I'm not sure if this is just me but the mismatch in pixel sizes and inconsistent palette is very jarring. This would be immensely more impressive if this actually matched the 8-bit aesthetic of like the NES.
This is great! Thank you for coming up with this.
edit- First 2 plays I watched are back to back homers. Go Royals!
Amazing, and I love every pixel of it. We know the MLB is famously understanding with creative repurposing of their data, so I wonder what live data you are using and if the rationale for use is something like small scale hobby/fair use?
I know when it comes to historical data, projects like the Sean Lahman Database have to go through quite a bit of trouble to reproduce "clean room" versions of historical data that are legally fine to use. I have to imagine there's a lot of complications when it comes to live data for anything that even has a hint of being more than a hobby project.
Awesome! Sometimes a thing conveys it was built with some love or intention. It's not restricted to fun/entertaining content, it can be Saas too. I'm talking more from how it looks and feels than necessarily what's going on in the backend, but I'm not really talking about graphics.
I'm not a sports person and other then going to a superbowl party really don't watch anything but this is really cool. I even put a game on the tv and was comparing it to the site. Very well done :) If there was some way to have live audio streaming in to hear what was going on while the screen animated it that'd make this perfect but I imagine that isn't really a thing that can be done.
Either way though, great job on this!
Very cool!
What a joy this is
Thanks! Glad you like.
"joy" is the word
This is brilliant. Can you make a sub-game, Streets of Rage II beat em up that you can play when the benches clear in a real game? Perhaps have Mortal Kombat finishing moves when the managers are fighting the umpires?
Ha! And when the batter rushes the mound. Jokes aside, like the idea of some interactive minigames between plays and innings...
PEDANT ALERT:
This is clearly 16 bit.
This is Hacker News where we appreciate these types comments.
I don’t watch baseball (maybe a couple games a year), but I think it could use some sound / audio, so you can have it running while doing something else.
IDK if there’s an easy way for the average person to get a live audio broadcast feed from games, so maybe your target market would be listening to that instead.
I’m thinking it could use some sound effects, for balls, strikes, hits, etc. I only tuned in for a couple pitches and then it was between innings, so maybe the more significant events already have something, and I just wasn’t patient enough to experience them.
I was looking away when the last out of the inning happened (or maybe changing views?). Is there a display of what caused the out, and maybe an animation of the fielders coming into the dugout, or does it flash up the “between innings” screen pretty quickly?
It might be nice to have a significant event summary available somewhere. It feels hard to believe that this would catch someone’s attention well enough that they’re watching the whole thing, and without audio cues / replays, I know I wouldn’t be interested in watching it for any length of time.
Couldn't find a live audio broadcast to embed, but that would be ideal. Will add some sound effects soon, and also like the idea for key plays/events recap in case you miss anything.
this f**ng rocks
Something about the way baseball itself is played seems to make recreations really satisfying -- like, more accurate? -- and fun compared to say, soccer hilights of matches on Youtube made with what looks like an EA soccer video game
I also really like the idea of recreating any type of event in this format. It's almost like photogrammetry but with as much creative intention as you have documentary. very awesome, very inspirational really
Thanks!! Agree baseball is a great match for this and just happens to have the data available, too. Have been thinking about what other formats this could lend itself to, as well. Golf and tennis would be great fits for sports, but data access seems limited/controlled.
For now, still a lot of work to be done for baseball. I'd love to get full in-field animation completed at a higher quality (think those 8-bit baseball iPhone games), and more details to give life to the stadiums and atmosphere.
When I choose "Full" view it should go to fullscreen view of the browser (hiding address bar, bookmarks, tabs, etc...)
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Amazing project! I'd love to see something like this for the football world cup. Maybe a FIFA 97 style?
I wonder if some kind of filter would work or we would need some data source. Looks much harder given the fast-paced nature of the game.
The thing that works for baseball is how slow the game is. There's plenty of time in between pitches to make the animation simple. With sports with constant movement like a WC match would require a lot more resources. Might as well be a game engine at that point.
Watching one of these live just brings home exactly how low activity a baseball match is. You can easily miss a pitch if you're not actively watching it and keep your attention span on it. It also brings to mind how much the commentary during a game keeps the viewer engaged. Live video and a good director cutting to different cameras also helps. Radio with out the color would be insanely boring:
Here's the pitch, low and outside.Ball 1.
30 secs of silence.
Here's the pitch, fast ball down the middle. Swing and a miss. Count is now 1-1.
30 secs of silence.
For sure. Have some ideas on how to make this more engaging. Though at the same time, this isn't really made for active viewing or to replace a live broadcast. I think of this more for the casual fan who wants to keep it on in the background while they work or multitask.
Love the look of this! Enjoyed watching a bit, will definitely have it on later.
One comment is, during “in between innings” when it was showing around the league and other stats, the text was really small on my phone. If possible I’d rather have it scrolling or switching between pages of data than trying to fit it on one screen. I get that on a tv or pc it’s probably the right size, so not sure if you’d want to spend the effort to have a separate view for small screens.
(this and Urgo's comments were posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48377493 a week ago, but since that thread didn't get much attention, I've moved them hither)
Awesome.
do the mlb streams flag a challenge?
Has the data, but I haven't built support to handle it just yet.
This is really cool! Would love a technical breakdown on how you put this together.
Agreed. As a developer, I'd love to see how this was done or if you have it out on Github.
Do you have a video of past livecasts to gt a feel?
Here you go! https://youtu.be/ILgyiNxCQHE
very cool! maybe make a soccer one for world cup?
Love this idea. Golf and Tennis, too. I think the main challenge for other sports would be less access to near-realtime game data down to the ball and player position, etc.
Football. Not soccer.
Tomato, tomato.
Depends if you mean Madden or FIFA. Then it's tomato and screwdriver
fun idea and gj execution, but the art looks like bad ai pixel art, at least on my screen. gives it that uncanny youtube music stream look.
Yeah because it is AI pixel art :/ But something also seems off with the AA right now. Going to try to fix. Then, maybe sponsor some artist-made sprites later if there's interest in the project.
This is a classic problem for people who didn't grow up making 8-bit pixel art. Typing "pixel art" into Nano-Banana only creates the illusion of pixel art, which quickly breaks down under modest scrutiny, particularly at larger resolutions.
That's why you can see "smeared edges," "fringing," etc.
Even a basic nearest neighbor downscale/upscale would have squashed some of the higher frequency noise.
OP: Look into palette reduction and pixel grids. This is a decent start as a post-processing tool for this stuff.
yes. i am more perceptive of bad art vs bad code. seeing so much bad generated art...everywhere...makes me wonder how much bad code is being put out there. art isn't load-bearing, but code can be.