

Show HN: Colors – Experimenting with Construct 2 - sleepysort
http://sleepysort.github.io/colors

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AshleysBrain
I'm the developer of Construct 2 - it's our startup (www.scirra.com). We're YC
rejects :) Nice to see it pop up on HN!

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lsjroberts
Hi Ashley, I've only just started out playing with Construct 2 and I have to
say it is fantastic. I recently used Scratch as a teaching tool and this seems
like a great next step.

It also seems like a great tool for quickly making Ludum Dare games. Thanks.

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kornakiewicz
Looks neat, but I would play with nicer palette. Also the hardness is
increasing hyperbolically so after those small red dots appears it's almost
impossible to survive.

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sleepysort
The color palette was pretty random haha; if you have a better color scheme to
recommend, I'd love to see it! And I'm currently trying to find a good balance
for size and speed such that the game is very challenging, but not impossible.

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kaoD
Whichever color scheme you choose, make sure it works for colorblind folks
too! I'm not colorblind myself, but I know it's a good source of frustration
for them.

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hawleyal
I don't think that is possible, given how many different colors this
generates.

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sleepysort
As the colors are purely for aesthetic purposes, this shouldn't be too much of
an issue. As long as it is pleasing to the eye for them!

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hawleyal
I don't think the colors are for aesthetic purposes. They describe meaning for
how large and fast the objects are.

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symmetricsaurus
The resulting balls always travel at a 45 degree angle from the direction of
the shot. So shooting diagonally should keep all resulting balls travelling
up-down or left-right. This would keep all balls in a rough cross shape on the
playing field.

Stay out of this area and you will be able to live forever and easily beat the
game.

In practice this is really hard to achieve since only a small deviation will
cause some of the ever increasing number of balls to hit you anyways.

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sleepysort
Nice job picking up on the nuances of the game :) and as you said, much easier
said than done.

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taternuts
It freezes for me after about 5 seconds in (Chrome 36.0.1985.143)

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sleepysort
Huh. Interesting. Do the controls freeze or the game itself? I'm not sure what
would cause that; the game was developed on a proprietary HTML5/JS engine.

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egeozcan
There's an error:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'qb' of undefined c2runtime.js:105
g.Jq c2runtime.js:105 g.qb c2runtime.js:102 si

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AshleysBrain
Check your browser addons and try disabling them - some clunky addons clobber
Javascript that the Construct 2 engine uses and breaks it.

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egeozcan
Tried in incognito mode where everything is disabled. Still, it freezes with
the same error. (Windows 8.0, Chrome Version 36.0.1985.143 m)

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AshleysBrain
Actually I did some sleuthing from the minified code and found where it
corresponds to in our engine. It's just calling a tick function on one of the
behaviors, and I guess from the error report it's calling a function on an
array with an empty element in it. No idea how that could fail or why it would
only happen on one system and not another, this is probably only Javascript
logic. Maybe the author is using an old version of C2, or a broken third party
plugin... or you have a buggy extension that runs in incognito mode?! I still
want to get to the bottom of it, maybe if you head over to our forum at
www.scirra.com/forum and post there we can dive deeper.

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sleepysort
To clarify, I'm using C2r178, and no third party plugins.

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yeppers8
Construct 2 is becoming a better and better game engine. Good to see it
getting some love on HN

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sleepysort
I'm thinking about also adding co-operative multiplayer functionality; what
are your guys' thoughts?

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kaoD
Sounds fun and I would definitely play with my friends :)

Add touch controls for mobile devices if possible (check PewPew for a similar
movement mechanic) and you got yourself a pretty fun mobile game. I'm not sure
if mobile browsers would be up to the task though, just throwing random ideas.

Does Construct2 include networking and lag compensation? It's hard to achieve
smooth gameplay over the internet, especially for fast-paced games like this
one. Check [1] for a great resource on networking.

I have some experience on game networking. Feel free to contact me at (el + my
HN username) at gmail if you need some help.

[1] [http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-
programmers/](http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/)

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sleepysort
I'm not sure about lag compensation, but the good folks over at scirra added
multiplayer functionality via WebRTC, which allows for peer-hosted games. I'll
look into adding touch controls and maybe get it out to Android soon!

Thank you for the offer! I'll be sure to consult you if I have any questions!

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kaoD
Looks fun, but the red balls are frustratingly hard to hit.

You should make it go fullscreen, I keep clicking my bookmarks and taskbar!

EDIT: I might've found a bug. One of the red balls escaped the game field near
the top-left corner while moving in a horizontal trajectory.

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sleepysort
Yeah I've seen/heard from folks that this happens; will fix sometime later
today! Thanks!

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eridal
I cannot shot using a regular tap on the trackpad. I need to hit really hard
the surface to shot, but I can get considerably fire speed using the physical
button..

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ionforce
Does it seem that staying in the corner is a good strategy?

Maybe if the canvas wrapped it would make moving around more rewarding,
strategically.

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sleepysort
I introduced the score multipliers (hitting the same color twice) to
discourage staying in one spot the whole game, but I guess it is still a
prevailing strategy. That's a great idea! Would both the player and the balls
wrap around, or just one of them? Also, what are your thoughts on having the
entire playing field in your vision, or having a locked camera on a much
larger field?

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azatris
The strategy for getting rid of red balls is to just wait until you get a lag
spike and they go out of screen (forever).

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_random_
Wow, almost as smooth as Flash! I think HTML5 could be easily used for casual
games in about 5 years.

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mickanio
check mine out:
[https://rawgit.com/mickeysanchez/battle_for_the_colorverse/c...](https://rawgit.com/mickeysanchez/battle_for_the_colorverse/computerShip/index.html)

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toadkicker
Bravo, thanks for ruining my productivity today.

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tcfunk
I must be on the wrong browser...all I see is "C o o"

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sleepysort
Are you using a modern browser with JS enabled?

EDIT: I'm a derp; your JavaScript must have been enabled since it (partially)
rendered the menu screen. Check your plugins, see if there's anything that
might conflict with the Construct 2 engine.

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tcfunk
I'm running Firefox (32 I think?). I do have Ghostery running, but I tried
disabling that thinking it was perhaps blocking something.

Could be the age of my laptop, though, I suppose.

