Saturday, June 28, 2008

Play Jangaron 0.52 Offline!

Jangaron does not need a server connection, as it is not (yet) a network multiplayer game. However, it has not been so easy to play Jangaron offline - until now!
At the request of Brian, I just uploaded a zip of the Jangaron 0.52 files (only 57 KB, without sound files), including a small patch to make it run without sound locally. Just unpack the archive to some folder, and open jangaron.html in your favorite browser.
The problem with sound is that Flash (which I use for sound only) refuses to load sounds from local file-URLs. The simplest way to make it work locally is to install a Web-server like Apache (don't be afraid, download the binary release and it's really simple!) and put all Jangaron 0.52 files and the Jangaron 0.52 sound files (3.5 MB in two subfolders) below Apache's htdocs folder. Then, start Apache and browse to http://localhost:8080/jangaron.html, and you can play Jangaron with sound, even when you are not connected to the Internet!
Please tell me if you succeeded to install Jangaron (with or without sound) or contact me if you need more detailed instructions.

3 comments:

  1. Awesome! It works, but not perfectly. Whenever I die, game play immediately switches to another player on my team, until the team is dead. And once in a while the cycle speeds get crazy and irregular.

    I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.4 build. I didn't install a web server locally because I don't have much time right now, but I want to do it soon. Maybe that will fox the problem? Plus, I want the sound. It's great. After playing with sound I can't go back.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian,
    very cool that you tried the offline version, thanks for reporting back!
    The problems you experienced are not related to the offline version, but a) (switch LCs) is a feature, not a bug and b) (crazy speed) is a bug I also saw in online mode. I think it happens when you are just accelerating when you die, and the "acceleration on" state is kept when the game restarts and an AI takes over your LC. I promise to fix that.
    Concerning a), I asked for feedback, but there was none. I also explain this behavior in the "Game play" tab of the game settings dialog.
    Since I do not want to end the game when the user LC crashes, but some team mates are still left, I see two alternatives:
    1. After a crash, you can choose a team LC to jump into.
    2. You are transported to any other team LC like now, but only watch the game and take over control after a key stroke, so that you do not crash immediately while still trying realign.
    The second one would be easier to implement and is also the one I prefer.
    A really cool variant 3 would be a combination of 1 and 2, i.e. when you die, you can watch all remaining team mates in split screens and select one, which zoomes in and you take over control...
    What do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for clarifying that. The cycle switching I'm not a fan of, I'm cool with the game just ending. I think it's because switching into a new cycle gives me no bearing on my new place on the grid and no mental map of where I've been. I usually die almost immediately. Some of my dislike might come from conditioning, since most games like this don't switch, they simply end. Maybe the function can be a toggled? I wish I could help more, but I'm just a player and know very little about programming.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.