RA

Genre	Description	Technologies	Development Status
Runner	Musical rails platformer	HTML5, CraftyJS	prototype

My first foray into HTML5, RA started out with a smallish scope that gradually shrunk to that of a prototype over several months. I wanted a way to recognize music that spoke to me while by interpreting and augmenting it through gameplay. I kind of succeeded.

Trying to do something novel while also learning three new technologies was a mistake, I spent a lot of time troubleshooting obscure issues caused by doing things “the wrong way” in JavaScript, as well as troubleshooting obscure bugs in Crafty, which is built on solid foundations but sparse on documentation, with even less of a community. The end result is a rickety framework that delivers on its promises inasmuch as each feature works as described, but don’t try using them all together in a real game. There are some fundamental implementation flaws that can’t be fixed by users without gutting or reimplementing large swaths of the library with no support save that of its lead dev, starwed, bless his heart.

And believe me, I tried. I’m just not that smart. Heck, when I started this I didn’t even know how to NPM. Now I know better, but I’ll save it for next iteration.

The project as it is is a dead end, albeit a useful one. It’s a decent proof-of-concept for a rhythm game on rails, where it’s more about soaking up the experience of tightly synced visuals and groovy tunes, versus any real depth of gameplay.

Astute players will notice some resemblance to [Bit.Trip Runner](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit.Trip Runner); it’s mostly superficial but it’s definitely there. Those Gaijin guys are my heroes :)