Missile Game | Hacker News Reader

Missile Game

missile-game.com

57 pointskqr45 comments

More context: this was a Flash game that was popular in my social group 15 years ago. In that version, you started on level 1 and had to clear X obstacles to move to the next level. Then when you cleared X obstacles on level 9 you won the game. (I don't remember what X was, specifically.) You had five lives across all levels and when you crashed out the fifth time, you had to start over on level 1.

This modern remake seems to pop you into level 9 with practically infinite obstacles and just one life. Makes sense since most people who got good ended up fairly consistently reaching the end of the game. I'm sure they would have wanted to play only level 9 and compare with each other how far they could get.

Sadly I am not good at it and probably need those first 8 trainer levels

They are accessible, press "M" to open the menu.

Here are links to the flash game this is based on:

Embeded: https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/games/missilegame3d

SWF file: https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/swf/roboman/missilegame3d(w...

I much prefer the flash version, when run in actual Adobe Flash (Flash Player Projector 29, OS X 10.9, Intel i7-4790K). Something about the controls feels much tighter versus the web remake.

When played in the Ruffle flash emulator, there's something wrong with the collision detection; I can't get past the first level. (The visuals are wrong too, there's much more aliasing.)

I love the dedication to the vintage OS. Is that a hackintosh?

Yes! It was purpose-built to be as fast as possible while retaining Mavericks compatibility. https://jonathanalland.com/old-osx-projects.html

The ability to keep running things like Flash is a nice bonus. (I do use flash projector, a standalone Adobe app which loads swf files; I would never run outdated flash in my web browser.)

Why does it start on level 9 by default? Also, this really could use an "invert Y-axis" setting.

> This game is one of the tests for the pilot to demonstrate the Eye-hand coordination. As a pilot, you are controlling a missile / flighter aircraft to pass through the obstacles as much as you can. Generally a qualified pilot can survive in level 9 up to 100 obstacles.

Doesn't answer *why* it starts at level 9, but level 9 appears to have some significance.

A pigeon would be good at this game. https://www.military-history.org/feature/pigeon-guided-missi...

Oh, I've recently made a similar game in godot:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8f6Q64ihHm0

You can play it here:

https://gotm.io/godotacademy/flight

And download the project files here:

https://godotacademy.gumroad.com/l/endless-flight

Seem to be fun. But I can never play this with not inverted y-axis

Would've played longer if it would've allowed me to change mouse sensitivity.

Make it reset faster so I can can fail faster. :)

Yup, this is one of the top things I pay attention to when making arcade games. The game over screen should put you back in the game immediately after a key press.

> This game runs in desktop browser only as computer mouse is required for precise control

What if I have a mouse connected to my phone?

I wonder if phones have cursor support. Obviously they have to for touch-based text editing, but it feels different. Touch screens inherently have dead zones with no input, a cursors position persists. I imagine there are a couple of gotchas if you were to try to implement this yourself. Fun to think about.

Android does, at least.

iOS does too. Might have to enable it in Accessibility settings, IIRC.

They do, both iOS (and iPadOS) and Android.

You are correct that it is pretty interesting how they went around implementing the interface. Look up some YouTube videos if this interests you.

Another clever thing is that you can connect an iPad to your Mac and control both with the same mouse, jumping over screen to screen with the cursor (dragging files, etc).

Reminds me of this very similar game I like more: https://www.kongregate.com/games/tenebrousp/accelerator

That link crashed my browser with its cookie popups.

Color or shading would go a long way towards telling obstacle from hole-in-obstacle.

You say that as if shading is a feature to add. Shading is the default for 3D libraries, so this developer went to extra effort to toggle on cell-shaded mode to remove it on purpose.

It's not obvious to me the developer was using a 3D library! It looks like this was made in 2010, and uses and SVG library and vanilla Javascript. https://github.com/bwhmather/missile-game

The flash game it's based on does have more textured walls, although overall shading is still pretty minimal. I don't know what 3D flash development was like.

This is fun on mobile, tested on ios; I had to close the “works on desktop only” popup (via a popup blocker), but then I could tap to move in that direction and I enjoyed playing this way.

Requesting Desktop Website also works.

If you make something that lives on the web and doesn’t support all platforms, please consider showing the unsupported platforms a screenshot or video.

Or, well, just let them friggin' open the thing at their own risk. Grrrrrr.

Cool! Quite difficult (reverse scroll makes it tough on trackpad). I have a soft spot for games that let you play within 2 seconds of boot, and this does, congrats on that. Is it intentional that it starts on level 9?

You can change the level under Menu > Setting

This is why games have UI designers.

Cool! This reminds me of Master of the Lamps that we loved to play on the Commodore 64.

https://www.c64.com/games/262

FWIW I’m happy to try it anyways even if it doesn’t work on mobile. The popup is the only reason I currently have no clue what the game might be like.

It's like I'm flying through Space Armada in Star Fox all over again.

"whoop whoop...wing damage"

And.. this reminds me of "Tunnels of Armageddon" a DOS game from 1989 ...

Impossible to play with touch pad.

this anyone knows this exact game but for keyboard/keyboard-centric?

Too hard

Yeah, It was so fast I gave up before even really understanding the controls. Never made it beyond the second obstacle.

this game is more then 15 years old, I remember it on break.com!

> Sorry... This game runs in desktop browser only as computer mouse is required for precise control

Meh. :‘(

Did you really expect to get very far in the game anyway with just arrow keys toggling constant-velocity motion?

I expected to be able to at least open it...

Just curious, ignore me if I'm annoying, but are you navigating the internet entirely without any ability to click a mouse pointer in any way?

Its too hard for me.

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