node.js ko
Apestronauts
Apestronauts
by Watermelon Sauce
Apestronauts is a massively-multiplayer game that allows players to control their ape: running around the planet and hurling bananas into orbit, only to have them come right back and explode on the planet’s surface.
Judging Instructions
Enter a name and join the game. Your Space Ape will appear on the planet–at a random location, holding a banana, and ready to chuck it into orbit.
Controls
- A: Walk Counter-Clockwise
- D: Walk Clockwise
- Mouse: Aim
- Space: Hold to Power-Up, Release to Fire
Browser Requirements
- Internet Explorer 9
- FireFox 4+
- Safari 4+
- Chrome – The newest version has a bug that forces the page to continually refresh. Sorry! Older versions of Chrome work fine!
- Opera (sort of)
Who
paularmstrong — Mountain View, CA
zachstronaut — Minneapolis, MN
jmullan — San Francisco, California
How
- express@2.4.6
- socket.io@0.7.9
- underscore@1.1.7
- canvas@0.7.1
- Swig@0.1.0
- nko@0.1.1
- bananas
- incredibly cooperative apes that we blasted into space
All art is original.
Votes
Your Vote
Voting is now closed.
Other Votes
(92)
elizabethchajudge
geradjudgeWhat a blast to play. I felt the controls were a bit hard to learn. Maybe if you could use the keyboard or the mouse exclusively it would be better. Beautiful design. I can see myself playing this more in the future.
mtoymil
contestantThis is really fun. I love the twists on the old banana throwing games: multiplayer and on a circle! The game is pretty responsive, too. Good job! Btw, I sat in there alone and tried to achieve an orbit. No dice.
oddacon
contestantThis is great. Theres more you can add to it to make it more fun, but for a weekend project this rocks. Congrats!
atsuya
contestantfun to play with a of people!
therazorbladejudgeIt’s pretty cool for a few minutes but then start getting boring. It is best when the other people you are playing with are right next to you and you can add some yelling and cursing to the action. It would be cool to add some flying objects that intercept the bananas.
Took away one fun star for having to stand and listen to you pitch it in person… :–)
- contestant
Thank you! When we were developing it we were in close quarters, so the yelling about bananattacks came naturally. We definitely want more types of things flying around to add complexity, and in-air (or in-space) collisions of projectiles would be a great addition. If you give us the star back I promise to never pitch another banana game to you ever. :D
- therazorbladejudge
There you go.
jasonhjudgeairportyh
contestantSo much fun!
- contestant
Thank you! We had a lot of fun making it, and we hope to have more fun extending it.
aaronheckmannjudgePretty fun. Not sure how one “wins” or finishes the game. Original idea.
- contestant
Glad you enjoyed it! More gameplay and mechanics are definitely on the way. The notion of health, is very likely on the list. It may be less about winning and more about not losing :)
willconantjudgeThis is a fantastic game, and an amazing bit of work done in only 48 hours. I would love to see some expanded game mechanics like, for instance, randomly spawning power-ups.
- contestant
Thanks! We definitely agree about the power-up drops. It would make walking around the planet more meaningful… people would race to pick stuff up. Great feedback.
drewblasjudgeDefinitely a lot of fun and roaring good time!
- contestant
Thank you!
rauchgjudgeAmazing game on all aspects. edit: Just played some more and I think this is my favorite submission.
- contestant
Thanks! I was just playing as well. I probably banana-bombed you a lot. Hehehe.
- contestant
Very kind! Thanks so much!
ryanmcgrath
judgeI like it, but it keeps refreshing on me within a minute of actually playing. The design is fun and well done – great work for 48 hours. ;)
- contestant
Thank you! I’m glad that you liked the time that you were able to play. We’re sorry about the refreshing problem — this seems to be related to chrome beta 15 in particular. We’d like to know if you had this problem with any other browser.
mikealjudge
_kamzillajudgeThe refresh problem in Chrome is unfortunate. I did get it to work just fine in Safari. I had fun playing with some other Apestronauts
- contestant
Sorry about the Chrome problems =( My understanding is this is a known socket.io issue, and it is now patched in the latest version of socket.io. We’ll update after judging!
lovehasnologic
contestantWas extremely buggy/laggy for me. I’d like to have been able to create my own game. There are a handful of other game entries this year that are also “things” shooting each other around planets that are executed better. (The design on http://the-indecisives.nko2.nodeknockout.com/ is great).
- contestant
Thanks for your feedback. I’ve experienced very few bugs or lags (and believe me… I’ve played for waaay more time than I should be ;). So, what browser are you using? What are the specs of your machine? More details will help us improve our game.
lovehasnologic
contestant8 core mac-pro, 8gb ram, safari 5 and chrome 13. 4 people were in the game when I played and sprites were moving extremely slowly (think 8-bit nintendo days when one too many fireball popped up on screen in Super Mario bros.). In Chrome the game froze 3x one me.
- contestant
Sorry you had that experience. We’ve been having some problem with Linode’s network. Consistent dropped packets or pings > 100ms. It’s not just our virtual machine, since while our site’s network is messed up I get the same dropped packets and bad pings on linode.com itself.
I’ve got half the mac you do, and I haven’t seen these kinds of problems. And I’ve played with 10+ people at a time. I think you may have been online during our network troubles. Sorry about that.
TrevorBurnham
contestantBrings me back to the DOS days. I seem to recall a banana-throwing game that was implemented in QBASIC…
Given the lack of variety in the game, it’d be more fun if there were an “endpoint.” A timer, for example—highest score in 1 minute wins.
dGoligorskyjudgeReally nice nod to the QBASIC banana-throwing apes. Pushes that concept further and throws in a little Scorched Earth, too. The instructions are clear, the gameplay is smooth, and I’m instantly drawn in, trying to protect my ape and throw some dangerous bananas around. Well-executed. Congrats. Constructive feedback… layers of success or failure would help. If I get good at this, do I get new, better bananas or faster apes or something? If I keep getting hit, what could happen that would let me know I’m failing? While I was playing (poorly) I was getting hit by plenty of bananas but nothing seemed to be happening to my ape. Anyway, well done.
- contestant
I’m glad you remember the gorillas in QBASIC! The feedback is appreciated. Those are questions we’re asking ourselves, too. We’ll definitely have some updates to do once judging is complete.
mattpodwysockijudgeNice concept. Would love more controls though. Had quite a few resets using Chrome which was pretty frustrating though.
- contestant
Thank you! Unfortunately, this looks like a bug in Chrome 15 beta. Regular up to date versions seem to work really well.
- contestant
Are you using the Chrome 15 beta? We are still trying to figure out the exact cause, but believe that the version 15 beta has a bug with sockets and/or CSS3 animations that causes it to refresh the page. Sorry about that!
Thanks for the <3!
- contestant
Jesse beat me to the reply. Whoops.
- contestant
Jinx.
mattcshorejudge
swoodiejudgeLoved the idea and liked the design a lot as well. Though I was very very incredibly bad at throwing bananas. Would be fun to see more controls like jumping, more things to do or levels to beat. In-game chat would be a nice add-on.
- contestant
Practice makes perfect. You can throw at me, I won’t mind. =) Thanks for the feedback! We plan on adding in more of the kinds of things you mentioned after the competition ends. 48 hours goes by quickly!
thammi
contestantNice game idea. Should be fun with many active players.
- contestant
I agree, it’s definitely more fun with other people on. Invite your friends and have a go at barraging them with explosive bananas!
blakmatrix
contestantWas fun and very addictive, wish you could do more with orbits though and get bananas say maybe 270 degrees away to take people by surprise.
- contestant
Thanks! We might tweak the magic numbers in the next version to make longer shots easier, but it is already totally possible (although difficult) to throw a banana three quarters of the way around the planet. If you stand on top of the planet and throw directly left with four or five (or six?) bars your banana will make its way around.
soldair
contestantmy ape had a really weak arm but it was fun =)
- contestant
Awesome! Maybe do some gorilla pushups and come on back ;–)
rhdoenges
contestantI shall follow your progress with great interest.
- contestant
Do not fret, we’ll definitely update it after judging is closed and add a lot more fun stuff. Thanks for the interest!
sylvinus
contestantMan! I had lots of fun with this one :) you have to turn off your speakers though :p
- contestant
I’ll admit, the sound can get overwhelming over time, but I’m glad you had fun! Thanks!
davidmoffitt
contestantVery cute, the sprites / animations are excellent. The controls were very difficult to master but it could just be my coordination (or lack of). Wasn’t sure how the scoring worked. Great job overall!
- contestant
Thanks! I actually wish I’d have had more time to make the sprite animations more clear and easy to see. Glad you had fun!
maraksquiresjudgeLoved it.
I felt like I was throwing banana bombs from Team 17’s worms while on a planet from Ionos’s Warheads, both great game mechanics.
I would have gone all 5s if I had seen any features like:
- Ability to jump
- Ability to fire while jumping / moving
- Collision on being hit by bomb
- Multiple planets ( that you could jump between )
- Destructive planets ( well, thats not very easy )
- Multiple weapons
Would really like to see this finished and open-sourced!
- contestant
We actually have a pretty decent plan for explosions destroying the planet, however, 48 hours was not nearly enough time to get that done.
Collisions, jumping, and weapons were also on the list of “really nice to have”, but we decided to concentrate on making sure the game was fully playable and would not crash constantly :).
Thanks for the feedback!
christkvjudgeInteresting concept did get some resets of the game in chrome that would force me to restart the game.
- contestant
This seems to be a bug with Chrome 15 beta. Sorry about that! None of us were testing non-stable browsers :)
yojimbo87
contestantmjunqueira
contestantpoelzi
contestantstagas
contestantbriehanlombaard
contestantchapel
contestantcarsonmcdonald
contestantgarann
contestantmustardamus
contestantfirebus
contestantFlassari
contestantberb
contestantReal fun!
sreeix
contestant
This was fun to play and imagine it gets even more fun the more people you have! I had a hard time getting used to the controls, but liked the ability to hold space bar to throw farther. Also very cool graphics!