
Pull this up in your Android or iOS browser: Defense - donohoe
http://m.lostdecadegames.com/onslaught_defense/
======
pilif
It's such a shame that the HTML5 audio API's are still such a minefield that
all these demos usually are silent.

Or the reverse: by now I have seen too many HTML/JS based games to remain
really impressed by the technology - unless the demos start to provide audio.

Because honestly, a game like this _needs_ matching 8bit sound effects. Too
bad it's practically impossible to play them in a timely fashion, nor mix
multiple of them together, let alone reliably generate them based on game
state

~~~
mcav
On iOS, you can usually get sound effects _or_ music working pretty well int
terms of latency, but not both. For a while Android had decent flash support
for multiple sounds at once in the browser. I agree, sound is really the most
lacking in mobile browsers.

~~~
huskyr
Hmm.. how do you get sound effects working 'pretty well' in iOS? Apart from
the latency the big problem is that you always need a user action (such as a
click on a button) for sound to start (1), which is pretty hard for games.

[1] [http://weblogs.vpro.nl/digitaal/2011/11/04/why-
html5-audiovi...](http://weblogs.vpro.nl/digitaal/2011/11/04/why-
html5-audiovideo-on-ios-is-virtually-unusable/)

~~~
richtaur
1\. Wait for user input before loading 2\. Load up a "sound sprite" (kind of
like a sprite sheet for audio) since iOS only supports playing one sound at a
time 3\. PROFIetc.

~~~
huskyr
Do you have any working examples? Would love to see this working in practice.

------
iliis
Wow, I just tested this on an age old HTC Hero (Android 2.3) and it runs a lot
smoother than most native apps. It even loads much faster. While it may not be
the next Battlefield, I'm impressed. I never gave HTML5-games much of a chance
for mobile phones because of all the additional overhead and quirks. But if it
starts quicker than Reddit... Kudos to the programmer[s]!

~~~
richtaur
Thank you very much! :-)

------
phanster
If you want to take a peak under the hood, their first game, Onslaught! Arena
was open sourced a couple of days ago:

<https://github.com/lostdecade/onslaught_arena>

------
rsaarelm
Fun. Though it has the problem many of these kind of gun defense things seem
to have, where first you are completely dominating the enemy for a long time,
with practically no challenge, and then the balance tips over to where you can
no longer handle the waves and you get quickly overrun.

~~~
richtaur
So the difficulty ramps up like this: it goes from 1 to 100 every 60 seconds,
spawning more difficult enemies as it increases. The difficulty increases
faster the more damage you've taken. Once it reaches 100, it spawns dragons,
resets to 0 and doubles the amount of monsters it will spawn.

You can reset the difficulty manually by working your way up the weapon tree
to the RUNEFORGE (purple sword)!

Glad it was still fun despite your frustration :-)

------
twodayslate
I feel that more apps will head towards this route. An app is going to be a
webpage.

~~~
fatjokes
Apple originally suggested that (before the release of the app store), but
people bitched.

~~~
kalleboo
It was true back then though. Try running this in the browser on the original
iPhone.

------
manuscreationis
Very cool, good work.

Axes are terrible, btw. I only started losing once I somehow got some Axes.
Gotta tune those.

~~~
richtaur
Yeah axes are something to avoid ;) We were thinking about making them more
fun but we're basically done working on this game.

~~~
manuscreationis
Thats too bad, but thanks for replying

------
dudeguy999
Holy shit. I am blown away that this can be done in a mobile browser.

------
whalesalad
Short link: <http://bit.ly/hndefense>

~~~
papalalu
qr <http://i.imgur.com/a5lyZ.png>

------
msg
202 on my g2. Now we need a leaderboard. Fun though, great to see it!

------
bnr
Also works on a BlackBerry (7.0 OS).

------
moondev
dosent seem to work on chrome in ics but all systems go in the stock browser.
nice work

~~~
jorgem
doesn't work on wp7 :(

~~~
drivebyacct2
Isn't it still the IE7 rendering engine? Does it surprise anyone?

edit: this information is outdated and incorrect, my apologies. Thanks for the
correction.

~~~
Xuzz
As of Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango), it's an improved version of the IE9 rendering
engine, and is generally not bad. It doesn't work with a lot of mobile sites
that expect WebKit (as with Opera Mobile or Firefox Mobile), but it's not a
bad browser by any stretch.

------
sskates
A lot of fun and well polished.

------
grantjgordon
Wow, this is so well done!

------
wink
I love the graphics. And it was really fun to play, well done.

------
rkwz
Doesn't work on my WP7

------
ynniv
_yawn_. If you want to make a game, make a game. Start by writing a story,
then break it down into scenes, then create a variety of opposing forces, then
balance them, then create suspense, then make it all fun. This might have been
notable before the onslaught of web game frameworks, but now it's just
something for me to complain about. And like pilif said, where's the sound?

~~~
methoddk
Really? Some people just want to watch the world burn. Native apps are the
future. It's something someone made in their free time to be enjoyed, not
bitched about on HN.

~~~
ynniv
No. HN is not your mom's fridge. If you want unconditional validation, ask
someone who cares about you. I expect that anything posted here will be fixed
with fire, because that's a valuable service that only skilled peers can
provide. Annoying less is wasting everyone's time.

