Show HN: Browser grand strategy game for hundreds of players on huge maps
43 points
3 days ago
| 16 comments
| borderhold.io
| HN
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.

https://borderhold.io/play

Gameplay:

https://youtu.be/nrJTZEP-Cw8

Discord:

https://discord.gg/xVDNt2G5

sornaensis
1 hour ago
[-]
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.

reply
sgolem
3 days ago
[-]
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.

reply
reitzensteinm
8 hours ago
[-]
How did you test with 1024 players - were they real? Often synthetic loads are very different to those caused by real players.
reply
altairprime
8 hours ago
[-]
> 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.

reply
plz_throw
7 hours ago
[-]
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

reply
rcakebread
7 hours ago
[-]
Very buggy, so many it's not even worth reporting, since you can't be bothered to test.
reply
harmf
2 hours ago
[-]
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
reply
Yokohiii
2 hours ago
[-]
RIP

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

reply
prawn
3 hours ago
[-]
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)
reply
bschwindHN
8 hours ago
[-]
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.

reply
pwatsonwailes
1 hour ago
[-]
Doesn't seem to do anything on custom game.
reply
registeredcorn
6 hours ago
[-]
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.

reply
Jyaif
3 hours ago
[-]
Judging by the error messages, it looks like it's a bevy+wasm project. So it's not a simple fork of OpenFront.
reply
mettamage
6 hours ago
[-]
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)

reply
pbmonster
3 hours ago
[-]
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.

reply
brudgers
1 day ago
[-]
I clicked "Play Game" and got a message about a queue.

Maybe that experience can be improved.

reply
smcin
8 hours ago
[-]
won't even load for me now. (Edit: it loads now)
reply
alephnerd
5 hours ago
[-]
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...

reply
SilentM68
8 hours ago
[-]
Hmm, it does not seem to work on Edge browser on my Linux OS, but it loaded fine in Chrome in the same OS.
reply
beeflet
9 hours ago
[-]
I don't like the mixel art used
reply