Pong Clock
bigjobby.com

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173 points

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donohoe

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6 days ago

36 comments

clocker ・ 3 days ago

Great idea! Wish the speed was bit more. I think it would be cool if it takes exactly 1 second to bounce between the two paddles.

  • gpt5 ・ 3 days ago

    Type this into your dev console to speed it up to one hit per second (or if you want in the URL bar, prefix it with `javascript:`)

      (()=>{const T=1;window._u0=window._u0||update;update=function(){const W=gameCanvas.getBoundingClientRect().width,dist=0.92*W,vx=Math.abs(ball.speedX)||INITIAL_BALL_SPEED;let n=(dist/vx)/(60*T);n=Math.max(1,Math.min(20,Math.round(n)));for(let i=0;i<n;i++)_u0();};})()`
  • bentt ・ 2 days ago

    That was my assumption as well and I'm sort of shattered that it doesn't work like this.

  • albert_e ・ 3 days ago

    I thought that was the idea and felt the seconds seemed tab bit longer :)

    • chrisweekly ・ 2 days ago

      tab -> tad

      (for the sake of non-native English readers)

      • schoen ・ 2 days ago
        ・ 2 more

        I don't understand either of those words in this context!

        (Maybe "a tad"?)

        • albert_e ・ 2 days ago

          Yes I meant a tad and made a typo too. Apologies.

  • Crontab ・ 2 days ago

    That would be ideal if coupled with a mode where the paddles never miss.

wkjagt ・ 3 days ago

I like to imagine two actual people controlling this game, and it's their job to control time. If one misses by accident, time for everyone on earth advances a little too quickly.

empressplay ・ 3 days ago

Cute, I love it! Thanks for sharing this.

It would be just a little bit better though if the paddles just missed the ball when the time changes rather than entirely stepping aside.

But still wonderful, nevertheless.

  • waltbosz ・ 3 days ago

    It took me a while to figure out that the time would advance when one of the paddles missed. I was also disappointed by the way it missed by intentionally moving to the top of the play field.

    I wonder how difficult it would be to code it so the miss was more convincing.

    • mspreij ・ 3 days ago

      I spent longer than I care to admit trying to find the player keys..

  • stevage ・ 3 days ago

    Thanks for the hint about what is interesting about this.

tombert ・ 3 days ago

I have an old TV that I bought in 2015. It's in this kind of weird situation where it's "too good to throw away but not good enough to actually use". All I have been using it for in the last six years is plugging it into servers that only have a VGA port, and I don't have any of those anymore.

I've thought about mounting it to a wall plugging in a Raspberry Pi and have it constantly rotate fun different types of clocks. Something like this seems like it could be a fit.

  • BobbyTables2 ・ 3 days ago

    Wow, my only TV is from 2012!

    • tombert ・ 3 days ago

      I mean none of my TVs are top of the line, I don't own any TVs that cost more than $600, but I did feel like the upgrade to 4K was worth it back in ~2018.

      The TV I was referring to was extremely cheap even in 2015. It's not even 1080p, and I'm not even 100% convinced it's even 720p, despite what it says. It served us well enough when I was broke working for academia, but I upgraded everything when I was able to afford it.

      Still, this TV is relatively small and could still be kind of fun for a virtual clock, so it might be nice to get a bit more life out of it.

theden ・ 3 days ago

Pretty cool! You can force a miss by setting these vars in the console

  scoreMinute += 1
Or

  forceMissPaddle = rightPaddle; // or leftPaddle
GauntletWizard ・ 3 days ago

I feel bad for the guy playing the left side; 0 - 55 is a heck of a deficit to come back from.

  • shmeeed ・ 2 days ago

    Yeah, the left guy's pretty bad. I admire his persistence, though!

    They seem to play with a made-up rule set with a handicap: every time the left guy lands a goal, the other guy's score is reset... So left usually starts in the lead, but then quickly loses out again.

    I estimate he's behind roughly 89% of the time.

    (For a fun exercise, ask Google for that percentage. It's astonishing how wrong the AI answers can get.)

    • GauntletWizard ・ 2 days ago

      My "AI" response was actually pretty good; It summed up the number of minutes per hour, making only one (glaringly obvious but understandable by some metrics) error:

      > Hour 12: The hour (12) is never greater than the minute (0–59), so the time is 0.

      Misunderstanding how human clocks work, but right for this clock.

      It then doubled that, because there's two 12-hour periods in a day, which was useless but reasonable, and finally divided by 1440 minutes in a day, and got an answer of 9%

      Then I asked again, and while it got the same answer, it used totally different "reasoning" that was wrong in a unique way.

  • afandian ・ 3 days ago

    Left player is playing the long game.

yodon ・ 3 days ago

Thank you for bringing a tiny bit of joy to the day

ajd555 ・ 3 days ago

This is great, congrats on getting it out!

stog ・ 3 days ago

Out of curiosity, are you Scottish?

  • cyberpunk ・ 3 days ago

    I hope so, otherwise he’s in a bit of a disappointment if someone ever explains to him what his domain means in Scotland ;)

mlcq ・ 3 days ago

So cool, very creative.

johntopia ・ 3 days ago

this is actually entertaining