Good fun. A couple of ideas, zoom in as you approach the landing site, it's hard to see the difference between 4mph and 1mph; and consider having no landing spots, like craters or sharp edges; finally, some slow flying asteroids to avoid every once and a while. Consider planting a little flag from previous landing or tombs on crash sites on restart, to have some continuity. :)
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 190.2 point crash
Speed: 1612.3mph
Angle: 98.6°
Time: 220 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 1612.3mph
Max height: 4534ft
Engine used: 15 times
Boosters used: 129 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Took it up to 1 million feet, it took another 1.5 million feet to bleed off 4000mph upward acceleration, then turned the pointy end downwards and accelerated.
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 1117.8 point crash
Speed: 9876.7mph
Angle: 177.3°
Time: 2101 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 9876.7mph
Max height: 2505688ft
Engine used: 3 times
Boosters used: 271 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
I used the same strategy. Same results with the bleed off. I was surprised how much I had to keep correcting my angle on the way up and down.
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 921.4 point crash
Speed: 8113.1mph
Angle: 174.8°
Time: 1638 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 8113.1mph
Max height: 1686337ft
Engine used: 417 times
Boosters used: 603 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Fun game! After climbing to 1 million feet, it took over 500,000 more to finally reverse direction with the ship pointed down and the engines firing.
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 869.4 point crash
Speed: 7757.3mph
Angle: 62.2°
Time: 1319 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 7757.3mph
Max height: 1549465ft
Engine used: 11 times
Boosters used: 351 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Well, my middle finger is numb, but I beat 1000 points. I took a straight path upward, and then switched to a horizontal -90° burn, slowly shifting to a -135° burn as I got closer to the ground.
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 1606.2 point crash
Speed: 14427.6mph
Angle: 18.9°
Time: 1567 seconds
Flips: 14
Max speed: 14427.6mph
Max height: 1361872ft
Engine used: 1 times
Boosters used: 438 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
I managed to get my rocket very very slowly rotating (<0.1° / s), so that I could just hold the acceleration and have it do one arc from launch to crash:
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 1712.2 point crash
Speed: 15226.2mph
Angle: 174.3°
Time: 5963 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 15226.2mph
Max height: 1993862ft
Engine used: 21 times
Boosters used: 14 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
This reminds me of when I made a parody "game" once, where all you had to do was click to get a point.
I had included a message at 10k, for a friend that I had expected to check the js source, but to my surprise a non-programmer friend send me a screenshot of it. He just kept clicking "to see if something would happen".
If only I had thought to turn it into an app with some ads at the time, there's a whole idle game genre these days. In some situations people will go to surprising lengths for a basically meaningless and pointless payoff. I still enjoy driving off the map in Trackmania myself. Takes almost an hour, but it's very zen.
1h40m for it though..., that's an extra 1h15m for just 800mph more. With some tweaking of your initial launch angle (get it somewhere between 40-60° rather than 0° which is what I'm assuming yours was, correct me if I'm wrong), plus maybe a second fine-tuning once you reach apolune, I'd guesstimate you could make 25000mph in ~3000 seconds.
The quickest (in terms of time elapsed) crash I've been able to get is 5 seconds. I think 4 may be just about possible, with the right initial conditions.
A smooth… wait… you crashed
Score: 26.1 point crash
Speed: 94.8mph
Angle: 140.9°
Time: 5 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 94.8mph
Max height: 240ft
Engine used: 1 times
Boosters used: 4 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
ehmorris, this is addicting for all the wrong reasons.
A smooth… wait… you crashed
Score: 29.0 point crash
Speed: 88.2mph
Angle: 173.4°
Time: 4 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 88.2mph
Max height: 218ft
Engine used: 1 times
Boosters used: 3 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Apparently the timing isn't tied to the framerate, so after I ran the game on a faster computer I got 2 seconds quite consistently
A smooth… wait… you crashed
Score: 28.7 point crash
Speed: 80.4mph
Angle: 178.4°
Time: 2 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 80.4mph
Max height: 185ft
Engine used: 1 times
Boosters used: 2 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Yeah that is a flaw. You could also just make your browser window very short on desktop. I think if it’s shorter than the lander height you may land in 0 seconds?
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 421.9 point crash
Speed: 3737.1mph
Angle: 57.9°
Time: 567 seconds
Flips: 1463
Max speed: 3737.1mph
Max height: 47969ft
Engine used: 3 times
Boosters used: 140 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 309.4 point crash
Speed: 2607.1mph
Angle: 176.2°
Time: 293 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 2607.1mph
Max height: 174828ft
Engine used: 6 times
Boosters used: 54 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
lol (and now I see others have already beaten this...)
Perfect landing, incredible, you can’t get better than this
Score: 99.2 point landing
Speed: 1.0mph
Angle: 0.2°
Time: 52 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 31.5mph
Max height: 389ft
Engine used: 99 times
Boosters used: 7 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
The amazing thing is all these lunar lander games are harder than actually landing the lunar lander that landed on the moon. That's right it used a computer stabilized system and featured a fully automatic landing program however every lander was actually landed in the semi automatic mode where the pilot controlled the descent but the attitude was still maintained by computer.
The left-right feel swapped to me, but I fail to give a factual reason.
Also reminds me of two 90s era DOS games: Ugh and some other about landing on Moon. Similar to yours, but the lander looked like a small tower/crate (for lack of better description).
I felt the same about wanting left-right to be swapped when I played on mobile, and I crashed every time. However, on desktop, the controls feel just right (with the arrow keys) and I landed every time. Could also be related to the vastly larger screen space on desktop.
I think some games in this style rather have you fire the left thruster with the left arrow key and firing the right thruster with the right arrow key, which kind of makes sense in its own right.
To counter those occasional asteroids that bizarrely, coincidentally seem to blast through the exact spot where the lander lands — how about adding the ability to take off again once having landed?
For folks for whom this is scratching an itch, highly recommend you check out Reentry: An Orbital Simulator. It is a beautiful indie passion project trying to faithfully recreate all aspects of the 1960s space era, in which you'd go through the actual steps necessary to operate the aircraft, including the lunar lander. It's awesome in it that it tries to be faithful, like NSSP and things of the nature, while also not cutting corners in the "game-like" parts of the experience, like textures, audio design, missions, VR capability, etc. If you enjoyed this for more than a few minutes, you'll enjoy poking around in it!
You'll never improve on Astro Chicken :). Seriously, I loved that game when Space Quest III came out, although it seems others had quite a different experience.
I created a discrete (and less realistic) version of this concept here: https://qewasd.com/ ("Lunar Landing" challenge) - try to get a score as close to 0 as possible!
Some people have managed to use MILP solvers to optimally solve some of the other problems
Still addicted. Two suggestions: 1. Factor in time to landing in the score; faster times score higher. 2. Add an option to make the meteor debris damaging.
Reading more of the discussion, I withdraw the suggestion of incorporating time into the score. It's rendered moot by both the window height and (potentially) the computer clock speed affecting the timing.
Doesn't work for me. I can't get past "2 arrows at the same time". I press them, and see flame from both side thrusters, but the game doesn't register that I've done 2 arrows, and does not let me play.
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/110.0
Pretty fun! I like trying to make as many flips as possible:
Basically a fender bender, but you landed
Score: 45.4 point landing
Speed: 3.5mph
Angle: 9.5°
Time: 62 seconds
Flips: 18
Max speed: 86.8mph
Max height: 1276ft
Engine used: 32 times
Boosters used: 55 times
Just shy of a good landing
Score: 78.3 point landing
Speed: 5.5mph
Angle: 0.3°
Time: 577 seconds
Flips: 206
Max speed: 302.4mph
Max height: 12012ft
Engine used: 69 times
Boosters used: 89 times
Flipping is really fun. If you do really many you'll get the color particles in straight lines coming down:
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 143.9 point crash
Speed: 1259.8mph
Angle: 35.0°
Time: 629 seconds
Flips: 1709
Max speed: 1259.8mph
Max height: 44983ft
Engine used: 1 times
Boosters used: 58 times
So, so close to a landing, but still a crash
Score: 1.6 point crash
Speed: 2.5mph
Angle: 12.2°
Time: 20 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 34.5mph
Max height: 221ft
Engine used: 20 times
Boosters used: 14 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
This is my best attempt for now:
A good landing, keep trying
Score: 84.1 point landing
Speed: 4.5mph
Angle: 0.0°
Time: 23 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 32.5mph
Max height: 221ft
Engine used: 26 times
Boosters used: 13 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Tried to get a good landing with as few control actions as possible. For a simple new scoring system, subtract your number of control actions from your landing score:
Very nice landing, amazing
Score: 90.5 point landing
Speed: 2.9mph
Angle: 0.2°
Time: 18 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 53.7mph
Max height: 425ft
Engine used: 1 times
Boosters used: 3 times
I was trying the same and this is super impressive… only 1 main engine fire??? I think this is actually part of the constraints of the real world landing problem.
Yeah, first thing I did was to try to get a feel for when I needed to hit the main engine. Executing a landing with 1 or 2 fires I can do with some regularity. Getting the boosters to 1 or 2 is very hard due to initial conditions, but 3 to 5 is also somewhat doable. All of it coming together for a 90 point landing involved some luck for sure.
Lateral velocity should be taken into account since I'm taking the vector of the x/y velocity. It's just that it needs to be under 12mph, so you can be going pretty fast laterally.
Think I found a bug! Left the tab (on Firefox mobile on Android) and then revisited it, and now it says: "Perfect landing, incredible, you can't get better than this" with a score of 102.3 (I'm assuming 100 is supposed to be the max score?).
I don’t think we’re getting back to Earth
Score: 34.4 point crash
Speed: 187.5mph
Angle: 122.8°
Time: 88 seconds
Flips: 7
Max speed: 187.5mph
Max height: 2336ft
Engine used: 11 times
Boosters used: 49 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Amazing.
A fast crash, but it could be faster
Score: 82.9 point crash
Speed: 689.8mph
Angle: 56.2°
Time: 79 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 689.8mph
Max height: 725ft
Engine used: 3 times
Boosters used: 46 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
* I first played this on my phone and the controls are basically backwards, touching right side of screen activates left booster. May be a subjective preference but when I went to a desktop and used the arrow keys (right key -> right booster) that was way more intuitive.
* Does it consider sideways velocity in judgment? Like 5MPH up and down vs a little bit sideways.
* For the love of Smoot please let me change to metric. Angles in radians would be fun too.
Dunno how much complexity you want to add, but limited fuel would be a nice challenge to add. Or landing spot which is moving (up and down or sideways).
Nice job on the game! Fully usable on my iPhone and only took me like 7 tries to actually land. Bookmarked to study the code and learn how you achieved such a nice end result. Thanks for posting.
Yes but you can also compete on using as little throttle/booster as possible! IMO the perfect landing is one where you engage the engine at the exact right moment to touch down at <1mph, and you engage a booster only once in order to be upright. Engine and booster use aren't part of the score though.
The older commits were part of a previous idea that I abandoned, then a few weeks ago I deleted almost everything and gave it another try.
> IMO the perfect landing is one where you engage the engine at the exact right moment to touch down at <1mph, and you engage a booster only once in order to be upright.
Would be interesting to see, if optimal control would do just that or use many short bursts.
One thing that would be interesting would be a mode where you have limited fuel.
Also, the ability to set different buttons would be good. Towards the end of the landing I want to use one hand for left-right, and the other for the booster rocket, and this is awkward.
I found the font saying the speed and angle were much too small to read, and hard to read against the background anyway, so it was unplayable. No one else seems to have had that problem! macOS 12.5, firefox, 24 inch 1920x1080 display - pretty normal sized. Maybe it works on a phone. I tried zooming in but then I couldn't see the ground, and the font didn't get bigger.
Perfect landing, incredible, you can’t get better than this
Score: 99.3 point landing
Speed: 0.2mph
Angle: 1.0°
Time: 22 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 33.6mph
Max height: 227ft
Engine used: 12 times
Boosters used: 11 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
It took a lot of tries, but I just barely made it eventually! Btw I'm on my Pixel 7 and it works better than I'd like expected on a phone. Seems like it'd be easier with a keyboard though?
Agreed. I tried to get a lot of flips prior to a successful landing, then I realized you can just accelerate upwards to an absurd height and do oodles of flips offscreen before stabilizing to land.
If there were a fuel limit, or if there were some scoring category that showed whether your rocket stayed under a reasonable height, that would make scoring more comparable for everyone.
As ever, this is the kind of problem I find more fun in programming a computer to solve than in solving myself, by hand. But this is a fun implementation! Good controls, too - it only took me two tries to land, which is better than I ever managed with an Apple II and a keyboard as a kid.
Perfect landing, incredible, you can’t get better than this
Score: 101.1 point landing
Speed: 0.7mph
Angle: 0.1°
Time: 26 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 32.4mph
Max height: 194ft
Engine used: 53 times
Boosters used: 30 times
I crashed at 2499.1 mph by going sideways for a long long time. How accurate is your physics? If I hit orbital velocity, will I just orbit the moon? What if I hit escape velocity?
On an iPad, it’s very hard to hit the left/center/right targets accurately. I got some successful landings, but there was a lot of, “No I said center, not left… no, center, not right… ah crap!” If there were keyboard controls, that would help, I think.
I think for mobile interfaces it might be easier to have the engine as the top half of the screen and the boosters as the bottom L/R quarters. That way you could use one thumb each for roll inputs and an index finger for thrust, without having to be very precise about aiming your taps.
I seem to be running into a bug where the velocity gets mis-matched somehow -- the velocity will be listed as above -12 m/s even though the rocket is actually going up, which obviously makes it impossible to land.
Wanted to play, but after the tutorial a first touch makes the ship disappear. When I reload the page, I can see the ship again, and the landing curve, then again if I touch the screen everything disappear except for the stars.
IMO it looked like a big noodle, and the "needle" at the bottom bounces around distractingly. Plus, without the help all the time, it's a little harder!
Great game! For me, controlling the rocket was not that handy, somehow I always wanted to press the opposite button. Will be a option to swap the left and right buttons? That would be great! :)
A good landing, keep trying
Score: 83.5 point landing
Speed: 3.8mph
Angle: 0.8°
Time: 44 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 32.1mph
Max height: 257ft
Engine used: 25 times
Boosters used: 19 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
I'm going to give you some feedback like your game did me: pretty bad lunar lander game, but it could be worse! Just kidding, I played it a bunch of times pretty fun.
It would be nice if the "how to play" screen gave keyboard equivalents. I was about to give up trying to play until I saw someone's comment about arrow keys.
This is tricky on laptops with touchscreens and keyboards, and iPads with keyboards. Seems there’s no good way to ask “is there a keyboard attached” or “what is the primary input method.” So I have to pick one set of instructions to show based on a guess, even though both inputs are acceptable.
I feel like the lunar landing aspect is incidental, and this is fundamentally a "impossible-to-please parent for whom nothing is ever good enough" simulator :-)
I had a 1 point bonus for flips in the score but ended up removing it because it felt too overpowered. But! Having a good score AND flips is impressive in itself.
