots are run on a separate thread from the main game loop and I can configure them to have a particular amount of actions per tick or second - to simulate real player action frequency.

In my tests core game loop handles 1024 bots without issues, often running 5-20x of realtime.

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 11:51:38 AM

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.

by sornaensis

3/20/2026 at 10:55:11 AM

This is a WIP version, and custom game seems to work for many players. I would've really appreciated if you told me how it didn't work so I can fix it.

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 6:20:18 PM

why play when you can vibecode?

by anhner

3/19/2026 at 5:35:20 AM

I don't know, looks like OpenFront in a RetroGUI? Based on the left bottom UI element an older version, otherwise remarkably close

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ckqSFbwplvY

by plz_throw

3/20/2026 at 10:57:17 AM

Yeah it's heavily inspired by openfront and territorial, I've played both. My goal for this was to see how far I can push it in terms of player count and map sizes.

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 5:49:56 AM

Very buggy, so many it's not even worth reporting, since you can't be bothered to test.

by rcakebread

3/19/2026 at 4:43:20 AM

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.

by bschwindHN

3/20/2026 at 11:10:29 AM

Hey, thank you for all these details, I really appreciate it!

I also use a 144Hz monitor and the framerate is often rock solid at the top. The problem is with browsers and battery powered devices. Chrome often locks up the game at 30, 60, or 120 FPS randomly, on battery or AC. I still haven't figured that one out.

I'm fixing some of those errors up right now. The problem is that I don't have a regular play testing base and for some players that do play it they're based relatively close to the server. I assume many issues reported here are from the US based folks, and I'm in Europe.

Thanks once again, I'll use this to improve it!

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 7:11:02 AM

Be honest: is this just an OpenFront clone?

https://openfront.io/

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.

by registeredcorn

3/20/2026 at 10:58:11 AM

The idea definitely came from openfront and territorial, I've played both. But this codebase has nothing to do with them, it was built from scratch.

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 9:51:49 AM

Judging by the error messages, it looks like it's a bevy+wasm project. So it's not a simple fork of OpenFront.

by Jyaif

3/20/2026 at 10:58:56 AM

Yes it's Bevy, with a custom backend game loop/simulation.

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 10:08:12 AM

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)

by prawn

3/20/2026 at 4:15:35 PM

I've added a "How To Play" button now before you start the game, and have polished up those error paths. Now they should be much less common and displayed more nicely.

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 10:42:55 AM

RIP

Can't enter a game, kicks me out of queue.

by Yokohiii

3/19/2026 at 11:49:46 AM

Doesn't seem to do anything on custom game.

by pwatsonwailes

3/20/2026 at 4:15:52 PM

Not sure why is that. Can you provide more details or try again?

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 7:28:47 AM

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)

by mettamage

3/19/2026 at 1:37:34 PM

There was Golden Age of Civilisations (or sth) a while ago. It ran Freeciv (FOSS Civ 2/3 clone) and made each turn take 4 hours and added advanced queuing tooling.

Was quite fun, maybe it still exists, haven't checked.

by TobTobXX

3/19/2026 at 10:17:33 AM

But why? What would change compared to 12 players on a huge map? Do you just want to conquer a large number of your neighbors and then still get to compete against other mega-empires?

When playing civ on 12 player maps, I still mostly interact only with the 3-4 that I directly compete with at any given time. I imagine that wouldn't really change with 100 people.

by pbmonster

3/18/2026 at 3:35:09 AM

I clicked "Play Game" and got a message about a queue.

Maybe that experience can be improved.

by brudgers

3/20/2026 at 11:00:27 AM

Sorry, that can definitely be improved. And is probably best to remove it until the game attracts some regular players for the queue to make sense. Will do.

by sgolem

3/19/2026 at 5:21:57 AM

won't even load for me now. (Edit: it loads now)

by smcin

3/19/2026 at 8:17:41 AM

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...

by alephnerd

3/19/2026 at 3:07:43 PM

Awesome resources, thank you for linking them!

by crotobloste

3/20/2026 at 4:54:21 AM

> thank you for linking them

Appreciate it. I've been getting trolled and attempted doxxed for providing links on HN recently.

Those nation state actors failed but worst case, I and my SO still practice our trigger discipline.

by alephnerd

3/20/2026 at 5:32:25 AM

Start a mailing list or something.

by tolerance

3/19/2026 at 4:32:53 AM

Hmm, it does not seem to work on Edge browser on my Linux OS, but it loaded fine in Chrome in the same OS.

by SilentM68

3/20/2026 at 11:24:07 AM

It should work on every browser that supports WebGL and SharedArrayBuffer. That should include Edge on Linux, but I'm not sure.

by sgolem

3/20/2026 at 2:32:04 PM

Yeah, I know. Probably something I did on my end.

by SilentM68

3/19/2026 at 4:22:22 AM

I don't like the mixel art used

by beeflet

3/19/2026 at 10:53:10 AM

[flagged]

by harmf