This feels like an achievement:
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 190.2 point crash
Speed: 1612.3mph
Angle: 98.6°
Time: 220 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 1612.3mph
Max height: 4534ft
Engine used: 15 times
Boosters used: 129 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/ Perfect landing, incredible, you can’t get better than this
Score: 99.2 point landing
Speed: 1.0mph
Angle: 0.2°
Time: 52 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 31.5mph
Max height: 389ft
Engine used: 99 times
Boosters used: 7 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Great game!
The amazing thing is all these lunar lander games are harder than actually landing the lunar lander that landed on the moon. That's right it used a computer stabilized system and featured a fully automatic landing program however every lander was actually landed in the semi automatic mode where the pilot controlled the descent but the attitude was still maintained by computer.
Nice one.
The left-right feel swapped to me, but I fail to give a factual reason.
Also reminds me of two 90s era DOS games: Ugh and some other about landing on Moon. Similar to yours, but the lander looked like a small tower/crate (for lack of better description).
To counter those occasional asteroids that bizarrely, coincidentally seem to blast through the exact spot where the lander lands — how about adding the ability to take off again once having landed?
For folks for whom this is scratching an itch, highly recommend you check out Reentry: An Orbital Simulator. It is a beautiful indie passion project trying to faithfully recreate all aspects of the 1960s space era, in which you'd go through the actual steps necessary to operate the aircraft, including the lunar lander. It's awesome in it that it tries to be faithful, like NSSP and things of the nature, while also not cutting corners in the "game-like" parts of the experience, like textures, audio design, missions, VR capability, etc. If you enjoyed this for more than a few minutes, you'll enjoy poking around in it!
You'll never improve on Astro Chicken :). Seriously, I loved that game when Space Quest III came out, although it seems others had quite a different experience.
I created a discrete (and less realistic) version of this concept here: https://qewasd.com/ ("Lunar Landing" challenge) - try to get a score as close to 0 as possible!
Some people have managed to use MILP solvers to optimally solve some of the other problems
Code here: https://github.com/void4/qewasd
Still addicted. Two suggestions: 1. Factor in time to landing in the score; faster times score higher. 2. Add an option to make the meteor debris damaging.
Doesn't work for me. I can't get past "2 arrows at the same time". I press them, and see flame from both side thrusters, but the game doesn't register that I've done 2 arrows, and does not let me play. Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/110.0
Landed on first try, years of playing Kerbal Space Program have come in handy :D
Pretty fun! I like trying to make as many flips as possible:
Basically a fender bender, but you landed
Score: 45.4 point landing
Speed: 3.5mph
Angle: 9.5°
Time: 62 seconds
Flips: 18
Max speed: 86.8mph
Max height: 1276ft
Engine used: 32 times
Boosters used: 55 timesHow is this a crash, because of the angle?
So, so close to a landing, but still a crash
Score: 1.6 point crash
Speed: 2.5mph
Angle: 12.2°
Time: 20 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 34.5mph
Max height: 221ft
Engine used: 20 times
Boosters used: 14 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
A good landing, keep trying
Score: 84.1 point landing
Speed: 4.5mph
Angle: 0.0°
Time: 23 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 32.5mph
Max height: 221ft
Engine used: 26 times
Boosters used: 13 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/Tried to get a good landing with as few control actions as possible. For a simple new scoring system, subtract your number of control actions from your landing score:
Very nice landing, amazing
Score: 90.5 point landing
Speed: 2.9mph
Angle: 0.2°
Time: 18 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 53.7mph
Max height: 425ft
Engine used: 1 times
Boosters used: 3 times
I like this kind of game, and this is perfect for a short diversion! This is the best I can muster for now:
Very nice landing, amazing
Score: 90.1 point landing
Speed: 2.8mph
Angle: 0.4°
Time: 9 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 38.7mph
Max height: 240ft
Engine used: 10 times
Boosters used: 10 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/Tons of fun aiming for the different types of high scores. Here are mine:
131 point crash - https://i.ibb.co/YdJ1c8B/131.png 426 max speed landing - https://i.ibb.co/5k5Csjt/Max-Speed426.png
Had a great time seeing how fast I could make it go!
Impressive speed, impressive angle - you crashed with style
Score: 89.2 point crash Speed: 761.4mph Angle: 41.4° Time: 82 seconds Flips: 0 Max speed: 761.4mph Max height: 344ft Engine used: 97 times Boosters used: 45 times https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Near-perfect landing, super smooth
Score: 97.5 point landing Speed: 1.4mph Angle: 0.2° Time: 17 seconds Flips: 0 Max speed: 53.3mph Max height: 377ft Engine used: 15 times Boosters used: 12 times https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Love this! Very simple and creative.
A solid “C” landing
Score: 71.9 point landing
Speed: 4.7mph
Angle: 2.5°
Time: 276 seconds
Flips: 27
Max speed: 114.4mph
Max height: 1323ft
Engine used: 58 times
Boosters used: 63 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/Suggestion of improvement: landing should only be successful if lateral velocity is inside a limit.
Think I found a bug! Left the tab (on Firefox mobile on Android) and then revisited it, and now it says: "Perfect landing, incredible, you can't get better than this" with a score of 102.3 (I'm assuming 100 is supposed to be the max score?).
I don’t think we’re getting back to Earth
Score: 34.4 point crash
Speed: 187.5mph
Angle: 122.8°
Time: 88 seconds
Flips: 7
Max speed: 187.5mph
Max height: 2336ft
Engine used: 11 times
Boosters used: 49 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/
A fast crash, but it could be faster
Score: 82.9 point crash
Speed: 689.8mph
Angle: 56.2°
Time: 79 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 689.8mph
Max height: 725ft
Engine used: 3 times
Boosters used: 46 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/Neat!
Couple thoughts:
* I first played this on my phone and the controls are basically backwards, touching right side of screen activates left booster. May be a subjective preference but when I went to a desktop and used the arrow keys (right key -> right booster) that was way more intuitive.
* Does it consider sideways velocity in judgment? Like 5MPH up and down vs a little bit sideways.
* For the love of Smoot please let me change to metric. Angles in radians would be fun too.
Dunno how much complexity you want to add, but limited fuel would be a nice challenge to add. Or landing spot which is moving (up and down or sideways).
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 198.9 point crash Speed: 1,600.2mph Angle: 179.0° Time: 336 seconds Flips: 2 Max speed: 1,600.2mph Max height: 55,433ft Engine used: 7 times Boosters used: 97 times https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Just landed safely, so think I am sending my resume to NASA for the upcoming Moon mission.
Nice job on the game! Fully usable on my iPhone and only took me like 7 tries to actually land. Bookmarked to study the code and learn how you achieved such a nice end result. Thanks for posting.
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 465.6 point crash
Speed: 4010.5mph
Angle: 178.0°
Time: 986 seconds
Flips: 509
Max speed: 4010.5mph
Max height: 409430ft
Engine used: 4 times
Boosters used: 126 times
It's 1 AM, I need to go to sleep...
Couple of great UX things I’ve found
- the game doesn’t let you play without knowing how to use the controls, and it shows them in real time - whenever you tap, the tap area lights up.
Small Details that make a difference!
Apparently, it's all about feathering the throttle. Very nice!
Near-perfect landing, super smooth
Score: 96.5 point landing Speed: 1.1mph Angle: 0.7° Time: 45 seconds Flips: 0 Max speed: 43.7mph Max height: 256ft Engine used: 73 times Boosters used: 37 times https://ehmorris.com/lander/
---
I see it took you about seven months from "Initial Commit" to its current state. How did you stay on track all that time?
Very addictive.
One thing that would be interesting would be a mode where you have limited fuel.
Also, the ability to set different buttons would be good. Towards the end of the landing I want to use one hand for left-right, and the other for the booster rocket, and this is awkward.
I found the font saying the speed and angle were much too small to read, and hard to read against the background anyway, so it was unplayable. No one else seems to have had that problem! macOS 12.5, firefox, 24 inch 1920x1080 display - pretty normal sized. Maybe it works on a phone. I tried zooming in but then I couldn't see the ground, and the font didn't get bigger.
Nice Game.
Perfect landing, incredible, you can’t get better than this
Score: 99.3 point landing
Speed: 0.2mph
Angle: 1.0°
Time: 22 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 33.6mph
Max height: 227ft
Engine used: 12 times
Boosters used: 11 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/Great fun!
Terrible landing, you need to land slow and straight
Score: 18.6 point landing Speed: 10.0mph Angle: 8.9° Time: 23 seconds Flips: 0 Max speed: 22.5mph Max height: 248ft Engine used: 25 times Boosters used: 16 times https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Great game. It took me a while to figure out how to start the game. I'd put a "Press space bar to start" somewhere.
I think you meant to do that
Score: 75.8 point crash Speed: 509.3mph Angle: 172.9° Time: 101 seconds Flips: 0 Max speed: 509.3mph Max height: 6618ft Engine used: 8 times Boosters used: 42 times https://ehmorris.com/lander/
It took a lot of tries, but I just barely made it eventually! Btw I'm on my Pixel 7 and it works better than I'd like expected on a phone. Seems like it'd be easier with a keyboard though?
A near-crash, way too fast
Score: 35.0 point landing
Speed: 9.7mph
Angle: 5.6°
Time: 8 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 35.9mph
Max height: 197ft
Engine used: 2 times
Boosters used: 6 times
Basically a fender bender, but you landed
Score: 53.6 point landing Speed: 9.8mph Angle: 1.4° Time: 566 seconds Flips: 182 Max speed: 635.2mph Max height: 62510ft Engine used: 109 times Boosters used: 145 times https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Unbelievable, the crater is visible from Earth
Score: 345.1 point crash
Speed: 2928.9mph
Angle: 175.6°
Time: 696 seconds
Flips: 28
Max speed: 2928.9mph
Max height: 299886ft
Engine used: 37 times
Boosters used: 194 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/A near-crash, way too fast
Score: 34.7 point landing Speed: 5.2mph Angle: 10.1° Time: 28 seconds Flips: 1 Max speed: 25.5mph Max height: 138ft Engine used: 16 times Boosters used: 19 times https://ehmorris.com/lander/
Fun game! It would add more to the game imo if there was a fuel efficiency target as well as angle and speed.
As ever, this is the kind of problem I find more fun in programming a computer to solve than in solving myself, by hand. But this is a fun implementation! Good controls, too - it only took me two tries to land, which is better than I ever managed with an Apple II and a keyboard as a kid.
Sweet game!
Near-perfect landing, super smooth
Score: 95.5 point landing
Speed: 1.9mph
Angle: 0.1°
Time: 57 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 31.6mph
Max height: 147ft
Engine used: 82 times
Boosters used: 33 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/Awesome game! Really addictive :-)
Perfect landing, incredible, you can’t get better than this
Score: 101.1 point landing
Speed: 0.7mph
Angle: 0.1°
Time: 26 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 32.4mph
Max height: 194ft
Engine used: 53 times
Boosters used: 30 timesGive this one a go, you know you want to...
https://theintelligentbook.com/thinkingaboutprogramming/#/de...
(programmable lander)
Awesome, the highest crash landing speed I was able to achieve was 97.7 MPH after about 20-30 attempts.
This game is gorgeous! It would be nice if the left and right thrust controls could be swapped.
On an iPad, it’s very hard to hit the left/center/right targets accurately. I got some successful landings, but there was a lot of, “No I said center, not left… no, center, not right… ah crap!” If there were keyboard controls, that would help, I think.
I seem to be running into a bug where the velocity gets mis-matched somehow -- the velocity will be listed as above -12 m/s even though the rocket is actually going up, which obviously makes it impossible to land.
Wanted to play, but after the tutorial a first touch makes the ship disappear. When I reload the page, I can see the ship again, and the landing curve, then again if I touch the screen everything disappear except for the stars.
I'd love to see an indicator showing how quickly you are rotating. That would make the final touchdown a lot easier to get straight, IMO.
Also, could the trajectory stay visible at all times? That would help plan burns better.
Crashed only once, but for a good one had to practice a dozen times at least.
A good landing, keep trying
Score: 82.2 point landing
Speed: 4.3mph
Angle: 0.7°
Time: 17 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 34.7mph
Max height: 210ft
Engine used: 7 times
Boosters used: 7 times
Here's a lunar landing copy I made 15+ years ago, Java *applet*: https://github.com/celwell/space-landing
Great game! For me, controlling the rocket was not that handy, somehow I always wanted to press the opposite button. Will be a option to swap the left and right buttons? That would be great! :)
love it!
A good landing, keep trying
Score: 83.5 point landing
Speed: 3.8mph
Angle: 0.8°
Time: 44 seconds
Flips: 0
Max speed: 32.1mph
Max height: 257ft
Engine used: 25 times
Boosters used: 19 times
https://ehmorris.com/lander/I enjoyed the easter eggs!
I played this game on OSX, Windows and Linux using Chrome.
The game is a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable to play on OSX. I reckon it has something to do with the input handling.
Love it. Want more. I would love to see different scenarios and, challenges. Obstacles? different gravity/planets?
I'm going to give you some feedback like your game did me: pretty bad lunar lander game, but it could be worse! Just kidding, I played it a bunch of times pretty fun.
It would be nice if the "how to play" screen gave keyboard equivalents. I was about to give up trying to play until I saw someone's comment about arrow keys.
I feel like the lunar landing aspect is incidental, and this is fundamentally a "impossible-to-please parent for whom nothing is ever good enough" simulator :-)
Nice work!
I think speed should be in ft/s to match height in ft. IIRC on Apollo they used ft/s for descent speeds. (an option for metric would be nice also)
Love it! It's like a cross between Flappy Bird and Asteroids. Nice tutorial at the beginning, too.
Just managed to get a 98.5, which I think was mostly luck.
Crashing sideways is fun, the exploded parts continue to wrap around the screen if you "land" sideways fast enough :D.
Terrible landing, you need to land slow and straight
Time: 8 seconds
Flips: 0 Max speed: 39.0mph Max height: 173ft Engine used: 2 times Boosters used: 5 times
Left and right are backwards on a phone. I'm sure I'd adapt after a few more games, but it's annoying.
Had a lot of fun
Enjoyed playing! Controls are smooth. Would you mind sharing tech used to design the game and exported to html?
Loved the soundtrack, too! Very fitting.
The lander disappears as soon as I touch the controls and never crashes. Iceraven 1.14.0/Android 11
Had a ton of fun with this :) thanks!
Playing the lunar lander game on a Commodore PET is one of my earliest computer memories.
Way more fun if you try to see high you can get your crash score. 26.3 personal best
It seems that higher refresh rate screens make this game significantly harder..
Great game, why can't it go on all directions ? lef, right, down AND UP ?
Reminded me of a game I used to play on Miniclip called UFO Joe!
Fun! I'd like to get a bonus for rotations in both directions.
Neat, and fun!
But why does it consume 100% CPU when sitting at the results screen?
Fun. Weird that controls are reversed (left/right).
very good one! Though it wasn't completely clear to me how rating was calculated.
Awesoem job! Thanks for sharing!!
Love it, great work!
Extremly addictive p
i love the confetti/fireworks! great game
well spent 10min, this is a good game!
671 flips, lol
Good fun!
VERY FUN
great game thx
[dead]
[dead]
This is like KSP but without the fun.
Good fun. A couple of ideas, zoom in as you approach the landing site, it's hard to see the difference between 4mph and 1mph; and consider having no landing spots, like craters or sharp edges; finally, some slow flying asteroids to avoid every once and a while. Consider planting a little flag from previous landing or tombs on crash sites on restart, to have some continuity. :)