Sunlight

A simple solar system toy

Commentary

This is a game where all you do is fool around with it until you have made a little solar system that looks good to you. That's it. You can save a screenshot of your solar system by right-clicking on the canvas, which is definitely one of my favourite things about HTML5 canvas.

I've been thinking about making a game in 'first principles' HTML5/JS for a good while, and something just pushed me to do it this month, after a promising but ultimately very messy attempt at a tactics game engine in PICO-8 lost steam.

I started out with a canvas, drew a circle, and immediately started feeling like there was something to be found here. About a week later (maybe?) and while it might not look super different or complex, I've had a lot of fun building bits and pieces on to that one little circle. In the process I made a '60FPS' display setup, input handling, and a simple game loop. It was a lot of fun! I hope you enjoy fooling around with it! I think I'll be making more games with this same sort of base, and probably trying to learn more about it in the process, but we'll see how we go.

Controls

W/A/S/D: Move the sun around. Planets don't move, but their orbits will change to reflect the new position of the sun
E: Switch from showing orbits to 'sunlight lines' to just planets
Q: Add a new planet in a random location
P: Hide/show the signature in the corner
R: Reset the solar system with 8 new planets

#onegameamonth May 2019