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[gingerbeardman]

Just registered so I could say:

this is great!

and

well done!

thanks for the game

matt

[rudy]

I love this game. Graphics look like it were hand-drawn and they are great. Good work.

[György Straub]

I hoped somebody would do this cover. I really love the atmosphere you've created here.=)

How did you achieve this amount of fluidity with the critters' animation (when they bend for a turn)? Is is procedural?

[Jonathan Whiting]

Had a really magical time with this, absolutely beautiful.  Sound, graphics, gameplay, everything meshes perfectly.  Chillllled out.

I would say it perhaps outstayed it's welcome just a tiny bit.  I was ready for it to end a few minutes before it actually did, but it's not a big deal.

I got 1605.

[John Nesky]

How did you achieve this amount of fluidity with the critters' animation (when they bend for a turn)? Is is procedural?

They're rendered procedurally, yes. Although I did not get a chance to generate them procedurally like I wanted to, so there's just like ten varieties that I made. Each critter sprite is a polygon that I manually entered into code, and the vertices of the polygon are mapped to the coordinate systems of the nodes in the chain physics model, interpolating between the two nearest nodes using some crazy algorithm that's hard to explain.

The chain is a bunch of circles of varying sizes that are kept tangent to each other. By default they follow verlet physics. When they are following a path, they ignore velocity and just move towards the next circle (following an arc) like a snake. I have a system for smoothly interpolating between the verlet and snake physics that I am proud of.

[György Straub]

Thanks for the reply! So, if I get what you're saying, the sprites are not textured quads rather than triangle strips, that are created based on the chain's curvature (or so)?

[John Nesky]

I don't know how flash's renderer is implemented, but in my code, the sprites are neither quads nor triangles. They are a call to Graphics.moveto(), followed by a sequence of Graphics.lineto()s. Some of the critters are just one polygon, plus a couple dots for eyes whose coordinates are calculated in the same manner as the rest of the vertices of the polygon. 

Maybe this screenshot of my desktop taken during development would help:
http://snoopon.me/shaktool/406

[Oddball]

I had a great time dragging around the chain of critters. I didn't bother trying to get a high score, I was having too much fun just swishing about. Well, I'm off for another go. See you in an hour.

[J. R. Hill]

Wow, this is an all-around great game.

[John Nesky]

My website is currently down for unknown reasons, to be investigated. In the meantime, you can play flowEST on Newgrounds:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/544659

If I don't figure it out soon maybe I'll ask Melly to change the link for me in the compilation...

EDIT: Okay it's back. Yay!