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Be sure to drop by and comment on some of the posts!

Vertigo Project has just launched our first product - RedLine. It is a sideways scroller racing game with the objective being to get the most points before reaching level 10. It uses bits and pieces of the examples I have previously posted but all together is much more impressive.

The 10 levels increase in difficulty as your play through them - with the number of oncoming cars increasing, the amount of time you have to stay alive increasing and the need for petrol increasing.

The game is completely based on jQuery and gameQuery which means it’s nothing more than crafty javascript and basic graphics. We have tried to make it as competitive as possible and have included a score board as well as proof of how awesome (or not) you were in your attempt to beat the game.

We have also tried to keep the javascript as easy to follow as possible incase anyone is interested in looking at how everything comes together. We figured we might as well do it seeing as you could get the source quite easily.

Above anything else, it was a challenge for Dave and myself to see what we could do with the jQuery javascript library and the gameQuery plugin. We have a few ideas for our next project which will also be a javascript game. But you will hear more about that closer to the time.

There is a jQuery plugin called parallax which gives layered elements a movement effect similar to one you would have when you look out of your car window while driving. The closer something is to you, the faster it moves. While I didn’t use parallax for this next demo, it is an awesome plugin and is what this is based on.

Again we have our style, html and javascript

Here’s the demo.

What we have here are 5 different images all placed on top of each other to give a composite image of a city skyline. You’ve already seen how you can shift the position of an element with keyboard events and positioning, I’ve just changed the direction the car moves and the key to press - this time the right arrow.

By looking at the code you can see all the various elements are animated on the key press. If you look closer, their durations change. The closest element to you, the car, has a duration of 2500 while the furthest element, the sun, has a duration of 6000. This is because the closer the element is to you, the quicker it should move.

When you press the right arrow, the car will move as seen in the first examples. The background also moves as before, except now with the layering of images and different animation speeds we have the effect you are used to while driving.

This is yet another technique we are planning to use in redline.

All projects that I will be a part of in the future will be branded under this new development group. You can expect some exciting things in the future and in the mean time you can see what we already do.

Here’s a demo I’ve put together taking the animation aspect a step further.

It’s a simple concept - a car driving along the road. I’ve done this two ways, with either the car or the road moving. The car and the road are seperate images that are manipulated to give the illusion of motion. This is simply done by changing their position on the page using the jQuery Animate effect.

The page is built up of 3 main components; The style, the script and the HTML elements.

<style>
    body {
        top:10px;
    }
    div#racebody {
        width:400px;
        height:400px;
        border:1px solid #000;
        overflow:hidden;
    }

    .racetrack{
        position:relative;
        top:-1200px;
    }

    .racecar {
        position:absolute;
        left:225px;
        top:380px;
    }
</style>

<script>
    function startcar(){
        $('#racetrack').css('top','-1200px');
        $('#racecar').css('top','380px');
        $('#racecar').animate(
            {top:"20px"},
            {duration:3000})
    }

    function startroad(){
        $('#racetrack').css('top','-1200px');
        $('#racecar').css('top','380px');
        $('#racetrack').animate(
            {top:"0px"},
            {duration:3000})
    }
</script>

<div id="racebody">
    <img id="racetrack" src="road.jpg" class="racetrack"/>
    <img id="racecar" src="car.png" class="racecar"/>
</div>

Now let’s take a look at what the script does seeing as it’s what actually gives the effect of motion. The concept is the same for both images, they are in a starting position and need to be moved to an end position. I assume that by reading this you have an understanding of jQuery and how it works and will skip explaining the basics.

The position of the elements are controlled by the ‘top’ css property. We are going to animate the movement from the start to end position. The same end result can be achieved without the animate effect by doing the following:

$('#racecar').css('top','-1200px');
$('#racecar').css('top','0px');

This moves the image, but without the illusion of motion. Here’s a demo.

This is a very simple demo that can give a quick animation painlessly. You can however take it one step further and make it interactive.

Simply by adding event listeners you can make the up arrow on your keyboard control the animation.

$(document).keydown(function(event){
    if (event.keyCode == 38) {
        if($("#racecar").queue("fx").length<1)
            $('#racecar').animate(
                {top:"20px"},
                {duration:3000})
        if($("#racetrack").queue("fx").length<1)
            $('#racetrack').animate(
                {top:"0px"},
                {duration:3000})
    }
});

$(document).keyup(function(event){
    if (event.keyCode == 38) {
        $('#racecar').stop();
        $('#racetrack').stop();
    }
});

What this does is on the up arrow keydown event, if there is no animation already started, we start moving the two images. The reason I’m checking the length of the animation queue is so multiple animations are not queued up. This gives a problem when we let go of the up arrow and the animation does not stop completely - just the currently active one does. Here’s a demo.

I hope to be using similar techniques in an upcoming project and will share more tips and tricks as it progresses.

[tested in Firefox 3.03, IE7 and IE6]

What exactly does this mean? Well, I used to have a blog which I kind of let die. It lost it’s appeal to me and I had no reason to really do anything on it. But when you register your name as a domain, it’s almost and official gateway into your life. Anyone who knows your name now has another place (not FaceBook etc.) to find out what it is you do and who you are.

This will not be a diary of my everyday activities, I am not that vain in thinking you want to know.

Whatever I do post, and whatever happens; you know you want to…