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An exciting escape game in which you star as Steve McClown, attempting to orchestrate a mass breakout at the infamous Clowncatraz jail.
You rescue clowns by picking them up inside the jail and launching them over the wall into the waiting laundry van. But hurry - the van's got a tight schedule to keep to!
How many clowns can you rescue? Go to it, Steve McClown!
http://www.extralegs.com/view_game.php?id=63
http://www.extralegs.com/games/clownthumbnail.jpg
Nice game, pretty difficult! I usually sent them flying, screaming out of the game. Or into the barbed wire. Maybe you should add some bonus thing to give you more time. Like a balloon that adds time when the clown hits it and drags it with him into the truck.
ihoss: Thanks for the suggestion with the balloons - nice idea! I may implicate that when I get a chance. The only thing I had previously thought of was having helicopter hazards, but I didn't want to make it even more difficult!
nice game, water-tight concept I'd say. Has a great 'one more try' factor. What I would say though is that the difference between an intergalactic throw and a gentle hurl seemed quite tight, is there any way you can increase the number of increments between hard throw and a light one?
robothouse:
Thanks for your comments! A few people have commented that it's too easy to throw the clowns hard. The initial velocity of a clown is calculated directly from the movement of the mouse as the button is released, so it's difficult to know what to change. I think it may be down to people's OS mouse settings (speed, acceleration etc). I did tweak the gravity up a little to bring things a bit more down to earth.
In the meantime, a steady smooth movement with the mouse whilst releasing the button seems to help. Although that still doesn't explain how this frogdoctor character got 29!! :scared:
good except i must concur way too hard, best i could do was four... tried three times then gave up...
very very hard, to the point of frustration.
I think your hitTests need to be a bit more forgiving, people tend to think their characters smaller than they really are...and their targets larger...and their obstacles smaller.
That's all relative to the visual size of course though.
I'm not sure how, but it needs to make the user feel they've accomplished a lot. It's very disappointing to only get a few clowns.
It's very addictive though, especially when you're at the point of almost-highscore.
Thank you everyone for the feedback! All much appreciated.
I've made a few changes based on the comments received:
-The barbed wire collision detection is now more forgiving
-The positions of the wall and van have been subtly altered to make it a little easier
-The speed sampling of the hand movement has been lengthened, resulting in a softer throwing action
Let me know what you think!
Somtimes when I threw the clowns they went in the opposite directions. This happened so many times I got really Peeved of a quit the game. Really Annoying.
You should be aware that some people still believe in clowns... this might be too much for them to swallow.
PS: Link doesn't work for me.
tindenburg:
Thanks for your comments. Could this be because the clowns were bouncing off the wall? There's a 'boing' sound when this happens. Other than this, I've never seen the clowns go in the opposite direction to which they are thrown.
No they weren't they did it as soon as they left my hand. Im using firefox though which occasionally makes a difference.
I didn't enjoy this game, although it has obviously had alot of effort put into it. for a start, it really wasn't very responsive at all. Most of the time when i tried to throw them, they stopped where my cursor was when i let go, went straight into the floor, or flew sky high. If the smoothness of the throwing was fixed, this would be a fun game, but it was way too irritating for me, sorry.
SaphuA:
I believe in clowns!
Thanks for letting me know that this link isn't working: turns out my webhost's database server is down, so I've asked them to fix it. Thanks for the heads-up!
tindenburg:
I'm on firefox too! Never heard of this issue before even during 100s of test plays, and can't seem to replicate it. Have you the latest flash player?
Aldarn:
Don't apologise - any feedback, good or bad is welcome and will help me with my next project.
I have previously tweaked the throwing action based on other feedback. Previously it was calculating the initial velocity of the clown from the previous loop's mouse position compared with the current one. Now, after tweaking, it uses a 3-loop-old mouse position for comparison instead. This seemed to smooth the throwing action somewhat.
If you've got any suggestions on how to make the action more intuitive and responsive, I'd love to hear them and implement them!
I just tried it again, it is indeed smoother, but now i have the same problem as tidenburg, sometimes the clowns fly in the opposite direction to what i throw them. For example, i throw them at a 135 degree angle, and then actually go backwards into the floor at a -45 degree angle, about 1/4 of the time. But its better now, highscores need fixing though, spammed by one guy :P
Aldarn:
Thanks for the feedback! I'm a little worried about this problem about the clowns flying off in the wrong direction as I can't replicate it at all so it's difficult to fix. Have you noticed any pattern to its occurrence? Throwing from a certain place, or in a certain way, etc?
As for the scores, yeah - seems like it's been two characters battling it out on there for the last couple of days (up to 32 clowns in one minute now - argh!) - but at least their scores on the 'today' panel will only last 24 hours and more people will have a chance, unless they come back! :-)
Thanks again
edit: ARGH! He's got 47!!! How???
I have the newest flash player. I've just tried it again and i still get the same problem occasionally.
I think i found the problem - if you let go of the clown too soon (before the grabbed animation has completed), it fires off in a random direction (usually down or to the right).
bleh, still seems like you can throw too hard, try a bit o' math to create less fuss
for example:
the farther away the value is from the average of "min" and "max", the bigger the change will be; for example, if the "expected" range is 0-2:Quote:
//max=the larger value you will expect
//min=the smaller value you will expect
//actualvalue=the actual value recieved
//newvalue=god it speaks for itself!!
newvalue=max*Math.sqrt(2*(actualvalue-min)/max)/2+min;
0=well actually i suppose it would be 0
0.25=0.5
0.5=0.7071067
0.75=0.8660254
1=1
1.25=1.1180339
1.5=1.2247448
1.75=1.3228756
2=1.4142135
Aldarn:
Thanks loads for that. I can see what you both mean now. I'll try to sort it: in the meantime it's recommendable to pick up the clown and hold it before launching - but I'm sure you already figured that out yourself! :-)
trogdor:
I'll try that formula out - thank you muchly! I would have struggled to come up with that myself. A lot have people have mentioned how easy it is to throw the clowns too hard, so hopefully this should sort it, whilst also teaching me a new maths trick!
Many thanks to you both
No problem, glad to help, game is pretty fun now :)
PS. I suggest you make it so your name only appears once on the highscores list. I said this on the shooter game thread further down the page, even posted the PHP code. Allows other people to have a chance too ;)
Very Nice work. This was the first time I've played this game so I cant comment on what it was like in the past and the updates you've made, but it currenetly seems like a very cool game.
The sound is fantastic, however I think the game could really do with some 'clownish' music playing the background (but the game is fairly addictive so with people playing it often, they might get sick of the noise, so give them the option to mute it).
The Graphics look great, cant complain about them, however I feel the gameplay could be polished up a bit.
I think the game needs some powerups/special abilities (the baloon idea seemed good) and trying to succesfully throw the clowns into the van was a lot harder than what I initially thought. To make the game easier you could have levels, every level the wall gets bigger (the wall would have to start off a lot smaller)and more powerups get introduced. You could also create skinny and fat clown characters (the skinny ones get thrown further and the fat ones get thrown a smaller distance).
Overall, good game and Goodluck :thumbsup:
Viza
Aldarn: I had considered only allowing names to appear once, but I figured that people would just type modified names to get themselves on the board more than once. I do store the IP addresses of players, but I was worried about using these to discriminate as there may be more than one player using the same IP
Viza:
Thanks for your kind comments. I think you are right about the 'clownish' music - I'm onto it! Really like your ideas of levels - maybe I'll develop Clowncatraz 2 and incorporate these ideas! Thanks again.
To let those who were interested know, I solved the problem of the clown flying backwards out of the hand during a short, sharp throw. The problem was that I was only tracking the movement of the had once it had grasped the clown, so the solution was simply to track the hand all the time, regardless. Simple solution but tough to hunt down!
Thanks for the continued feedback, I've found it invaluable!
I have now adapted the throwing velocity calculation to make for softer throws. Thanks to trogdor458 for the necessary alogrithm. I adapted it slightly because it wouldn't work with negative velocities. So I found the absolute overall velocity with pythag, softened it with the algorithm, and then applied the difference ratio back to the original individual velocities.
Which all means it should be a lot easier to control your clowns. Feedback most welcome.
http://www.extralegs.com/view_game.php?id=63