巨獸之夜 Kaiju Night
A giant robot and a kaiju fight in a harbour city at night, in the rain: https://ywchen0711.github.io/kaiju-night/
- Four modes, in Chinese or English (toggle top right): watch an AI-vs-AI fight cut like a live news broadcast (helicopter, street-level phone, harbour CCTV,
over-the-shoulder, slow-motion close-ups on heavy hits), pilot the robot, play the kaiju and wreck the city, or go on foot: one person in the street, first person, looking up at the fight (don't get stepped on, don't stand under buildings).
- The look: three.js with ACES tone mapping, bloom and a film grade (cold shadows, warm highlights, grain, vignette,
chromatic aberration, letterbox). Storm sky with lightning, rain streaks, a reflective harbour, wet asphalt with puddles,
thousands of lit windows, searchlight helicopters, fire light from burning ruins.
- The giants: a Pacific Rim-style jaeger (layered chamfered armour, weathered paint with hazard stripes, a turbine reactor, heat-sink towers venting steam) and an upright Godzilla-style kaiju with
craggy bark-like hide, three rows of glowing dorsal plates and a heavy twelve-segment tail; foot IK keeps every step planted,
with body bob, hip sway, a tail that lags behind turns, head tracking, keyframed attacks, staggers, knockdowns and death.
- More joints: the kaiju's neck bends along two joints, its toes flex and its hands have a palm, knuckles, four two-segment fingers with hooked claws and a thumb that spread and clench; the jaeger has
two-segment fingers and a thumb that close into fists or open for the palm cannon, toes, hinged missile-pod lids, a
fold-out arm blade, and pauldrons and thigh plates that follow the limbs. Detail: belly scutes, bony spikes on the
tail, thighs and forearms, horns, gill slits and old wounds that glow brighter as the kaiju gets hurt; antennas, hoses,
vents and back thrusters on the jaeger.
- Stages, jaegers and kaiju (chosen on the title screen, or random; every fight gets a fresh city):
- Stages: 暴雨港灣 Harbour storm (night, rain, lightning, the bay), 黃昏煉油廠 Refinery at dusk (low sun, blowing sand,
storage tanks, warehouses, burning flare stacks), 雪夜山城 Snowbound town (falling snow, a frozen lake, cabins, a church, pines).
- Jaegers: Sentinel MK-IV (balanced), Bulwark MK-II (heavy: wide pauldrons, huge fists, forearm shields; slow and tough),
Striker MK-V (light: back fins, a forearm blade; fast and fragile).
- Kaiju: Abyssal (deep-sea, blue heat beam), Magmaw (lava veins glowing through cracked hide, rock armour, a snout horn,
magma breath; biggest and slowest), Voltra (lean, tall crackling plates, a crest of blades, thunder breath; fastest).
- Different bodies, not just paint: Asura MK-III (阿修羅) has a second pair of arms with their own fists and a ring of light
behind its head (a four-fist combo, 阿修羅千拳 Thousand Fists); Fortress MK-VII (要塞) carries two long shoulder cannons
that lob shells (its main guns replace the palm cannon; 攻城砲擊 Siege Barrage walks six shells onto the enemy).
Gorvax (巨猿獸) is an ape: no tail or plates, a hunched back, huge long arms, a short muzzle and tusks; it backhands,
beats its chest into a rage, rampages with hammer fists, and grabs the jaeger, hoists it overhead and slams it down
(巨猿擒摔). Pterax (翼龍獸) has skinned bat wings that fold along its back and beat in the air: a wing gale that drives
the enemy back, a dive-bomb from high up (俯衝轟炸), and a talon strike from the air (掠空爪擊).
- Each has a signature move of its own (key T, gamepad LT): Sentinel's thruster uppercut 推進升龍拳, Bulwark's
ground-splitting double fist 斷層鐵拳, Striker's four-slash blade flurry 疾風連斬, Abyssal's ring of light 深淵脈衝,
Magmaw's line of lava geysers 熔岩噴發, Voltra's lightning called down from the sky 雷暴召喚. The AI uses them from the right range.
- Each variant has its own health, speed, move tempo and damage, tuned with headless AI-vs-AI runs of every pairing.
- The fight: punches, uppercut, kick, elbow, two-fisted hammer, a jab-cross-uppercut combo, a jet-assisted rocket
punch, block, dash and plasma cannon against claw, two-handed rake, bite, headbutt, stomp, tail sweep, a running charge, acid
breath, a low claws-first pounce, and roar. The kaiju fights with its body only, no projectiles besides its breath. Every fight starts from random positions. Buildings in the way collapse into dust and fire. The AI fights in phases (close in, trade blows,
now and then break apart with a thruster backstep or a hop and circle at range, come back), so they are not always in a clinch. Knockdowns are rare, and getting up takes a while: roll up to a kneel, push up to standing.
- Fighting like a fight: below a walking pace the feet stay planted in a stance (the jaeger side-on like a boxer, left
foot leading, with a light bounce; the kaiju wide and low, leaning in, claws up) and step one foot at a time when the body
has moved or turned away from them. Punches turn from the hips while the legs hold. The AI throws combinations (two or three
blows flowing into each other), steps back out after them, guards, slips blows to either side or sways back out of reach
(a slipped blow misses), and counters off a slip.
- Weight: every joint above the hips moves on a damped spring, so limbs carry through and settle; each footfall sinks the
body and nods the head a beat later, the upper body lags behind changes of speed, the tail lifts as a counterweight, and the
legs always step at the body's real ground speed (lunges, the charge and being knocked back all walk). Moves play a little
slower than they used to, the kaiju more so.
- Special moves (a power meter fills from dealing and taking damage): the jaeger's missile barrage (飛彈齊射) and
a thruster leap into a plasma-blade slash (電漿劍 · 天降斬); the kaiju's atomic heat beam (原子熱線), which sweeps
after its target and cuts through buildings, and a leaping quake stomp (震地踐踏). Each gets a hero shot, a wide shot
and a title across the screen. Pilot keys: E / F for the specials, C to back off.
- Impact: a blow that connects freezes both fighters for a few frames (longer the heavier it is); the camera is knocked
the way the blow travels and punches in; a flash and a ring of air at the point of contact; sparks spray away from it;
a fighter driven back skids, kicking up dust (sparks off the robot's feet).
- Hit reactions depend on where and how the blow lands: a head blow snaps the head back (an uppercut lifts it), a body
blow folds it over, a leg blow buckles that knee; hooks and claws from one side twist and tip the body away and turn it;
the arms fly out, the head whips a beat after the body, the kaiju's jaw gapes and its tail lashes; heavier blows take
longer to shake off. The one hit cries out: a ragged growl, or the robot's hydraulics straining and a damage alarm.
- Sound: blows, footfalls, explosions, collapses, the plasma shot, thrusters, lightning, the kaiju's roars, growls,
pain and death cries (each kaiju at its own pitch), swings and the robot's hydraulics are real recordings (Kenney's CC0
Impact Sounds and Sci-fi Sounds; rubberduck's 80 CC0 creature SFX 1 and 2, Ogrebane's Monster Sound Effects Pack, the
Swishes Sound Pack from OpenGameArt, all CC0), layered and pitched down to giant scale by tools/design_sfx.py into sfx/ (credits in
sfx/README.txt); a big blow stacks a second recording and a sub-bass thump. The synthesized versions remain as a fallback.
Synthesized with WebAudio: a crack, a deep body thump, then ringing armour plate (a
dent crunch, claws scraping, bolts falling away) or a wet slap of hide (bone crunch on heavy blows), a ground rumble.
Swings are heard as the limb moves; robot footfalls hiss and clank. Sounds in the world are panned to where they are,
quieter, duller, later and more echoing the farther away they are. Also rain or wind, thunder, roars, explosions, collapse.
- Controls: keyboard, touch (stick and buttons) or gamepad. Three quality presets.
sfx/ recorded sound effects (CC0) and their credits
tools/ design_sfx.py, which builds them
js/roster.js the jaegers, kaiju and stages: build, colours, stats
js/i18n.js Chinese and English texts
js/world.js the city, sky, rain, water, lights, helicopters, building collapse
js/fx.js particles (smoke, glow, sparks), debris, fires
js/models.js the kaiju (one skinned body lofted along its bones, craggy skin, dorsal plates) and the jaeger (chamfered armour plates)
js/fighters.js walking with foot IK, attacks, secondary motion, hit detection, AI
js/audio.js synthesized sound
js/main.js renderer and post, camera director, modes, input, HUD
