HTML5 Snake | Hacker News Reader

HTML5 Snake

xarg.org

29 pointscarmoicast15 comments

I said it last time and I'll say it again: I don't get why people are impressed by these demos. This game moves too quickly, there's no built-in restart ability, it uses alert(), and it's something easily assembled with a day's worth of javascript knowledge. And no, I'm not mad, but I just really want to see HTML5 evolve beyond the simple demo state.

Here's a game I made for my girlfriend in a couple of days for Valentine's Day: http://ektomarch.com/games/VDGame/VDGame.html (excuse me for the hammy dialogue)

I wouldn't normally make this public, but I think this better shows what's possible. It seems that HTML5 games haven't even begun to approach the state of flash games in the early 2000s, and this is a problem.

Also, I'm running on a cheap-o server, so things may die/not load.

I'm pretty sure we all welcome constructive criticism here :) If you want examples of HTML5 evolving beyond "simple demo" state, http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ is filled with examples that range from "complex demo" to "modern flash game" to "I can't believe its not OpenGL!". http://www.pirateslovedaisies.com/ is a pretty legit HTML5 tower defense game. I'm sure you've noticed Angry Birds in the Chrome app store. Game engine-wise, Impact and Akihabara are both proven for quality pixel art games. While there's no Kongregrate for HTML5 (yet), professional quality HTML5 games definitely already exist, and if you seriously want to see solo devs putting out quality work, you'll find it.

It -seems- like your beef's not actually with the state of HTML5, but with what you're seeing submitted to this site. Which I guess is fine, but more focused criticism would be a more better way to help push everyone forward.

Personally, I just like seeing people make things :) Or I'm just reaaaally laissez-faire.

Nice. I did the same thing last year. The code is https://gist.github.com/394216 and you can play it at http://snakezz.heroku.com/

That's fun! It runs pretty fast, though. You might want to have it start a bit slower.

You should also use requestAnimationFrame instead of setInterval.

    http://paulirish.com/2011/requestanimationframe-for-smart-animating/

Might also be nice to have a 'Start Game' button--I clicked the link and then got a dialog about losing. Blocks on the edges are also a little hard to get at. Nice job! Fun too. :)

These are the two things I would suggest, too.

Perhaps some instructions would help. I'm on a pad and lost 4 times in a row with no idea what I'm supposed to do. Tapping the "field of play" seems to have no effect.

A 'restart' or 'start over' button after the 'you lose' dialogue would be a nice addition.

Great game.

Having never programmed a game, I would have expected a lot more… code. It's super inspiring to see how simple (and readable) it is.

Seems like an elegant implementation.

One of my first games.. created last year: http://www.brokenresolve.com/projects/slither/. Source available at: https://github.com/xtrementl/slither

Ah, the snake game. One of the reasons I was so excited about my brand new Nokia 3310, back in 2003 :)

It was also one of the first games I made while teaching myself programming, in QBASIC, in 1997 or so. No graphics, it was all text.

HTML5 is fun. I wrote a game of life implementation as my first canvas experiment: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/119154/permalink/html5life/life.html

Any reason for having javascript alerts? Instead of inside the game window?

BTW the javascript alert shows up on a different monitor in my dual-head setup.

Great. I just wasted 30 minutes on it. Game on!

Javascript alerts are the bane of my existence. Could use a restart button. Otherwise, I like.

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