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[Gagege]

Push/Pull Factory

Play here!

I've decided to call it a release. It's ugly. There's still some work to do, but it's playable! It's for two players, so grab a friend and try out the beta version of my game, Push/Pull Factory.

Instructions are in the box.

Details

• Written in Haxe.
• Compiled to Javascript/HTML.
• In development since October 29th.
• I'm doing this for the 2012 Github Game Off... and for glory.
• Tested in more than several internet browsers.

[zwets]

Nice idea! I didn't have any convenient friends available, so I just played around with it myself, but I can see it would be fun to compete for the boxes. Push/pull, nice way to tie it in with GitHub! :-)

A few suggestions:

• Maybe instead of showing numbers for each of the resources, visualize the current order by displaying individual tokens that fill up as you progress? I think that would make it a little easier to keep track of the order, and it might look more interesting.
• It's easy at first to get 'stuck' in the order selection without realizing it. Instead of reusing the movement keys for order selection, maybe have separate keys for that? For exampe, Home and PgUp for the right player, and Q and E for the left.
• I realize you're still working on it, but I think making it more visually appealing (even if the graphics are simple - I'm no drawing wizard either :-) will make it more interesting to play. Maybe have cool logos for the corporations, and make the resource/box designs really distinct. And of course the robots are a great opportunity to give the game personality.

Nice to see more people working in Haxe and HTML5. We're working on a Haxe game too, although our HTML5 target isn't playable right now (we work with the Flash target mostly, and are planning a Windows build too). Thankfully the HTML5 target is improving all the time, so we'll probably get that running someday.

Good luck in the competition!

Jan.

[Gagege]

Maybe instead of showing numbers for each of the resources, visualize the current order by displaying individual tokens that fill up as you progress? I think that would make it a little easier to keep track of the order, and it might look more interesting.

I love progress bars too. I think I'll try to implement them. Thanks.

It's easy at first to get 'stuck' in the order selection without realizing it. Instead of reusing the movement keys for order selection, maybe have separate keys for that? For exampe, Home and PgUp for the right player, and Q and E for the left.

This is a really good idea. I'm going to change this ASAP.

I realize you're still working on it, but I think making it more visually appealing (even if the graphics are simple - I'm no drawing wizard either :-) will make it more interesting to play. Maybe have cool logos for the corporations, and make the resource/box designs really distinct. And of course the robots are a great opportunity to give the game personality.

Graphics are something I'd love to improve. I feel like I can make some nice looking boxes and almost-half-decent company logos. As far as robot personality goes, that's going to be a tough one for me. I've thought about giving them treads/wheels or just connecting them to some kind of bar that moves.

I only have until the 30th and now I also want to add some kind of AI for single player. I may be getting a little too ambitious!

[zwets]

Yeah, AI would be a nice addition! I think the hardest part would be to make it 'suboptimal' enough to seem human, so it's still fun to play against.. :-)

As for the robots, you could do a 'side view' maybe? That makes it easier to give them personality.

[yuji]

Just tried this on my own as well and mostly want to address the same points as zwets but some additional thoughts:

Maybe instead of showing numbers for each of the resources, visualize the current order by displaying individual tokens that fill up as you progress? I think that would make it a little easier to keep track of the order, and it might look more interesting.

I love progress bars too. I think I'll try to implement them. Thanks.

I'd take this a step further: if you look at the order progress areas in the upper corners of the screen, most of the space is being taken up by 1) the name of the element and 2) the word "OF" (that one word is literally taking up as much space as the two numbers that are actually important).

So in addition to a graphical progress bar, I'd think about abbreviating the name of the element. Just going from "Lithium: 1 OF 3" to "Li: 1/3" with the font twice as big would already make things a lot more readable. Bigger font for the current score ($) and time would be good too.

It's easy at first to get 'stuck' in the order selection without realizing it. Instead of reusing the movement keys for order selection, maybe have separate keys for that? For exampe, Home and PgUp for the right player, and Q and E for the left.

This is a really good idea. I'm going to change this ASAP.

Whatever you do, please don't literally use Home and PgUp because then this will no longer be playable on most Macs.

[Gagege]

True, home and pgup wouldn't be good. Neither would the numpad. I'll have to think of something that's convenient and on every keyboard.

[Gagege]

Big graphics update.

Beta 2.



Let me know what you think of the controls now.

Still need to add AI. Still need to tweak it 'till it's fun!