So I have been messing around with some idea’s for a game and I have come up with something which might have some potential.
Take a look here and let me know what you think.
Look past the graphics or lack of. Its the gameplay Im working on at the moment.
I had some feedback that the game seems way too easy to play. I have tried to rectify that. The ship controls are a lot more sluggish. Its not so easy to just get out of the way of the rocks.
I also have a test large UFO that come in and fires in random directions.
Why not give it a go and let me know what you think.
I’m trying to practice writing games.
In order to force myself to finish each one I set myself a timescale to complete. They will all have features that never make it into the released product. To date I have released Galaxians and Asteroids in this way.
You can help determine what happens next.
If you want to see the games improved now is your chance. Send me a message in the monkeycoder forums or write a comment here on this site.
Feeling shy ?… send me a message from the Contacts Page.
Let me know what you think. What works, what sucks, what should be changed or added. If I get interest in any of the games I write then I will return to make improvements.
If I get nothing but Golden Silence then I will consider the games as done and move on.
Im enjoying using Monkey so much that I thought I would convert my Asteroids game. It’s all going pretty well. I have most of the code converted now.
Wanna give it a go ?.
Select it from the menu or click here
I seem to have had a half decent response to the game so I decided to devote another 6 hours to it.
Click the QB Galaxians link in the menu to find the latest WIP version.
Current New Features are :
Graphics for enemy and player explosions.
Less prominent stars. They are nice and colourful now too.
Some sounds which can be toggled with the S key.
The sounds are for player shot, player explosion and enemy explosion.
Enjoy
Additional :
Font background is now transparent
Font changed to a thick CGA font.
So I hit the 24hr mark and this is the result.
I still think it needs more work but Im pretty happy with what is a working game.
Select QB Galaxians from the menu to give it go.
Any feedback welcome.
There was a distinct lack of interest in the tutorial so unless I feel the urge or someone expresses an interest it has gone on hold.
The asteroids game… well… I have lost interest in that too… no one else seems to be interested either so no loss there.
On a more positive note I have discovered the joys of being a MonkeyCoder 
I feel I have learnt it enough to give a go at writing something with it.
I have decided to try writing a galaxians game with it. Rather imaginatively I have decided to call it QBGalaxians. Who says I lack imagination !?
I have also decided to try doing things a little differently this time. The whole project is run as an Agile project. Given the amount of spare time I have I figure 6 hours of work per Sprint sounds reasonable. I can get that much work done in a week. I have also given myself a deadline. I have limited myself to 4 sprints. The comes out as 24 hours work.
The whole game has been broken down into stories. A story can be anything from a 15 minute to a 2 hour coding task. I pull in 6 hours of work per sprint of work. When coding I will not deviate from the list of stories. No sneaky extra features. With everything time boxed I cant afford to faff about. To ensure I dont get carried away I have restricted myself to finish the game in 4 sprints. 24 hours sounds like a nice deadline.
I have just completed sprint 3 and it is looking pretty close to a finished game.
If you want to see the progress click here to run the html5 build of it.
Once you are in the game use the cursors keys to move left right and Z to fire.
Work is about to start on the fourth sprint. I have had to be pretty brutal to pick what makes it into the game and even more brutal in this last sprint to ensure I pick the absolutely necessary stories.
It wont be the perfect game I initially envisioned. If I am going to be honest if I were to try and get it all written then there is every chance it would never get released.
It will however be finished. If I feel like it or if anyone expresses an interest in the game then I may run more sprints to enhance the game.
Otherwise I will move on to something else.
QB Asteroids - Now with sound... sometimes
Its been a long time since I have had any time to look at this code so I figured I would just post up where I got to.
This is pretty much the same game as before but now it tries to play sounds. In keeping with the rest of this project the sounds are not an external resource. It is all generated with code.
It sounds a bit raspy in Chrome and Opera remains silent.
Still… its progress of sorts.
You can find this latest version here
The time between updates is huge but this is still being worked on.
My current goal is implementing some sort of sounds. In keeping with the general theme of ‘no external media’ the first challenge was how ( if possible ) can you create and play a sound in javascript. The answer is that it is possible. You can create a wav file in memory and then get the audio tag to reference it.
A big thank you must be given to Steven Wittens (Here) for showing how this can be done.
The bad news is that for some reason Opera doesnt want to play ball. So for sounds I am now reduced to a list of Firefox, Safari and Chrome as browser platforms. I’m hoping that eventually Opera will fall in line.
Of course next I needed some way of generating sounds. I wanted to work it out for myself and I have something that allows me to make something approaching usable sounds. There is also the issue of having several sounds playing. The control of the audio tag is still currently very limited so I need to try out a few different ways to come up with what I think works best.
The code I have is still very much rough and ready and until I clean it up a little bit I dont want to release it.
So… to sum up… I have something… but Im not sharing… yet.
–> Here <– is the latest version of my version of the arcade classic asteroids game written using the Canvas tag introduced in Html5.
New features added this time are :
1. Big UFO makes an appearance. Note : It doesn’t actually shot yet.
2. Hyperspace works. You should not appear inside any object.
3. You now start the game with 3 lives. You will only re-appear after losing a life when it is safe to do so ( as with hyperspace you will not appear inside an object ).
4. When objects are destroyed debris is produced.
Comments / emails are always welcome.
Let me know what you think.
