Jangaron - new browser-based lightcycle game

[Jangaroo]

Looks really cool, but it seems like the AI can turn much faster than you can. Starting in the middle of three also makes it very difficult. About all you can do is turn around and go out the back.

That's not the case. All light cycles can turn at every unit. Every 10th unit has a white line. The AI only reacts faster than you! More on tactics below...

Or accelerate as quickly as you can and turn right at precisely the correct moment.

wrtlprnft, that's a stategy I use, too!
Another one is to make a small "side-step" quite early. Stupid AI only turns when there is a wall ahead, and so rushes by your LC. You can go straight through all 3 enemies and turn when behind their starting positions.
It is also fun to vary the AI player's speed (by setting their "Min. speed").
Would you like to see faster acceleration / braking, too?
I'm getting a space problem in the player configuration table!
Other features I plan:

• Save settings as a cookie, so you don't always have to start from scratch
• assemble player images (let me surprise you, it's gonna be cool!)
• 2D overview, probably just at the end of the game (in retrospect)
• Looking left and right (mentioned before), maybe even a rear mirror
• Show players' names during the game

Whaddayouthink? Can you prioritize?

I just set up a voting at the Jangaron blog, so please submit your vote there!

Btw., did you try Jangaron-mini in my blog, or even integrated it on some other website?

[DDMJ]

Btw., did you try Jangaron-mini in my blog, or even integrated it on some other website?

It doesn't seem to work on Safari 3.0.4 .

[Jangaroo]

Btw., did you try Jangaron-mini in my blog, or even integrated it on some other website?

It doesn't seem to work on Safari 3.0.4 .

DDMJ, I started testing with Safari 3.0.2 beta on Windows, but recently upgraded to 3.1. The 3.0 version for Windows seems to never have made it as a final and is no longer available. Since I don't have a Mac, I'm sorry to say that I probably will not be able to support Safari 3.0. Or do you know where I can still get the 3.0 beta for Windows?
And: why not upgrade to 3.1?

[ed]

Having played it for a little while, I'd say I was pretty impressed with it. Although it does have a little way to go to keep me coming back for more.

A couple of ideas...

I know it's mentioned by yourself, but I think glancing, or some kind of 2d overview would make a huge difference. I find myself playing blind most of the time, with only guesswork to help me strategize ways to kill the ai.

Some kind of cockpit overlay would be nice, so you could feel that you were actually sitting in a lightcycle.
Plus if glancing were used, (/me steals Lucifer's idea) how about that overlay scrolling left and right as you glanced. To give a greater overall feel of being inside the cycle.

I won the match but was not properly congratulated
An online score system would be nice.
So, when I did win it said something like:
Congrats, you've won in 54.54 seconds, you are rank 44, please enter your name....
Then, the top ten scores are displayed. Give me something to fight for.

Anyhow. Nice work!

[DDMJ]

DDMJ, I started testing with Safari 3.0.2 beta on Windows, but recently upgraded to 3.1. The 3.0 version for Windows seems to never have made it as a final and is no longer available. Since I don't have a Mac, I'm sorry to say that I probably will not be able to support Safari 3.0. Or do you know where I can still get the 3.0 beta for Windows?
And: why not upgrade to 3.1?

The sad true reason why I hadn't upgraded to 3.1 is that whenever I'm doing stuff relatively important, that damn Software Upgrade application pops-up and wants me to install 5000 new upgrades and restart my computer.

Anyways, it does work on Safari 3.1 .

[Jangaroo]

Greetings ed,

thank you for your straightforward feed-back!

I know it's mentioned by yourself, but I think glancing, or some kind of 2d overview would make a huge difference. I find myself playing blind most of the time, with only guesswork to help me strategize ways to kill the ai.

You are right, but I still have to figure out a way to include a birds-eye view without spoiling the game. By spoiling I mean that if you can see the whole grid from above, you probably wouldn't look at the 3D view at all anymore. I think the main point is to see where the others are and how to reach them.

Some kind of cockpit overlay would be nice, so you could feel that you were actually sitting in a lightcycle.
Plus if glancing were used, (/me steals Lucifer's idea) how about that overlay scrolling left and right as you glanced. To give a greater overall feel of being inside the cycle.

I have two problems with this feature:
The movie never shows a view from inside the cockpit, so it wouldn't resemble the movie and, maybe more importantly, I wouldn't know where to get the graphics. Does anyone have a hint?
The second problem is that in Jangaron, you cannot see the lightcycles of the other players. Including a cockpit overlay would make this flaw even more obvious. I think the more abstract HUD overlays should be enough, but maybe needs some design.

I won the match but was not properly congratulated
An online score system would be nice.
So, when I did win it said something like:
Congrats, you've won in 54.54 seconds, you are rank 44, please enter your name....
Then, the top ten scores are displayed. Give me something to fight for.

By "not properly congratulated" you probably mean that very bare JavaScript dialog which pops up and says that "... has won" (note that you can enter your name in the settings dialog before you start the game!). You are right, I'm going to change that, technically as well as regarding the wording.

Your other point, the online score system, would require a server with a database, which I currently do not have and which would be quite an effort to set up. What Jangaron does provide (maybe the feature is a bit hidden) is some statistics of each player: how many wins, how many deaths, shown at the top of the screen. Unfortunately, these statistics are reset when you reload the page (but of course not when you play one game after the other). If you do not like this as much as I do, go to my blog and vote for the feature "save settings", which also would save your statistics (maybe I should mention that in the explaining blog entry!).

Thanks again, keep the feed-back coming in![/i]

[Tank Program]

Just had a look at the mini one. Pretty cool. Is it supposed to be transparent? Patterns from your background image kept coming through randomly and were a bit distracting. Do you think it would be possible to have it sort of maximize into a larger window when you click in it or something?

[Jangaroo]

Just had a look at the mini one. Pretty cool. Is it supposed to be transparent? Patterns from your background image kept coming through randomly and were a bit distracting.

You are right, Tank, I removed the transparency.

Do you think it would be possible to have it sort of maximize into a larger window when you click in it or something?

It wouldn't be Jangaron mini then, would it?
But seriously, it would be difficult. The idea of Jangaron mini is that everybody can embed it on his or her website. If I added code that tried to modify the iframe size, I would run into cross-site-scripting problems -- browsers do not allow that. Maybe there should be a link inside the game iframe that jumps to the full game?

[DDMJ]

Maybe there should be a link inside the game iframe that jumps to the full game?

Isn't there one already?

For the fully functional version of the game, click here.

[Jangaroo]

Maybe there should be a link inside the game iframe that jumps to the full game?

Isn't there one already?

Yes, but it's not inside the iframe. In the corresponding blog post, I encourage people to copy/paste the iframe code to their web-sites. They probably use the iframe without copying the link to the full game.

[Jangaroo]

Btw., did you try Jangaron-mini in my blog, or even integrated it on some other website?

It doesn't seem to work on Safari 3.0.4 .

Just found an old installation of Safari 3.0.4, so I could test. Didn't work first, but then I right-clicked on the iframe and selected "Reload". After that, Jangaron mini worked perfectly, even when I reloaded the whole page! So just seems to be some initialization problem, probably working when things come from the browser cache? I don't really know, but I think this workaround is okay for you Safari 3.0 users. I would be interested if it works for you, DDMJ (if you still have Safari 3.0)?

[Jangaroo]

To keep you up-to-date about Jangaron: I have just made public a new Jangaron version, called 0.5. You can find it
here or reach it through www.jangaron.net.
It features look left/right/aback, music and sounds, team play and presets, and more accurate control of the lightcycle. I also welcome you to read my corresponding blog entry.
A few remarks about the feature request that came out of this forum thread:
ed: Now, glancing left, right, and even backwards is possible! To further improve orientation, I think about adding arrows that point to the location of each player and show the distance, even if they are behind a wall or completely out of your current view.
"I won the match but was not properly congratulated" - I hope you will like the new end-of-game screen, also included in Jangaron mini!
Tank Program: "It seems like the AI can turn much faster than you can" - In fact, there was something wrong with the "human" lightcycle control, which I addressed as "more accurate control".
DDMJ: Of course, I tested Jangaron 0.5 on Safari again, and of course, I made it work! I didn't have a chance to retest using a "real" Mac Safari, so if you have one, please go ahead and let me know!
Hope to see you at www.jangaron.net!
Cheers,
-Joo-

[ivantis]

dude! thats awesome!
one thing: is it meant so that when you turn, you must press the direction, then click the screen? i have to do that to turn using firefox on ubuntu.

[Jangaroo]

Is it meant so that when you turn, you must press the direction, then click the screen? i have to do that to turn using firefox on ubuntu.

Of course not! To fix that, I need to know, are you talking about Jangaron mini, i.e. the "embedded" Jangaron on the blog page? I could imagine that the key event makes the embedded iframe lose focus, which stops the game. So it could also depend on your window manager settings concerning focus (focus on click vs. focus on mouse over).
I have tested on Firefox 1.5 under SUSE Linux, and the embedded version as well as the full game work as expected.

[Jangaroo]

Since I stole the latest small Jangaron feature from Armagetron, I thought I should post it here, too: You can now set the outer rim wall to be infinitely high in Jangaron, too! Check it out under Jangaron 0.52.