One video to show those map sections loading:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/0IWoWuarjhE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/0IWoWuarjhE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Yep I've done that. The map begins from (0,0) and each coordinate point is a section of a map containing blocks. The section in which the character and all adjacent sections are active, others are serialized to disk. It is not yet threaded because I had some weird problems and need to clean the design before adding concurrency. I'll post later how it works. :b I have some performance issues with Android and I think I'm killing the gc with those section loads and saves.


That sounds fun, I'll need to try it out! All the physics are not perfect yet. Earlier I had also moving blocks "done" but I had to redo most of the game when I started using Libgdx and haven't done them again yet.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

We have started using Libgdx for this game and it feels very promising so far. We will target both desktop and Android from now on.

http://louhigames.com/2013/05/07/we-are-back/

Here you can see "chunks" working:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/HU3FMl0hsFI?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/HU3FMl0hsFI?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

And here some new blocks:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/elHqm3j_I20?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/elHqm3j_I20?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Does anyone have an idea of how I could (should) make a "continuous" map, meaning that if you go far enough to one direction, you'll end up to the beginning at some point? And without the player noticing any "joints".

Now there is line of sight too. LoS and block activation / deactivation runs in a separate thread scheduled to run in intervals.

I want the maps to be very big, so I've been implementing a way to activate and deactivate blocks based on the distance from the player. The base functionality is done and surprisingly also somewhat working, but I still need to do some performance tuning. At some point I was able to play 100x100 map without the modification, and 1000x1000 with the modification, so I think it's going to work just fine. Enjoyable programming.

Thanks a lot, I've added a better video. Didn't get the audio though, but I'll figure it out when I have the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMhLiHLCCnI

Edit: I also fixed a bug that caused a nullpointer ex and added some delay so that you could more easily jump from the edges (certain amount of time after the falling has started when the jumping is still ok).

I've added digging and building, and simple sounds.

Arrow key + x => digging.
c + arrow key => building.

Seems to be buggy and may crash. Deleting objects probably causes some nullpointers.

Jar also works as standalone:
http://louhigames.com/2dplatformer/

I added a bit longer tether to the camera and now this

http://louhigames.com/2dplatformer/

version looks "good" I think.

Content would be nice.

A small update. Rendering is now done in a separate thread which could make things smoother... But somehow something is still missing. You can compare the old and new implementations:

Old:
http://arttu.louhigames.com/game

New:
http://louhigames.com/2dplatformer/


The new one doesn't look as good because it has smaller blocks. I'll figure out a way to draw them more nicely.

All feedback is welcome as well as tips on how to make the game run smoothly.

Looks like I got the hardware acceleration to work after all. It would be nice to hear how smooth the game feels if someone has tested the Applet? You can also open the Java console while playing to see if the hardware acceleration works on your machine.

Edit: I've added one video (quite poor quality): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTBJmiiL7Wo&feature=plcp

This is very impressive. Hopefully you'll manage to make the gameplay enjoyable and support gamepads.

Teemu did mock-ups with Google Drawing. I usually use Paint.NET for everything I need to do (which isn't much or sophisticated). The drawing in the game is currently just filled rectangles - the intention is to change tile size depending on the screen size.

I think new graphics are pretty (Teemu did those).

I've added a way to "attack" by pressing down when the character is jumping.

Looks like hardware acceleration is not an easy task achieve with plain Java. I want to make this game without any external libraries which makes it hard to get smooth drawing... I'll need to get back to this later.

I've been trying to port this to Android, but something is not working as I think it should. Without any heavyweight things I get around 17fps, and with everything (especially physics) on, the game freezes to < 1 fps. Apparently I'm doing something very, very wrong.

I made the highness of the jump depend on how long the player presses the up button. I don't know if it's better than before, but I like the idea of being able to control the jump better.

I should refactore the physics and collision detection part of the engine. Too many magic numbers, and the code isn't well structured.


Edit: Now you can also jump from the walls. Just lean to the wall (press to the side) and then jump. This can be done only once per jump (the character needs to be grounded in between).

I also noticed that when playing in browser, the game doesn't look as smooth as when using the Eclipse Applet viewer. Anyone got any thoughts on that?

Thanks, and wow! Seems like you have put a lot more effort to your game. I'm trying to keep this small(ish), so I would actually finish the project at some point, and make it polished. I started this out as a "quick work sample" to my website, but it just keeps getting bigger (as they always do).

Two main things I'm considering right now are multiplayer and procedural map generation. Especially multiplayer is something I've never done, so it could be a real problem... And that's probably the reason I should do it.

I made the game area a bit bigger, 600x300. I also fixed one bug on physics, but you may still go inside walls sometimes. The problem might be, that if the position of the object is corrected, I don't go through all the other objects to make sure it doesn't affect them. I need to start polishing the code and then figure it out.

I made a randomly created path so there would be a bigger area to test the game, and noticed, that at some point drawing starts to bug a bit. I think it might be when the x-position goes negative.

Edit: use + and - to change the size of the character.

I've just recently started to make the game, so there isn't much to do yet. Right now you can just jump around and so. I haven't even made the map editor yet, although I also try to add some kind of procedural map creation to this.

Edit: Right now I'm trying to make collisions work 100% accurately.

Problems:
a) Moving box on top of another moving box is not working all the time (sliding away)
b) Leaning against an object on the left seems to put you 1 pixel inside that object.
c) Some other problems I've not identified yet.

I started doing a 2d platformer and decided to share some thoughts of the development here. We are using Libgdx and aim for desktop and Android.

The latest screenshot:


Latest video:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/elHqm3j_I20?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/elHqm3j_I20?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Something else:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/0IWoWuarjhE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/0IWoWuarjhE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Well done, the Applet version looks good.

We made a small update: flies hitting the display edges will cause vibrations. Also fixed some small bugs (you can change volume from the main menu now). We also made new website, where you can find the .apk too: http://flygames.louhigames.com/

I had to test this again with my own computer and it seems to be working fine. I can't figure out what could be the problem, but I'll keep that in mind, if we continue this. Somehow each time I test the game, I start thinking that maybe I should start implementing new enemies and weapons etc. It just requires a lot of refactoring.

I wanted to put this here, because it is kind of a finished prototype. We are not currently coding this anymore, but we might return to the subject in the future, and it's good to know if this doesn't work on some machines and so on.

That slowdown sounds strange, I should test the game more. I don't recall hearing about those problems before, but I made some changes before putting this here so maybe I broke something.

Slick is a good and simple to use library for these kinds of projects. I'm sure you will not have any problems with it.

Thanks for the feedback!

Hah yeah thanks. I just wish we would have time to create a proper game now.

Ok, thanks. I need to check it out.

I wanted to share our older project with you, hopefully this isn't seen as spamming. During 2011 we made a small 2d shooting game demo called Bystanders. It took about 6 months for us to release this demo.



Download: http://bystanders.louhigames.com/ (About 8 mb.)

The objective is to defend the base that is located to the center of the screen. You can destroy and move the boxes and collect new ammo and health.

Use wasd to move, left mouse to shoot, and right mouse to move boxes.

Edit: I forgot to mention: This used to use webstart but is now just a normal jar file. We've tested the game only on Windows 7. Before it worked also on other platforms but now I can't guarantee it. Leave a comment if you have any problems.

A game play video:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/l7vZmejtPZE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/l7vZmejtPZE?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Right now we have ceased the development as we concentrate on Android, but we have been thinking whether we should continue this to make a finalized small game of out the demo. We have used Slick and JBox2d in the game.

Old posts about the development are in our blog: http://louhigames.blogspot.fi/search/label/Bystanders

All feedback is again appreciated.

Sure, there you go: http://www.louhigames.com/flygames/

Thank you for testing! Our cats are very playful and usually they "play" at least a bit when I put the game on, but of course they also lose their interest rather quickly when something else gets their attention.

Has anyone put an Android app to Amazon store? Is it possible to do that easily? I didn't even remember that their Android devices don't use Google Play.

Good small game. I'd like the character to feel more "real" with weight or something, but a nice little game. Hard.