Cool idea but as some others have said the website was running quite slow for me. I noticed it at first when hovering over the 'enter' button (so before even loading the pond) because the hover animation on the button kicked in really late feeling.
Then actually entering took a few seconds and it was quite laggy looking at all the fish.
Once those things are fixed I think the idea is neat. It would be cool to be able to interact with the pond in some way (click lily pads, drop food in the water, click the water to make it splash) but that might not be what you're going for with this
Seems like quite laggy (I suppose bcz of heavy assets and rendering). I would have liked it more if we had some interactive elments with the pond or the fishes because I can only stare at it for some seconds lol
I haven’t tried it on desktop, but it’s running silky smooth for me on iPhone. No lag at all. I see some others complaining of that too so not sure what the issue is.
Been on a train of thought recently that with AI making web dev so much easier that we should be making more beautiful experiences.
I have always felt ultra minimalism is partly a way of fighting bugs. Why can't we put more effort to make every site a great experience in of itself?
Been experimenting with going way beyond my usual frontend work for something truly special. This made me think if it. It's 10x the effort but that's about the same effort I put in before manually making a minimal one.
This is neat. I like the zen background sounds. I'm particularly fascinated by digital third places with extremely limited social interaction (like cursor camp by Neal). I think it has something to do with the impossibility of something like this happening in real life.
That said, I'm not sure how real the "koi you see are other people visiting the pond together with you" bit is. I only ever saw 3 swimming koi. Maybe that's the base.
Hey! That’s the base, correct. Three are always there so if someone joins and nobody else is using it – they’re never alone.
In essence, when you someone joins the counter goes up and another koi will spawn locally.
It’s a bit nerfed from my initial idea to sync the movement of each koi, but I might do that in the future.
It looks like the way I deployed (Railway) it causes `429 Too Many Requests` to be returned, so I’ll definitely have to look into that. But it’s 1:21 AM so tomorrow.
I noticed the koi pop in and out of existence on visible parts of the screen - it would be nice if incoming koi swam into frame from offscreen, and outgoing koi swam offscreen before disappearing.
Yes, that was very jarring. I didn't bother reading the intro text that said the other fish are other people on the site, so I just thought this was janky crap. The creator shouldn't assume people read anything. I see a button that says "Enter", I click - I'm not reading anything else. So it's going to cause a lot of confusion when I arrive in a pond filled with way too many fish for a zen-like experience, and even more annoyance at the constant flickering in and out.
It appeared to be real earlier, or at least simulated being real. I watched for 10 minutes and there were ~10 koi in my pool, with koi routinely flickering in and out of existence as though they suddenly joined or left. That said, I see three static koi now. Entirely conceivably that HN killed the backend and triggered a failsafe.
This is great! The sounds and visuals are a great way to recenter. Only UX thing I’d say, is it would be nice, and less distracting, if other “users/koi” popping in instead kind of faded in. Them suddenly appearing kind of pulls you out of the zen mode.
Awesome idea!
I really like the UI especially the about page. I don't think you are supposed to be able to see the about page on the playing page (it took a bit to start and then started when I was in about) but it looks good there with the blur.
Super cool, thanks for making this! I've been there with you on the perfectionism. Glad that 'good enough' won this time, and we're all the better for it. Keep going!
Looks like it locks the number when you first load. I had it open for 30 minutes, with just 3 fish, but after reading your comment, re-opened to find 3 dozen.
This is honestly super cool, and a lot of fun. I was about to say something about the koi fish spawning and despawning until I read that they are the other users on the site, which is an awesome mechanic. Is there a way to set this as a screen saver or background?
Then actually entering took a few seconds and it was quite laggy looking at all the fish.
Once those things are fixed I think the idea is neat. It would be cool to be able to interact with the pond in some way (click lily pads, drop food in the water, click the water to make it splash) but that might not be what you're going for with this
I have always felt ultra minimalism is partly a way of fighting bugs. Why can't we put more effort to make every site a great experience in of itself?
Been experimenting with going way beyond my usual frontend work for something truly special. This made me think if it. It's 10x the effort but that's about the same effort I put in before manually making a minimal one.
I want more koi fish swimming around my saas.
That said, I'm not sure how real the "koi you see are other people visiting the pond together with you" bit is. I only ever saw 3 swimming koi. Maybe that's the base.
In essence, when you someone joins the counter goes up and another koi will spawn locally.
It’s a bit nerfed from my initial idea to sync the movement of each koi, but I might do that in the future.
It looks like the way I deployed (Railway) it causes `429 Too Many Requests` to be returned, so I’ll definitely have to look into that. But it’s 1:21 AM so tomorrow.
Thank you for letting me know!
Here's a list of other sound/relaxation websites: https://fmhy.net/audio#ambient-relaxation.
This one is pretty funny but not relaxing to me. It may be a covid remnant: https://imisstheoffice.eu/
I'd love a version without the multiplayer and just zen
Choice about busyness would be nice.