More context: this was a Flash game that was popular in my social group 15 years ago. In that version, you started on level 1 and had to clear X obstacles to move to the next level. Then when you cleared X obstacles on level 9 you won the game. (I don't remember what X was, specifically.) You had five lives across all levels and when you crashed out the fifth time, you had to start over on level 1.
This modern remake seems to pop you into level 9 with practically infinite obstacles and just one life. Makes sense since most people who got good ended up fairly consistently reaching the end of the game. I'm sure they would have wanted to play only level 9 and compare with each other how far they could get.
I much prefer the flash version, when run in actual Adobe Flash (Flash Player Projector 29, OS X 10.9, Intel i7-4790K). Something about the controls feels much tighter versus the web remake.
When played in the Ruffle flash emulator, there's something wrong with the collision detection; I can't get past the first level. (The visuals are wrong too, there's much more aliasing.)
The ability to keep running things like Flash is a nice bonus. (I do use flash projector, a standalone Adobe app which loads swf files; I would never run outdated flash in my web browser.)
> This game is one of the tests for the pilot to demonstrate the Eye-hand coordination. As a pilot, you are controlling a missile / flighter aircraft to pass through the obstacles as much as you can. Generally a qualified pilot can survive in level 9 up to 100 obstacles.
Doesn't answer *why* it starts at level 9, but level 9 appears to have some significance.
Yup, this is one of the top things I pay attention to when making arcade games. The game over screen should put you back in the game immediately after a key press.
I wonder if phones have cursor support. Obviously they have to for touch-based text editing, but it feels different. Touch screens inherently have dead zones with no input, a cursors position persists. I imagine there are a couple of gotchas if you were to try to implement this yourself. Fun to think about.
You are correct that it is pretty interesting how they went around implementing the interface. Look up some YouTube videos if this interests you.
Another clever thing is that you can connect an iPad to your Mac and control both with the same mouse, jumping over screen to screen with the cursor (dragging files, etc).
You say that as if shading is a feature to add. Shading is the default for 3D libraries, so this developer went to extra effort to toggle on cell-shaded mode to remove it on purpose.
It's not obvious to me the developer was using a 3D library! It looks like this was made in 2010, and uses and SVG library and vanilla Javascript. https://github.com/bwhmather/missile-game
The flash game it's based on does have more textured walls, although overall shading is still pretty minimal. I don't know what 3D flash development was like.
This is fun on mobile, tested on ios; I had to close the “works on desktop only” popup (via a popup blocker), but then I could tap to move in that direction and I enjoyed playing this way.
If you make something that lives on the web and doesn’t support all platforms, please consider showing the unsupported platforms a screenshot or video.
Cool! Quite difficult (reverse scroll makes it tough on trackpad). I have a soft spot for games that let you play within 2 seconds of boot, and this does, congrats on that. Is it intentional that it starts on level 9?
This modern remake seems to pop you into level 9 with practically infinite obstacles and just one life. Makes sense since most people who got good ended up fairly consistently reaching the end of the game. I'm sure they would have wanted to play only level 9 and compare with each other how far they could get.