Show HN: Putt.day a daily mini golf game
putt.day313 points by ellg 3 days ago
313 points by ellg 3 days ago
Feels like there's too much rolling resistance, even with a perfectly lined up shot there's not so far you can go. And definitely not enough to make it in 6!
Also if the camera angle is too high, you can't pull back far enough to reach maximum speed.
If you bounce off the wall at the start, and RNG gods look down on you, you're lined up to go through castle on first shot. Then knock it through castle, and lined up for 3rd final putt into hole.
But I agree with those points. I feel like real putt putt glides more, then more resistance at slower speeds then slow speeds have more resistance. And then yeah, default camera angles are troublesome--it makes it impossible to do full power shot at some angles too.
tweaking this currently, thanks for the feedback
My pasteable "scorecard" was fairly simplistic, just 8 solid green circles followed by an ellipsis. I think you could improve this by dividing the course into regions (either visibly or invisibly - same number of regions as the par) and considering each hit to be green if it makes forward progress, amber if it doesn't, or red if it goes backwards. And don't truncate it if it takes more than 8 shots!
Also it was very disorienting especially after making into the circular hole thingy, hard to know which way to aim, some small sign which is the right way would be nice, other than that, quite nice.
Don't aim forward. Jump the wall to the side, and you'll be in within shout of the hole.
Every time I did that it 'splashed' even with the ball 'landing' on the grass
I made my own daily golf game a couple years ago; honestly it isn't even really finished but it gets a couple thousand plays every day somehow.
It's more like a 2d platform golf: https://squigglegolf.com/game/
I had built out a custom level editor and some other fun features, but never really polished off the UI enough to release those. Someday I should really finish / update it.
> it isn't even really finished but it gets a couple thousand plays every day somehow.
Having just spent 5 minutes on it...I imagine it gets played because it's pretty good fun (good work!)
The inclusion of showing the trajectory of your previous (failed) attempts is really neat - it means I can refine my shots more accurately.
I really enjoyed this!
It was also a pleasant surprise when I learned I could hit the ball again while it was in mid-air.
It's cute but the physics feel off. Something about the bouncing feels like it dampens the momentum too much, and the rolling resistance also feels like it's too aggressive. I really did not like the ramp that pushes for you.
ya its still a wip, I appreciate the feedback though and I do want to keep tweaking stuff like this. Feel free to add feedback at the end of level prompts too if you feel like it, I'll be reading all of them
I like the concept. It's fun. Feedback:
1. The ball seems a bit soft. I suggest you get a real golf ball and putter and see how they behave, if you haven't already.
2. It would be nice if the camera positioned automatically so that it's roughly in the direction the ball should go on the next shot.
3. There were a bunch of flying yellow blobs. I was not sure what they were supposed to be.
i agree on the camera direction. that is annoying.
the flying blobs are other players going wild
I suggest "feather touch"
you have selected: "POWER DRIVE"
Prove you can get in the hole in just 6 putts, damn you.
You can bounce the ball up slightly (presumably the spin from rolling is modeled or approximated, and gives lift when hitting a bumper), which might be enough to skip from the tee to near the end of the course. Not sure that should be considered for "par" though. Took me 14.
It's possible. Done in 4.
Bounce it off the left wall in your first shot and you can land close to the end of the course.
I scored 5. Bank at max power at 5 o’clock from tee, the ball bounces over the wall and skips most of the course.
I have to wonder if they modded it because this doesn't seem possible anymore. Though I may be holding the putter wrong XD
I tried hitting the little floating island behind the start too to get a bounce but the ball clips through it.
What I did find was that you can use the purple spinning circle at the beginning as a teleporter to the one near the end if you aim at the wall opposite the spinner. Your ball will hit the wall and bounce back and up into the teleporter thing.
edit: I think the level changed?
There's a new course every day (like Wordle), so we were talking about yesterday's. It's still accessible from the archive / calendar button in the menu!
I'm pretty sure Mr Dev Man messed with the power levels after I played, though, because it absolutely wasn't doable when I first tried. Surely.
Thanks for the tip. Was 26. Now 4.
More specifically: aim back, and where the left side (as you now face) starts to ramp down there aim for the spot where it starts to slope down. Full power.
Cool project. On my phone the camera is facing the opposite direction and I can't figure out how to consistently rotate it.
There’s a setting on by default that aims the camera at the hole. Turning that off helps a lot.
On mobile, don’t make the ball the hit target to putt, because you can’t see where the direction/power under your thumb
I like it! The graphics are really good but it feels a bit laggy to me. IDK if someone else has experienced this.
On a related note, does anyone know of a good (open source) golf simulator/game for Linux? Serious level gaming more than just entertainment, I'm thinking something like FlightGear of golf games.
I don't know any since I'm not playing any golf simulator games myself, but most games on Steam work in Linux with Proton so you might find something there. That's not open source of course but you had it in parenthesis which I think means this was optional :)
My dumbass sent the ball backwards first go haha.
putt.day #32 9/9 Par
https://putt.day/s/sxUQOXKmSCxC
It is wild how far browser gaming has come. The stuff on CoolMathGames from when I was a kid isn't so cool anymore...
Would be awesome to also have a private room where you can play X old random/picked holes in a series versus your friends.
This is really cool. Probably needs some physics tweaks as a short putt is almost always way to hard. But love the idea!
Almost complete inability to sink the ball. I though I was meant to get it to stop in the spinning circle? But it is impossible to putt a short distance, it's always a couple of feet, and when I managed to use the edges to bounce away energy and stop the ball on the circle, nothing happened.
The hole (like in IRL golf) has a flag in it. :)
The Overview button helps get an idea of where to go.
A positive AI side effect. The era of "little flash games" is coming back and I love it!
I kind of feel like I'm going crazy when I read comments like this. The era of "little flash games" has never left and there have always been countless number of such games developed. The only thing AI is doing is putting AI developed games in front of Hacker News readers.
i always enjoy going to the games section on newgrounds, plenty of great games
Adorable little game, works very well! In today's hole I found a little shortcut by bouncing back from the starting position into just before the little "house" and managed to complete the hole in 4 shots. I like that such things are possible, feels satisfying.
Why can I see other people's ball/cursor? Feels like that adds a ton of complexity to the project but like, what do I do with/gain from that?
am i dumb how do i get past the first little ledge
You don't, you just cheese the level by slamming into the wall just to the left at the start and skip most of the course.
The ball appears to go high enough but it [control] doesn't like that it went over space. So the best one could do was put it (after +1s) into the port.
Same here, got stuck in an infinite loop of the booster pad (?) sending slamming me into the wall over and over.
Fun but closer to the hole it’s impossible to aim. I missed it for time because I have no way to understand fine direction if my thumb covers the indicator at low power
I couldn't get past the partial instructions. The box of text is taller than my screen and centered vertically, with no way to scroll up or down.
It's a good game! If I had to give a little feedback, I wish the sound of falling into the water was a bit more natural! Other than that, I'm satisfied.
The camera auto orientation was 180 degrees wrong after clearing a stage. Maybe you need to give it a sort of "preferential direction"?
Really love the concept! It was kinda laggy for me tho. Had to stare at a blank screen until i spammed the refresh button. Other than that, pretty cool stuff.
Reminds me of http://kindahardgolf.com
Also reminds me of 3D Ultra Minigolf Deluxe (https://youtu.be/mr9GbmBROfo). That game was kind of Disney World meets minigolf with how imaginative the levels were.
Par 6 my ass
https://i.imgur.com/PzlgXnD.png skill issue
edit: https://i.imgur.com/9xnntqB.mp4 fairly reliable trick shot
Mind giving a description for the jurisdictionally challenged? (imgur self-censors in the UK)
1. Download Tor Browser from https://www.torproject.org/download/
2. Visit the site in Tor Browser
3. Tell everyone you know about 1 and 2, and remind them that if they ever actually "verify their age" or any other bullshit, they're likely to have their identity stolen and their details leaked. Never do this. Tell the government to suck a fat one.
4. Use https://www.writetothem.com/ to write to your MP and tell them to repeal the Online Safety Act. It's a censorship and surveillance regime, it makes nobody any safer.
5. Consider joining https://www.openrightsgroup.org/
6. Vote Labour out of power at the next election. Tell all the other parties that they'll have your vote if they repeal the Online Safety Act
Honestly I assumed imgur blocked tor exits, but you're right, it doesn't (at least not in my test just now).
I configured my host-based proxy multiplexer to use tor for *.imgur.com, and now I'm free!
Before making the first shot, turn around and face backwards. Shoot back and to the left toward the barrier. After the ball ricochets, it should hit the downward-angled barrier on the opposite side and hop over it to the end section, where it's not too hard to sink the ball with three or four more shots.
screenshot of finishing with 4 strokes / 6 par (tho my locked-in daily result was 14 strokes).
The video is bouncing the ball of a wall right at the start to make it jump over the wall, water, and corner behind the start, to skip most of the track.
You can go from the starting position to the last u-turn, skipping nearly the whole course. But I doubt that's intentional.
Very nice. I'd be interested to hear how the real-time/multi-player element is working?
Love it! If you added a more useable multiplayer mode, I'd love to share with some friends I usually golf with.
Looks quite funny actually. Maybe it could be some multiplayer mode that I can srike and crash my opponent ball.
Bug: Show a message that WebGL is disabled instead of blank white screen.
Loved this, I hope it's not another promotion by anthropic :D
Ain't even loading for my poor laptop. Sounds like a lot of fun though!
The score card should reflect your latest playthru even if it “doesn’t count.”
Congrats on game that can be used in a mobile browser. Thats rare.
I like it. What stack did you use for rendering, physics etc?
I'd love a rotation fixed overhead camera
Par 6 seem impossible? At least 15 necessary at the least?
I did it in 3, but you need to hit a jump from the start over, and roll far enough to go through the arch on shot 2.
6 is possible. Just did it. Less is possible. Hitting a wall gives you a vertical impulse. That can be used.
I got it in 15 but overshot the last 2, so I'd say 13 at least is possible. But definitely not 6!
Doesn't seem to render on Firefox.
Works on mobile firefox for me.
I often get webgpu errors with firefox.
151.0.4 (Build #2016165791),
GV: 151.0.4-20260608154138
AS: 151.0.2
OS: Android 16
The phrase “how was this hole” was amazing
Honestly the games very good, i played all the holes in one go. One thing I’d like though is for the ball to lose a bit less speed when it bounces off the wall.
Really fun idea! Though I agree about the feedback on the physics: the ball doesn't travel as far as I'd like and bounces off the edge too often.
The game also often wanted to reorient me towards the flag which was annoying when I was trying to go another direction.
It also sometimes was tricky to drag the ball - It thought I was trying to pan the perspective.
All that said, this is fucking rad! I think with a few small tweaks you've got something really special. And it could easily be extended with windmills, power-ups, etc. I'm excited to play more and see it progress!
thanks again for the feedback everyone. I just pushed a few updates around physics and scoring!
Freakin awesome. Hahahah, I love that there are 'cheats' and the fact that you can see everyone playing definitely makes it cool! You can even get hints by watching the ghost players. Great job!
Eagle
This is really awesome! But par 6 is absolute bullshit. I thought I was doing really good, made great progress with every putt, didn't seem to make any major mistakes... but way over par :( I'll return tomorrow and try again
I got a Birdie! You don't just have to follow the main path...(mysterious sounds)
fun little game!
incredibly annoying to get close to the hole then go back and forth over the hole on what should be a tap-in. reached it in 3, then got to 22 strokes before saying fuck it, I have better things to do
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