Personal Projects and Mucking Around

© Luke Wallin 2005-2017

Planet Wars (Old Version)

Planet Wars v0.13 example

Planet wars is turn based multi player game, inspired by an old game called Galaxy Wars, which in turn was a clone of Gravity Wars. Gravity Wars was made in 1989 by Sohrab Ismail-Beigi (took me ages to track that down, and I'm still not certain his was the very first).

Each player (up to 4) takes a turn to specify the angle and speed of their missile, and try and hit another player. The last player alive wins.

How to Play

There are different objects in the game:

  • Planets have gravity which affects where the missiles go, and will destroy your missile if you hit them.
  • Worm holes (blue swirly things) will take your missile and spit it out from another worm hole. These always come in pairs.
  • Spaceships are where each player fires their missiles from, and what you should aim at. The last surviving spaceship results in that player winning the game.
  • Black holes are rare, invisible, and have strong gravity. They will attempt to draw in your missile, and will destroy it if they succeed.
  • Space Stations ("that's no moon!") will repel your missile if it gets too close.
You can either type in angles and speeds with the keyboard, or use the mouse to click near the spaceship in the direction and speed you want the missile to go. I would recommend using the mouse to get the missile roughly in the direction of an enemy and then finely tweak the angle or the speed manually to actually hit them.

The game makes use of the latest version of my 2D JavaScript engine and the HTML canvas (for the nifty effects). It works in semi-recent versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, and in theory any browser which supports the canvas. Simple graphics are enabled by default in Safari due to shading bugs on some versions of the browser.

Road map - Progress and Plans

  • Trails behind missile - Done
  • More than one player - Done
  • Black holes - Done
  • Worm holes - Done
  • Arrow to show direction and speed of next missile - Done
  • Online multi player (like squirms should have been) - Done!
  • Map Editor - Online and offline!
  • Online Ranking system - Done, and improved.
  • Stalemate vote online - Done
  • Spectating / bigger maps / more players online - Done/Not Done/ Done
  • Arrow keys to change speed/angle
  • Better world generator - Next
  • AI players