The Story Continues: Jangaron 0.70

I just promoted version 0.60 to "stable" and uploaded a new "experimental" version 0.70. 0.43 is no longer linked (though still online) and 0.54 is now the "old" version.
Here are the highlights of the new experimental version 0.70:

• Using soundManager2 for HTML5 sound that works in modern browsers without any plugin and even on iOS (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad)! Well, still quite experimental, but it's a proof of concept... As a fall-back, if available, Flash is still used. Moreover, I had to repair stuff to make it work on iOS again.
• New controls  In single-player mode, you can now press Shift or Ctrl combined with the arrow keys. What happens is that when you hold down a modifier key, releasing the arrow key will turn your lightcycle again! Using Shift, you turn in the opposite direction, while using Ctrl, you turn in the same direction. Thus, you can do side-steps (Shift + arrow) and U-turns (Ctrl + arrow), and the time between pressing and releasing the arrow key determines the "width" of the move. Be warned that holding down the key for too long will trigger key repeat, and you will most likely crash! Maybe I can fix that...
• Improved team lightcycle resurrection  When you play in a team with other programs and you crash, you are transferred into another lightcycle of your team. So far, this move was so confusing that usually, you immediately crashed again. Now, the view port changes to the other lightcycle, but it remains controlled by the program until you press the first controlling key. Thus, you can relax and wait for a not-so-close situation until taking over control, or just decide to watch the game continue. I plan to visualize the state in which the program has control over the viewport's lightcycle.
• More technically, I used the latest Jangaroo compiler to recompile all libraries and the game itself. Should not really make any difference in game play, but leads to cleaner JavaScript code and a better build process. I hope to be able to put all Jangaron source code on github soon.

Please tell me what you think about the new features and whether they work for you!

P.S.: For those of you who are bored with the splash screen and voice, there is a secret switch: Just add ?nosplash to the URL, and you'll be directed to the settings dialog immediately, like this: http://www.jangaron.net/jangaron0.7/jangaron.html?nosplash

Jangaron 0.6 Online: 3rd Person Perspective!

After improving the Jangaroo tool (sorry, new version not yet released) and major refactoring of Jangaron into separate modules, I put online a preview on the upcoming new version:

Jangaron 0.60 (beta)

Now, eventually you can play what you could only see in a video so far!

The new features include:

• smooth switching between 1st- and two different 3rd-person perspectives
• shrinking lightcycle walls when players derezz, like in the movie, instead of fading walls like before
• support for IE8 (also patched Jangaron 0.54) -- lightning fast!
  
• offer you an offline version to install (you need to install Adobe AIR first -- I used version 1.5.1), much easier than my previous attempt. Jangaron now has a really nice build process (Maven), so that I can promise to build a version to install for each future update.
  
• bug fix: controls now work correctly when going very slowly
• redesigned the Jangaron home page with the look and feel of the new version and links to all available versions of the game to give visitors better guidance which one to start
• added meta-data so that iPhone and iPod touch use full screen mode
  

Open issues are:

• clipping: depending on the type of browser, when you go very close to another wall, the angle of the wall may be displayed incorrectly. The reason is that when introducing arbitrary trapezoids, I removed clipping for the time being. Different browsers have different limitations in the size of borders (most around 1000 pixels) which lead to problems with steep slopes.
• restart game: you still cannot return to the configuration screen other than by reloading the page. This is especially annoying in the AIR version, where you cannot reload! I hope I'll have this fixed soon. Besides that, there are still some states (glance direction, speed when having jumped to another lightcycle) that seem to be reset incorrectly when the game restarts.
• iPhone on-screen controls are not yet available. As you might remember, I patched them into 0.54, but this solution will be replaced by browser detection and/or configuration.
  

I successfully tested in Firefox 2 (Windows XP), 3, and 3.1beta, IE7 and 8 (Windows Vista) (known not to work in IE6 and never will!), Safari 3.1 (XP) and 4 beta, Chrome 1, Opera 9.62, AIR 1.5.1 (Vista), and iPod touch 2.2.1. I also experimented with a new open source AIR alternative called Titanium, but only made work the "mini" Jangaron version, i.e. the one without the settings dialog. Brave folks can download a Mac, Windows, or Linux installer on the Jangaron Titanium page.
I'd like to ask you help me collect all other browser/OS environments Jangaron 0.54 or 0.60 run on! Please report any functional or performance issues!

Jangaroo Released and Jangaron Updated to 0.54

It's been a while since you last heard of me. Of course, I've been really busy, but rather less with Jangaron itself (and, as obvious, even less with the Jangaron Blog) than with the base technology Jangaroo.
Jangaroo? As mentioned before, Jangaron is completely written in JavaScript, but it uses features of the new language version JavaScript 2, most notably packages, classes, and static and private members. To allow this JavaScript 2 code to run in today's browsers, I use the Jangaroo compiler, which was developed by CoreMedia as an internal tool, but has just now been released to the public as Open Source. Guess what kept me busy: I was the initiator and so-called "Program Manager" of the project at CoreMedia, with the goal to launch the Open Source Jangaroo project. (Okay, plus one week holiday, where I refrained from touching a computer. To be honest, I lost a bet with my wife.)
Read all about the goal, features, and history of Jangaroo in the Jangaroo Blog.
What I did update for Jangaron are two things: I used the latest version of the Jangaroo compiler, and I revamped the settings UI. Read about both changes in a minute, but if you want to try the new version immediately, here are some hints for troubleshooting:
If you have any JavaScript errors, try to clear the browser cache. If that still does not help, reset your settings by clicking the corresponding button with the red x in the settings UI. If that does not work, either, delete the Cookie "jangaron" from domain "www.jangaron.net", path "/jangaron0.5" using a Cookie manager for your browser. If your browser does not have a Cookie manager, then don't use IE (well, you can still delete the Cookie from the file system). If you still have problems with the 0.54 update, please report back by comment or using the e-mail address given on the "About" tab of the game. For the time being, you can still use my back-up of version 0.52 or the (very old) stable version. I also updated Jangaron mini in the Blog, so here, clearing your browser may also make problems go away.

Updated to the Latest Jangaroo Compiler
I used the latest version of the compiler (version 0.1.1, which has just not yet been released) to recompile the Jangaron code. Besides some performance improvements, the main point is an even better browser compatibility of the Jangaroo runtime. This makes Jangaron run in Konqueror 3.x (tested with 3.4) and even on... yes... Safari/iPhone!!! It seems that Safari/iPhone is more similar to Konqueror/KHTML than to Safari/Desktop. Unfortunately, the way Jangaron grabs key strokes does not seem to work on Konqueror, and the iPhone does not even have (many) keys. So I set up a special iPhone version that uses on-screen buttons for turning. Speed and view control are not yet available, this is just a quick test whether it is playable at all. Please report back!
But most importantly, Jangaroo being Open Source allows me to release Jangaron as Open Source soon, too. I had to wait until Jangaroo was released, because nobody would have been able to produce a running version from the Jangaron source code without the Jangaroo compiler! Now, I have to figure out which license I'm going to use for Jangaron and where to put the source code repository. Developers, stay tuned!

Revamped the Settings User Interface
On my way from Hamburg to Augsburg to visit the 40th birthday party of a good friend of mine, I used the 2 x 6 hours to revamp Jangaron's settings UI and add a splash screen with a new logo including a smoothly increasing glow effect (again, pure JavaScript!).
To come back to the new features, the settings dialog now has

• a large glowing lightcycle changing to the first user player's color and serving as the new "Enter the Grid" button,
• a different color theme,
• expandable, overhauled help texts for each tab,
• it starts on the "Players" tab when visiting for the first time (since there you find the setting you most likely want to change),
• there, it starts with the main two settings: game mode and number of players, and
• in the background is now an optionally animated game grid (what else?), that can be switched on in the "Grid settings" tab. However, by default it is switched off, since the permanent redraw consumes quite some CPU. Also, you can get dizzy in the head from staring at the sliding grid.

One small visual change to the game is that the you win / you lose texts now even more look like old character-based terminal output. I added a PNG as an overlay that is slightly less transparent at every other line, which leads to this "analog monitor blur" font effect. You may need to take a closer look to recognize the difference (click the image above or lose the game, whatever you think is the faster option!), but still I think it was worth the effort since it adds to the 80-s look-and-feel of the game.

Of course, I also fixed some bugs. For example, combo box selections did not update correctly in Safari. Fortunately, someone else had identified and solved the problem before. The point is that Safari is very close to the spec here, which does not allow two options of a select element to be selected at the same time. So to select a different option, you have to deselect the currently selected one first, or the change is ignored in Safari. The fix was to simply use the selectIndex property of the select element, which avoids this problem completely.

Finally, you may ask yourself, and what about the 3rd person perspective? I have also been working on that, but there are still some performance issues in some browsers and some minor bugs and features (e.g. changing camera position), and I want to give you a good experience from the start when introducing that feature. Maybe I'll set up an alpha version of Jangaron 0.6 for curious and brave Jangaron fans, so let me know if you want me to!

A Tiny New Feature for Jangaron (0.52)

This one I stole from Armagetron: The outer rim walls of the game grid can now be set to be infinitely high. I like it better for its claustrophobic ambiance, so I made it the default. If you don't like it, uncheck Grid settings | infinitely high outer rim, and you're back to the way it looked before. On any problems running the updated full game or Jangaron mini, please clear your browser cache.

Jangaron 0.5 is out!

Finally, its done! We arrived at a level where Jangaron version 0.5 seems stable enough to announce it to the public and offer you an updated version packed with new features!
"We", in this case, are David "Avi" Scott and Frank "Joo" Wienberg and all the others who gave valuable feedback.
Note that version 0.43 is still available at the well-know location www.jangaron.net/jangaron.html. The index page www.jangaron.net now lets you choose between the stable (0.43) and the experimental (0.5) version.
Night of the Feature Creep
The most important feature for the new version turned out to be something that wasn't even mentioned in the voting (sorry, guys, no grassroots democracy yet): Sound and music! And David is the one who contributed his own compositions to Jangaron. Thank you again, David, for your excellent "labor of love"!
To give you a quick overview of what to expect from Jangaron 0.5:

• Look Left/Right/Aback - One of the most-voted features is now available, and even in the extended version that you can also take a look behind, watching out for lightcycles chasing you! This gives you more overview and allows new strategies. The keyboard setup has been extended by three columns for the corresponding keys.
• Sound and Music - This one is the real feature creep. I revamped Gustavo Ribeiro Amigo's Javascript Sound Kit for Jangaroo (no, this is not a typo: as faithful readers might remember, Jangaroo is the language Jangaron is developed in). Sound is only available when you have a Flash plug-in which must be version 8 or higher, but the game remains true to not requiring any plug-in, you just have no sound then. This technical feature allowed to enrich the game with sound and David's great music. Pump up the volume and enjoy!
• Team Play and Presets - I promised Brian to include teams in the next Jangaron release, and as I tend to keep my promises, you all had to wait a little bit longer ;-). But it turned out great (at least I think so!) and was worth the effort. Team play allows a variety of modes and so that you do not get lost in configuration space, we included presets for classical setups: you can replay the famous original movie scene (User vs. MCP), fight one on one (on one on one...), setup pairs, or face your destiny as a Lone Hero against one big MCP squadron. Starting from one of these presets, you can create your own personal setup. Please let me know your favorite team play mode!
• Save Settings - a feature you did not know you wanted. Now that there are various ways to set up the game, it would be a pity if you always had to start from scratch when reloading or revisiting. All settings are saved to a browser cookie. Note that the in-game statistics (wins, deaths) are not stored.
• More Accurate Lightcycle Control - I noticed that especially in critical situations where there is a lot work for the rendering engine, the lightcycle control became inaccurate. I improved this by recording the key event time and computing a more precise turn position. This change improves gameplay a lot and increases your chances to beat the stupid, but fast-reacting program players (they somehow remind me of Matrix Agents).

I hope you enjoy the new version as much as I do myself. Jangaron started more or less as a proof-of-concept for the Jangaroo language tools and was nice, but probably not long-lasting fun to play in the previous versions. Version 0.5 offers music, sound, and much more variety in gameplay, in particular for multiplayer sessions, so I hope you'll all become Jangaronies! Let me know of your preferences, ideas, feature requests, or if you are willing to contribute! Just leave a comment here or drop me a mail (joo[AT]jangaron[DOT]net).
More about the technical challenges, pitfalls we had to overcome, and solutions later...
See you on the Grid!

New Jangaron Version 0.43 Online

Greetings programs,

I just put online a new version (0.43) of Jangaron with some improvements you might like:

• You can now adjust the minimum and maximum speed of each light cycle. Program players currently always go at minimum, but at least each can race at a different speed.
• The on-screen status display has been split into one global status bar that shows the wins, deaths and current state of each player, and a head-up display inside each view port, which shows the view port's player's name, position, direction, and speed (now also graphically) [thx TRON.dll for the suggestion!].
  
• The default setting is now that all six players are already added, so you can quickly start a more vivid game. I also adapted the default names and colors to better resemble the movie scenario.
  
• All starting positions have been moved a bit into the grid, so that now there is room to cross behind them, which keeps you from becoming separated from the opponents early on in the game [thx TheReelTodd! It does play better!].
• Some minor HTML and CSS changes that make the settings dialog even more flexible and accessible.

Note that you may have to refresh your browser cache to receive the updated version!

This is how the new version looks like in two-player split screen mode with the option "light cycle walls are always transparent" on the "Grid settings" tab switched on:

Any feed-back is highly welcome! Please play the game and help improve it!
Have fun on the grid, and take care not to be derezzed...

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