Ship Chase

by Christopher, 2009-09-15 12:42:43

Tags: javascript game physics

Overview

Ship Chase is a game of starship tag that runs in your browser window, for 2-4 players. It uses Javascript and CSS extensively, so you need a modern browser and reasonably fast computer. So far it's been tested successfully on Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3.

How to Play

1. Your ship is controlled by three keys: left, right, and thrust.
2. The player who's It is marked with arrows. If they touch another player's ship, that player becomes It.
3. As long as you're It, your clock counts up. Try for a low score!
4. The game lasts 3 minutes. The last 30 seconds is a Lightning Round, during which the clock counts faster!
5. Tokens float across the screen. Collect them by running into them. Not all of them help you directly, but some do.
6. Some tokens give you an ability that you can use once. Do this by pressing Left and Right at the same time.

That's all you need to know to get started. Go ahead and play Ship Chase. If you want more details about the game, read on....

Ship classes

There are three types of ships, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

The Space Hippo is a reworked freight hauler. It's a standard, easy-to-fly ship overall, but its big disadvantage is its low top speed. Its large mass keeps it from getting thrown about too fast. It's the easiest ship for beginners to keep up with.

The Fledermaus-class scout vessels were designed for quick reconnaisance. With high acceleration and low turning rate, they fly in wide, sweeping arcs. Because of their small size, they're easily knocked off course by other ships and projectiles, and they have more difficulty hitting small targets like tokens.

The Heptapede luxury cruise vessels are the most ill-equipped for the arena, and the hardest to master. They were designed for comfortable long-range travel. They have a high top speed, but lack a noisy main thruster, so they are slow in getting up to speed. Instead, their turning engines have been overhauled to work as thrusters as well. This requires extra turning engines, which is why Heptapedes can rotate very fast.

Tokens

Whenever you collect a token, its name will appear in the corner of the screen. If something becomes attached to your ship, you can use it by pressing Left and Right at the same time. Here's a complete list of tokens you'll encounter:

Accelerate

Temporarily increase your ship's acceleration and top speed.

Brake

This token gives your ship the one-time ability to come to a full stop. Press Left + Right to use it.

Doppelganger Decoys

This token is home to a colony of mischievous robots that produce holographic copies of your ship called Doppelgangers. When you hit this token, four copies of your ship are sent off in four directions. One is the real ship, and three are Doppelganger holograms. If you want to take advantage of the decoys, don't move, and the other players will be unable to tell which ship is really you. If you are It while there are Doppelgangers of you, you will not be marked as It, but your score is still increasing! The holograms will disappear if they encounter any ship besides yours. You can also dispel the Doppelgangers by pressing Left and Right.

Enlarge

Temporarily double your ship's size.

Gravity Well

When you hit this token, several million teratons of invisible, non-interacting dark matter spills into the arena, marked by a couple of chromatically aberrated Einstein rings. Ships will be gravitationally pulled to the center of this spot until the dark matter halo dissipates, which happens after about 12 seconds.

Halt

All ships immediately come to a full stop.

Reverse

All ships immediately reverse their directions.

Ink Spill

Upon hitting this token, your ship tears open a rift between space and metaspace, named an ink spill by the deep-space explorers who first saw one, because it blots out the stars. A strong drag force slows any ship entering the ink spill region. The interspacial rift dissipates after about 12 seconds.

Projectile

The projectile is a dense sphere of steel-plated Curium-247. If you get the projectile from this token, you can launch it at any time by pressing Left and Right. It will fly toward the nearest ship and try to impact with them, knocking them off course.

Reassign It

A random player is selected to be It.

Wormhole

This token gives you the one-time ability to briefly open a small Einstein-Rosen bridge by pressing Left and Right. This will transport your ship to another, randomly-chosen point in the arena.

Historical note

I originally wrote Ship Chase in QBasic in 1998. It's one of the first video games I ever wrote. There were much fewer options then. There was a blue Space Hippo and a red Space Hippo, and the only token was Accelerate. Around 2001 I rewrote it in C++, adding the Fledermaus. The first Javascript version came in 2003.

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