Forums » Games » released my first game : Private Joe

hi all,

hope to get some feedback from the peeps here...

http://www.hotbazooka.com/privatejoe

* technical aspects *

the game has an achievement system (badges and points). You need to sign in via Google/Yahoo/OpenID to earn badges.

the hardest part was designing the achievement system, and integrating it with the game.

essentially, hotBazooka is my very own mini Kongregate.

* game design *

it's got 5 levels, and I try to have a mix of realism + arcade. Polished it many many times, and played through the game many times!

feel free to poke holes, and ask questions. ImpactJS, dom, and you guys taught me a bunch, and i'm really grateful.

This game is sweet!! Love the giant monster at the end of level one, gave me a HellBoy/Wolfenstein vibe of Nazi's and monsters. You truly did a great job.

You might want to bind the down arrow key (no action tied to it) so when you accidentally hit it mid game play it doesn't move the scrolling bar on the page, but other then that i'd say its pretty much perfect!

@MobileMark thanks! just binded the up and down keys, pushed an update.

also, can anyone test the game on IE9? I'm on OSX, can't find a portable IE9 program to test.

Outstanding job fugufish. The game looks and plays great! Did you create the art? HotBazooka is awesome! It looks great!

One comment and it probably is only me who would do this, but could you also map the up arrow to the jump? That way you can use the X or Up key?

I second MobileMark when saying that the game is pretty much perfect!

Very impressive! I love all the different enemy types and the text bubbles above them. Awesome job!

I have one nitpick though: the collision box for the player feels a bit too big. I think it should have the same width as the character, but without the gun. I wouldn't mind if the gun overlaps the collision layer.

Awesome game fugufish! Really like the graphics. The movements are very fluid. Really dig the music too.

I went ahead and upgraded to IE9 from 8 on my Windows 7 machine. It was kind of interesting. The game would not load at all at first. Refreshed and no go. Then I went on to check out the developer tools for IE9. I went to the console feature and it said to refresh the page. When I did that I got these messages:

SCRIPT5007: Unable to set value of the property 'innerHTML': object is null or undefined 
ajax.js, line 81 character 10
LOG: Browser: Explorer 9 on Windows 
LOG: other console 
SCRIPT5007: Unable to set value of the property 'gS': object is null or undefined 
privatejoe, line 1 character 1
SCRIPT5007: Unable to get value of the property 'run': object is null or undefined 
privatejoe, line 1 character 1

The odd thing is that after that, the game worked perfectly. So I turned off the browser and tried a bunch of times. What I found is that the game seems to work perfectly when the developer's console is left open (maybe because it allows the scripts to continue despite the errors?). But when the developers tools sub-window is closed, the game won't even load. It would be interesting to know if anyone else had a similar experience.

Yeah, same experience in IE9. :(

If I let it run with the console open I get 7-9 fps.

hmm i think I know what's causing the IE9 problem:

- some ajax calls made by the game to the server
- setting variables in game states

I wish I have access to an IE9 machine so I can properly debug it.

I've had this experience in other (non Impact) js situations when printing something to the console for testing. Those LOG: lines

LOG: Browser: Explorer 9 on Windows 
LOG: other console 

look like they might be debug code you have in there somewhere. Try taking that out and see what happens?

yeah I actually used

 console.log()

to print out info regarding the browser. The reason being I wanted to allocate certain features to certain browsers ( somehow not all browsers are equal)

anyone know of a way I can get a portable IE9 without forking out cash?

Afaik you there's no way to use IE9 if you don't have Vista or Win7.

Quick workaround for this issue - just define the console object yourself, when it's not present:

if( !window.console ) {
	window.console = {log:function(){}};
}

(untested)

Very cool! I like the military guys, great artwork! The voice text is a nice touch as well as the occasional shootable tiles for secret spots

Awesome game,
i reach the level where there is a lava pit and the prisoner on the left corner, and i can't jump through it because i always hit the platform, is that suppose to be a trap ? :P

then i run out of lives/continue (i thought it's gonna be unlimited :P )

@potan try going to the top right platform (where the tank was), press left continuously ... you'll 'glide' or 'drop' towards the prisoner nicely.

Excellent game. I can't wait to dive into a bit more. I like the dropped items after you kill a bad guy. Keep it up!

hi all, i just made the game IE9 compatible, but I seemed to run into some performance issues ( I suspect its due to my 3 yr old laptop running Windows 7).

anyone care to have a look and offer feedback? (sound fx, music, performance,etc)

I made 6 different resolutions for the game, hope you can test all of them.

http://1-1-largetest.hotbazookaportal.appspot.com/privatejoe?res=300x200
http://1-1-largetest.hotbazookaportal.appspot.com/privatejoe?res=350x180
http://1-1-largetest.hotbazookaportal.appspot.com/privatejoe?res=350x200
http://1-1-largetest.hotbazookaportal.appspot.com/privatejoe?res=400x160
http://1-1-largetest.hotbazookaportal.appspot.com/privatejoe?res=400x280
http://1-1-largetest.hotbazookaportal.appspot.com/privatejoe?res=450x200


In my machine, the game freezes on IE9 if the action gets a bit too heavy.

PS: the game now has 8 full levels, I haven't officially released it yet on the website. Feel free to play all you want!

more issues from my machine:

in IE9 and using
http://1-1-largetest.hotbazookaportal.appspot.com/privatejoe?res=450x200

the game freezes upon successful loading (the bar reaches 100% but jams after that)

seems like the crashing was caused by line 98 in sound.js

I looked up http://impactjs.com/forums/impact-engine/bug-with-sound and it's solved!

Looks very nice :-)

I just started playing with the impact engine today. Looks like it will be heaps of fun.

Great to see other devs creating cool stuff.

Cheers

Wow! This is stunning... well done! :-) Although the nazi-theme seems a bit oldschool, the gfx are great and the game runs very smooth.

thanks! it now works on IE9 too!

On your website http://www.hotbazooka.com/privatejoe

I keep getting this error at the beginning of the game in Safari for OS X, right before I encounter the first enemy:

INDEX_SIZE_ERR: DOM Exception 1: Index or size was negative, or greater than the allowed value

games/game1/game-html5audio-large.min.js

It sometimes locks up the game, and sometimes resolves, only to occur later. Seems to be a sound issue.

hmm weird, it works perfect for me (OS X Safari 5). No errors in the console too

I also had a problem where I would load the game and it would get stuck near the end at about 95% loaded. But quitting the restarting the browser (Safari 5.0.4 OS X) fixed the problem. Maybe just a weird cache or memory issue, likely not your fault.

Very nice game. No problems noticed so far.

Wow, just noticed that its a popular game on Chrome Web Store with TONS of reviews and installs, great job!

Browser Bots was doing well as a featured game for a month maybe, then was no longer a featured game (not sure why) and my Chrome installs have slowed to a trickle. Seems like its hard to find games that aren't featured as well. Still not sure about a good formula to stand out as a popular game in the Chrome Web Store but Private Joe seems to have it!

thx! I haven't been monitoring it lately, am surprised myself!