Show HN: QBasic Gorillas (Repeeled)

Show HN: QBasic Gorillas (Repeeled)(gameswithtony.com)

11 points by TonyAlicea10 5 hours ago | 8 comments

I've found the most engaging way to practice techniques for AI-assisted development and test models is to build fun side projects in vanilla JS.

I spent many hours playing (and studying and editing) QBasic Gorillas, and this is a vanilla JS implementation using Fable and Opus.

Play 1-on-1 hotseat or against the computer. A bit of extra camera snazz as well.

elsig60 1 hour ago |

I like it. I know it's silly, but I could clearly waste time on this. BTW great idea to build fun stuff to practice new tools.

TonyAlicea10 56 minutes ago | |

Yes! Fun things that either you’d never have taken the time to build otherwise, or recreations of things that you know well.

Things where you know how they’re supposed to make you feel (like games from childhood), and getting that experience match is an exercise.

pimlottc 2 hours ago |

The arrow length does not represent power accurately, There's a minimum arrow length even when power is nearly 0, which means when the arrow is twice as long, the power is actually almost 50 times higher! It should be directly proportional. Perhaps there should be different indicators for "power" and "direction" -- maybe a fixed-length dotted line arrow for direction? And/or a power bar that is not anchored to the player position?

The arrow for wind strength also seems to be a different scale, making it hard to judge how much to compensate.

TonyAlicea10 2 hours ago | |

Fair. This is a direct port in some areas of the 1991 game, which strategically was more try something then dial it in. I’ll ponder. It’s almost arcade vs simulation in some ways.

That is, if you can calculate it too easily then the first player always has a huge advantage.

vunderba 4 hours ago |

As somebody who grew up in the era of MS-DOS and QBASIC - it's pretty amusing to see two AI-assisted GORILLA.BAS web games in the past week.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48856350

Can also play the original as well online

https://classicreload.com/play/qbasic-gorillas.html

Feedback

- the wind/round text should NOT be placed over buildings because.... one of the buildings is gray thus making it almost impossible to read.

- I'd honestly get rid of the pseudo-CRT scanline filter - it looks grainy more than anything. For a better reference see https://github.com/gingerbeardman/webgl-crt-shader

- When implementing camera follow one thing you need is a sort of "grace window". Right now it's so tightly coupled to the movement of the banana it practically gives you whiplash.

TonyAlicea10 4 hours ago | |

I hadn’t seen the other one! I grew up with this as well.

I like the camera grace window idea. I’ve been pondering how to handle the post-hit zoom in.

Good call on the wind text. I like the filter (?). I’ll look at your link.

Thanks for the feedback!

netsharc 1 hour ago |

Trying to aim with the mouse immediately shows me "made by a fucking clanker"...

TonyAlicea10 1 hour ago | |

I did let the LLM handle the mouse and touch aiming for v1. That’s an experiment as I prefer typing in the boxes or using arrow keys.

I think it needs tweaking to let you hone in a value better. What are you thinking?