Pistol Slut, a 2D shoot-em-up platformer in Javascript
pistolslut.com
pistolslut.com
The game could use a Game Over screen and way to restart (without reloading the page) on death. Otherwise, it appears that the core mechanics are well executed, and a bit more length and variation could only help.
Yes, I agree it needs a game over screen and a way to restart without reloading. These are both high up the list. The reason they are not there yet is that I think of the game as a sandbox at the moment.
I'm simply posting this to show off what I've been working on. I would greatly appreciate suggestions for improvement. I know the graphics are horrible.
Also, I really like how the bullets don't always aim straight. It's a cool bit of realism.
Gameplay: Guns: The three available guns are nice, but I want that mortar launcher.
Gameplay: Shooting: The ability to shoot multiple bullets and create alternative directions because of kickback is a neat feature.
Gameplay: Opponents Shooting: The infinite amount of bullets that the opponent has does not jive with my predicament. The shotgunner lays down a full spread of bullets while the mortar shoot covers from a distance. My theory was to wait for the opponent shotgun guy to run out of bullets.
Gameplay: MortarDude/Cover: The first mortardude fires directly onto a canopy, sometimes the mortar hits the canopy and explodes, other times when the trajectory puts the mortar on path to hit the canopy, the mortar falls through.
Gameplay: Damage: No clear sign that I was hurt by that last bullet that was shot at me while I was diving behind the tires. If you want to leave off a damage bar, take off body parts from the character accordingly.
The player will get the mortar launcher - still figuring out how to make the controls work.
I hadn't thought of giving the enemies limited ammo. I will try it and see how it feels. I haven't done any work on what weapons the player gets and when. This will come once I start making more levels.
Yes, a damage bar seems like a good intermediary step while I explore other options for showing bullet hits.
Other than this: fun game
Seriously, if you haven't done it already, find or make yourself a module that lets the user customize the keyboard controls to his/her preference. Then you can just drop it into any game you write, and presto! You're good to go!
For even more gooey goodness, make up some one-click "profiles" for different keyboards that users can pick at a click. You don't need to make it top priority, and you may not even need to do all the work yourself. If you just ask for people's preferences in a forum, or a feedback form with the game itself, you can probably get a ton of helpful input.
Best of luck!
1,2,3 + arrow keys would be a better choice for sure.
The reason that this isn't a problem for Flash is because Flash grabs and steals all keyboard and mouse focus away from the browser; not something anyone should re-implement in JavaScript.
I like the stick figures also!
That said, I noticed your loading bar reports xx of yy as it progresses, with BOTH values increasing. The 'of' value (yy) is traditionally fixed at the final value xx should reach, in order to give the user some sense of actual progress. I would recommend following that practice, if at all possible.
I'm considering doing an unrealistic Halo-like health system. That is, if you take too much damage too quickly, you die, but your health recharges when you're not getting hit. I think this allows set pieces - "I've got these resources to get through this section" - which is exactly what I'm trying for in Pistol Slut.
Maybe with a stronger indication of when you get hit it could work quite well without one.
If you can find a way to make it work using only layout-independent keys (arrow keys, ctrl, alt, enter, space, esc, etc) you will save yourself a lot of headaches.
(I'm on Firefox, Ubuntu)
i don't want to play a game that looks like it's from 20 years ago, the only difference being it runs EVEN WORSE than it did on a 486.