I had a similar dillema before starting my own game for my final year university project. I recommend you actually try both to begin with. It won't look good on your report if you have to say "We decided to go with Java because we asked some guys on a Java gaming forum what the best language was and they said Java was way better than C++". It looks much better if you actually go through the process of weighing up each language's advantages and disadvantages yourself. Then, depending on the type of game you intend to make, devise a test application that you can write in both languages that tests each of the language's limitations. If it's performance that you're worried about then it should be pretty easy to test. If it's speed of development then you can measure that too.

It helps as you go through your project  if you plan each section of your report as you develop the project. At each stage think about how you're going to answer the "We did this in this way because..." questions.

Heh, nah I really don't think it would make a good tutorial for Slick. My code isn't pretty.

nva255, I've updated it to only register left clicks when controlling shyguy now.

Looks like there was a bug with that last update. The score wouldn't reset after each play. As a result, I've had to reset your local scores. You're online scores are still there but might be a little inflated as a result of the bug. Depending on when you played and submitted your scores. Any new score that you submit that is lower that your online score won't be updated so your highscores should remain until you get a better score.

Another update.

You get more points for each coin now depending on how hard they are to get. The score for each coin is shown too.

I like the idea of getting combo bonuses. However this is a pretty difficult thing to implement. Either I say that you get more points as long as you don't miss a coin. Or, you get more points if you keep getting coins within a certain time of collecting the last coin.

I think I need to do some experimentation.

Those of you that had problems with the MIME type, please try loading the game again. I've changed the MIME type to the one specified by Sun although I'm not sure why the previous one I was using worked with most people but not others.

That's strange. I must have messed up the .htaccess file. I've had another report of the MIME type being text as well but for most people it seems to work fine. What browser are you using Orangy Tang?

New updates.

The game will now work for linux users
There's a new level system. The game gets harder with each new level rather than gradually as it was before.
You can submit your highscores!

asc, I agree the coins perhaps do need more points to them. I'm not sure though. I can get most of they coins without a problem so it doesn't usually affect how far I go. It depends how risk taking you are though and how many of the really tricky ones you go for. If I make the coins too valuable then people will try to get every coin, die and then not get very far. If I make them not worth enough then they won't bother collecting them and will just try to go for distance. I like to make the game challenge your coin collecting skills as well as your wall dodging skills. If you ever reach levels 6 or 7 you'll see how the skills requires shift from the former to the latter. If you really want to get a good score you have to collect as many coins as you can early on, and then try to get as far as you can later on.

One person gave me the idea of having powerups. If anyone has any ideas for special abilities you might get from power ups let me know!

I got 2269. I like it. A bit on the difficult side. And yes the controls are still akward.

This is a clone of the popular flash game Copter, but it's made using kevglass's awesome Slick library.



Play with webstart:
www.terabytelabs.net/projects/shyguyscod/shyguyscod.jnlp

Please let me know what you think and let me know if you have any ideas on how it can be improved.

Hi,

What is your company? I might be interested. I have a relatively decent pool game that I made for my university course. At the moment it runs with web start using the LWJGL 3D library. But in the latest version of LWJGL applet support has been introduced so it would be possible in theory to convert the code to run as an applet.

The game offers a pretty simple table, game rules, physics and multiplayer over a network. The code is pretty ugly though. It depends what you're looking for. Anyway check it out:

http://www.terabytelabs.net/projects.php

For some reason the webstart application doesn't run on linux. This is some problem with my host as for some reason it just really really doesn't like linux.

Edit:

OK, I've created a MJS account where hopefully my pool game will now run on linux. If my website link above didn't work, try this one:

http://www.myjavaserver.com/~aspurling/pool/pool.jnlp

Another level.

This one should be a little easier and perhaps a little more fun:

Here's my level:


Might be a little tricky. Timing is quite important. Tip: Let the red shroom lead the way.

Have fun!

Ok, well I got over my problem by making the things I didn't need to save transient. Still l don't know if that's the best way to do it. I still have to load up the correct materials and textures when I load the game state. Still I can't think of any other way short of making seperate classes for each object that hold all the info I need to save.

Anyway still open to more suggestions...

Howdy guys,

I was wondering if anyone can give me some tips about how to create a decent method for saving and loading the sate of my game. I thought about making all the classes in the game implement the Serializable interface and then output all of the objects to a file. However, some of my objects have properties such as their material which cannot be serialized. The properties I want to store are things like the position, velocity and orientation of all the objects in the game as well as a few game properties such as the players' scores. Somehow I need to store all of these properties into a single object and also be able to restore all the properties when loading the game. What solutions to this problem are there?