Xtreme Space War - Online multiplayer space shooter!

[Aramaz]

Now version 0.18c is up (www.xsw.se)! It fixes a few bugs, and produces a better logfile. If you are thrown out of the game please send the file Client.log to me to help me find bugs.

Matzon> Glad you liked it! There are some pretty good players out there nowadays, even I get beaten by some...

SluX> Eventually I might get around to it. I have to little time to sit with the packaging of things right now though... so not yet.

We've had some very intense battles this week with 7 players involved at times, it's been great fun . Thanx all for playing and testing it!

[Aramaz]

version 0.19 is now up. Adds a couple of new maps, and fixes some bugs.

[MickeyB]

At what times do most of you play?  I want in!

 


M

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[noblemaster]

Not too many people playing yet ;-(    Anyhow, the graphics look great, did you all create them by yourself? Any hints for a graphics noob such as myself? How to get them to look good?

[MickeyB]

I ran the jar, got the little window to shose play-settings, etc.. but clicking play does nothing...music is nice though.  I can start a server, it then shows up in available servers.  I can launch the Map creator...but no playplay. 

Acer 1ghz tablet, winxp tablet edition, 512mb ram  java 1.5.06

and finally made Ninja on the boards...!!

[tortoise]

I was the only one on the server, but it looks and plays great on my measly Mac Mini. Very good stuff!!

[Aramaz]

kingaschi> Usually we play in the evening time at GMT +1. Around 21-22, mostly on normal week days, on weekends people are busy doing other stuff. Keep the main window running (consumes very little cpu) to see when people are playing. The graphics were done by a friend of mine, and my brother. I am not very good at drawing graphics myself... guess you need the talent and time to do it. I have neither .

MickeyB> Did you get into the start screen of the game? OpenGL driver running correctly? Is there some error listed in the Client.log file (in the root xsw directory)?

tortoise> Try again some other time, you need to experience it in multiplayer

I'm very nearly finished with Team Death Match mode. Hopefully I will have it ready sometime by the end of next week, then we will get some good team games going . I think this will be very good for new players as then you can cooperate with other players. Right now there are a handful of very skilled players, and I've found that new players going up against these find it very difficult to get any kills at all (thus they find it frustrating), so it will be very good to actually have some of these players on your team, .

[MickeyB]

Turns out my Acer will not run OpenGL.  LOL

Anyway my other pcran it fine and got my rear handed to me a number of times.  Played with about 3 others for a while.  Fantastic game.

[MickeyB]

OK, 2 things....

First, need a radar.  Was playing witha few people and if you dont see them, you can't find them to play.  Just fly around and hope to run into somebody.

Second,. (*&%(^ , but I hate getting my arse handed to me over and over. My son is a better pilot at XSW.  LOL

[SluX]

Second,. (*&%(^ , but I hate getting my arse handed to me over and over. My son is a better pilot at XSW.  LOL

Err...u suk?

Just kidding, ur son is good

<-spammer swy

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[Astrosmurf]

Hi,
killer app!
Is the source open? It would be interesting to see it as I am working on something similar myself
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/motopain) but I'm having problems getting it to run as smooth as your app.

Regards Anders

[nva225]

Ahh, why is it saying version 0.20 is up and it's not?? And it won't even let me play??

[Aramaz]

nva225> You beat me to it... I actually uploaded version 0.20 late last night . You might be getting the xsw page from your local cache if you don't see it. Try clearing the cache and reload the page (ctrl-f5 to force reload I think?)

So, everyone, I am pleased to annouce that xsw version 0.20 is now up on the site! The major change in this version is Team Death Match mode! This will bring great fun for everyone . In team mode there are pointers to your teammates on the edge of the screen to help you locate them. No pointers to players in opposing teams though.

Mickey B, I've thought about radar before. I like the element of suprise when you sneak up on someone, but I think I will add a radar soon and try out if I like it better or not. Good luck against your son, such things are hard for a man's pride!

Astrosmurf, glad you like it . The source is not open at this point in time... maybe in the future.

[Aramaz]

Another update. Version 0.20b is up. Now you can see the team score at all times. And also some other visual updates.

[CommanderKeith]

WOW!  I love your game - great steering & movement.  Amazing graphics, and the music & sound is 100% suited.  Just needs WebStart... bad  .  Then I wouldn't have to downlaod 16MB with every little update

By the way, I'm trying to make something similar but using Java2D.  Was the lwjgl necessary for this kind of 2D game do you think?

Keith

[Aramaz]

Thanx for the praise . Yes, alot of people here are asking for webstart, I just haven't had the time to look into it at all. And there are so many other things that I have on my todo list that I can't promise it will be webstartable soon.

 I'm providing a patch file that is much smaller for the updates, so you don't need to download the full 16 mb each time. I'm going to put the music in a separate download, so you'll only have to download it once.

The main reason why I went for lwjgl was the lack of support for hardware rotation in java 1.5. Of course all the sprites could be pre rotated, but I didn't want to do that. Also you can do alot of nice effects in opengl that is not available in java 2d (not that I'm using any fancy stuff yet...). For just fast 2d blitting of sprites java 2d will do just fine.

[nva225]

Well, I think there is hardware rotation to some degree in java 5.0 (see http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/2d/new_features.html) but I'm not positive if it's fully functional on all platforms. It works just fine on my computers but obviously that's no indication for overall support.

Also yea LWJGL can support translucency a lot better (only supported for windows on this point) plus a few other things. Which is why I still want to learn how to use LWJGL. But somehow I haven't and have been able to stick with Java2D for the time being.

I'm curious what the performance differences are as well. I imagine java2d would have to be a little slower just because it has to be compatible with software generated graphics.

[Aramaz]

Version 0.20c is up! Adds team-colored images for the smallest ship (firefly), this was not in 020b, so if someone chose the firefly ship in 0.20b the game would crash for every one in teammode.

Some of the shots have had a facelift. Fixed so scores are updated correctly (before team score and the score in the upper left corner was only updated when the scoreboard was visible).

We had a big 8 player team game yesterday, it was great fun!

I've noticed several players coming in from the states and other places where they have much lag on the connection to my server here in sweden. If you notice your ping is above 150 try running your own server.  If the ping is close to 500 it might in reality be alot more than 500, I'm only reporting a max of 500 (to send information in one byte that is then doubled). At this ping rate weird things start to happen like ships starting to jump around, shots and missiles going through other ships etc.

According to: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/2d/flags.html hardware rotation of translucent images is not supported in java 1.5, which is very important to me. For non translucent images I'm not sure what the case is.

[CommanderKeith]

According to: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/2d/flags.html hardware rotation of translucent images is not supported in java 1.5, which is very important to me. For non translucent images I'm not sure what the case is.

Thanks for pointing that out.  Looks like that's still the case in java 6:  http://download.java.net/jdk6/docs/technotes/guides/2d/flags.html

Still, java2D's opengl pipeline supports accelerated rotation & other transforms as well as translucency and everything else so Java2D may have sufficed.

Keith

[nva225]

Hmm good point, never though about translucent rotation.

But, do you use any translucent images that rotate? I almost always want translucent images so this may be a very good reason for me to start using LWJGL but I don't recall any such images in XSW where a Transparency.BITMASK wouldn't work.

Of course, I'm not saying you should have done it in Java2D. It's probably still faster anyway in LWJGL. Just wondering in theory if you could have done it. =)

[Aramaz]

XSW version 0.21 is up!

Among other things this version contains:
* 2 new maps (one HUGE for 3 teams, and one 2on2 map).
* Team chat + chat "macros" (Shift + numkey lets you say a predefined message)
* Lowered bandwidth usage, more players should be able to play on the same server.
* Bug fixes - should be more stable now.
* and more...

We've had some 15 players playing at once before, but the server couldn't quite handle that. Hopefully that will work now.

Looking forward to some intense space battles!

nva225> Some images are translucent, like the clouds in the background. But you're right, it could've probably been done without... but better to give the artists freedom .

[nva225]

* Lowered bandwidth usage, more players should be able to play on the same server.

Woot! Nicely done, hopefully that reduces the noticeable lag you start to see when you get 8-10 players. Timing is always crucial when a missile is flying towards your face.

[Aramaz]

XSW version 0.22 is up!

New in this version:
* minimap to help you navigate
* small improvements to the hud
* accelerated turning to help you aim slightly better
* server sends messages to clients at different times (should reduce lag slightly with many players)
* One cool new map - (and 2 not so cool)

download at http://www.xsw.se/eDownload.htm

enjoy! 

nva225> hopefully it did, I haven't been playing with more than 8 since last update so I don't know for sure. With 8 players I noticed no lag, hope to go over 10 soon

[noblemaster]

I am going to try again once you have it available as webstart... If you use Ant, I wouldn't mind sending you my build script. One mouse click and Ant builds you the deployable, packed etc. webstart files.

[Aramaz]

Yes, I am using Ant (started using it a few weeks ago... what a time saver! ). I'd be happy if you sent me the script. If it's as easy as you say, we might have a webstartable version soon...

[noblemaster]

Alright, I emailed you the files 

[Aramaz]

After months of silence... finally a new version of XSW has arrived!

The big news in XSW 0.31 is:

Player accounts!
Player rankings!

Also lots of small changes and improvements have been implemented. Check the news section on www.xsw.se for more info.

I think competing for ranking will give alot more enjoyment to the game. Also player stats for each player can be viewed on the homepage. This has been long in the making, and I wouldn't be suprised if a few bugs crept in, please report any bugs you find to me.

If you want to try out the game without creating an account you can log in as guest - but not on ladder servers. Currently I'm only running a ladder server (as I have very limited supply of server computers), but you can easily start your own non ladder server to try out.

Have fun everyone!

 

[Jamison]

Very cool game. Would be seriously awesome if more people would go online.
Runs great on my beast. Average FPS was about 400, at it's peek it was about 480 frames per second.

RAM: 2GB DDR2 800MHz
Video: nVidia GeForce 7600 GT 256MB
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Dual Core 3GHz
Windows XP Home, OpenGL 2.0, DirectX 9.0c
Resolution ran at: 1280x1024x32 @75MHz (fullscreen)

[Aramaz]

Glad you like it!

Sometime soon I will try to spread it a bit more, right now I've only posted here and told some friends. Keep the "notifier" running and chances are a game with a bunch of players will start. Nice FPS, I wish I had your computer... I'm actually running on a laptop with integrated graphics most of the time... and on that the game stutters pretty bad. (All java games does, maybe it's something with sharing the memory between cpu and graphics card?)

[Jamison]

Yeah, my laptop stutters quite a bit too. I don't use it for gaming. The stuttering is caused by a slow video card or it doesn't have enough video RAM. With a slow video card and/or low VRAM, it takes longer for it to transfer memory. And obviously when you have low VRAM, it must use regular RAM for storing graphics (well, depending on how a game loads it's images, it might not even be using VRAM at all).