V2.01.20230520: 10th Anniversary "Remastered" Edition Addendum

V2.01.20230520: 10th Anniversary "Remastered" Edition Addendum

Previous release: V2.0.20230501.

Video overview

• 10th Anniversary summary video (3m 45s): https://youtu.be/oYUCUvg02rY

• History, review, tutorial, demos, "Midnight Oasis" walk-through: (1h 12m 55s): https://youtu.be/6wEMcssFJ-E

Bug fixes of note

• Don't let helicopter reach absolute edge of screen; buffer 5% on each side.

• Mobile / touchscreen: Bananas weren't firing sometimes, due to incorrect keyboard mappings.

• Sound: Always wait for sound load before firing onplay().

• Sound: Relative, in terms of distance to the helicopter.

• Video: Ensure video is active when initial request / preload completes before playing.

• Editor: Engineers were being output as infantry.

• Update positioning of helicopter trailers for both sides, and when rotated.

• BnB: Show existing "Cornholio" turrets at start of game.

• "Midnight Oasis" network level: Added terrain decor - gravestones, trees etc.

Updates

• Project now has its own site: https://armor-alley.net/

• Nice progressive web app-style icon set.

• Updated "Armor Alley" wordmark to resemble the original boxed software one, based on the "Stencil Compress D" font.

For developers

• Added developer notes, gulp-cli-based build via npm: README_DEVEL.md.

• Concatenated + minified / bundled JS + CSS files, see gulpfile.js for build script.

• SM2 + Snowstorm are now ES6 modules, included vs. concatenated into bundle.

V2.0.20230501

Armor Alley: Remastered

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 A R M O R  A L L E Y :: R E M A S T E R E D

A browser-based interpretation of the Macintosh + MS-DOS releases of Armor Alley.

Copyright (c) 2013, Scott Schiller

https://www.schillmania.com/armor-alley/

Code provided under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) License

Original game Copyright (C) 1989 - 1991 Information Access Technologies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_alley

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Quick links

• 10th Anniversary summary video (3m 45s): https://youtu.be/oYUCUvg02rY

• Original article about building "V1.0" (from 2013)

• 2022 Demo, features and walk-through of "extreme" mode (55 minutes): https://youtu.be/9BQ62c7u2JM

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Changelog / Revision History

V2.0.20230501: 10th Anniversary "Remastered" Edition

Previous release: V1.6.20220201. Original release: V1.0.20131031.

Video overview

• 10th Anniversary summary video (3m 45s): https://youtu.be/oYUCUvg02rY

New features

• Mobile / touch screen support. Updated UX / UI, better playability and feature parity vs. desktop. Portrait is playable, but landscape is preferable on smaller screens.

• Network multiplayer, like the original game. PvP, or co-op. Can be played with or against CPU players, as well.

• 22 game levels. 10 original game "campaign" battles, plus 12 levels designed for network games.

• Level editor. Create or modify existing levels. Data stored in URL at present - terrible, I know. Also compatible with network games.

• Optional "Virtual Stupidity" theme pack. 🎸🤘

Performance improvements

• Reduced CPU load, in general, across the board between JavaScript execution, layout, and paint / compositing.

• Game Loop: Adjustments to target 30FPS on 120 Hz monitors.

• Collision "zones", greatly reducing object comparison work and function calls. 20,000 collision checks per second, down to 500 or less. https://twitter.com/schill/status/1627725917345955840

• DOM node pool / recycling: poolBoy.js - for things like gunfire and smoke. Less paint / repaint, more GPU compositing. https://twitter.com/schill/status/1628833430988554240

• Reduced variable / object creation in game loop.

• Battlefield DOM node no longer being transformed for scroll; now, only on-screen sprites.

Sound

• Even more sound effects.

• Some sounds can use ±5% playback speed for a little variety.

• Sounds can now be heard "in the distance," to the left and right.

• "Virtual Stupidity": 500+ meticulously-picked samples.

UX / UI

• "Live Graveyard" feature: decorate the battlefield over time.

• "Remastered" 8-bit sprite assets from Armor Alley V1.1 for Macintosh. The original 1.0 and PC-DOS version had up to 4-bit colour.

• Nice home page logo, "scanned" from the combat handbook that came with the original boxed game.

• Network games use Windows 95's LIGHTS.EXE taskbar UI showing tx/rx traffic, very important. ;) https://twitter.com/schill/status/1636449071140605958

• Four types of stormy weather: rain, hail, snow, and one other that's a surprise.

• Radar jamming: New visual noise overlay.

• "Extra-fancy" bunker explosions, particles, burning, and smoke effects.

• Nicer bomb explosion on ground. Hat tip: "Dirt Explosion" by SrGrafo on DeviantArt - https://www.deviantart.com/srgrafo/art/Dirt-Explosion-774442026

• "DOMFetti" confetti explosions, colours based on the target being hit.

• Notifications: Verbiage for different actions, e.g., "your tank steamrolled an infantry", or gunfire "popped a balloon" etc.

Bug fixes

• Refactor of Traffic Control, so vehicles are less likely to get "stuck" waiting for one another.

• Helicopter bombs could be delayed after key press. They should now be consistent and fire on the next frame.

• Super Bunkers would sometimes stay yellow, even when friendly.

• Additional "arrow signs" on battlefield were missing from bases since 2013. Oops. ;)

• Parachute infantry (dropped from helicopter) no longer get a recycle (reaching end of battlefield) reward.

• Balloon respawning at top of screen: fixed.

• Allow balloons to be moving up or down at init, previously always downward.

• Fixed bomb spark / hidden / bottom-align logic.

• Tighten up inventory ordering / queueing, consistent spacing + avoiding overlapping between sprites.

Gameplay

Helicopters

• Only the local player's helicopter blinks on the radar; all others are solid, as in the original game.

• Desktop: double-click no longer toggles helicopter auto-rotate feature.

Smart Missiles

• Notify user when trying to fire a smart missile, but no eligible targets nearby.

• Smart missiles can now take damage, and plow through up to four infantry (ground units only) before dying.

• Smart Missile targeting refactor. Removed former "missile facing target" requirement. Prefer shortest distance, unless just above ground. Hat tip: Pythagoras. 😉 📐

• Smart Missiles now target your vertical offset, plus half your height.

• Smart Missiles now blink on launch, and take a moment (0.5 seconds) to arm themselves, and are not as dangerous (1 damage point) until then. This is implemented as the "Ramius frame count" (delay) - as inspired by "The Hunt For Red October." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgTc3cYaLdo&t=112s

• New feature: Smart Missile "decoy" ability, - about 1/3 of a second to see and retarget a newly-deployed parachute infantry when the initial target was the helicopter.

Gunfire

• Gunfire can now collide with gunfire.

• Turret gun firing rates have been reduced significantly for easy + hard levels.

• Gunfire can now ricochet off the roof of a Super Bunker.

• Desktop: Helicopter gunfire now stops when landing on, and cannot start while on a landing pad.

Bombs

• Bombs now "pass-thru" infantry, as opposed to dying 1:1.

• Bomb explosions on the ground can now take out larger groups of infantry.

• Bombs can be hit by gunfire in extreme mode.

Tanks

• Tanks have finally been given flamethrowsers (as in the original game,) which they use on infantry, engineers, super bunkers and end bunkers.

• Game preferences refactor. Volume control, UX/UI, and optional gameplay features.

• Enemy tanks fire every 11 frames in "hard" mode, 12 in "easy" (and tutorial), and 10 in "extreme." Previously, all were 10.

• Tanks now repair more incrementally, larger gains every 1 second.

Other

• Engineers start repairing bunkers (if enabled) at the doorway, "shielded" by bunker vs. previously standing outside.

• Landing pads can be "The Danger Zone" if enabled in prefs. This was inspired by the 2022 Top Gun movie release. See also: "The Girl From Ipanema, "I Got You Babe," "Mucha Muchacha," and more.

• Base explosions can now also damage units passing by.

• Bases can fire rubber chickens + bananas if "match missile type" enabled in prefs.

• "GOURANGA!" - inspired by the original Grand Theft Auto.

• When the battle is over, the losing team's units all contribute to the explosion party.

Technical

• Codebase migration to ES6 modules, patterns and syntax.

• SoundManager 2: hacked-together version of Web Audio API for playback, vs. HTML5.

• Refactoring of game type and objects system; e.g., tank -> TYPES.tank, and game.objects.tanks[] -> game.objects.tank[] so look-ups and interating by type are logical.

• game.objects.players now has local, remote, cpu etc., which point to helicopters. Previously, many assumptions were made about game.objects.helicopters[0] and [1].

• Network feature uses PeerJS (MIT license) for peer-to-peer communication via WebRTC.

Miscellaneous

• It turns out there are three types of cloud sprites in the original game, not two.

• 12 smoke frames in the original game too, vs. my 9.

• Nicer ASCII block-character logo.

• Updated favicon + related app / tile images.

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Prior release notes

For history back to V1.0, see the README equivalent in aa.js.

V1.6.20220101: 2022 Update

V1.6.20220101: Massive update for 2022, based on work from 2020 + 2021

http://schillmania.com/armor-alley/

Previous release: V1.5.20180201
Original release: V1.0.20131031

Video overview

• Demo, features and walk-through of "extreme" mode (55 minutes): https://youtu.be/9BQ62c7u2JM

Performance improvements

• The game should be smoother, targeting 30FPS. It is OK full-screen @ 1080p and windowed @ 4K in Chrome on a 2018 Mac Mini, 3.2 GHz 6-core i7 w/Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB.

• More GPU-accelerated rendering, reduced DOM nodes by removing when off-screen (e.g., static terrain items)

• All sprites should be on the GPU and moved using transforms, reducing paint operations

• All transforms (CSS + JS) for positioning + animation are 3d, with the goal of GPU acceleration - e.g., translate3d(), rotate3d(), scale3d()

• DOM nodes are not appended at object create time - now deferred until the object is on-screen for the first time.

• All "sub-sprites" should now be GPU-accelerated via CSS animations, transforms and transitions

• Sound: Only create Audio() when actively playing sounds, and destroy when they finish playing. Browsers are starting to limit the number of Audio() instances.

• Sound: Queue and play sounds all at once with each animation frame callback, vs. prior ad-hoc behaviour.

• Refactored game tip scroller to only show two nodes at a time, 1024px width vs. 102,400px. Front-end tech / Chrome Dev Tools demo: https://youtu.be/eVW0WgTdK3A

• Performance: Don't update known static radar items: turret, base, bunkers (bunker, end bunker, super bunker) unless marked as "stale" during resize / world scaling

• Performance: CSS / contentVisibility to reduce / optimize rendering costs

• Animation loop: improved timing, target 30 fps. Request next frame right away. Exit early if next frame arrives too quickly.

• Turret "scan" is now a CSS animation; previously, animated via JS.

• Smart missiles and helicopter trailers are now GPU-accelerated.

• Performance: Battlefield and radar units are now positioned via transform: translate3d() - no more legacy CSS shenanigans using bottom: 0px.

• Memory leak fixes: DOM nodes, audio events, and a few others.

Sound

• Over 100 sound assets now in use

• New and updated sound effects: Infantry and engineer gunfire, injury and death, credit +/-, helicopter and turret guns, shell casings on turrets, bullets hitting the ground, turret being disabled and enabled (restored.)

UX / UI

• Proper "game options" modal with radio buttons and checkboxes for various UX/UI and gameplay features

• "It was a dark and stormy night" - option for snow on the battlefield. (May be slow on some computers.)

• Bunkers, balloons and super-bunkers now use graphics from the Macintosh (68K) version of Armor Alley; a bit more orange, and less garish yellow.

• Dune ][-style credit / debit UI and sounds

• Toast-style game notifications

• Health status bars when units are being hit or repaired

• New and improved smoke / particle effects, more explosions and shrapnel, more fun!

• Order queue: Refactored UI to show letters (e.g., MTVIE), with superscript numbers as appropriate.

• Missiles smoke more, and in extreme mode, have a burst of thrust (as in the original game) as they near expiry

• Pseudo-3D effect on shrapnel: Increase size slightly with vertical position on screen

• Ground units are "behind" most terrain elements like trees, bushes etc.

Bug fixes

• Bombing floating balloons no longer causes an explosion on the ground

• Improved bomb and shrapnel alignment / collision positioning with balloons, tanks, bunkers, and super-bunkers

• Fixed bug with quickly-respawning balloons (shooting balloon while infantry are passing under bunker, for example.)

• Fixed UI bug where the "incoming missile" white line would not always disappear.

• Game end: Improve alignment of view and base

• Adjusted initial position of game, centering view on the helicopter + base

• Helicopter / super-bunker: Improve vertical alignment if helicopter crashes on superbunker "roof."

• Fixed radar item for Super Bunkers, now shows correct friendly / enemy status.

• Cloud "wind" accelerates / decelerates more smoothly

• Clouds no longer "bounce" when they drift off the end of the world, but get a nice bit of wind to bring them back into view.

• Slight vertical alignment tweaks on gunfire and balloons in radar view.

• Improved orientation of heat-seeking smart missiles (and rubber chickens and bananas) as they track their target

• Tweaked movement and velocity of smart missiles, making them potentially faster / more random

• Enemy helicopter will now turn to face targets. Sometimes it would fire the other way. ;)

• Improved helicopter motion when approaching landing pad - "bounce" has largely been eliminated.

• Improved off-screen / on-screen DOM pruning, restoration of 3D transforms when re-appending DOM elements

• Fixed end-game bug, sometimes ground units (e.g. van) did not appear at base when blowing up.

• Adjusted collision detection: if helicopter is hiding "in" a friendly super-bunker, bombs should hit the roof of the super bunker and not the helicopter.

Gameplay

• New weapon: Heat-seeking bananas

• Ground unit "Traffic Control" option: Vehicles try to leave space between, and avoid overlapping each other. Tanks will now "park" behind friendly tanks, avoiding a pile-up. Tanks normally only stop to fire. Vans and missile launchers will now wait for each other, too. Tanks will not stop for vans or missile launchers, giving tanks a greater chance of ending up at the front of a convoy - a preferable offensive position.

• Units can now be "recycled" if they cross the battlefield, you are rewarded 2x cost in credits

• Engineers can now steal all funds from enemy bunker

• Engineers can now repair (but not rebuid) friendly bunkers

• Bullets now ricochet off non-friendly super-bunkers

• Shrapnel will ricochet off certain units (tank, super-bunker)

• "Incoming missile" doesn't show in extreme mode when the radar is jammed.

• End base, extreme mode: if a defense missile is destroyed, respawn another within 0.5 seconds.

• Missile launchers trigger when closer to the helicopter, more likely now to be on-screen

• Helicopter respawn: Delay if certain ground units are obstructing the landing pad.

• Enemy helicopter AI: Default 10% of dropping bombs when targeting a tank, subject to game difficulty (hard: 15%, extreme: 25%.)

• Bombs can now collide with smart missiles and take them out

• Tank gunfire only hits bunkers if tanks are shooting at a helicopter, or another tank (bug fix: previously, tanks could destroy a bunker trying to hit an infantry on the other side.)

• Super bunkers that are un-manned are "neutral" and dangerous to both sides, and will be shown as hostile on the radar.
(This includes when tanks disarm a bunker by firing at it.)

• Bomb trajectory now includes the helicopter's Y-axis velocity, and they now rotate along with their trajectory.

• Helicopters now rise up from the landing pad on game start and respawn, like the original game.

• Helicopter gunfire takes tilt / angle into account.

• Helicopter "shake" starts when health is under 70%, gets worse with damage. This affects gunfire trajectory.

• Your missile launchers only fire at the enemy helicopter when the convoy is "unassisted", e.g., there is no friendly helicopter or turret nearby.

• Extreme mode: If you shoot down the enemy base's smart missiles while near the base, it will launch new ones that are faster and more difficult to dodge.

• While on a landing pad, your gunfire may go over infantry's heads most of the time.

• Don't assume the top of the battlefield is always safe; watch out for balloons!

• Parachute infantry now fall at slightly different rates, and may be affected more by wind

• A few additional, inspirational [ game paused in background ] messages

Technical notes: development / code

• Migrated core JavaScript to ES6 syntax, retaining functional + prototypal inheritance style. Slightly less verbose.

• As part of ES6 migration, dropped legacy IE 8 + 9 code and checks: ancient event handlers, lack of transform, requestAnimationFrame() polyfill etc.

• Lots of cleanup: Exit early, reduced if/else nesting. Dropped all setTimeout() calls, moved to a frame-based approach: setFrameTimeout().

• aa.js (core game code) is massive at ~450 KB, and seems like a good candidate to be broken up into ES6 modules. TBD.