In the next days (or weeks) i will write some articles about how did i do my third entry to the annual js13kGames competition, called "Gravity".
I believe the topics i will describe is not only useful for who wants to build small games, but also for big games, or artists, trying to reduce the computing resources usage.
Prologue
I'm a big fan of stilling and animating html elements with javascript from 1998, with the Netscape's <layer> element. Then it comes the CSS age, where we get more power and fun. Aftera while Andrzej give us the js13kGames, where I'm participating on the from it's first version. Naturally i try to participate with HTML+CSS animations, and that works...
My first entry was "SimLand", a classic SimCity clone where each element is a completely build with html elements. House's walls and roofs are CSS transformed <div>s; animated wind power generators are elements with css animate with iteration-count:infinite; factory smoke was transparent text with high blur text-shadow. The game has nice features, but that is hard to grow and hard to make your population happy. And i get the 4th place.
In the second year my entry was "Dodos — Escaping from Extinction", where we must help free living dodos to reach the save point controlling only one attractive dodo. I believe the game is beautiful, it's visual features are pure HTML+CSS, also the waves are animated css gradients... But i did some wrong decisions. My game, again, was too hard to play, however, the worst decision was to put the game on the mobile category, while i only test it on desktops. My tablet was broken and i believe the android browser or any webkit based browser must work equal for the same css expressions, but they don't. I had earned nothing this year.
This year i decide to change somethings. I like canvas, i know canvas animations are faster than HTML+CSS, so... canvas it is. My game must be something for fun, not an ability test. I know... I finished with the game "Gravity" that is not for children, but please... You have an autopilot, your boids grownups faster then the enemy, and no other landing game accepts the hard impact i decided to accept without explode the ship. ;-) To know about the game history, please read the project description.
The next articles will be:
- metajs — a new language?
- A sky full of stars (soon)
- Drawing a ship with a keyboard (soon)
