It's raining cats & dogs (devices)

[poncle]

 

(3rd HTML5 game) A 5 minute game for all ages, with minimalistic gameplay that gradually gets harder.

Try It's raining cats & dogs here

 

 

 

It would be awesome to get some feedback on this lighter version too, that is being optimized for mobile browsers.

[dhaber]

This game caught my eye because I've been working on a similarly themed game.   It has just been fun little side project, and I don't know when it will be released.  We took the "raining cats and dogs" more literally though, and so in our game a little boy is horrified to see a crazy cloud tossing down cats and dogs.   In ours the game play is different too.  Instead of dodging falling things, you are catching them.   The game play is like the old Atari game Kaboom.   Here is an early screenshot:   http://imgur.com/a/4fkdb#1

 

 

I really like the art style in your game.   The game play is nice and simple, though I didn't play for long enough for it to get challenging.

 

I tried it on a few platforms before I got it working:

• Google Chrome Desktop - The "loading" screen appeared, then it went blank and never came back
• Firefox Desktop - Same as Chrome
• Chrome for Android on an S3:  Unbearably slow, even with the lighter version
• Safari on an iPhone with the new iOS: The lighter version was playable.  It didn't fill the screen or remove the extra browser UI.   I didn't hear any sounds.

 

Random thoughts:

• There isn't that much being drawn or calculated, so I'm not understanding why it performs so slowly.   I think you should definitely be able to get reasonable speeds on any recent mobile device with this type of game.
• Sounds (where possible) would definitely add a lot of life to the game, as could background music.
• It may look better to have smoothly interpolated movement for the cat, rather than having it jump from one position to another.

 

EDIT:  

   When chrome fails it throws this error:

 

     Uncaught TypeError: Object #<WebGLRenderingContext> has no method 'measureText'

[-Ben]

Looks beautiful

 

Had no problems with either version on my galaxy victory 4glte, performance was fine.

 

same with chrome desktop.

 

I'd recommend displaying the critters health on the screen somewhere.  I thought that each drop hit was = to one life but I guess it takes a couple hits to lose a life?

so yeah that'd be more clear if there was a health indicator.

 

it's very pretty.

[techwiz]

Really love the art style. Tested using chrome on windows.....

[fatalfluff]

It stands out quite nicely against the usual standard vector graphics.

[SenadMMG]

Cool art style. Really unique art and uniform with UI.

I played several times on chrome for a few minutes and I saw no fishbone

[fatalfluff]

 

 

 for a few minutes and I saw no fishbone 

 

They take a while to show up 

[IndieDevAustin]

The graphics are great on this game. This light version ran great on my iPhone 4S in chrome. The only thing is that the game wasn't fit to the screen or centered.

[poncle]

Thanks everyone, it looks like the background is just too heavy on the normal version (10 huge textures to get a 2 seconds parallax scrolling effect between screens), yet more capable devices are handling it properly, so it's a shame to cut it out completely. Will try to scale down the graphics depending on the device in use.
 

@dhaber : it's weird that it doesn't work on desktop browsers, the game uses webGL only if your browser supports it, are other games working properly?

[Son of Bryce]

Looks good! Works fine in Firefox for me.

 

What did you use to make this game?

[dhaber]

@dhaber : it's weird that it doesn't work on desktop browsers, the game uses webGL only if your browser supports it, are other games working properly?

 

Strangely, it sounds like it works for a lot of other people.  I'm using the standard google-chrome-stable package on unbuntu.  WebGL works fine normally.   I just updated and your game still doesn't work there.  It is Chrome Version 30.0.1599.66.

 

It looks like every tick the console throws:

   Uncaught TypeError: Object #<WebGLRenderingContext> has no method 'measureText'

 

I don't do much with WebGL, and so I may be wrong, but I thought measureText was only for the 2d context?    A quick test in the console seems to reaffirm this:

> document.createElement('canvas').getContext('2d').measureTextfunction measureText() { [native code] }> document.createElement('canvas').getContext('webgl').measureTextundefined

That is in Chrome, but I get the same behavior in Firefox (Nightly 27.0a1 2012-09-28 linux x86_64).  

 

I am not sure what it means that it is working for some people.  Maybe this has changed in some builds of browsers, or maybe your engine is falling back to 2d for all of those people?

[dhaber]

I am not sure what it means that it is working for some people.  Maybe this has changed in some builds of browsers.    Or maybe your engine is falling back to 2d for those people?

 

I did an experiment, and turned on the "Disable WebGL" flag in chrome.  After doing so everything worked.  So, it seems like people who use a 2d context are fine, but if webgl does get used, the measureText() call inappropriately gets made against a webgl context that doesn't support it, and so errors and a blank screen result.

 

Also, when the game did start up I received the message to return my device to the proper orientation.   It looks like you may be deciding the orientation is wrong based on window size?   You probably shouldn't check like that against desktop browsers, or maybe when the orientationchange event isn't supported.   The way it is, some users may not realize that they need to make their window more narrow.

[poncle]

Thank you very much for all the testing, I cannot reproduce the problem in any way though. The only thing I can think of is the OS, tried on anything but ubuntu.

[thehorseman007]

@poncle

 

works nice on my desktop with firefox,

 

I think you can add a power-up called umbrella , it will be active for some seconds and it will protect the kitty from those drops, it will be more fun, i just want some kind of power in that game too. This was just my view and suggestion.

[revan]

I liked the way the cat changes its mimics