A Command and Conquer engine in JS
Update Nov. 2011:
Aditya Ravi Shankar created a version that uses canvas blitting instead of DOM manipulation.
Your unfinished C&C demo inspired me to give it a shot. My version uses HTML5/Canvas and works in Chrome/Firefox.
This was a very ambitious project to fully recreate the first C&C game and introduce in-game objects for expansion by user scripting. I envisioned an SDK type end-result as the final piece. The sparks flew in late 2007 and main implementation had begun by the time summer 2008 hit.
There were a multitude of intermediate problems that needed to be solved: question of creating / converting terrain maps, accurately modelling the damage and movement of units in the original game, extracting all the frames of all the game pieces, and handling animations, to name a few.
Prior to the wide-spread adoption of the canvas tag, the most efficient way of manipulating hordes of sprites required for an RTS game was via the DOM image elements. Development stopped after about a week of intensive coding. As the first moderately large Javascript project, I felt the brunt of ill-planning and subsequently burnt out.
This is what I eventually had working before burning out:
- Terrain blocks construction and movement of vehicles
- Mobile construction vehicle unit / all non-turreted vehicles
- Construction tech-tree prerequisites
- Usable nuclear super-weapon
- Structural damage and destruction
- Unit and building selection, with healthbar
- Basic construction interface
- Fire and smoke animations
The Game Engine
Click inside the iframe to interact with the engine.