
Voidcall – Making of 13kb JavaScript RTS Game - ash
https://phoboslab.org/log/2019/09/voidcall-making-of
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rsiqueira
Many javascript code compression techniques are used to create even shorter
demos, animations and even games, using 140 characters or less, by the Dwitter
community. E.g. a similar to Perlin noise image used to create the terrain (in
this 13k game) was made with less than 140 characters of JavaScript, see here:
[https://www.dwitter.net/top/month](https://www.dwitter.net/top/month) Some
Dwitter members are also developers of 13kb games.

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ArtWomb
One pleasant byproduct of perusing Dwitter Web is you can pick up a lot of
esoteric mathematics formulas ;)

[https://www.dwitter.net/h/math](https://www.dwitter.net/h/math)

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giancarlostoro
Nice it reminds me of the classic Runescape to an extent. I wasnt big on
Runescape at the time like my friends were but I still admire the game. I know
some still remember it fondly it is one of the icons of mid 2000s gaming much
like Starcraft.

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GordonS
This was an incredible read for me! I've always wanted to write a game from
scratch, but never quite found the time - and it's a bit daunting if you don't
know where to start.

Really appreciate the commentary, details and code snippets!

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NortySpock
The previous game, Underrun, was excellent, and I took to heart his points on
sound files taking up a lot of space. Using synth sounds is relatively easy to
generate and takes up only a few bytes for code snippets.

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codesushi42
Excellent post, thanks for sharing. You may want to read up on influence maps
if you want to improve the AI.

Also you should check out a book called Programming an RTS Game with Direct3D
if you can find a copy:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1584504986/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_BQ...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1584504986/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_BQRIDbXA7DDD1)

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toper-centage
As I wrote to you before, your game looks amazing. I think you could probably
expande it a bit. But it's very unclear what's going on.

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GrayShade
For people wondering about it, you can select the engineers and make them
build harvesters and turrets. There is one medic who will heal the unit
closest to him.

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fesoliveira
Great write-up! It's very interesting to see how one actually goes around
making a game in such short time. I have been doing computer graphics stuff as
a hobby for some years, and I know your pain when it comes to OpenGL
shenanigans. Keep it up!

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BAReF00t
Only 1664 bytes?

I guess if you shove all the heavy lifting out to extensive libraries, you can
do that.

I, for one, prefer kkrieger. 98kB, but a full Doom-3-level 3D shooter. All
without putting an OS... inside an OS.

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theon144
What are you on about? kkrieger also makes extensive use of the Windows/D3D
apis.

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hombre_fatal
I don't even think these people understand what they think they are
criticizing. Leveraging external code doesn't make something less impressive
-- the extent in which you can leverage other code like graphics APIs is what
becomes impressive.

I suppose they think they are being some sort of technical pedant, but surely
anyone with any actual technical chops knows otherwise.

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BAReF00t
Yes it does.

Example: My new language "Crysislang". It has only one one-bit instruction.
That, when compiled, results in a whole Crysis game.

A whole 3D shooter! Written in only one bit! Ain’t I amazing? ;))

I think you get my point.

If your libraries and environment do all the work, writing a small program
that does big things approaches triviality.

