Topic: Pixel Art

@pix: i wasn't impressed by that, either, honestly. Pac Man felt slow, and at one point, i ran straight through a ghost that should have killed me and nothing happened.

Yuck. Your game is indeed better than this.

Really? Interesting. I expect it'll run slow on some computers, but it's still awesome that you can just open up a text file and script a game without needing to install anything.

Edit: Hahaha, I guess only programmers would understand why that game is cool. Polish is important, of course, but in this case you have to look past the graphics and see that it works. It's a functioning game and proves that it is possible to program a platformer in HTML5.

@bro2dragons

Those examples are still simple compared to what will ultimately be possible. As I mentioned, Google ported Quake II into HTML5 for a demonstration.

@warioswoods: Yeah, I saw that earlier. I'm curious, though, do you know when will all browsers support it?

Edit: Here's a YouTube video of it for you guys:
[youtube:XhMN0wlITLk]

@pixelman

That's hard to say; I still have people trying to use IE6 (!) to access modern sites--unbelievably stupid--so, even if the next IE version supports it, along with all the other major browsers (some of which already do), it's hard to say how quickly mainstream sites will start to require it for their content. Still, asking people to upgrade their browser to the latest version before playing a game really isn't any worse than requiring an external Flash plugin, so we'll see what happens.

I know flip about HTML (and Python, which I've just downloaded) and how you'd program games in it, but am I right in guessing that as opposed to Flash Actionscript, where you can work with your images within the Adobe Flash platform, with HTML, you'd have to recall images from an external source - or bank of images? Offline, I'd imagine you'd store such files in a folder like any other game on your system.

I took a quick look at the HTML source on that game pixelman showed us and noticed a variable tag, so presumably, you are able to compress code into variables, but is it really as intuitive as Actionscript - with the benefit of Flash to draw and manage your objects?

And to justify me posting in a Pixel Art topic, here is a pixel art rendition of my avatar I did a few months ago (on seeing this very topic).

I did it in (you guessed it) Flash.

That's cool, edhe.

@edhe: I don't have the fancy Flash IDE (since it's crazy expensive), just the Flex SDK compiler. I draw my images with Gimp and then embed them into the SWF. But yeah, for HTML5 as far as I know you have to load images from an external source, just like an HTML page.

Ah, I was wrong. You can embed images directly in the HTML page with Base64 encoding.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Canvas_tutorial/Using_images...

Latest version of my monochrome art:

hm. style's still cool. and i like the aliens (they are aliens, right?). not sure about the character, though... kinda hunchback-y, what with the low graphical style... good level design, too, though.

It's a backpack, lol. :3

yeah, i figured. it just looks funny. it'd probably look more normal in motion.

Sneak peek: http://files.pynguins.com/flash/BitGalaxy.html

_{yes it's flash, yes I'm not working on my Ninja Story game right now.}

i like it. doesn't quite have the hops of that ninja of yours, so he feels a little easier to make precise jumps with.

What the heck, Pix? What the heck?

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, if your main problem with the last game was that it's in Flash, how is this helping? Also, have you considered expanding Ninja Story's demo and making it into a short one-sitting game with what's been programmed so far, adding only some sort of ending and maybe sounds / music? Seems like such a waste to just to just abandon it.

I like the astronaut a little bit more now that he is an astronaut. The helmet compensates for the hunchback.

Are you going to make this an exploration game, too? Doesn't look like it ought to be. Ninja Story was a joy to look at as you explored. This is so plain that it feels more like your linear platformer you were planning.

agreeing with every last bit of this. just come up with like a handful of levels for us to get through, provide some kind of goal area to reach and a short plot (he's trying to infiltrate a castle and get out quickly with [insert item here], for example), and just make it a one-sitting game. just finish the damn thing, for cryin' out loud, man, please don't let it die. It's been a lot of fun playing the demos as they've evolved, and the Ninja Story game deserves some kind of closure, even if it's not the full game we were hoping for.

The major issue is that the code, again, is terribly messy (which is mostly due to Flash's quirks). The reason I'm starting over is to make a super-simply-cleanly coded platformer that I can be proud of. I'm silly that way. When I build a house I like to get the foundations right, not just make it look pretty on the outside.

I agree with you there - I feel terrible abandoning it after so much work, and I've been thinking about how I can finish it up quickly. I'll probably do some work on it and surprise you guys later.

Yes and no. Each area will be connected seamlessly, but it'll most likely be more linear than Ninja Story. I still want to add a few upgrades/abilities. And to touch on your comment about the art style - this is actually a reimagining of my very first platformer ever (one that I finished, by the way). It had the same monochrome art style, but it looked rather bad, so I'm trying to remake it - better.

I made this for Pac-Man's 30th anniversary.
My avatar is a slightly altered version of this.