Show HN: An 8-bit live gamecast for baseball

Could you display live data in a browser tab title? Not just the score, but actually mostly when it's not between innings so I know when to switch back to it.

I also wish it was more zoomed-in on the action, but I get why that's not in v1.

Super cool! I used https://github.com/paaatrick/playball a few times to follow games, looking forward for updates.

FYI: The look is more 16-bit than 8-bit. 8-bit platforms like the NES typically showed less colors on screen than their 16-bit successors.

Super cool! Makes me nostalgic for my Earl Weaver Baseball fix.

The pace of events will always be a challenge with baseball (delays between pitches, missing when they do happen).

Some other mode like the Youtube TV: Catch up with Highlights, would be fantastic. Quickly replay the big events (runs scored, bases loaded strikeout to end inning. Maybe every hit and third out). It becomes a rapid-fire view. Or, similar thought, a rapid replay mode -- start from the beginning, replay each change with minimal delays between them.

Always love to see new baseball visualizations. Not necessarily a big fan of AI art, but it's cool how dynamic it is. Some constructive criticism: I think using a real pixel font and maybe writing a deterministic downsampling algo for the images instead of relying on AI would go a long way to make this look better.

Not to hijack your thread but in case anyone's interested in a physical scoreboard built on top of the same APIs using Raspberry Pis, I have a project as well. We also support software emulation if you don't want to buy parts.

https://github.com/MLB-LED-Scoreboard/mlb-led-scoreboard

You can see it in action here:

https://mlb-led-scoreboard.dev/

Love this! Charming and easy to follow, thank you!

I love this! If I were to suggest any improvements:

- Have a play-by-play view so users can see plays they missed

- Make the "between innings" tabs clickable rather than forcing users to wait for the cycle (cycle by default, pin if user clicked a tab)

- show glove on right hand for outfielders that throw LH

- maybe show baserunners taking leads rather than keeping a foot on the base

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!

vibe coded project people like = omg so amazing, you did so great. wow the ai art is so amazing!

vibe coded project people dont like = llm vibe coded slop, waste of the internet, why did you even try. cant believe you didnt pay hundreds of dollars to a human artist.

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.

This is so cool, I love these little scoreboard projects. The artwork is also such high quality.

I am a big fan of the ESPN CDN data api and have made a few "scoreboards" of my own. Recently I polished a simple html one at: https://mlb.ope.cool/

But I will most definitely be reaching for yours and tossing it up on the TV's in the office, this is so cool

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.

Best of luck with this. About twenty years ago there was a website that displayed play-by-play of games in progress with a much more minimal display than yours: just a scoreboard, balls and strikes count, and an indication of who was on base.

MLB crushed them with a copyright infringement lawsuit, claiming copyright over the plain factual description of the play-by-play. It was bullshit, of course, since simple factual descriptions aren't protected by copyright. But website guy couldn't fight MLB in federal court.

Sorry I don't remember the name of the site. I hope it turns out better for you than it did for them.

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.

Love it.. too bad MLB will probably send you a C&D over it.

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.

Ha! I'm watching the Astros game and I guess my stream is delayed because this just spoiled a home run. Great job!

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?

This is really cool! Would love a technical breakdown on how you put this together.

This is wonderful and well done. I wanted to do something with a single NFL game using the play by play you see on websites. Do you have precise enough coordinate data or do you interpret and extrapolate from a play-by-play description? Is the feed data free?

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

What a joy this is

I can't seem to scroll down thru the active games list :-(

The game I want to watch is a LIVE game but it's no longer one of the top 4 games

I see the scrollbar but it does not interact

(Chrome or Edge same issue)

You even got the ballparks and the middle inning transitions!

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.

This is really, really awesome. I'm going to let the folks at Pitcher List know about it!

PEDANT ALERT:

This is clearly 16 bit.

very cool! maybe make a soccer one for world cup?

When I choose "Full" view it should go to fullscreen view of the browser (hiding address bar, bookmarks, tabs, etc...)

This is great! Thank you for coming up with this.

edit- First 2 plays I watched are back to back homers. Go Royals!

I'm not sure if this is just me but the mismatch in pixel sizes and inconsistent palette is very jarring. This would be more impressive if this actually matched the 8-bit aesthetic of like the NES.

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.

Do you have a video of past livecasts to gt a feel?

this is one of the coolest projects I've seen in a while. Great work.

This is awesome!

Very cool!

Awesome.

do the mlb streams flag a challenge?

Incredible work! Do you have any plans to add sound effects synced to in-game events, or maybe even TTS-generated commentary? That could make the experience feel even more dynamic and immersive.

You all realize this is 100% AI, right?