When I was seven, my all-time favorite video game was T&C Surf Designs for the 8-bit Nintendo® (NES). Feeling nostalgic this weekend, I developed a version of this old school game using jQuery and Javascript.

Up and Down to move, Left and Right to skate faster or slower, Spacebar to jump

After playing Javascript Mario Kart, I’ve been wanting to develop a classic video game with jQuery. T&C seemed like a good fit because its motion and overall simplicity are ideal for jQuery’s animation library (and it’s really fun).

I’m fairly pleased with the performance, which is vastly improved through the use of cell-based collision detection. Instead of having to check for collision every pixel, it can be checked every 32, with huge processing savings. Additionally, the use of CSS sprites greatly reduces the number of HTTP requests and the need to use … Read more…