If you couldn’t finish it, publish it!

I started developing a web-based, HTML5 and Javascript game in 2011. At that time, I fantasized about making it a multi-player game via WebRTC. I wanted to make it a massively fun and competitive game. It was gonna be a blast. The project went strongly for 2 weeks and then I left it there rotting for 5 years!

Today, I wanted to revive the project. It was so much fun developing the game, I even created my own Javascript engine. I called it B. You can try the game here http://thaibui.github.io/battle-city/ and the source code is published here.

The reality is that I couldn’t finish the game. So I should just accept that fact and embrace it. Publishing the game and letting people play will hopefully make my work a bit more useful than letting it rot on my computer.

About the game

The game concept is very simple. I was trying my best to bring back all the previous components of the old Battle City game on NES. I did the graphics; I edited the tank pixel by pixel based on a reference image I found on the internet. The bullet and the bricks were also a recreation from some of the reference images I found. They look better than the original, I think.

The game was created from scratch using only what was available in Javascript and HTML5. I wanted it to run on multiple platforms. The game was a big ambitious project and it’s probably why the game was never finished. Luckily, it is playable.

I was also reading the book High Performance JavaScript at that time. I applied most of the knowledge I’ve learned from that book to make the game run as fast as possible.

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