Friday Flash-ish Spaß!

March 20, 2009 5:54 AM

Friday Flash JavaScript Fun! Balldroppings (ha.) is a gravity-based game where balls drop at regular intervals from a particular point in the screen and you draw lines to make them bounce. The excellent part: every time the balls bounce off a line, they sing.

Well, to be more precise, they emit a bell-like tone at a pitch that is somehow a function of velocity and/or height. Brought to you by Chrome Experiments.

posted by LMGM (19 comments total)

d'oh. that was supposed to be strikethrough through "Flash." win some, lose some.
posted by LMGM at 5:57 AM on March 20

Previously (that link is dead, totally worth a re-post IMO).
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 5:58 AM on March 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

I need to try this on a computer that's a little...fresher. The one I'm on was used 5 years ago...
posted by DU at 6:02 AM on March 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

dangit! I thought I had searched thoroughly for doubles. Sorry, folks. As TPAA says, tho, the previous link is long-dead (and more than 5 years old). Also, the Chrome Experiments page is something new; most of the "experiments" work well in my Firefox 3 browser on my mac, although the whole project is supposed to be for Google Chrome browsers (which they refuse to release on mac, those bastards).
posted by LMGM at 6:10 AM on March 20

> the whole project is supposed to be for Google Chrome browsers (which they refuse to release on mac, those bastards).

Many of them work well enough on the Safari 4 beta.
posted by ardgedee at 6:16 AM on March 20

It seems to be working fine in Firefox -- though it slows down if you build walls that your balls can't escape. Still, it's sort of entertaining to see how close you can get to a steel drum sound simply by drawing what looks like a steel drum.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:35 AM on March 20

Flippertronics.
posted by pracowity at 6:37 AM on March 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

I had high hopes that the Safari browser on my iPod touch would be able to display that properly, but nope. The ball drops at a snail's pace, and touch gestures won't create lines on the page. Safari 4 on my Mac works just fine.
posted by emelenjr at 6:41 AM on March 20

i like that tinkle tag.
posted by fuzzypantalones at 7:00 AM on March 20

Sweet cacophony!
posted by chillmost at 7:01 AM on March 20

It's a lot like one of the electroplankten with the fish hitting leaves only more freeform and chaotic.
posted by I Foody at 7:08 AM on March 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

I like this very much.
posted by sidereal at 7:10 AM on March 20

upping the frequency of the ball drops to an insane level and it brought my new MacBook almost to a halt... And, after about 2 minutes it kicked on the cooling fan which NEVER happens on this machine...
posted by HuronBob at 7:29 AM on March 20

This is a gas, the objective is to get as many balls going around as possible, right?
posted by From Bklyn at 7:43 AM on March 20

This is basically a clone of one of the modes of Electroplankton, which was done with more panache and features... but fun nonetheless.
posted by Foosnark at 7:44 AM on March 20

This is great! (And apparently six years old!) I've been playing with it half an hour, and I think I already have an album on the ambient charts.

The creator, Josh Nimoy, has made a bunch of interesting stuff, much of which I suspect has showed up on metafilter already.
posted by moonmilk at 8:24 AM on March 20

which they refuse to release on mac, those bastards

heh. No, they're not refusing, they're simply not done.

From http://dev.chromium.org/developers/faq:
Q. Well when will it be ready on Mac and Linux?
A. Porting to a completely new platform is a lot of work that will take some time. We are working extremely hard, and we expect some impressive results in the coming months. You should expect to wait months, and not days, until there is something you can use.

Also, this is fun. And remarkably quick for JS.
posted by GuyZero at 10:28 AM on March 20

LMGM, could you just send me the screen captures for dance of the sugar plum fairies and take on me by a-ha so that I can get back to work?
posted by umbú at 12:18 PM on March 20

Hunh. I seem to have broken it...I upped the ball drop rate and everything slowed to a crawl, but I could see the trace of the ball route, which was cool.
posted by leahwrenn at 5:46 PM on March 22