My very first Chrome experiment

I've never worked with the new <canvas> element of HTML5 so I played with it and created a really really simple game at the weekend. Normally, I don't share such experiments, but maybe you can find something useful in it.

Let's start with the basic rules of the game. You control a red circle with your mouse on a yellow court and have to catch a red rectangle. This is quite simple, but you must not hit one of the gray circles. The number of gray balls increases with every new catch. By a simple click you can inverse the direction of all balls - which is sometimes helpful if you urged in the top left corner for example.

If you're just interested in playing the game and use already one of the modern browsers like Firefox 3.6, Opera 10.6 or Chrome click to play the game.

For all others who are interested in the mathematical background of this game should continue reading. Moving the balls should be clear, so I focus on the hittest, which is not so trivial in JavaScript. My first idea to detect a hit with another point was checking the distance of these two points. This can be done by using the sum of both radii as the smallest possible distance between two circles. Geometrically this can be conceive by the following:

This is quite simple by using the Pythagoras to determine the distance. But the problem with Pythagoras is, that we need 2 powers and one square root in the equation, which will slow down the whole thing if there are 100 flying balls and 50 calculations per second.

A much better idea would be to approximate it for the first step. So I sketched a hair cross in my mind over the scene like this:

Okay, let's dig a little deeper. I decided to make the flying balls half size of the big ball attached to the mouse, which allows us to safe one addition, because we can use the coordinate directly instead of using the right border offset (as the small ball fits in the first half of the big circle):

Now we can describe the matching condition with

(m.x <= b.x-5 <= m.x+10 OR m.x-10 <= b.x+5 <= m.x+10)

which can be better expressed by

(m.x+5 <= b.x <= m.x+15 OR m.x-15 <= b.x <= m.x+5)

Now it's possible to simplify the expression to

(b.x <= m.x+15 AND m.x <= b.x+15)

which is our final check if we hit a point at the x-axis. If the condition is true for any point, we can use the slow distance formula to make a more precise decision:

(m.x-b.x)*(m.x-b.x)+(m.y-b.y)*(m.y-b.y) == (m.radius+b.radius)*(m.radius+b.radius)

As I used PHP as macro language, everything on the right hand side is substitutable and remains constant in the resulting JavaScript source. I used PHP for every offset calculation to reduce the number of operations on the client. At the end of my work, I also removed some unnecessary functions to avoid function calls.

Update of 06.03.2008:

BTW: My record is a score of 145; beat this ;-)

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18 Comments on „My very first Chrome experiment”

Robert

Sagar,

it's deliberated that you can rest behind the dashed lines or use the area to trick the grey balls.

The software I publish on my blog and github is well tested and even weekend projects are build with diligence.

Robert

Sagar Parihar
Sagar Parihar

Hey, very impressive bro. I wanna take lessons from you.

But I found out a silly loop hole in the game. As it was your weekend experiment, its trivial even to mention it. But..

You can actually go out of the frame and need not worry about the small black balls then sneak in to get the prey safely.

In this way you can score around 350 points.

Jean-Marc Heneman

Thanks for sharing this.
It is a good way to practice mouse (or trackpad) dexterity.
(I am teaching internet to elders.)

Free Online Games
Free Online Games

Awesome game. I really like the idea.. played some flash games like this. But you've taken the idea to the next level.. good job..

Phat

I got high score 180

Also Robert :)
Also Robert :)

First, this is an amazing introduction to the Canvas element! I'm trying to learn how to use them, so do you think you could post a commented version of the code? I would really appreciate it. Are you planning on doing anything else with the canvas? Very fun and surprisingly addictive game, btw. :)

Robert

Daniel,
thanks for your correction. I meant Chrome 4, but Opera 10.6 is also fitting.

Robert

Daniel Kendall
Daniel Kendall

*nineties

Now I'm making typos!

Daniel Kendall
Daniel Kendall

Slight typo.

You mean Opera 10.6 not 4. That version is from the nighties long before html5.

Lol

Revolutioners
Revolutioners

Awesome game. I really like the idea.. played some flash games like this. But you've taken the idea to the next level.. good job..

Jay Lauser

This is one of the best 'computer' games I have ever seen. Its simplicity and cleanness is amazing, as well as the way in which is grows with you.

Patrick
Patrick

Hey,

very nice game. Good job. There is just one possible exploit: if you click very often the directions are changed very fast. The result is that the balls do not move very much. This offers a way to move around them quite easily.

OneBoy
OneBoy

Very funny!
Sou Brasileiro e adorei o Game extremamente viciante =D

qwertzguy
qwertzguy

Nice game. There is one little optimisation you're doing and that you forgot to talk about: you're checking collision only when the mouse moves. However this is also a kinda cheat to the game... because if you feel stuck simply stop moving the mouse and all the gray balls will just pass over you without killing you.

Palilo
Palilo

Win! 310 =D
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/1169/xarg.png
very addictive...

Ryan
Ryan

Score of 200. =D

Nick
Nick

Heheh, high score 180!
Great game! The instant-death-upon-touching-a-square thing is a bit frustrating, but this is one of the most fun games I've played on a browser. Great work!

Robert

Hi Rusell,

yes I check the position of the new ball with the following code:

do {
x = Math.random() * 315;
y = Math.random() * 315;
} while(prey.x <= x + 10 && x <= prey.x + 30 && prey.y <= y + 10 && y <= prey.y + 30);

But sometimes I also had the problem that I lost immediately. I'll check this part of the code again.

Russell Ladd
Russell Ladd

Do you check that newly placed small balls and squares are placed a reasonable distance away from the large ball? Sometimes I will lose immediately when I touch the square.

 

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