Finished with 3 minutes on the Jam clock...it fully implements my design, but I didn't have time to tune the playability much at all. So you might find it frustrating or impossibly difficult, I don't know. It's possible to discover Hydrogen and almost certainly Helium.* I'd be interested to hear if anyone gets much farther than that.
(* UPDATE 3: Since first writing that, I've discovered Helium, and Lithium too. I think I might be able to get Beryllium but it's HARD. Can you get it before I do? Post a screenshot of the scoreboard. It's 4 protons, 4 electrons, 5 neutrons.)
Comments of any kind are welcome, of course, especially bug reports, constructive criticism, and lavish praise.
This weekend has been a huge amount of fun! I'm happy with the game I made and I plan to keep tinkering with it post-Jam, tuning the physics for playability.
UPDATE 1: D'oh! There's something wonky going on in the preloading. Sometimes it loads, sometimes it hangs when the opening-screen diagrams have appeared but not the paragraph of instructions. Don't know why and I'm out of time, so please give it plenty of time to load, or a few tries, or something, and let me know if it works or doesn't work for you.
UPDATE 2: Fixed! I can't believe it took me a whole extra day to get the preloader working, but my game should finally be playable. So please check it out!
My cursor kept jumping back to the center of the screen, which made holding onto things difficult. Still, it's a fun idea and a pretty good execution. I can't even imagine holding together enough to get some of the heavier elements.
Very neat! Being able to reference a periodic table ingame would probably be really helpful, as aside from Hydrogen and Helium, I don't remember exactly how many protons/neutrons there are for the elements!
I also noticed the detector seems to get really finnicky and jumpy sometimes, if that's intended you might want to explain how that works.
Yeah, it seems jumpy to me too. Two things to watch out for in that regard: 1. If the mouse cursor gets too near the edge - as in, you're maybe leaving the game to play itself for a while - the cursor jumps back to the center by design (if a bit too fast). So stay away from the edges.... 2. If you play with the flash filling your browser window, you might change the rectangle shape, and the mouse code doesn't adapt, so the "leaving" area (see #1) might get extra big. I recommend you reshape your window to the aspect ratio of the screenshot for best results.
But I wonder if there's a #3 I don't know about, because it just recently started seeming perhaps extra jumpy. Sorry.
This is a really cool concept. I find it incredibly difficult to get anything besides Hydrogen though. The jumpy control has something to do with that.
I also think it would be helpful to have some kind of a HUD to guide you. Like showing what particles are required to build the next element, or if you have a few particles contained show what you need to grab to make something. I had a hard time remembering which particles were which, and don't really know the periodic table well enough to get much beyond Helium.
This has the potential to be a really cool educational game though of you can work out some of those issues.
I really thing there's a bug in the controls now, that wasn't there before the whole fiasco with the preloader. (A bunch of event listeners got mangled in the process...I'm writing up a postmortem.) It really is jumping around for some odd reason. I think I'm going to have to fix that.
As for the hint-HUD...I agree, but I can't add features to this version, since the deadline has passed. I'll definitely continue to work on this game, though, and some such feature is very likely long-term.
- Definitely fits the theme. - I am not very charmed by this, though. - Ah, fullscreen. That's a bit better. - Appreciating the particles lines. - This sound gets annoying when there are many particles in my hexagon. - It is hard to build elements. - The rotation is a nice touch.
Things I would change:
- The sound. What to do with it would probably be more obvious if there was some music. - Make it fun.
Nice idea! I always liked particle physics. I also found it incredibly difficult to make anything other than hydrogen, but I like the minimalistic look of it.
Really nice concept and graphics. Very difficult for me to make anything other than Hydrogen. This is a great start to something educational if you developed it further in that direction.
I learnt today that negatron is also a word for anti-proton. Cool! However, the name of the game bothers me. Hadrons are composite particles made of quarks. The proton and the neutron are hadrons. Hadrons simply don't 'gently hold' other particles.
How come a proton, neutron and electron don't count as hydrogen? No time to support isotopes? :3 What would make this game for me is anti-elements. Like a positron and anti-proton make anti-hydrogen.
Finally, this game is supremely hard... I only did managed H and He. I really liked it though. Great job!
Also, I had no audio while playing. I'm running on Maxthon in Win7 64Bit
Zim: Yeah, I really want anti-elements too! That was part of the original concept, and is very likely to show up in a future version. And maybe isotopes too, though that might overcomplicate things...there are certainly some simplifications at play here.
And yeah, the title doesn't really make sense. (I'm not thrilled with it myself...the phrase "Hadron the Barbarian" got stuck in my brain early in the LD weekend, and wouldn't leave.)
Plash: I appreciate the detailed feedback. "Make it fun" is definitely on the roadmap for this project! :)
Comments20
I also noticed the detector seems to get really finnicky and jumpy sometimes, if that's intended you might want to explain how that works.
1. If the mouse cursor gets too near the edge - as in, you're maybe leaving the game to play itself for a while - the cursor jumps back to the center by design (if a bit too fast). So stay away from the edges....
2. If you play with the flash filling your browser window, you might change the rectangle shape, and the mouse code doesn't adapt, so the "leaving" area (see #1) might get extra big. I recommend you reshape your window to the aspect ratio of the screenshot for best results.
But I wonder if there's a #3 I don't know about, because it just recently started seeming perhaps extra jumpy. Sorry.
I also think it would be helpful to have some kind of a HUD to guide you. Like showing what particles are required to build the next element, or if you have a few particles contained show what you need to grab to make something. I had a hard time remembering which particles were which, and don't really know the periodic table well enough to get much beyond Helium.
This has the potential to be a really cool educational game though of you can work out some of those issues.
I really thing there's a bug in the controls now, that wasn't there before the whole fiasco with the preloader. (A bunch of event listeners got mangled in the process...I'm writing up a postmortem.) It really is jumping around for some odd reason. I think I'm going to have to fix that.
As for the hint-HUD...I agree, but I can't add features to this version, since the deadline has passed. I'll definitely continue to work on this game, though, and some such feature is very likely long-term.
As said before it could use some "career mode" like: gather 2 of these and 3 of these to create Theseium.
- Definitely fits the theme.
- I am not very charmed by this, though.
- Ah, fullscreen. That's a bit better.
- Appreciating the particles lines.
- This sound gets annoying when there are many particles in my hexagon.
- It is hard to build elements.
- The rotation is a nice touch.
Things I would change:
- The sound. What to do with it would probably be more obvious if there was some music.
- Make it fun.
How come a proton, neutron and electron don't count as hydrogen? No time to support isotopes? :3 What would make this game for me is anti-elements. Like a positron and anti-proton make anti-hydrogen.
Finally, this game is supremely hard... I only did managed H and He. I really liked it though. Great job!
Also, I had no audio while playing. I'm running on Maxthon in Win7 64Bit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Proton_proton_cycle.svg
and other fusion chains.
Zim: Yeah, I really want anti-elements too! That was part of the original concept, and is very likely to show up in a future version. And maybe isotopes too, though that might overcomplicate things...there are certainly some simplifications at play here.
And yeah, the title doesn't really make sense. (I'm not thrilled with it myself...the phrase "Hadron the Barbarian" got stuck in my brain early in the LD weekend, and wouldn't leave.)
Plash: I appreciate the detailed feedback. "Make it fun" is definitely on the roadmap for this project! :)