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Show HN: InvaderZ is now available to play on itch.io
- fxtentacle 6y agoI believe you should have mentioned the evolutionary algorithm, so that people know why this is on HN. BTW, here's my own retro arcade game: https://fxtentacle.itch.io/space-dance https://fxtentacle.itch.io/space-dance
- atum47 6y agoyou're right, InvaderZ implements GA to evolve the enemies. source code: https://github.com/victorqribeiro/invaderz https://github.com/victorqribeiro/invaderz
- fxtentacle 6y agoFrom what I understand, the GA is used for the shape, and then the shape determines both where it can be hit and also its movement pattern. https://github.com/victorqribeiro/invaderz/blob/1e4512c336b9be8368b8b6ca476548312532c5c4/js/Invader.js#L26-L33 https://github.com/victorqribeiro/invaderz/blob/1e4512c336b9... My guess would be that the "ideal" invader is fully transparent. Can that happen?
- atum47 6y agoroughly speaking I guess there is a 1/(0,5^16) of that happening. I wrote the code back in 2018. I don't fully remember it. I just decided to share on itchio yesterday.
- atum47 6y agobeautiful game by the way
- frompdx 6y agoInteresting idea. I like the minimalist approach. My feedback is the firing cool down period should be much shorter. As fast as the player can hit the space bar. The enemies should move faster as well. At the moment the game feels difficult in an arbitrary way because of the artificial latency while firing.
- riffraff 6y agothis was my same impression, I really wanted to see the evolution but it felt too frustrating to play and I just gave up at generation 4.
- atum47 6y agoif any of you could please open a issue on GitHub I'll take a look as soon as I'm free
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoI think we all had the same impression. It felt like with the speed here you had to make a decision on when to move and when to shoot but they can wiggle faster than my shoot speed and my bullet velocity, so it ends up feeling cheap/unfair.
- CptFribble 6y agoIsn't this reminiscent of the original space invaders, though? IIRC, in that game you were also limited to a single bullet on the screen at a time. Not saying you aren't right about it being frustrating gameplay, just taking a guess at why this game is the way it is.
- atum47 6y agoEverytime I release a game / interactive experiment this kind of stuff happens. I usually see if more people feel that what I did could be improved on. if many people think something would improve the UX, I usually change it. first time I released this code I remember people saying they want be able to "survive" more to see the evolution. if decreasing the cool down if the shot would help, I guess I can change that.
- haolez 6y agoThis remembers me of a game called "Warning Forever"[1], which is immensely fun and implements the same kind of approach seen here: your enemy evolves via machine learning to exploit your weaknesses and protect itself against your strengths. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_Forever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_Forever
- andrelaszlo 6y agoI tried two strategies: 1. Kill the ones that seem to move the fastest, hoping it would lead to very peaceful enemies over time. 2. Kill them from left to right each round, hoping they would all start gathering at the right hand side of the screen. Neither seemed to do anything special, they seem to just be moving randomly and I get to level 60 or so before I get too bored. I don't understand what it's supposed to do. Am I doing it wrong? :D
- atum47 6y agoafter 7 generations I discard them all with the exception of the best one from the past 7 generations. this so the player faces new enemies. you're probably doing well killing them all.
- bestest 6y agoStarted feeling kind of boring at gen 20 — it was just the same all the time. Maybe the pace is really too slow.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]