Welcome To The Machine

Hey!

Here's my blog about creating a browser based shoot-em-up game. The game, called Bullet Hell Survive Alpha, is an idea that I've played with a couple of times before over the years. It started off as something that I wrote for a gamejam when I worked at Denki, way back in 2008. It's a game genre that I really like and has got lots of great feedback each time I talk about it - it's still one of the subjects that gets the most hits over on my main blog at http://evilpaul.org.

The game itself is a little different to your usual shoot-em-up - the aim here is simply to survive the bullet hell onslaught and to score points as you go. It's not about blasting your way though levels, finding enemies weak-points and exploiting them.. it's purely about dodging the beautiful patterns of bullets. It's part reflexes, part pattern recognition.

One of the most interesting things, for me, will be building the levels. Making bullet patterns that are both beautiful and survivable (if only you can find the places to hide..) is a lot of fun. In previous versions of the game I've included level editors and I will be doing the same here. I've had some great feedback on previous versions of the game from people who enjoy building absolutely insane levels for themselves.

What's in it for you?

It depends what you are looking for. You may learn a little about JavaScript, a little about gamedev, a little about shoot-em-up development.. or a lot about all of these. You may just enjoy watching the development of a game and playing it as it is built. And feel free to send me feedback and suggestions as I go along - What are you interested in seeing in the game? What would you like me to explain in more/less detail? What do you think should be added/removed?

Because you'll have access to all the source code you'll be able to play around and make your own versions of the game, or really take it apart to understand exactly how it all works. You could even use the codebase as a building block for something completely different.

While we're on the topic of source code, here's one last thing: I don't plan on using any frameworks. No jQuery, no P5.js, no nothing. There are a couple of reasons behind this. Firstly - we just don't need them. Secondly - it's more interesting and illuminating to develop the stuff from scratch. Having said that, if something really warrants the use of a library then I'll use one.

What's in it for me?

I'm an old gamedevver who started off writing commercial games in the PS1 era, and I stayed in the industry until towards the end of the PS3's lifetime. In-between I've released games on GameCube, PS2, XBox 360 and a few others, and I've worked for Sony and Microsoft, among others, along the way. I now work outside of gamedev and this is a way for me to use some of my skills that I don't get to use in my day job. I use JavasScript a little bit at work (mostly in NodeJS) so it's going to be fun to start poking around in the corners of the language. It's also going to be interesting for me to see your feedback and suggestions.

What's next?

I'll start off with a simple post explaining how to get a sprite up and moving around the screen, and then I'll add bullets, spawners, object management, collision detection, debug systems, fonts, game states.... and that's just for starters. I have a lot of stuff planned but I'm happy to be steered by your interests - just let me know what you'd like to see added next.