Trap the Critters with Paint | Hacker News Reader

Trap the Critters with Paint

deepanwadhwa.github.io

60 pointsdeepanwadhwa23 comments

Overlapping zigzags quickly trap them. Since ‘trapped’ appears to be determined by the rate of bounces, you just need to divide the area as much as possible.

You can resize the levels to basically zero and instantly win each level

Resizing the window smaller makes the game a lot simpler.

It does. There are 100 levels.

Reminds me of the Brandon Sanderson novel, The Rithmatist, where creatures are also trapped in drawn shapes.

I drew a circle around the critter and it was trapped inside it, I didn't win? Did it in 4 strokes

Apparently you have to subdivide the areas so finely that they don't have enough room to exist.

It's giving Qix, a little bit, although the critter's different and the lines are way more freeform.

Bug, I think: the critter definitely can cross some of the paint lines, which was a little unexpected. It slows down but then it's on the other side of it.

Fun game.

The collision detection seems to have the same problem as the yin yang game that was posted a while ago: The critters sometimes cross the lines. I wonder if the root cause is similar, having to do with this being a browser game?

Nevertheless, fun little game

How do you win a level?

I trapped the critter with painted lines but when the time expired it said I lost :-(

Ah..you have to trap them REAL tightly and then they explode :-)

Helps to hold the button down and shake over the circle - if you don't mouseup it doesn't count as a new stroke.

Nice find, there is a limited length for each stroke though :)

It's easier to keep bisecting the area vs trying to draw a circle.

Reminds me of Xonix [0]...

[0]: https://dos.zone/xonix-1984/

JezzBall was also pretty similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JezzBall

Jezzball was a TI calculator classic.

This is what I did instead of learning AP Calculus :D

This is so nostalgic. I remember feeling like I was so good at Jezzball. In later levels I'd start a wall near one corner of the screen, closer to one edge than the opposite edge, to ensure the shorter wall would connect, and sacrificing the longer wall. The surviving wall would create a "corridor" in which to trap balls with tiny horizontal walls, often such that they ended up completely stationary.

Yes, this game is quite similar to JezzBall, or to a more modern example, Just Fillin’, which used to be available on the iPhone. I remember playing JezzBall back in the day on a floppy disk, and Just Fillin’ during the early days of the iPod Touch. It’s no longer available, but when I mentioned it, my 11-year-old son tried to recreate it, and honestly, I think he did a pretty great job.

Just Fillin’ iPhone gameplay can be seen on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqvnk05iTbs

My son’s game, Bleachclaw Bubble Bash, is available at: https://lotsofnoise.github.io/

Xonix is listed as a remake of Qix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qix

I encountered a version of this game sometime around 1990 and played the hell out of it. Since I don’t see any remakes from around that time, and I never had a Game Boy, I might have found it on a BBS, or a discount rack. There were a huge number of people briefly playing another game in this genre sometime around 2004, with lots of pretty colors. Everyone was playing it, and then they weren’t. I didn’t because I’d already played the original enough for one life. But I can’t find it in the list either.

I like it. I wish they'd bounce off each other too! - to incentivize getting em into the same zone.

I just predict their path and draw a very tight circle and they explode in just one or two draws :)

Very Cool and quite fun to play with

Reply on news.ycombinator.com