[HN Gopher] Show HN: Not My Cows - Save your cows. Blast the met...
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Show HN: Not My Cows - Save your cows. Blast the meteors. Giddy up
I made this straight vanilla JS game for a game jam a few years
ago. Considering coming back to it and fixing the bugs and
gameplay. https://github.com/jonfranco224/not-my-cows if anyone
wants to check the source. Edit: y'all seem to be enjoying this! I
spun up a quick Twitter/X for game updates if anyone is interested
- https://twitter.com/notmycowsgame
Author : whothatcodeguy
Score : 66 points
Date : 2023-08-17 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (notmycows.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (notmycows.com)
| swyx wrote:
| this is great! audio is too loud when i first spin it up, perhaps
| lower it a bit or give obvious controls. some of us work in an
| office haha
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| oh! so sorry lol. maybe ill default to it muted, or just have
| the sound start a little softer to give players a chance to
| modify it
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| After a while my cows walked off the edge of the screen! The farm
| needs fences - or you need to be able to herd your cows :P
|
| Also, a score, a score would be nice.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| Those pesky bovine. Noted and agreed for next version!
| Wonnk13 wrote:
| holy cow (pun kinda intended) I don't do frontend work and was
| expecting the source to be some giant React / whatever project.
| It's mostly all in a simple index.html that even I can mostly
| grok. cool.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| that was the only way i could finish it in two days for the
| game jam, plus I love just coding in one file when the
| project's scope allows it
| netsharc wrote:
| The meteors explode into tiny particles. The cows should explode
| into tiny burgers!
|
| This sounds like a "get rid of the duck"[1] comment...
|
| [1] https://www.simplethread.com/looks-great-lose-the-duck/
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| cows making more cows and exploding into tiny flaming space
| debris burgers, v2 is gonna be wild
| zamadatix wrote:
| It might be cleaner to use event.code instead of event.key that
| way non-QWERTY users don't have to play finger twister.
| Unfortunately, Safari+Firefox don't leave a way to then determine
| the correct letter to display until after the user has already
| pressed the key which makes the initial "press this" a bit more
| difficult to write as you have to put a picture in the message
| clarifying you mean the WASD area not literal letters. Chrom* has
| an API for resolving the character outright though.
| pvg wrote:
| If you haven't come across it before check out SABOTAGE here
|
| https://archive.org/details/a2_cple_Game_02a
|
| Similar setup but with some clever additional mechanics that
| might be worth stealing.
| gammarays_ wrote:
| Also want to mention Paratrooper -
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_Paratrooper_1982
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| i love that archive.org has all of these
| pvg wrote:
| Paratrooper is effectively a clone of Sabotage, it looks like
|
| https://retro365.blog/2021/04/07/bits-from-my-personal-
| colle...
|
| It's interesting how much depth you get out of the additional
| mechanics, unsurprising the game itself was copied a great
| deal but coming up with engaging twists on seemingly trivial
| gameplay seems to have been a lot harder to replicate
| consistently.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| Love it, i'll check it out
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I remember how irrationally amusing it was to shoot the
| parachute and watch the enemy splatter. It made the difference
| between a memorable game and a merely-decent one.
| _adamb wrote:
| Fun! It's very pretty. I'd love to see you keep developing around
| this (same game or similar games). You've got an eye for it for
| sure.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| Thank you! My brain tends to be a carnival, might as well take
| advantage
| mbfg wrote:
| It's amazing how such retro games are still humourously fun.
|
| My only nit is i wish the ammo came out of the muzzle of the
| cannon.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| I love nits. I can make that happen for the next version.
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| Pretty fun! There is a bug in the particle/bullet handling code.
| If you move left to right while fire, they maintain the X
| coordinate at which they were fire as you'd expect.
|
| But if you move from right to left while firing, their X
| coordinate moves with the player.
| mNovak wrote:
| FYI, you can move the character infinitely far out of the game
| window. Doesn't help you win, but confusing when I got "lost"
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| good catch! the cows can also just leave the window if you wait
| long enough. think im going to add some barriers on the side.
| pstorm wrote:
| Here is a direct link to the github.io page:
| https://jonfranco224.github.io/not-my-cows/
| corry wrote:
| 1) Love the JS-only angle, beautiful!
|
| 2) The combination of cows spreading out and your 3 axis of
| action (left/right + angle of gun + timing of shots) is really
| cool.
|
| 3) Consider levelling. Every x asteroids, there's a pause (the
| cows get into the barn to sleep), player rests a moment, and then
| sun rise and play resumes with faster / more asteroids. Have the
| cows re-clump after each sunrise and spread out from there.
|
| 4) Kind of silly, but if the cows bred more cows infrequently
| that would be cool.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| lol cows just making more cows, the game would be so chaotic
| thats amazing
|
| also, it can be a bit tedious but i love the control of JS
| only. it keeps the game super compact and easier to debug.
|
| I'm glad you liked the 3 axis of action! I'm still vaguely on
| the fence about it. In ways I feel like it makes the game too
| complicated for casual play, but maybe I'm overthinking it.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Nice work! Once I figured out I could hold in the spacebar
| without consequences it got pretty easy.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| It was fun spraying around until I realized I could just hold
| down the spacebar and shoot over the two cows on the left side
| (who never left that side) and the asteroids couldn't get
| through. I think you need to add damage when it hits the farmer
| and you die when you get hit x times. And have the cows cross
| over to the other side. Maybe they start to get more and more
| agitated too.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Similar experience, but I did enjoy figuring that part out. I
| would also figure a way to increase the challenge over time.
| Maybe the asteroids get faster? Maybe the cows walk farther, or
| away from each other? Infinite level games are most fun when
| the challenge increases.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| Yup, there is definitely a cheat mode once you find it. Totally
| agreed on callouts and suggestions. Damage and mechanics need
| to get balanced out. The cows being more reactive would be
| super funny, maybe some more explosions on the ground that can
| affect the farmer. Still thinking through the asteroids... like
| they're just on a random number generator right now but i think
| there needs to be a little more thoughtful difficulty ramp.
| zengid wrote:
| This is awesome! Can you please make spacebar fire as well?
| jonlacework wrote:
| Definitely! Give it a try, just pushed.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Pretty fun. Could use a mute sound button as well.
| [deleted]
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| There should be one above the game window. Is it not
| visible for you? I can always add into the actual game UI
| if thats easier to spot.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I have a mute music button, but the sfx still fire.
| zengid wrote:
| HELL YES THANK YOU
| karaterobot wrote:
| The game gets easier the further it goes, because you have fewer
| cows to protect, but the number of meteors does not (seem to)
| increase. Once I got down to only two cows, I didn't have to do
| anything to protect them in certain rounds, because the meteors
| just missed them.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Page doesn't seem to work for me, I get DNS address could not be
| found.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| Does it still do that for you? i'm trying on a few devices and
| seems to be working
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Yes. Could just be on my end though.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| If anyone out there on the internet sees the same, lemme
| know
| [deleted]
| user_7832 wrote:
| Great game!
|
| A few points: Firing while moving left and right cause a vertical
| line/diagonal line. Something in the physics seems to be
| asymmetric. (This is also a nice "trick" to play on easy mode.)
|
| A highscore would be nice. (Apologies if it's there but hidden by
| my dark mode.)
|
| If on battery on laptop and on a low battery situation, the game
| runs ~40% slower. Initially I thought this was the normal speed
| until I plugged my laptop in. The true normal speed seems a bit
| fast for me, maybe a speed option would be nice?
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| These are all great callouts. I actually experienced the laptop
| piece myself. Definitely improvements to be made from the game
| jam state of this.
| recursive wrote:
| The arrow keys control the game but also scroll the page. This is
| really distracting and kind of hard to use. I'm on Firefox for
| Windows.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| I'll debug this, thanks for calling out
| mNovak wrote:
| Same happens on Brave/Windows
| civilitty wrote:
| IMO a gun overheating mechanic and increasing difficulty would
| make it a full game.
|
| Holding down fire to spam and sweeping the gun back and forth
| creates a wall of bullets that eliminates most of the asteroids
| right as they appear and sweeping towards the fastest asteroid
| easily catches any stragglers, completely breaking the mechanic.
| whothatcodeguy wrote:
| This is the first thing I think I'm going to address. Every
| time its been play tested thats the first thing people do.
| Smart humans gonna smart.
| leca wrote:
| You can even simply point in a direction above the cows and
| slightly above ground and ammo act as a shield and nothing
| can get through
| quercusa wrote:
| _Missile Command - Bovine Edition_ Very fun!
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(page generated 2023-08-17 23:01 UTC)