Boba Jet a 2D HTML5 shooter

[LudovicCluber]

Hi, I'm a programmer, composer and hobbyist HTML5 game developer.

 

I just released my second game a few days ago.

 

You can play it for free here : http://bobajet.roostrjs.com

 

Boba Jet is a free 2D javascript / html5 canvas shooter.

 

Fight your way through various levels with your jetpack and your gun. Destroy all foes and travel through portals to rescue your brother.

 

This game was mostly about learning basics of video game programming and building a reliable and comprehensive Javascript game engine.

 

I'm looking for opinions on the game and joining an html5 game devs community.

 

[rich]

Please edit your post and add a screen shot of your game, thanks

[LudovicCluber]

Done.

[bolatro]

Very nice

[end3r]

I love the strange sound you make when you die

Also the music is quite good, I enjoyed playing the game. The most important part is that it's fun - well done!

[LudovicCluber]

Thank you!

 

it's try and die for the most part. Better if dying is funny. The death sound helps a lot in this matter.

[Evan Burchard]

Overall it's really cool. 

 

The amount of detail for the art is uneven.  The details on the main character and enemy sprites are extensive when compared to the background.  I want power ups (even just a charging one or full life one would be enough), and to remap the s-key to the z-key.  That would make it more standard.  maybe you were going for the letters having meaning?  I'm not sure.  I liked the song, but wanted another one for the cave, and maybe for the boss too. 

 

I like the smoke trail, and the shells that pop off when you shoot.  The particles from hitting an enemy, and the animation/noise when taking damage.  I like that there are times that are more clean up oriented, and others where you just need to get through an area quickly.

 

There are a lot of details that you worked in that make the game compelling.  I like how the bullets curve, and how it's both an asset and a detriment at times.

 

I got to the 2nd or 3rd cave stage.  I might attempt it again at some point, but it was a slog getting there!  You might know, but the game is really hard in places. 

 

I'm curious about the login/account create thing.  Maybe you could just store the user's progress in a cookie or have a distinct url for each level.

[LudovicCluber]

Hi fight_magic_run,

thanks you very much for your extensive review.

 

You can remap the keys in the controls menu. Or maybe you mean I should change default keys ? I think S and X are meaningful and natural to grab with the left hand index and middle finger. And I want to avoid A,Z,Q and W because of the AZERTY / QWERTY layout differences.

Which keys would be more natural according to you ? (avoiding A,Z,Q and W)

 

I'm all for power ups! glasses, helmet, gun, jetpack and green antenna you can see on Boba were meant to be power ups when I drew them. Power ups are great in arcade mode but don't really fit in the try and die normal mode. So they quickly became standard parts of the main character.

 

Maybe in a future patch I will add more power ups. For now there are only two of them.

One give you full life the other give one more credit. The second one appears only in arcade mode because in normal mode there is infinite credits already.

The full life power up is a heart. Given your progress in the game, you already saw it in several levels. There is one heart just before the first boss for example (level 1_14).

 

Each boss has his own song already. The song starts with the level not with the boss encounter. This is probably what you meant in your post.

I would love to compose more music and have different ones for the cave world. To me music composition is probably the funniest part of making a game. But right now with 5 songs and the SFX I'm almost at 10mo of sounds to load. It's already not bandwidth friendly even if the sounds load asynchronously.

 

The art is clearly not my thing... It's not something I enjoy. I'm more into programming and music. That's why I keep it simple.

 

I'm aware of the difficulty... My games are always too hard. I'm working on that. The game will be easier with the next patch.

 

The account creation for this kind of game is still blurry for me. I'm just testing. I should probably use the google+ and facebook login. I don't know yet.

 

Can you be more specific with the cookie / different urls ideas ? It does not seem strong enough for me.

 

Thank you again for your extensive review.

[mentuat]

really fun game and great variation across the levels to keep me wanting to play, my only gripe would be maybe you could ease the player into it a bit more and then increase the challenge as the player progresses

 

initially I found the S + X controls difficult to get to grips with - I instinctively tried to hit the space bar to shoot several times but it would scroll the window down and I would die immendiately!

 

the curving shot effect is interesting and I can understand why you chose to do that - but I found it harder to shoot enemies right in front of me unless staying perfectly still

[LudovicCluber]

Thanks for your comment mentuat.

 

The space bar is a pretty logical control key to shoot.

But I don't use it as default because even with a preventDefault() function some browsers still scroll down.

Maybe there is a better way to prevent this to happen ?

 

I'm easing the game right now.

[LudovicCluber]

I just released a new patch for the game following your feedbacks.

 

The game is easier.

 - There is a little less enemies during the first part of the forest world.

 - Boba has 25% more life and his shield regenerates 20% faster.

 - Flying enemies shoot 15% slower.

[Evan Burchard]

I like the patch for the difficulty. 

 

I didn't think of other keyboard layouts as a concern.  I'm used to having two adjacent keys for action keys though.  S and X feel unnatural.  Maybe you could have multiple keys do the same thing?  Giving a couple of defaults and letting players decide which work better for them.  Z and X for QWERTY people, and something else for the AZERTY ones?  It seems popular in unity games especially to have WASD and arrow keys both control movement. 

 

As for space bar, I wonder if this might be helpful for you: http://stackoverflow.com/a/940232.  That said, I'm a little skeptical about using space bar if you have 2 action buttons.

 

One interesting consequence of the player changing the controls is that the first level instructions in the background are wrong then

 

Why do you need accounts?  Is it just to save progress?  I'm saying that if you just want a player to be able to save their progress, then you can have a password system based on a url.  So if I visit http://www.bobajet.roostrjs.com/ then I can only access the first level.  But if I visited http://www.bobajet.roostrjs.com/level1_complete, then I could access the second level.  You could use whatever you wanted for this url though, so people can't guess (like changing "level1_complete" to "fHUBUShhew" or something).  If you're worried about needing an account to save high scores, you could just go with "Enter Your Name" after they die to save someone's name with a score. 

 

Where is RoostR JS by the way?  I saw it in the credits, but there was no link.  I'd like to check it out.

[LudovicCluber]

Having multiple keys to do the same thing sounds pretty good. I'm gonna work on it.

 

your link for the space bar problem seems broken.

 

To save high scores I use the simple "enter your name" system in Vortal Combat.

For Boba jet I wanted to do a comprehensive account system. Because the account saves your progress, high scores, controls, options and achievements. I also keep informations like the browser used and the average frame rate for each player. It's a lot of things to save.

For now it's just a test to see how players react to this account system. I have not decided what's best for my next games yet.

 

RoostRJS is far from beeing ready to be shown. The only almost user friendly thing for now is the level editor.

For everything else there is no user interface yet. It's ok for me because I know my program. But I don't think anyone else could find this helpful. So for now the engine is just for me. It helps me to prototype games very quickly. I save a lot of time with it.

I have a lot of work to do before I can eventually release it one day.