It’s been a long journey since I started Galactic Chaos. I chose to focus on this project because it involves many of my personal interests and allows me to experiment and do things that I hadn’t had the opportunity to do before.

I’ve been a gaming enthusiast for a long time, but I’ve never had the time to try making one myself. Since I’ve never developed a game, I wanted to go through the fundamentals rather than relying on an engine (e.g. Godot, Unity, Unreal Engine). To offset this drawback, I opted for a programming language I’m familiar with (JavaScript/TypeScript).

Finally, I aimed for it to be easily playable by anyone, which meant removing additional friction such as the need for downloads and installations. Hence, the decision to make it web-based. Additionally, the game isn’t resource-intensive, so it can be played on less powerful hardware. For instance, I used a 4th-gen Intel CPU with integrated graphics during development.

Today, I’m making both the game and its source code publicly available.

The following sections will highlight some features I’ve had the joy of implementing.

On-screen debugger

This feature has been incredibly helpful and was among the first to be implemented. Logging or debugging wasn’t an effective method for identifying certain issues, especially considering the game runs numerous cycles per second.

The debugger can be enabled or disabled for groups of entities or individually (player, enemy, boss). Available visualizations include the movement trajectory (depicted by white dotted lines), the entity’s hitbox (illustrated as red circles), as well as the entity’s angle and absolute position within the canvas.

Additionally, the debugger offers a global summary, providing canvas dimensions, frame time, and frames per second count.

Playground

As mentioned here, implementing movement has been one of the most challenging aspects of the project thus far.

I’ve created a movement abstraction for game objects based on relative coordinates (ranging from 0 to 1), which are then calculated in relation to the canvas dimensions.

The idea seemed okay; however, creating new enemy patterns became cumbersome due to the complexity of movesets, which rely on these relative coordinates. The process of envisioning and implementing these movesets was time-consuming.

The playground served as a GUI tool that helped alleviate this issue. At some point, I intended to create a full-fledged level designer. However, this would have taken me too far off course.

I came to the conclusion that the best solution would be the playground, which serves as a showcase tool as well as a platform allowing me to experiment with movement parameters.

This way, what has been accomplished so far could potentially serve as a foundation for a future level designer.

An important decision was choosing Solid over React or direct DOM manipulation to develop the playground.

This decision wasn’t immediate. I began with raw DOM manipulation, but it soon became challenging to maintain. Therefore, I initially delved into React, which is my familiar territory. However, I encountered two major issues:

• Obstructive (component) lifecycle
• Excessive file size

Instead of attempting to work around those issues, I took the liberty to experiment with something new.

When I say ‘new,’ I’m referring to something other than the big three (React, Angular, Vue). With that in mind, there were two contenders: Svelte and Solid. Despite the considerable hype around Svelte, I ultimately chose Solid for its:

• Non-obstructive (component) lifecycle
• Reduced file size
• Speed (running, building, etc.)
• Familiar syntax

Surprisingly, the learning curve turned out to be shorter than expected due to its similarities with React. A significant factor for me was Solid’s different approach to handling (component) lifecycle, which made integration with my existing code base easier.

After implementing the playground and having a good experience with Solid, I’ve also used it for the menus of the game.

Overall, I’ve appreciated the experience with Solid, and I highly encourage anyone interested to explore it further. There’s much more depth to it than what has been superficially mentioned here.

OST

Also, not exactly a feature, but something I’d like to highlight: the game’s soundtrack was created by me.

Conclusion

There are several features, improvements, and fixes that I still would like to make:

• Making it playable on mobile devices
• Ensuring responsiveness to window resizing events
• Enhancing asset loading (on-demand for both audio and images)
• Development of a level designer

Additionally, numerous gameplay ideas are in consideration:

• Adding more levels
• Implementing different difficulty levels
• Introducing game modes: story and survival

As Galactic Chaos continues as an ongoing project, I’m keen about the journey ahead.