Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 6:36 PM
Hi there,
first of all, I would like to say thank you for having created such a vivid community around Tron!
This seems to be the perfect place to announce a new Tron light cycle game I have created during the last month: Jangaron
The special thing about Jangaron is that it runs in most browsers and requires no plug-in whatsoever, but still features real-time 3D graphics. Of course, these graphics cannot compete with OpenGL / DirectX, but you can play Jangaron almost anywhere - all you need is a browser, no administration rights to install anything! Because it works in Safari, it should even run on an iPhone / iPod touch (but unfortunately doesn't at the moment)!
If you think that this an interesting approach, please go ahead and play the game, respond to this post, leave a comment in my blog, drop me an e-mail, or best: contribute ideas and code (as soon as I have set up Jangaron as an open source project)! There are still a lot of open issues: sound, better AI, network play, ...
Have fun!
-Joo-
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TRON.dll
User
Posts: 4,349 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 7:19 PM
Wow! What a way to start off at Tron-Sector!
That was really awesome, although I was only playing against computers. I'll try out multiplayer soon!
Here's a quick review:
PROS:
-Player names are characters from the movie.
-Finally! A game where TRON isn't in the Blue cycle!
-3D graphics that run smooth even on my computer.
-Simple, predefined controls
-Obstacle placement was very fair
-Full control over grid size
CONS:
-Info may be hard to read for some (I.E. Speed)
-Can't see info for players 4-6, gets cut off screen on main menu
-A bit hard to see at times, maybe some better camera angles
IDEAS:
Note-I can understand if any of these are out of reach, hehe.
-Hole in the wall
-Deleted music from the LC scene in the movie*
-Character voices/movie sounds
-Wall textures
The game would still be perfect if you just fixed the cons, though! Network play would be pretty awesome, too. If you can make this compatible with the Nintendo Wii's web browser, then you are my new hero. (My current hero is Tom Dickson.   , jk)
Seriously, though, keep up the good work! It's always great to see a new game developing program rezz into the sector! 
 
TRON 2.0 (PC) name - TRON.dll
I'll play any mode, but I'm best at LC.
PSN - TRON-dll
XBOX Live/Games for Windows Live - TRONdll
-I have a Wii, DS, and 3DS. PM me to exchange friend codes.
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TheReelTodd
Sector Admin
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 7:44 PM
Joo Wrote:Hi there,
first of all, I would like to say thank you for having created such a vivid community around Tron!
This seems to be the perfect place to announce a new Tron light cycle game I have created during the last month: Jangaron |
Greetings, Joo and welcome to TRON-Sector!
I just tried out your light cycle game. Pretty cool! I suck at it, but it was fun to play. You should consider having the players not start all the way against the wall. I always seemed to get separated from the opponent early on in the game. It would be nice to be able to travel behind the opponent's starting point and go head to head with them. Just a suggestion. 
A couple of threads you may want to hit are:
What's with your name?
And...
Don't forget to PING in every time you have yourself Another dose of TRON
I think you'll enjoy your time here at The Sector
|
DaveTRON
User
Posts: 5,314 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 8:16 PM
Nice. I'd love to see an actual cycle at the front, but still kind of fun to play.
DaveTRON
|
Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 9:06 PM
| DaveTRON Wrote:Nice. I'd love to see an actual cycle at the front, but still kind of fun to play. |
Thank you. Yeah, that's the minimalistic appeal about Jangaron ;-)
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Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 9:29 PM
| That was really awesome, although I was only playing against computers. I'll try out multiplayer soon! |
You better, cos the AI really sucks.
-Finally! A game where TRON isn't in the Blue cycle!
|
Strange, isn't it? That in the whole movie, good is blue and evil is red, but in the light cycle race, it's the other way round! If you happen to have the correct RGB values of the three "good" light cycles (which are all a bit different, as you surely know), I would gladly use them.
Thanks for your other PROs as well!
CONS:
-Info may be hard to read for some (I.E. Speed)
-Can't see info for players 4-6, gets cut off screen on main menu
-A bit hard to see at times, maybe some better camera angles
|
Speed: I plan to place this, together with the coordinates, in a separate head-up display and visualize it graphically (bar or even something circular). Or did you mean the color?
Player info: if they overflow, they should wrap into the next line, which looks a bit confusing. How does it look like in your browser (can you make a screen shot?) When the speedometer is separated, there should be enough room for all 6 player infos in one row.
Other camera angles: The only other camera angles that are possible would be 90 degrees left or right or backwards (rear camera/mirror): these are on my to-do-list, too. Smooth turns are not possible due to technical limitations with the rendering technique I use.
IDEAS:
-Hole in the wall
-Deleted music from the LC scene in the movie*
-Character voices/movie sounds
-Wall textures
- ... Network play ...
- ... Nintendo Wii's web browser compatibility ...
|
Music / character voices / movie sounds: Do you think I could use them without getting into trouble? Then, there would still be the problem that there is no cross-browser JavaScript sound. It would require some plug-in, which I have avoided so far. But I could make sound optional...
Graphic effects (hole in the wall, wall textures): Textures are impossible with my rendering technique, only very simple graphical symbols could be rendered e.g. for the outer walls.
Network play: I had this in mind from day one. When it comes to networking, being in the browser is a big advantage (XMLHttpRequest!). The complicated part is that I have to decide for a server architecture and infrastructure. I thought about reusing an existing network protocol, but it must be HTTP-based, or I could write an adapter client that translates the browser's HTTP requests into some other Tron-game-protocol... any suggestions are welcome!
Nintendo Wii's web browser compatibility: Are there any developer testing tools for that browser? Otherwise I'd need a real Wii for testing. When I think about it, this sounds like the perfect excuse for buying one! ;-)
|
Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 9:44 PM
TheReelTodd, thanks for the nice welcome!
You should consider having the players not start all the way against the wall. I always seemed to get separated from the opponent early on in the game. It would be nice to be able to travel behind the opponent's starting point and go head to head with them. Just a suggestion.
|
A welcome suggestion! Just some hours ago, I played LightCyclesGCC and noticed the slightly different starting position. I also thought immediately that it improves game play!
The only reason my light cycles still start directly at the wall is because the walls are infinitively thin. Usually, the only wall you can see from its "thin" side is a wall that is just being constructed by a light cycle, but there, the light cycle (in Jangaron, also rendered as a small "lateral" wall) hides it. I will use the same trick and add a small "lateral" wall at the starting position.
Another feature I plan is that you can select the starting pattern, maybe even for each single player. You may have noticed that all settings lead to an immediate update of dependent elements (well, for input fields, this is delayed until you exit them). There is a UI framework behind the settings dialogs that takes care of this behavior and could also be used to select/enter start coordinates which update a visualization of the starting pattern. Maybe even some drag'n'drop could be possible...
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lurkinghorror
User
Posts: 803 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 9:53 PM
TRON.dll Wrote:
-Finally! A game where TRON isn't in the Blue cycle!
|
Have you never played GLTron?
Great game Joo.
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TRON.dll
User
Posts: 4,349 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 10:06 PM
| Joo Wrote:You better, cos the AI really sucks. |
lol, it was actually at about my skill level. 
Strange, isn't it? That in the whole movie, good is blue and evil is red, but in the light cycle race, it's the other way round! If you happen to have the correct RGB values of the three "good" light cycles (which are all a bit different, as you surely know), I would gladly use them.
Thanks for your other PROs as well! |
Looked to me like you had the colors down pretty good.
Speed: I plan to place this, together with the coordinates, in a separate head-up display and visualize it graphically (bar or even something circular). Or did you mean the color?
|
You were right the first time. Color was fine.
Player info: if they overflow, they should wrap into the next line, which looks a bit confusing. How does it look like in your browser (can you make a screen shot?) When the speedometer is separated, there should be enough room for all 6 player infos in one row.
|
Yeah, I'll take a screenshot and put it in another post to avoid confusion
| Other camera angles: The only other camera angles that are possible would be 90 degrees left or right or backwards (rear camera/mirror): these are on my to-do-list, too. |
When I said different camera angles, I meant something like looking left and right. But I can probably get used to what you have now.
Smooth turns are not possible due to technical limitations with the rendering technique I use.
|
I don't think smooth turns is really neccasary in this game. That was just one of my ideas, I'm fine with no getaway.
| Music / character voices / movie sounds: Do you think I could use them without getting into trouble? Then, there would still be the problem that there is no cross-browser JavaScript sound. It would require some plug-in, which I have avoided so far. But I could make sound optional... |
Of course you could use them without getting in trouble, so long as you don't try selling the game or making money off it or the like, but if you can't implement sounds then I can fully understand.
| Graphic effects (hole in the wall, wall textures): Textures are impossible with my rendering technique, only very simple graphical symbols could be rendered e.g. for the outer walls. |
Hey, that's fine. It'd probably slow the game down anyways.
Nintendo Wii's web browser compatibility: Are there any developer testing tools for that browser? Otherwise I'd need a real Wii for testing. When I think about it, this sounds like the perfect excuse for buying one! ;-)
|
The Wii's web browser has Flash 7 and is Javascript compatible I think. [URL]www.wiicade.com[/URL] may have what you're looking for, but I think it's mostly flash stuff. They came up with a way to allow flash games to use the Wii remote's buttons, directional pad, and even tilt and distance detection. If you can't find the page about all that, I can find a link.
TRON 2.0 (PC) name - TRON.dll
I'll play any mode, but I'm best at LC.
PSN - TRON-dll
XBOX Live/Games for Windows Live - TRONdll
-I have a Wii, DS, and 3DS. PM me to exchange friend codes.
|
Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, March, 29, 2008 10:23 PM
| The Wii's web browser has Flash 7 and is Javascript compatible I think. www.wiicade.com may have what you're looking for, but I think it's mostly flash stuff. They came up with a way to allow flash games to use the Wii remote's buttons, directional pad, and even tilt and distance detection. If you can't find the page about all that, I can find a link. |
Just found out that the Wii browser seems to some Opera OEM version: http://www.opera.com/products/devices/nintendo/.
Since Jangaron runs perfectly on Opera 9 (I tested 9.26, build 8835 on Windows XP), you should maybe just try it!
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Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Wednesday, April, 02, 2008 6:49 AM
One more thing I wanted to ask:
May I reuse the cool background graphics of Tron-Sector for my game?
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death-program
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Wednesday, April, 02, 2008 10:38 PM
This is great! Controls better than the  light cycles, in my opinion. There should be an online multiplayer, and we can have King of the Grid Tourneys.  Just a suggestion, i realize if this is not possible, or too complex, or if you just don't feel like adding it.where to buy abortion pill ordering abortion pills to be shipped to house buy abortion pill online
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There are 10 kinds of people: Those who understand trinary and those who don't. And those who confuse it with binary.
The  is THE TRUTH ZOMGWTFBBQ
 
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Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Thursday, April, 03, 2008 2:57 AM
| death-program Wrote:This is great! Controls better than the light cycles, in my opinion. There should be an online multiplayer, and we can have King of the Grid Tourneys. Just a suggestion, i realize if this is not possible, or too complex, or if you just don't feel like adding it. |
Thanks, death-program! Technically, network play should be possible, since Jangaron runs in a browser, and one of the things a browser can do best is being a network client. Also, I am not "just" a JavaScript hacker, I also think I know enough about server programming to implement a server. The only things that keep me from adding network play to Jangaron are a) time to implement it and b) a place to host server code. To overcome a), I think my time is better invested in making Jangaron an Open Source project and find folks who help me in developing Jangaron. b) should not be such a big problem, although my server side programming experience so far is mainly Java, and it does not seem so easy to find a hoster that allows to execute Java code, so I would probably need a root server or learn another server-side language...
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Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Friday, April, 04, 2008 8:29 PM
Greetings programs,
thank you again for your feed-back! Some of it I could already implement in the updated version that is now online:
Jangaron version 0.43.
Go ahead and play or read about the new features in my corresponding blog post!
Note that you may have to refresh your browser cache to receive the updated version!
End of line.
][][]
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death-program
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Friday, April, 04, 2008 10:07 PM
If you put every player as a Program, the program messes up and it becomes very difficult to exit your browser.order abortion pill morning after pill price where to buy abortion pill
------------------------------------------------------
There are 10 kinds of people: Those who understand trinary and those who don't. And those who confuse it with binary.
The is THE TRUTH ZOMGWTFBBQ
|
TRON.dll
User
Posts: 4,349 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, April, 05, 2008 4:48 PM
Updated version works great! Nice job!
Uh Oh, the MCP has an incredibly evil request...
 -NOW MAKE IT WORK IN A DREAMCAST BROWSER! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Just so you get that joke, the most common edition of the Dreamcast browser has these specs:
Dial-Up only
Flash 2
Javascript
If you get it working for Dreamcast, then you, my fellow conscript, are insane.
But seriously, there's no way any flash game will work on Dreamcast web browsers. The most recent one was broadband compatible, but the adaptor you had to buy was really expensive and, today, really rare. That browser had Flash 3.
The is so evil...
TRON 2.0 (PC) name - TRON.dll
I'll play any mode, but I'm best at LC.
PSN - TRON-dll
XBOX Live/Games for Windows Live - TRONdll
-I have a Wii, DS, and 3DS. PM me to exchange friend codes.
|
Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, April, 05, 2008 5:25 PM
| death-program Wrote:If you put every player as a Program, the program messes up and it becomes very difficult to exit your browser. |
You are indeed a death-program, death-program!
To be honest, I already noticed that bug, but decided then not to fix it as I thought nobody would try to let the game play by itself! But well, it could make a nice screen saver then... ;-)
So okay, I'm going to fix it after all.
The reason that all those dialog boxes pop up that make it so hard to get rid of the browser window is that the game is considered over in two situations: a) when there is at most one player left or b) when there are no more users left. In case b), a surviving program is chosen as the winner randomly, as I thought it might have been boring to watch the programs finish the game. Because you can configure that game to run without any user right from the start, it is considered over immediately!
But what about fixing the bug by making the "game over because no user left" detection wait for some user interaction? Such as: a message appears (but not as a popup!) that says that there are no user players left and provides a button to quickly end the game. In contrast to my old solution, the game would keep on running until the button is actually pressed!
What do you think?
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Joo
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, April, 05, 2008 5:40 PM
| TRON.dll Wrote:Updated version works great! Nice job! |
Thanks again, TRON.dll! Did you notice btw. that in my blog, I gave you credits for the hud clean-up suggestion?
Uh Oh, the MCP has an incredibly evil request...
-NOW MAKE IT WORK IN A DREAMCAST BROWSER! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
...
But seriously, there's no way any flash game will work on Dreamcast web browsers. |
The is very evil, I agree! But let me tell you that free programs do not use Flash! ;-)
Jangaron is not Flash! It is completly written in JavaScript and uses only (D)HTML for rendering. You can pause the game with the space bar (hey, maybe I should mention this in the game instructions!) and inspect the scene with a DOM inspector like Firebug...
So the question to ask is whether the Dreamcast browser (or any other platform where you would like to see Jangaron) supports suffcient JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to make Jangaron work. For example, IE6 doesn't (it fails to render transparent borders and sucks hard on XHTML) and Konqueror
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death-program
User
Posts: 0 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, April, 05, 2008 8:56 PM
Joo Wrote:
You are indeed a death-program, death-program!
|
Well, thank you.
...I thought nobody would try to let the game play by itself!
|
Obviously, you've never met me... 
Such as: a message appears (but not as a popup!) that says that there are no user players left and provides a button to quickly end the game. In contrast to my old solution, the game would keep on running until the button is actually pressed!
What do you think? |
Good idea. Then you could have it showing a Program's viewpoint.
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------------------------------------------------------
There are 10 kinds of people: Those who understand trinary and those who don't. And those who confuse it with binary.
The is THE TRUTH ZOMGWTFBBQ
|
TRON.dll
User
Posts: 4,349 | Re: Jangaron: Light Cycle Race in a Browser
on Saturday, April, 05, 2008 9:30 PM
Oh, didn't know it wasn't Flash, lol.
Even though, Dreamcast browser probably doesn't have what it takes to run Jangaron. I'm sure it doesn't have a high enough version of anything to run any modern websites.
The Dreamcast line was a joke, btw. hehe. I'll have to try it in a Wii browser soon.
Oh, and it works great in Firefox!
I'll have to check it out in my Palm's browser, too! Wishful thinking... 
Great job! Keep up the good work, and keep us posted! where to buy abortion pill http://blog.bitimpulse.com/template/default.aspx?abortion-types buy abortion pill online
TRON 2.0 (PC) name - TRON.dll
I'll play any mode, but I'm best at LC.
PSN - TRON-dll
XBOX Live/Games for Windows Live - TRONdll
-I have a Wii, DS, and 3DS. PM me to exchange friend codes.
|
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