Show HN: A game I made in 48 hours
joemanaco.itch.io
joemanaco.itch.io
TIME ZONE
How to play?
Arrow Keys Left/Right: Move left/right Arrow Keys: Up: Jump X: Shoot
Instructions: Try to reach the exit before your life counter reaches zero. You can earn valuable time by collecting Life Capsules. When you destroy an enemy they will drop Life Capsules. But be careful: Each shoot costs you time.
Play at itch.io: https://joemanaco.itch.io/timezone
Source code: https://github.com/JochenHeizmann/timezone-ld44 (will add Readme/Build Instructions later on when I got some more hours of Sleep)
Soundtrack: https://soundcloud.com/jochenheizmann/timezone-ludum-dare-44
Ludum Dare Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/timezone
I did everything from scratch (Code, GFX, Audio, Level Design). I've used Monkey (which transpiles to Javascript) to code it, Photoshop for the pixels (Artwise I was inspired by Downwell, which I tried to mimic, but I suck at art) and Logic and Renoise for the Music and Sound FX.
Have you ever tried using phaserJS?
http://www.sextonsmusicandgames.com/80s-classic-arcade-games...
probably want to make jump / shoot right-hand actions as well, like in most games
I really like the concept and wanted to play the game, but as it stands the controls are too annoying for me
because of the AZERTY keyboards. You can't detect AZERTY keyboards in a browser, so he would have had to create menus to allow players to choose the keys.
And if every other game out there can manage it, by definition it's not an insurmountable problem
> being right-handed (like most people), I prefer directional controls on the right hand and action buttons on the left.
It is right-handedness that led to this because it was used in conjunction with a mouse, so all those right handed players had a mouse in their right hand, meaning their left hand was on the keyboard.
If you, as a right-handed person, use a mouse in your right hand and the arrow keys in your left hand, you are very much in the minority. Even for games that don't use a mouse, this convention (and muscle memory) is so established that it makes sense to use WASD, even for right-handed players. However making it configurable is always desirable to accommodate the minority of players who might not want to use WASD for any reason.
If you're not an avid gamer or primarily gamed before keyboard + mouse was common, this might indeed seem strange. But for anyone who's gamed consistently in the past 20 years it is very normal.
Why not ESDF? I don't know why initially but today WASD is established convention.
A further argument for movement from the left hand comes from consoles, which starting with the NES if not earlier have consistently (always?) had the d-pad on the left. I remember having some trouble reversing that learning for the PC platforming games that used the arrow keys for movement.
ASDF used to be an option on first person shooters when they were first coming out.
How are the first FPS games relevant?
Retrofitting alphanumerics for game controls is such an ugly, kludgy hack, even if it’s very convenient (especially in games where you can text chat with other players.)
Feels like a carry-over of the PC’s “wannabe”ness as a gaming machine since the 1980s/90s.
https://github.com/prologic/monkey-lang
EDIT: NVM, that's not it either.
Yes, I wanted to implement a separate crystal for the enemy loot to make it more obvious, but I ran out of time.
I think I have to tweak the hit boxes a little bit, so it's more forgiving. And probably also change from insta death so you only loose time/life when you hit an enemy.
Edit: Finished level 3 with almost 2 minutes to spare. Would definitely play more of this. Specially levels that focus on forward momentum, like level 1.
You should be able to adjust the jump height by pressing/holding the up key. Didn't that work for you? Which browser/os?
PD: the music is the best part of the game, perfect for coding :)
Not a criticism, just an observation.
And I think especially in the sprite I took a little bit too much "inspiration".
I replaced the sprite now with something more unique. You can play the updated version here: https://joemanaco.itch.io/timezone
I really did enjoy the music.
As mentioned I did it in Monkey, but it should be also easy to recreate it in vanilla javascript, because all you need is a basic canvas you can render to, and there you go.
The real hard part was to get all the differents parts involved ready in time. For example the art took me alone around 10-12 hours because I'm really bad at graphics and I put a lot of effort and lots of trial and error in the animations.
The music I did in Logic Pro and Renoise, and it took only around 2 hours because I'm quite experienced in doing music (doing it since my childhood). But if you listen carefully you will find out that the arrangement is very simple, and it's also not mastered. Turning this in a full-blown-not-so-repeatedly track would take several days I think for me (I sticked to the 80:20 rule here ;).
The level design I did in Tiled, and I had the Tiled loader ready before the Compo started.