Forums » Games » Partypillars

I just created a game for my birthday party, which I called Partypillars. It's a multiplayer platforming game for 2 to 4 players, where the object of the game is to eat cake to get big and gain more points than your opponents. But you gotta watch out, if your opponents jump on your head you'll get smaller again.

It's inspired by the classic Mario Bros game (you know, the one that introduced the POW!) and I think I was inspired by Super Crate Box by the excellent Vlambeer with regards to the art.

You can try it here: http://www.krisjet.com/partypillars

The game was a huge success at my party, we hooked up 4 PS3 controllers to my Macbook, connected it to my TV using HDMI, turned on fullscreen and went nuts with multiplayer mayhem. Gathering most of my closest friends in the same room and watching them having fun playing a game I created is the best birthday gift I could have gotten :)

I did a followup post on the quirks I found when creating Partypillars. It touches on box2D, input lag in browsers, the fullscreen API and the audio API.

http://krisjet.tumblr.com/post//technical-info-on-partypillars

love it <3

Ditto. Just fantastic, lots of fun.

Interesting write-up, Krisjet. Thanks for the technical details. One thing I am curious about is the PS3 controller input binding for Impact. How did you manage that? Did you use any libs? Thanks in advance.

EDIT: okay I see that OSX now includes PS3 controller drivers. Still not sure about how to go about binding/testing input from the controllers in impact. Did you use any 3rd party app or lib for that?

Yeah, I used a third party app. I might try out the gamepad API, but it only works in Chrome, and I can't stand the input lag :) I've heard the gamepad API is supported in nightly builds of Firefox, so maybe I will try it out. Would be cool to rely as little as possible on other software.

Thanks for the info.

Meanwhile, searched and found a couple of interesting links on the subject: a tutorial on the subject and this lib. May be of use to others.

@Krisjet Great game. Nice work. How long did you work on that? Also, you say "Yeah, I used a third party app". Which one? I have got my browser to work with 1PS3 controller, but not multiple! I'd like to see how.

I worked on it for about two weeks, but I was super into it, so I spent more time than I planned :) Since I was gonna "premiere" it on my birthday I spent some extra time on polish and stuff too, and I'm pretty happy with how most of the graphical feedback ended up.

For mapping keys I used Gamepad Companion, an app I found on the Appstore. It is a bit of a pain to get bluetooth to work for more than 2 PS3 pads, but I just connected them with the cable, unplugged them, pushed the system button a bit, and if it didn't take I tried again. After some minutes I had them all up and running. After Gamepad Companion recognized all of them there was no problem remapping the keys. Didn't use the analog sticks though, so I'm not sure if they will work.

That's some damn nice progress for two weeks work! I guess I was thinking you were using a 3rd party JS app to get the controller to work with ImpactJS/The Browser. But you were using a 3rd party app as a driver. So once you got the controller working w/ the OS, then the browser just recognized it as a controller input and you were able to use the Browser built in functionality seen here

So were you mapping keys like: Controller 1 "L1" button = L key, Controller 2 "L1" button = K key? ANd then in impact you setup those keyboard bindings to actions?

I'm going to write an ImpactJS plugin to interface with the browsers built in gamepad support so that you can more easily use a gamepad in your games. I doubt it would work with multiple controllers though.

Also, I'm just realizing you're the guy who made the Little Big Mansion game which I thought was really cool. You're on a roll! Keep it up!

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread, but I just posted Partypillars on itch.io, and I added much needed controller support to the game! Grab some friends and a couple of controllers and enjoy it the way it's meant to be played :) I also updated the above link with controller support of course.

Itch.io link: http://krisjet.itch.io/partypillars

Saw this game the first time. Absolute fun :)

Just posted an updated version of the game here: krisjet.itch.io/partypillars/
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