colourny
projects | | linkz: Play Game | Sidney Flavell (Artist)
Skills Practiced: Haxe, Javascript
Tools Used: HaxeFlixel
Project Duration: 2 Weeks
Project Focus: Fun / Jam
Another collaboration with my friend Sidney, this game is was made for Rainbow Jam 2017, an LGBT-focused jam with the theme “Spectrum”. We wanted to make something cheerful and something that would be playable in the browser. Having had experience using Flixel and HaxeFlixel in the past to make Flash games, I used Haxe’s HTML5 compilation/export feature to build something that was immediately playable in modern browsers, while getting the benefits of using the venerable Flixel framework.
The game is a simple painting sandbox, with a small colony-sim-esque game mechanic of collecting pixels of various colours from surrounding objects. At first, the player can only harvest the colour blue from pools of water around the map, which is done by connecting the ponds to the central building by means of a network of pipes. Once the player has enough blue pixels, they can place a blue-coloured building which is able to harvest red pixels. Then, using both red and blue pixels, they can harvest the giant green fungi for their green pixels, and so on. As more colours are gathered, the main building becomes more colourful and interesting to look at. Each technology building or decorative piece requires a certain blend of pixels, and the player must figure out a way to combine and gather the colours to get the pixels they want. Then, the player can use a paintbrush and use surplus pixels to paint directly on the ground, transforming it into whatever they wish! The game also has a screenshot button, so players can save their creations to show their friends.
Players can connect pipes of different colours together to create an impressive explosive burst of colours; they may want to prevent the pipes from leaking too much though, as the colours can spread around the canvas and make a real mess!
The pipes system presented a number of interesting technical hurdles, particularly avoiding recursive calculations when trying to simulate the flow of resources along the pipes. These were solved in a pretty terrible, brute-force manner that entirely ignores time complexity, and the tell-tale slowdown of the game as more pipes are added is definitely the most visible symptom of it. I know better now!
Additional Credits:
Sidney Flavell - Art
