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
Suhinnall27 2 minutes ago [-]
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?
hatthew 50 minutes ago [-]
It's running at 3fps or something like that. Is that a me problem or a "lots of traffic" problem?
natnatenathan 14 minutes ago [-]
I understand your trepidation sharing this, given how often 'vibe coded' is used derogatorily. I like what you made, thank you.
pozol 55 minutes ago [-]
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!
jeromechoo 2 hours ago [-]
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.
hxii 1 hours ago [-]
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.
Thank you for letting me know!
p1necone 47 minutes ago [-]
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.
dolebirchwood 7 minutes ago [-]
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.
applfanboysbgon 1 hours ago [-]
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.
keithnz 52 minutes ago [-]
lots and lots of koi at the moment!
Cider9986 1 hours ago [-]
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.
I'd love a version without the multiplayer and just zen
mcint 41 minutes ago [-]
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.
Choice about busyness would be nice.
Jtarii 41 minutes ago [-]
You might want to prompt ChatGPT to increase the frame rate of the fish animation.
ecto 38 minutes ago [-]
You might want to prompt for some manners, and why humans have them.
emkoemko 4 minutes ago [-]
weird comment.... this was vibe coded so yes it has terrible performance why wouldn't we want more fps?
wateralien 52 minutes ago [-]
I do this with the screensavers on the Apple TV device. They’re amazing.
grvdrm 47 minutes ago [-]
Awesome. Top of bookmark list for a daily zen!
_qua 40 minutes ago [-]
Love it
suzukivenom 54 minutes ago [-]
thanks! had a really rough day
animanoir 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 23:37:46 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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
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.