Show HN: Fly By – retro biplane flying game

Like many side scrolling airplane games, the object controlled in this game behaves a lot more like a rocket than an airplane. I suggest learning a little about the physics of airplanes[1] to improve the feeling of flying.I made a prototype[2] once (not working on mobile, unfortunately) to show what can be done, and it takes getting a lot of details right![3][1]: http://av8n.com/how/[2]: https://xkqr.org/flightle/[3]: https://entropicthoughts.com/sidescrolling-flight-simulator

For further inspiration, check out Wings of Fury, an old DOS game. https://www.myabandonware.com/game/wings-of-fury-taApparently a newer 'inspired by' successor is https://store.steampowered.com/app/1371710/Rogue_Aces_Deluxe...

I had a lot of fun, the scan line effect looks really good and the obstacles are interesting and challenging. I'd have liked to use my game controller, there's a browser API for it. And to have changed my control settings. I thought both mobile and desktop controls were good though.I've been working on a browser game too lately. It's a pretty great environment to work in. Three.js + WASM have cured my desire to learn Godot, at least for now.

I'd rather see AI being used to generate new games for old platforms (console emulators) than these faux-retro things with mixels, inconsistent graphics styles (some blocky bits, some curves), and rotation of squares.Constraining the canvas to a low-res pixel grid would be an instant improvement. The recent post https://airport.apunen.com/ does a decent job of this but it, too, has an odd mix of modern aircraft sound fx and vintage biplane graphics. It doesn't feel very retro because it's full 3D rather than limited 2D sprites of a 3D scene.

Maybe this is intentional, but the up/down controls felt a bit counterintuitive to me. Up makes the plane go down, and down makes it go up - is that by design?

If you pick up an additional machine gun powerup, the plane should fire more bullets simultaneously.

The fake scanlines and position of the UI elements make them difficult to read. The plane is too slow and its turn radius is too tight, the physics (if there are any) need to be improved to give a sense of weight and velocity to the plane IMO, and that probably necessitates a bigger playfield. Also it feels like it really needs a gun (edit: OK it does.)Overall it feels like an OK prototype but I agree it needs more polish.That said, HN is traditionally for sharing code with the community. Maybe for AI submissions people should share their prompts? I don't know. I'd ask to see the code but since you didn't write it you can't really discuss it.

This was a nice game. It would be cool if you added some more purpose to landing the plane, like if the fuel and throttle were limited, making it actually useful to land it. Overall great game and enjoyable. Also would be nice to get some extra points for doing loop-de-loops or tricks with the plane. A shield power-up is also a great idea.

Loved it. That's exactly what AI should be used for. Something that would take us one month at least, full of bugs, AI now delivers in less than a day, ready to shipThis is the essence, AI is a super power, the world is ours

It's no Sopwith