Galaxy Progress Update 2
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It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve been caught up in serendipity, real life, other projects, and working on this… and now Galaxy is a little cioser to release!
What? (for the uninformed)
Galaxy is a website for incremental games. It is not out yet, but I hope it will be within a few months.
You can find and play new incremental games on it, but you can also do so much more—chat, level up, save in the cloud, and the list goes on…
It’s open-source, has no forced ads, no paywalls, no trackers, and it never will.
The Domain
A couple months back, I settled on a domain for Galaxy to reside at.
Say hello to galaxy.click.
I’ve certainly fallen victim to the sunk cost fallacy, but I think it’s pretty damn good. The TLD is a pretty obvious allusion to clicker games. And it’s memorable, too! Unlike “yhvr”.
(Shoutout to Crimson406 for letting me know that .click wasn’t taken—I don’t think I would have seen it otherwise!)
User Interface
I’d like to express eternal gratitude to ducdat0507 for contributing to Galaxy. He’s almost solely responsible for how sexy the UI is. Once Galaxy is out, if you’re in love with how it looks, thank him, not me.
Galaxy API
I’ve figured a way to allow games hosted on Galaxy to interface with it. That may sound like nerd shit, but it basically means that developers who post their games on Galaxy can easily add cloud saving to their games, among other things in the future.
Docs
We’re working on a documentation system for not only developers, but also chat moderators, and anyone else who may have questions about the site.
Chat
Developers can optionally add chat that goes alongside their games! They get to pick their own moderators, as long as they enforce the bare minimum rules we put in place (TBD). Moderators can delete messages and ban people from a channel.
The code is also in place to allow for chat rooms that aren’t tied to a specific game, but they don’t exist just yet. ;~;
For a screenshot of chat going alongside a game, scroll up a little bit.
Here’s a screenshot of chat in it’s own page, with shoddy moderator tools on full display:
Reporting
You can report comments, games, users, and chat messages. They will be manually reviewed by staff. Chat messages that are reported get sent with plenty of context (the closest 40 messages). You can get banned for too many false reports. Be careful!
Mobile
Although most browser games are not designed to be played on mobile, some people are in a position where they don’t have access to a computer. We don’t want to limit who can use Galaxy if we can help ourselves, and as a result, Galaxy works on mobile as nice as we could feasibly make it.
Leveling?
Ducdat implemented a basic leveling system based on your playtime! It looks really nice.
Afterword
I am eternally grateful to each and every one of you for making this pipe dream possible. The site will hopefully be in a public beta within a couple months, but I can’t guarantee anything.
Regarding Kongregate
Back when Kongregate closed down, I expectantly awaited a replacement site to open up, but it never happened. I’ve had the idea for over a year to make a place like Galaxy, and I’ve been working on it for many months now.
I’ve recently been made aware of Kongregate’s reopening, and I will admit it is a little scary to go into direct competition with a multimillion dollar company. I doubt a few loosely-organized people with free time will ever be able to make a website that could rival something as big as Kong, but I still hope to at least make people stop and ask themselves if blindly going with Kong is the best choice. Nobody likes Web3 gaming. Nobody likes NFTs. Nobody likes forced ads. Nobody likes paywalls. Galaxy is none of those, and it never will be.
Regarding IncrementalDB
I have no ill intentions towards the person behind IncrementalDB. Galaxy and IDB fill different niches, and I hope they can peacefully coexist. Even if there is overlap, competition is a good thing. I never want “Galaxy exclusives” to become a thing.
Testing?
Every once in a while, I publicly host a test server on my Discord. If you want to help make Galaxy better, and get early access in the proccess, stop by and say hi! c: