Review my HTML5 game(nuclearcarrot.com)
nuclearcarrot.com
Review my HTML5 game
http://nuclearcarrot.com/html5/frantic/
9 comments
I'd love to hear some more details about the design decisions you made and any performance tradeoffs you ran into.
Otherwise, it's a great start. Some things you might consider:
* Better explosions. You can get pretty good effects with expanding/contracting colored circles, or using an animated sprite. I'm not sure what would be more efficient in html5. For an example check out the explosions in http://mochiland.com/articles/flash-game-friday-death-vs-mon...
* Reduce the size of the player's collision box. Most 'bullet hell' shooters actually use a box much smaller than the player sprite to give the player a bit of leeway as they try to dodge bullets.
* There's a pretty big size mismatch between the player and the enemies, maybe even that out a bit? The small enemies are cool because you can have a lot in a wave, but as a player the small enemies felt frustratingly hard to hit sometimes.
* Bullet image sprites. Guessing there's a performance issue here but I thought I'd suggest it anyways just in case you haven't tried it. A nice bullet sprite will make enemy bullets easier to read and easier for the player to dodge.
Otherwise, it's a great start. Some things you might consider:
* Better explosions. You can get pretty good effects with expanding/contracting colored circles, or using an animated sprite. I'm not sure what would be more efficient in html5. For an example check out the explosions in http://mochiland.com/articles/flash-game-friday-death-vs-mon...
* Reduce the size of the player's collision box. Most 'bullet hell' shooters actually use a box much smaller than the player sprite to give the player a bit of leeway as they try to dodge bullets.
* There's a pretty big size mismatch between the player and the enemies, maybe even that out a bit? The small enemies are cool because you can have a lot in a wave, but as a player the small enemies felt frustratingly hard to hit sometimes.
* Bullet image sprites. Guessing there's a performance issue here but I thought I'd suggest it anyways just in case you haven't tried it. A nice bullet sprite will make enemy bullets easier to read and easier for the player to dodge.
very nicely done. I agree with the last part of this comment. The enemy bullets are a little off.
The player laser beam is awesome :P
The player laser beam is awesome :P
Hey thanks for he feedback everyone.
Design decisions: Dont rotate images - this really kills performance.
Try not to scale images - My rough performance tests said: draw 1 scaled image = draw 3 images.
As you guessed, Bullet images sprites were not done for performance reasons. I might try and add them again and see what it looks like.
I'll experiment with bigger enemies / explosion images / collision box changes.
I'll write up an article in the future covering my decisions in more detail. And yes I hate it when HTML5 games kill my CPU I was going to make sure this one didn't do that.
andy
Design decisions: Dont rotate images - this really kills performance.
Try not to scale images - My rough performance tests said: draw 1 scaled image = draw 3 images.
As you guessed, Bullet images sprites were not done for performance reasons. I might try and add them again and see what it looks like.
I'll experiment with bigger enemies / explosion images / collision box changes.
I'll write up an article in the future covering my decisions in more detail. And yes I hate it when HTML5 games kill my CPU I was going to make sure this one didn't do that.
andy
Impressive! Was really surprised at how little it taxed my system, usually I see my CPU graph shoot straight up. Would love to know how you optimized it as that's the biggest drawback with most HTML5 games I play.
Looked great! Maybe you can write up a post or article about how you made it?
It's an inspiring demo of what can be done in HTML5. Also a fun game.
To be honest, I prefer your "Cat & Mouse"...
edit: perhaps you should change 'cursors' to 'arrow-keys' or some variant in the instructions.
Won't work on iPad etc.
Any feedback welcome.