You know you want to…

It’s been a while since I’ve made a post about something, and I hope to not dissapoint with this one.

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.

Now that you’ve been introduced to the tools and methods available to make quick and painless animations, let’s build on it and take it one step further.

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.

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Myself and Dave have opened the doors at Vertigo Project.

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.

I came across an article on snook.ca showing how jQuery can be used to animate background images for flash like results. This is just the start of what I think is possible with one of the most (if not the most) powerful javascript library available.

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.

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