darkRun

By: ithamore

On: December 29th, 2008

darkRun, about which you can read more in the Feedback forum, is a stylish, arcade, music game by JLJac where the player collect dots while avoiding circles that sing and dance as they pull the player toward them with their localized gravity. The synergy of its neon graphics, music, and audio is delectable, and its use of gravity gives it that nice extra touch of flavor. It has even been compared to Blast Arena Advanced.

There are framerate issues, which has already been discussed a bit, and an ugly version has been released to help out slower computers. However, when darkRun slows down, it actually makes it a little easier to get a higher score on an older computer than a newer one. Also, this is JLJac’s first game in Flash, which seems quite impressive for a first try. Lastly, you might have to adjust you monitor to be able to read the in-game instructions.

With that said, have any of you already looked into JLJac’s mockups for Dog Street? If no one out there with more programming experience than me (especailly AGS experience) doesn’t want to help, I do. However, I’m not calling dibs on it. That means, I’m lending myself to the editing of the English text at the least. If no one else steps up to the programming plate, I’m even thinking of doing a crash course on AGS.

Additionally, for those who like unique controls or difficult games, JLJac’s school project game is also worth checking out. There is no current promise of stretching out or finishing the game, but it might be good enough for you as is.

Posted in Action, Audio | Tags: JLJac

Esquar

awesome post, we need more like these
mots

nice buildup, but i feel it needs a little something extra to make it really great
Sparky

Also last I heard, JLJac is working on another extremely exciting project which he hasn’t started a thread for: Freethinker. He’s posted some amazing screenshots and video of it.
Alex

Argh FLASH! Flash runs at 2fps on my laptop, and my laptop would be the envy of any computer user from the late 90s! More developers should give more efficient programming methods a try, C is not that hard to get a grasp of, and coupled with a nice library like Allegro, a result just as satisfying can be achieved. :'(
juice

Argh! C doesn’t run quick enough on my C64: this sort of thing should all be written in machine code: it’s not that hard to get a grasp of.

Given that this is the guy’s first game, I’m sure it’s unlikely to be heavily optimised, and Flash has a major advantage over C and Allegro: it’s cross platform and will run without recompilation on Linux, OS X, Windows, Windows Mobile, the Wii – basically, anything that Adobe has seen fit to release an interpreter for.

Overall, things will get better as JLJac learns his craft, and given that I just picked up a 1.4Ghz/1gb laptop for $100[*], maybe it’s time to think of an upgrade…
juice

[*] Whoops. Erm, anyhoo: $100 for that laptop was quite lucky, but there’s no shortage of decent laptops on Ebay for similar prices, such as my gloriously lightweight Toshiba R100.
http://0xdeadc0de.org/ Eclipse

flash is slow ok but this game is totally not optimized and maybe badly coded to run like this.
There are only a bunch of stuff on the screen and i did way fancier things with actionscript myself…

pretty nifty game in the overall anyway
th15

Hmmm, is the music procedurally generated? It looks like it’s generating the music instead of just reacting to it.
http://0xdeadc0de.org/ Eclipse

every circle produce a sound from a sample, several samples makes music :)
Dusty Spur

I like how “its” is used correctly and then incorrectly replaced with “it’s” in the same sentence.

I also like how the instructions are too dark to read.
ithamore

Maybe it’s because it’s usually easier to edit the writing of someone else than one’s own. Anyway, thanks for pointing it out for me, Dusty. I would at least agree the irony is interesting and, with that in mind, likable.

As for the contrast settings for the instructions, I think it might be better for JLJac to address the issue, since I’ve had varying degrees of readability on three different screens.
http://gnomeslair.blogspot.com/ gnome

(sneaks in and leaves a lovely bottle of Dom Perignon)

Happy 2009!
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