LD39 - Soaring

This is a Ludum Dare 39 game jam entry.

Game summary

• rules

  • 1HP, must pick fuel periodically (in tough spots) and may pick coins
  • constant player movement in XX
  • vertical impulses to keep ship above ground

• items

  • gas (required to keep gas level above 0 else game over)
  • coins (best effort. catching all in a level unlocks full level completion)
  • power ups

• score

  • survived game time and picked coins

• obstacles

  • static platforms
  • moving platforms (recurring movement/rotation)
    • gates opening/closing
    • rotating elements

• item placement

  • items can be static, but also tied to platforms and or with assigned paths (if so, one must grasp them fast otherwise too hard)

• enemies (not sure these are necessary given the game constraints, only relevant if we can affect them in some way)

  • classic patrolling movement around point
  • sine wave movement à là r-type

• power ups

  • invincible
  • speed up/down XX speed
  • power up centers camera ahead of player, allowing to see more of the level
  • rotate the camera (harder to reason about)
  • kill visible enemies
  • kill destructible obstacles (are these any of these?)
  • invert YY gravity

• game appearance / vibe

  • average/poor art, best effort (most likely)
  • crude solids with vibrant colors (geometry dash)
  • dramatic with normal lights

• nice to haves

  • decent sprites (may drop compo to jam and use artwork from elsewhere such as kenney)
  • music (either: none, use free licensed, from a friend - therefore jam)
  • sfx (might do with simple generators since the theme is simple enough)
  • lighting as an obstacle (would require sprites to have )

Supported browsers

• tested / targetted
  • android chrome
  • mobile safari (iphone/ipad)
• best effort
  • chrome, safari

Tech stack

• browser and javascript
• 2D gfx with pixi
• collision detection with bump
• audio with howler docs

Artwork stack

• graphics

  • used blender3D, inkscape, gimp and generated some procedural textures with tg
  • the background sky and a couple of pill sprites came up from kenney.nl, didn't manage to replace those in time :P

• sfx and music

  full credits to @asilva4000

  composed with reason

  audio encoding with xmedia recode

some references

• https://github.com/kittykatattack/learningPixi

TODO list

• brainstorm
• set up basic engine
  • renders sprites
  • touch support
  • music and sfx playback
  • level loading
  • keep aspect ratio and viewport independent of screen
• implement game rules
  • xx constant movement
  • impulse
  • texture loading
  • basic box collision support
  • pick up coin
  • gas tank logic
• tiling bg
• animated items (coins etc)
• start screen > play > game over | pause states
• compress audio to howler compatible formats
• request fs and avoid double events
• reset time on game over
• level transition
• highscores (displayed on game over)
• pitch ship according to y speed (requires improved collision det)
• graphics made with blender, tg (procedural) and gimp
• prepare publish

MAYBE

• animate title screen
• toggle sfx and audio (persist to LS) -> done. still no way of toggling
• google analytics, if time permits

DOUBT IT

• review cleanup (ex: sprite.destroy())
• implement and add power-ups
• particle effects
• additional backgrounds with different parallax?