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Here's my submission to the competition. It's basically just a standard vertical SHMUP (implemented using JavaScript), in which all the game data is generated at "random".

Follow this link to play the game (http://www.kloonigames.com/evolution/).

(http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/evolution_small_01.jpg) (http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/evolution_shot_01.jpg) (http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/evolution_small_02.jpg) (http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/evolution_shot_02.jpg) (http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/evolution_small_03.jpg) (http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/evolution_shot_03.jpg)

Randomly is in quotes because the game uses very Darwinistic way of generating the data. Every time you play a game, the game keeps track of how long you played that particular game. And the way that a game is generated is by selecting few of the more popular games and mashing them (randomly) together. Hopefully this process will create a game that is even more interesting and thus will be played even longer. The plan is to create the ultimate game, that is so addicting that once people stumble upon it they can’t quit playing it. And then the game will evolve consciousness and it will start taking over the world by itself. And thus Skynet was born…

I think it's an interesting idea, but it's hard for me to say much about it because it performs so poorly in my browser :(

And maybe you should spend some of the extra time you have now on improving those graphic assets and squashing some bugs. The first time nothing showed up for me. It's also very unfair when an enemy or 'bullet' pops up on top of my ship.

I don't like browser games and I hate browser games that are implemented with tricks that aren't meant for multimedia. You should really try to port it to flash if you want it to be a browser game.

Does this even work in every mainstream browser. (Firefox 2 or 3, Safari, Opera, Konqueror...)

It works in safari, fwiw.  Seems a little bit too random at the moment: some of the unt speeds are a bit high, and not infrequently there's absolutely nothing to do :/

cool but the fps jumps around a lot for me.  Also after I played through the first time and died it reloaded and never sent any enemies at me.  When I clicked for a new game the next one didn't have enemies either...

(My experience is that JavaScript in general doesn't work particularly well in Opera. Or rather, it works fine but then randomly stops working entirely. But I keep using it anyway, 'cause I love it. And hey, Javascript isn't important, right? ;-)




As it goes - I gave it a go, but two things put me off: firstly, the bullets were so small I could barely see them; secondly, laptop trackpads aren't so great for action games. ;-)

Awesome idea!  :)

Like I said on your site before you posted it here, I don't think time spent playing is an adequate measure of quality/addictiveness unless you let the player replay a given game. Since the basic mechanics are fairly fun, the learning algorithm tends to favor weak enemies. 2 of the 3 times I played today had enemies whose shot radius was far too short to pose any threat to the player, causing longer play times before game over, entering into a feedback loop which encourages weak enemies. Harder enemies would be more fun, but since the player dies quicker and cannot replay, the game classifies them as undesirable.

Also, sometimes it takes a long time to load up a new wave, or just doesn't load a new wave at all. This is long enough to skew the time played measurement.

Okay, this concept is really cool. But it didn't work. ): Enemies had no range at all, and some just shot left. It seemed a bit like survival of the shittest to me, sorry.

Thanks a lot guys for the feedback.

The coolest thing about the game is process of evolution. It's fun to see were the game goes. I hope it turns out to be somewhat playable.

I'll try to improve the game a bit during the competition. I came up with couple of ideas that could help the evolution... I have to try those out.

 :-X I really hate some of the misconceptions about Java and Javascript.

Java is one of the most platform-agnostic languages.  It's also one of the fastest (both of these properties are due to the fact that java is compiled to bytecode and if you still think java is slow, then you are living in 1997).

If you suffer from java incompatibility, it is from your choice of browser or OS.  Or you have an outdated version of java.


*sigh* This seems more a matter of personal preference than anything else.  Programmers prefer java, and artists prefer Flash ... what else is new?  Flash has a lot of limitations that Java Applets don't suffer from.  If anything, I would recommend that this programmer port to a java applet, to open up most of the features of the Java language.  Javascript is incredibly limited, even when compared to Flash, but Java is far more versatile than flash  (don't believe me?  see here http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/free-music-stud.html (http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/free-music-stud.html) for the most glaring example).

Anyway, I can see why a lot of people use Flash.  For artists, it is a lot easier to use.  You can rapidly develop and deploy animated and interactive applications.  Still, Flash has a lot of limitations that programmers, understandably, don't like.  The biggest of these is in audio handling, but there are others.

I understand why you would choose Flash, but please let go of the java hate.   ;)

One other option, which lies somewhere between DOM element hacks and Flash, is the new Canvas element.  Safari, Firefox, and Opera all support it extensively.  It basically gives you a good high-performance drawing surface, on which you can render from images or vector paths through JavaScript.

This is also pretty funky: http://ejohn.org/blog/processingjs/

I think that the time a person spent playing one stage can't accurately measure how much he liked it. Perhaps you should have a "rate stage" step after you finish, in which the player rates the stage on some sort of scale. I also think that ,perhaps, the graphics need more proceduralness, but I guess that's hard to accomplish on javascript.  ;D

P.S.: I love your work.  :-*

And that is why I have to recommend Canvas.  It fits the bill quite nicely for generating graphics on the fly.

yeah that is an interesting concept,. but it is not working well,. i see little shot trails that don't even make it out of the enemy sprite,. well nothing killed me acually and then,.  nothing happened, . . . . . .

perhaps a human rateing system would be better,. good suggestion.  or involve the score in the evolution equation,. higher score means player shot  something! 

and I don't like flash at all, or browser games in general,. but one thing is UNFORGIVABLE :-X the utter lack of ANY sounds!  how can you have a videogame without sounds?  I had a hard time with ppl who dev. games without sounds too,. I find out all sorts if timing and even simple functioning of my code from the FEEDBACK i gain from even crapy placeholder sounds,. to me games should have some sence of rythem,. what easyer way to find that then to add sounds to the events and listen to the "music" that your game generates?   :-\

Sometimes it's over a minute before any enemies appear.