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Topic: games
- updated:
- 2010.07.16
- published:
- 2010.07.08
- topics:
- games
- javascript
UPDATE: My video game won 2nd place in the Boing Boing Games Inspired by Music contest! It is apparently now an "instant old-school classic." heh. I couldn't have done it without the support of everybody who voted. I really appreciate it.
Why hello there reader, I'd like to announce a video game I created called "Infiltration at Dusk". It is the near future, and the Artificial Intelligence is trying to rid Earth of all humans. The remaining villages have installed batteries of gun turrets as their only defense against the hordes of biomechanical abominations sent on raids by the AI. You, gunner, are the last hope remaining!
Play my game online now in your browser with Firefox 3.5+, Chrome, or Safari. It is an old school arcade/action shoot 'em up game with a couple twists. I created this game for Boing Boing's "Games Inspired by Music" competition where the idea was to make a video game inspired by a chiptunes song. (Vote for "Infiltration" in the poll at the bottom of the competition page!)
I chose the song "Infiltration at Dusk" by the very talented Tettix, off of his Technology Crisis II album. The album inspired me to create biomechanical monsters that you have to shoot, and the song inspired me to create a game that starts at dusk and gets darker as you play. The bullets from your gun and the exploding enemies light up the dark scene — that's one of the twists of my game.
I set out to enter this competition with two major goals in mind. My first goal was to raise the technical bar for games written in JavaScript rather than Flash. I wrote the game engine in JavaScript using the canvas tag for graphics and HTML5 audio tag to play the music. I wanted to show realtime lighting effects and have fast paced action with lots of sprites on the screen at once to help demonstrate the massive improvements in JavaScript performance. Rob Beschizza of Boing Boing and Offworld says:
Zachary's Infiltration was built with JavaScript and HTML5's canvas tag, but contains powerful lighting and blending effects normally the province of Flash — a perfect showcase for plugin-free browser gaming.
The other big goal I had for this game was to introduce a new input style for desktop gaming (my second twist). In Infiltration, you control where your turret shoots bullets by mashing on the keyboard. The entire keyboard becomes almost a touch input surface roughly mapped to the game screen.
Typically with action games on the desktop you target your bullets with the keyboard using WASD or the arrow keys, or you use your mouse to point in a particular direction. This always felt a bit too controlled to me when playing manic "bullet hell" style action shooter games. I would play my way up to dozens of enemies on the screen at once and end up dying in a keyboard crushing or mouse tossing fit. That's when it kind of dawned on me that it might be a bit more fun to mash on your keyboard in the general vicinity of the oncoming horde of enemies. I think it turned out pretty well!
If you haven't already, why don't you go play my video game and then be sure to vote for "Infiltration" at the bottom of the contest page.
Update: Check out this gameplay footage video and controls tutorial:
- published:
- 2009.08.31
- topics:
- games
I've been tracking the Experimental Gameplay Project blog since its return earlier this year. I decided to enter the competition this month when I saw the August theme, "bare minimum," which they suggested could be anything including "graphics, sound, gameplay — some have even been so crass as to suggest clothing!"
My idea was to create an extremely basic RPG with gameplay throwbacks to NES titles like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, but with even simpler graphics. The graphics concept I came up with was basically that anything in the game would be represented with giant square pixels of color. And then playing off the theme's implication of bare-as-in-naked, I came up with the game title: Equip > Pants. Here's a very brief review:
Having perhaps the highest hilarious: number of pixels ratio, equip > pants follows the exploits of a pantless hero who must don pants. -Experimental Gameplay Project
In the spirit of the Experimental Gameplay Project competition rules, I spent just seven days developing this game. I put in less than 40 hour of development time total.
The game is written in JavaScript, and should run fine in most browsers. Play it now. Click START below.
And after you've finished, check out the other games from the August theme. Just to give a few more technical details about the game: I used the DOM to draw the graphics instead of a canvas tag. Those of you with Safari, Chrome, or Firefox 3.5 should see a beautiful pixel font in the game thanks to an @font-face rule.
Oh, and don't mind the ABOUT / CREDITS link... that just goes to this blog entry. (Some places have linked to the game directly rather than this post.)
- published:
- 2009.06.28
- topics:
- games
A friend of mine runs umber° studios, an art gallery in south Minneapolis. The gallery is celebrating its second anniversary with a show titled "Together" that brings… together… all the artists who have shown work in the gallery in the last two years. The reception was on June 20, and the show runs through July 12.
Here's a photo of yours truly next to my submission — a nearly life size blowup of some pixel art I've been working on for Zachstronaut:
So like I said, the "Together" show was comprised entirely of artists who had previously shown work at umber. I had the great pleasure of showing a variety of fun pieces in a fall 2007 show titled "Play." The show was the idea of my friend Peter Smith, and I was very happy to have him invite me to be a part of it.
My art for the "Play" show was a juxtaposition (oh yes, I dropped the j-bomb) of video games I played growing up — which inspired my career path as a builder of the digital flavor — with the physical toys I used to build stuff as a kid.
First below, photos of four pieces done in LEGO brick on LEGO plate (left to right, top to bottom). Here are links to the games in question: Bubble Bobble (NES), Dragon Warrior (NES), Final Fantasy (NES), Super Mario Bros. (NES). Then, a piece constructed with dominoes, GORILLAS.BAS (QBasic).
Actually, I had one more LEGO work in the show which was the heart containers from The Legend of Zelda (NES), but that piece has sold. If you're seriously interested in any of this art or commissioning a piece, contact me.
Surprisingly, I've never become a regular Flickr user, but I imagine I should get high-res shots of these up on Flickr or somewhere eventually.
- published:
- 2009.05.08
- topics:
- games
- javascript
If you follow me on Twitter then you've probably learned by now that I've been out of the office at my day job because I had an emergency appendectomy. Today was my first day back, and I have to say I had a pretty good morning because I found out that a video game I made with my web team last spring — Handy Andy 2: The Ampersand Trail — won an award! (So now I can say I am an award winning video game developer. Heh.)
Hey, it is a Friday afternoon, you know that you totally want to spend it "researching" this game rather than working. And when you've finished playing Handy Andy 2, you definitely will want to check out the first game, Handy Andy's Key Quest, and play some Handy Andy Bowling.
Congratulations to the Handy Andy 2 team! Kamran Ayub did the graphics and Jesse Mullan did the sound, and both contributed to the overall insanity and level design. The games are written in JavaScript with a Flash bridge for the audio if you were wondering.
- published:
- 2009.03.22
- topics:
- games
- javascript
When my friend Jesse moved out to California, I made him a little venturing-west game (in the loose sense of the word "game") as a safe journey gift. He was just in town visiting for the last week, which reminded me of the game so I thought I'd post it. The game is built with JavaScript, and I did the graphics except for the flying manatee, which was done by Kamran.
To play, use your right and left arrow keys to move the Viking Jesse and blow up as many flying Manatees as you can. Click the image below to start.
