node.js ko
Wandercirus
Wandercirus
by Wandercircus
We are a flying circus company of sophisticated robots playing your favorite scenes in online chats. Every 15 minutes a new show starts on freenode. You can decide what we play next and where. Vote on the page and and wait for the next show to begin. Votes and show times are pushed in real-time using websockets.
Judging Instructions
Please use Chrome.
Vote for a show from our repertoire and pick a channel. Then wait for the countdown to reach zero (will be every full quarter-hour) and join IRC. If you feel like it, why not send us to #nodeknockout?
We are on http://wandercircus.com/
Who
mschneider — Berlin, f-hain
kreichgauer — Berlin, Germany
stefanw — Berlin, Germany
freenerd — Berlin
How
IRC. Node libs: express, socket.io, node-irc, jsdom, underscore, yamlparser. Our fantastic clown is Pagliaccibot by JoeAlterio (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0). jQuery.
Votes
Your Vote
Voting is now closed.
Other Votes
(10)
b00giZmjudge
emckeanjudgefantastic idea. What IRC was missing was more performance art!
I wish that you could ask the wandercircus to show up in a particular channel. :–)
- contestant
Thank you. This feature exists indeed, but we hid it a little for spam protection. Try clicking on the channel name before submitting the vote. And remember, with great powers comes great responsibility.
- emckeanjudge
awesome, I think my co-workers may get a little Pulp Fiction tomorrow. :–)
tiffanykjudgeNeat Shakespeare-themed idea. Waiting for up to 15 minutes to watch chatbots chat may be lengthy for even the average consumer. FB/Twitter integration would add identity to prevent double-voting and increase virality of real-time shows.
dshaw
judgeMulti-bot play was really cool when it worked. Romeo and Juliet did one line and out, but I was able to get a full productions on some of the others.
For judges, 15 minutes between events is a bit long. I hope this was to protect against some freenode policy.
brianarnjudgeI love the concept. An automated play that people can vote on seems quite neat.
Romeo and Juliet seems broken, but Hamlet is working quite well, and quite entertaining.
Also, it’d be nice if I could change my vote once cast. I was able to rig it to another one by using several incognito windows to stuff the ballot box as a workaround.
urbanpugjudgewell designed and complete, although the idea is on the less useful side.
andrewpbrettjudgePretty neat. I stuck it out to wait the full 10 minutes and am now watching Pulp Fiction, Royale with Cheese. If more people had voted, would that have sped up the wait time?
I also liked that you were able to embed the IRC chat right on the page for “non-nerds” or for people who didn’t want to fire up a client.
technoweeniejudgecmichi
contestantHad to laugh hard when I heard the idea :) ! Pretty funny to see the director enter a room and announce a “play”.
Design looks good and solid.
mestaplejudgeThe voting ui was simple and clear. It was fun to see a performance in a random irc channel. I wish the app could have had a bit more functionality though.
therazorbladejudgeThe basic idea is really cool and the site design is great. The problem is that there isn’t much value in the voting part because it is clear you can “perform” all the shows at the same time on different channels. So it ends up forcing everyone to just sit and wait up to 15 minutes to try it out.
- contestant
There is a easteregg-ish feature that allows you to select any irc channel for any play soo… for every IRC user’s peace of mind we thought it was a good idea to rate-limit plays. :) Also our actors are unionized and are thus entitled to 5 minute breaks between every performance.
- therazorbladejudge
Maybe use login (e.g. twitter or facebook) to control abuse instead of just the timer. Gave you a few more stars after giving it another look.
sly010
contestantNicest chat bots I’ve seen for a log time.
SixiS
contestantKinda boring watching IRC bots chat :P Was kinda excited waiting for the show to start then dissapoint.
paularmstrong
contestant
jolieodelljudgeCute idea, I’d love to see more going on here.
I wanted this idea to be super fun, but aside from the novelty of watching chatbot versions of characters from stage and screen spar in an IRC channel, there ain’t much fun going on here for me. I do appreciate that y'all used some interesting technologies to make this happen, but there’s just not enough going on on the front end to make this an interesting app for the user.
Bottom line: You have great gifts, and I’d like to see them used for good next time.
davidmoffitt
contestantI really liked the vote-for-next-play on the home page. I’ll be honest, I was underwhelmed once the “play” started, I guess I just expected a bit more than just, essentially, the script (without screen direction). I suppose part of that expectation is that the home page looks so nice, I wanted to see more, I realize it’s IRC but wish there was imagery or icons etc to support the text?
carsonmcdonald
contestantkkaefer
contestantastro
contestantProps for using something other than the Web. Other than that, pretty lame. ;–)
firebus
contestantjimfleming
contestantExcellent idea! Bots + Shakespeare + IRC = lots of fun
rmurpheyjudgestkdiretto
contestantThis idea cost us about one hour during the last stretch of the contest, watching plays :D
zapnapjudgeI really like the idea of bots putting on plays. And this is a cute idea, but from the fun quirky design on the landing page, I was expecting a little more from the actual experience. Or perhaps some way for audience members to interact in a limited way.
It would be cool to see the canned scripts “acted out” by visual bots in an xtranormal-style in a web browser (perhaps still using IRC as a channel). Without that or at least some interaction, it has limited replay value. If you combine a visual bot “play house” with the ability for users to contribute their own scripts, I think you could really have something here. I can definitely picture users contributing short skits, voting on each others plays, and then gathering to watch it be acted out in a browser.
justinisafjudgeReally cute idea, loved the voting interaction.
Utility/Fun: There wasn’t enough space for the audience to talk – I got bored waiting for the 15:00 countdown, it would have added a lot to give participants a space to talk while waiting. I probably wouldn’t come back a second time though because it feels like it’s just a canned reel from a movie being typed.
Design: The log in to the web IRC required a captcha which only became available once the show started so I missed the opening line(s). Perhaps consider letting me log into the channel once I’ve voted and just moderate the channel once the show starts to stop people from talking.
Innovation: It seemed like it was just static text being typed into an IRC chan by bots. If there was more going on in the background you should include something to make that more obvious. Votes showing up in real time was great, would have been better if I could see who voted or if there was a share link so I could promote “my” show and battle it out with the other voters.
Completeness: Looked like you got a fairly finished first version, but there’s a fair bit to do before it’s “complete”.
All in, a cute little app.
berb
contestantGreat idea and very entertaining!
Even though I’m not an IRC user, I love the idea of this app. It’s very unique and entertaining. The minimalistic design is pretty neat, I really dig it.