It's really nice to play with a trackpad btw (except my trackpad is a disaster but that's nothing to do with the game)

okay, it's not just my trackpad - sometimes, the mouse cursor is clearly moving around the screen, but the ship isn't doing anything. Maybe it the 'click' button. Or maybe it's the site simply not responding.

EDIT// seems to be a problem with the site beíng too busy - got kicked out of a game for the second time in half an hour.

^ it didnt happen since deo - I changed my trackpad settings - I think it was to do with a certain are triggering the context menu and *possibly* a bug with the escape key triggering an option for the context menu.
If you click any of the two options on the context menu - it simply kicks you out of the game - you cant bet back to it. Not ideal, but shouldnt normally be a problem.


EDIT//
Okay, it just happened again - in spite of context menu activation being disabled in the trackpad :-(
But it could well still be the trackpad. I think it and it's driver were designed to drive people slowly but surely insane...

What does it mean to be kicked out of the game? Does it take you to another page? Does the game stop loading? Does the plugin just go all white/black?

on the trigger game page:

• start a game
• right-click with mouse
• select either "setup" or "about" - you will be sent to a new page
• Game over....

I suspect this happening arbitrarily is still to do with my wonderfully designed and lovingly crafted [dodgy] trackpad.


EDIT:
here's a screenshot -

[attachthumb=#]

I pressed escape to get away from the context menu which appeared out of no where and was blocking my view - the game stopped but the menu stayed. (I just went back to the tab and it's gone now, but it did disrupt the game and caused me to die).

on the trigger game page:

• start a game
• right-click with mouse
• select either "setup" or "about" - you will be sent to a new page
• Game over....

Aha! I've disabled the context menu. That should no longer be a problem for you.

hi deo,
I see via your blog that you have an Asteroid Destroyer for download on itch.io
Is that an earlier version?

I just tried this and think it's really well done.  I love the smooth graphics and explosions.  I also like the fact that there's an extra challenge because the explosions can hide an oncoming asteroid fragment.  Really nicely done, Deo. 

I just tried this and think it's really well done.  I love the smooth graphics and explosions.  I also like the fact that there's an extra challenge because the explosions can hide an oncoming asteroid fragment.  Really nicely done, Deo.  

+1 to all this - I've really enjoyed playing this game

And I made a video showing off the game.


(Also added it to the original post.)

My score in the video is crazy high because of a ... feature ... that works better than I intended.

The points you earn for destroying each asteroid is based on the size of the asteroid, the current level, and how many lives you have. If you play perfectly (meaning you don't get killed) you'll have just over 7,000 points at the beginning of level 7. But here's where the part where the feature works too well comes in: You're awarded an extra life every 10,000 points. So once you get to about level 10, if you manage to have 5 lives or so, suddenly you're getting 10,000 points every several seconds, granting your more lives, which gives you a larger score, which in return gets you more lives, which gets you an even larger score, etc., and before you know it you've got more lives than you could ever lose unintentionally.

In the video, I actually had close to 30 lives and intentionally just sat there to lose them all before starting that last level. I was just gaining them too fast by that point. On level 15 with 30 lives, each small asteroid would give me 1,800 points. That's an extra life every 6 small asteroids. And there was no lack of small asteroids at that point.

So yeah, I threw in that extra life feature at the last minute and didn't properly test it out. Or I just didn't play as well in my tests and I died too quickly. Either way, that needs to change.

It's a lot harder now to break the 10k mark. (But I done it - eventually...)
Slowly starting to get more aware of where the mouse is - move it out to aim accurately, back in so as I can rotate more easily.

I have had the experience a couple of times lately where the brand new ship gets killed before I can even start - i.e. the 'repulse' effect doesnt work - this is hard when it's your last man ship - could that be because I dont have the mouse button fully pressed (dont think so but I'm not sure).
-
It happens when the asteroids are too close to the new ship when it first appears, there is then no replulse effect -- ship dead before it can even get going.

It's a lot harder now to break the 10k mark. (But I done it - eventually...)

If you play perfectly (without dying) I believe that you should clear 10k points on Level 7.

I have had the experience a couple of times lately where the brand new ship gets killed before I can even start - i.e. the 'repulse' effect doesnt work - this is hard when it's your last man ship - could that be because I dont have the mouse button fully pressed (dont think so but I'm not sure).

This is an intended feature of the game. It's a bit unfun to experience as a player, but it adds a little bit of "luck" factor in there. The "repulse effect" (as you call it) greatly reduces the chance of this happening, but it does still happen sometimes.

It happens when the asteroids are too close to the new ship when it first appears, there is then no replulse effect -- ship dead before it can even get going.

It should be noted that the repulse effect still happens (and you'll probably notice the asteroid start to spin wildly due to it), it's just that due to the proximity of the asteroid, it's not able to effectively push it away and the ship respawns in the same location that the asteroid is currently occupying.

On another note - I'm curious how the scoring works:
one time I got to level #9 with only 6.5k points - my highest score is over 12k - but only at level #8 (?)

Points are awarded based on three factors:

1. What size of an asteroid is destroyed.
2. What level you're on.
3. How many extra lives you have.

The reasons for this are:

1. The smaller asteroids are harder to hit, so they give more points than the larger ones.
2. The further you progress in the game, the more you're rewarded.
3. The better you play the game (i.e. the less you die), the more you're rewarded.

So in your case where you got to level 9 with only 6.5k, you probably died a couple of times in the first few levels, greatly reducing your score. When you got over 12k on level 8, you probably played a nearly perfect (no deaths) game up until level 7 or 8.

I think I've mentioned it before in this thread, but if you play a perfect game, you should reach just over 7k points when you start level 7.

As I've been working on the Android port for this game, I realized that somewhere along the way I accidentally removed the part that made smaller asteroids harder, which affected the number of points you got for them.

So now that I've fixed that, you'll find it is a lot easier to get higher scores on earlier levels (the highest score you could have after clearing level 1 used to be 78, now it's 258), but the overall difficulty may have been increased a bit.

Scores

Without dying, at the beginning of each level I had the following score:

Level 1: 0
Level 2: 258
Level 3: 1290
Level 4: 3612
Level 5: 7740
Level 6: 15585