JS13k - A Weekend of Appearance - Day 15

 Halfway through the contest time and I had a weekend day to do nothing except JS13k so I thought I would pay some attention to the appearance of things - I knew the graphics would be very important to make the game come alive for people so I did an intense 14 hours work on the graphics of the game.

This is what I started with at 1pm on Saturday:

This version which you can play here is from about 6pm with proper cracks, animated piece movement and stems:

by about 9pm I had the growth  animations going and pretty randomly distributed leaves 

much later that night I had tiles drawn properly and better cracks:

Still not totally happy with the graphics but I think it looks better and the hard code issues are cracked.

Current compressed version is about 48% of the 13k.

JS13k - Almost an AI - Day 13

 Today I have my first attempt at a dumbish AI player which has turned out very well - it's simple heuristic is getting dominance of the board in the very short term as defined by the score.

Here is a version where you can play 7 x 7 against it - a board where something like this AI sometimes does okay.

So I'm getting close to my goals for a game that can be played between players together or apart and would support single player vs AI opponents but I need a menu system and intro page to structure all these pieces. 

Currently the project is running at 4880 bytes compressed - about 37 percent of the allowed package size. That's okay I think - there will be space enough to make it pretty.

Js13K - multiplayer progress - Day 12

 I've had a busy few days in which I have redesigned the look of my 'path game' a little; also introduced scoring and win conditions. You can see the latest version here set up for two players on one device.

I've played the game against myself on one device for a few days and am happy with the dynamics - I have a few small tweaks in mind but nothing breaking.

I've also completed the work on cloud based play - this Heroku instance allows connection across the cloud to other players and co-ordinates the play between players on different devices. You can play with that here (by going into multiple tabs or using different devices/browsers). Very happy with this implementation atm and don't think it will need much further work.

Source code for my development can be found here if anyone needs a sample for a turn based multiplayer game.

Path Game - Day 7 - JS13k Games

 I have been working on the dynamics and game play of my strategy game. I currently have a working version of the game for 2 human players on one device which still has rough graphics but allows you to play out the basic dynamics of the game, it looks something like this:

This is 9x9 board with the game about half way. A simpler board might look like this near the beginning of the game.

Currently there is no way of keeping score and no end condition. I was thinking of using a simple % domination of the space to keep score and ending the game if no move is possible for either side or one side gets 60% domination.

You can play the game (with yourself or another person physically with you) here:

Starter Game 7 x 7 

Standard Game (I think) 9 x 9

Hectic Mode 11 x 11 (mostly just testing to see if this grid size can work on mobile)

The release compressed zipped size is currently 3673 bytes - 27% of the 13kb.

The Path Game - js13k - Day 4

 The contest has begun and my plans continue afoot. The announced theme for 2021 is 'Space' which should be easy enough for my ideas - I'm thinking 'a space in the sun' or winning space within a small area (as opposed to outer-space).

I have some CSS code to draw the game pieces in a grid and have started the code analysis of the board at least so that it can select legal positions for the next move.

All the graphics is needs to be replaced but it's looking alright here.

A 'Path Game' - My js13k ideas - 1 day to go

I've played a lot of the board game Carcassone over the last few months - a brilliant and famous game. I am especially enamoured of the 'road game' in Carcassone which involves building roads from the tiles and claiming a segment of road as your own.

Carcassone looks like this:

So the road pieces (white roads on green) are essentially a lot like the this game which has existed in various forms throughout my life. (this is the windows 95 version called 'pipedreams')

So these concepts are at the centre of what I want to do: a square grid on which you place tiles to form pathways(like Carcassone and pipes); a turn based two player game where your paths can block and interfere with your opponent's (like Carcassone); which has targets you needs to reach (like pipes); and which you can see the future tiles (like pipes) and plan for them.

Additionally I'd like the game to be fair in the sense that no luck element is involved and both players have equal opportunities (Carcassone is not like this) - thus a symmetric board and identical draw of new tiles for both players. 

Tomorrow we get to know the theme and can start thinking about how it might look (branches of a tree; neurons in a brain; roads or really anything that has paths and flows).

Plan to start the programming in earnest next week.

JS13k Some old Audio Code - 5 days still start

 Audio is an important aspect of games but I often fail on it as there is never enough time and space (in the 13k) left for good audio by the end of a project.

This year I want some good simple sound effects - nothing fancy. I went back to my 2018 entry ice-x and extracted the audio system I used there as it was tiny and flexible.

It allows you to make effects by defining a volume and frequency envelop in time and allowing concurrent sounds. Simple to use and very small in bytes I made a repo here demonstrating how it works - there is a live copy where you can hear the sounds it makes

The Lobby for js13k multiplayer - 6 Days to go..

 I've been working a little on the js13k server technology and created a demo that is the minimal version of a multi-player lobby in which strangers can meet online and play together. It also provides a communication and ending facilities for a two player game.

I plan to use this as a major piece in my own js13k entry this year. The multi-player features and associated displays and server side co-ordination are currently 2k / 13k - something like 15% - that seems like a lot to me so I'd like to cut it down.

Here is the public sample code I wrote for the lobby which is running here if you want to play with it.

JS13k Time 2021 - Starts in 8 days

 Once again the new js13k contest will be starting in a few days, for those  unfamiliar with the contest the rules are pretty simple: write a game in entirely one month that runs in a browser and ensure that all resources, code and graphics can zip to 13kb - yep that's 13 312 bytes. Not a lot.

In the previous years of the contest I have entered both desktop and mobile games but I have never entered the server category which allows communication between players through the cloud.

This year I plan to focus on this functionality and hope to enter the game into the server, desktop and mobile categories. I have a turn based strategy game in mind and I intend to support:

• one player vs AI (various levels of skill)
• player vs player on a single device
• player vs player online

I'd really like to include:

• A nice lobby where players can select an appropriate opponent for multi-player
• Very pretty relatable graphics using SVG and CSS
• Simple soundscapes
• Good tutorial
• an AI that plays in a human-like manner

So the challenge is pretty hard in terms of the 13k code size - specifically the extra lobby display code,  the server side messaging logic and the AI system aren't going to leave a lot of space for the actual game.