Kickstarter Campaign for Nevergrind, a GSAP-powered in-browser game

[Carl]

Hey Guys,

 

Joe Leonard, an active GreenSock community member, has been working really hard on his in-browser game Nevergrind.

It features silky smooth animation powered by GSAP and professional artwork. 

 

He's running a Kickstarter campaign to bring it to the next level. You can play the game for free now and watch a video explaining everything he has planned here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nevergrind/nevergrind-html5-action-rpg

 

Carl

 

 

[Halcyon]

Thanks, Carl, I appreciate the support. I have spent more than 30 months developing this game. It could have been finished faster, but I'm married, I have three kids, and I work full-time, which means I have precious few hours to work on this project. It would be interesting to see what kind of game a small team of full-time professionals could pull off using GSAP and EaselJS. Nonetheless, Nevergrind stands as a good example of what is possible using a mix of DOM UI elements and canvas elements. The trailer gives a pretty good idea of how many elements can be flying around the screen without breaking a sweat.

I figure I would mention a little about the technical aspects of the game:

• Built with a combination of JQuery, GSAP, and EaselJS. JQuery to simplify common tasks like event delegation and AJAX. GSAP for timers and tweening. EaselJS for canvas.
• Built without using a conventional game loop, yet you can pause the game thanks to the delayedCall method. Game actions are event driven.
• Built using a mixture of DOM elements for the UI and canvas elements for most animations, monsters, "special effects", particles, etc.
• I took care to minimize the number of DOM elements. I believe a $.length returns about 350, though it grows if the chat log is enabled.
• There's significant room left to optimize, so it could definitely run even more smoothly if I had time to make those adjustments. It still runs very smoothly on most desktops and laptops I have seen.

That's all that comes to mind right now. If anyone has any questions about its development, I'd be happy to discuss it.