Balls

[jojoh]

No I'm not being obscene, it's just the name of the game.


Last year I created a few 4K games, and I was thinking that it would be nice to have a small "framework" for doing 4K games. I like the wiki page that Jbanes started up, and thought that it would be great to have a complete template to start with for making 4K games. So I created a game that comes complete with small startup screen w custom font, kbd input, timebased movement, pixel precision collision detection, score display and naturally it's own particle system    This game weights in at a hefty.... drumroll.... 1713 bytes.

I am not really into compression techniques and like the 4K compo because it is a great way to crank out games and test ideas without getting too carried away in month long planning of just the menu system and other annoying things  So I challenge anyone to compress the final jar even further or to create additions to the code to make it even more worthy as a template for the wiki. Hopefully we can get even more ppl to take part in the 4K compo this way.

I used ProGuard, JoGa and BWFlate to create the final jar file.

Game Description:

Get the green balls while avoiding the red balls. Arrow keys to move. It's as simple as that.

webstart
jar
source

I am planing to add more features to the game when I am happy with the code as a good startingpoint for 4K games. I am thinking about real graphics, powerups (faster speed, slow down badies, change sizes, bullets, explode some badies and so on), sound, missiles. More ideas also welcome.

Now this post is larger than the game itself, so I better stop.

[hvor2]

Hey, it is pretty funny in this level, i liked it!

[Morre]

I'm currently at some 7500 points due to a tiny little bug (put yourself in the top left corner, press enter, and watch the score increase. Quickly.) Perhaps you should spawn the reddies first

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[jojoh]

I'm currently at some 7500 points due to a tiny little bug (put yourself in the top left corner, press enter, and watch the score increase. Quickly.) Perhaps you should spawn the reddies first

Right you are you cheater  So instead of moving and checking for collision from first to last ball I now do it from last to first. It prevents the cheating and actually reduced the uncompressed class file with one byte  I also changed other for loops and did some more or less ugly hacks to reduce size further to 1697 bytes.

[Malohkan]

Sweet!  My best so far is 18.  I'll keep at it though   I want to be able to go faster though.  I feel too limited at times.  Perhaps you can play with different control schemes to balance better speeds?

[hvor2]

Ha! 22! I discovered that when you collect green ball others seem to slow down, that is good - motivates one to collect greens fast.

[Anon666]

omg that's not fair!

You get it finally down to the last ball (so you can camp the spawn point to get an infinite score ;P) only for the game to simultaneously spawn 3 balls!

You are eeeeeevil.

[Morre]

Good thing you can't cheat anymore. It's a bit unsmooth on desktop computer though, actually worked better on my lappy (although with less speed). I'd like to see particle effects for when you collect them instead of when dying (perhaps both), because the effects are so nice they motivate me to go die instead of collect points.

[Anon666]

Got to 180, and died... tragically. (on the last ball, spawned very slow, collected it - and immediately died to the newly spawned ball trio >_<)

I think you should get a points bonus for clearing all the balls, at the moment it is better to sit and wait for a 2nd ball to appear before collecting the last ball on screen.

[steeg]

very addictive, good job 

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[kevglass]

Its like one level of Super Dudester! Nice work!

Kev

[moogie]

Your template class as done its job   I have been inspired to try my hand a 4k entry.

The inital concept version can be found at http://www.geocities.com/budgetanime/rally4k.html

There are two versions: a windowed and fullscreenversion. Currently the fullscreen version makes the game co -over the 4k limit. However i have not yet optimised the code (as seen on the web site)

I am also thinking of chaning the storage of the maps to a much smaller footprint and embedding it in with the class.

Please if anyone has a Mac or uses linux can they please test it out... i.e. are there any graphical glitches or does it run really slow.

Cheers

[swpalmer]

Please if anyone has a Mac or uses linux can they please test it out... i.e. are there any graphical glitches or does it run really slow.

Mac OS 10.4.4  Java 5 (1.5.0_06)
40 fps in windowed mode.

The car had a yellow fringe around it that I wasn't sure about.  Maybe it is a bug I should report to Apple (they've had issues with some image formats and alpha blending before), or if that's just the way it is for everyone.

Should start a new topic for this game.

[moogie]

I have done what was suggested and created a new topic for the game: http://www.java-gaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=12278.0

[jojoh]

Thanks for the feedback. Have had little time for coding, but got a little break recently. So here are some replies to your comments:

Hey, it is pretty funny in this level, i liked it!

Thanks. Have though made some changes after other comments, lemmi know what you think about them.

Sweet!  My best so far is 18.  I'll keep at it though   I want to be able to go faster though.  I feel too limited at times.  Perhaps you can play with different control schemes to balance better speeds?

Yep, you are absolutley right, I have increased player speed a bit. Enough? What other ctrl schemes were you thinking of? You should no doubt beat 18 now.

Ha! 22! I discovered that when you collect green ball others seem to slow down, that is good - motivates one to collect greens fast.

I have now added a bonus system to even more stress you out  collect the green one before bonus time is out (~2 sec) and you get 2 point, after 2 bonus collects in a row you get 3 points and three more give you 4 points per green ball. You'll see the bonus points when you collect (think I am too tired to make sence now, sorry).

omg that's not fair!
You get it finally down to the last ball (so you can camp the spawn point to get an infinite score ;P) only for the game to simultaneously spawn 3 balls!
You are eeeeeevil.

MUUAAAHHHAAAHAAAHHHAAA!  Yes I am! One step ahead of you there

Good thing you can't cheat anymore. It's a bit unsmooth on desktop computer though, actually worked better on my lappy (although with less speed). I'd like to see particle effects for when you collect them instead of when dying (perhaps both), because the effects are so nice they motivate me to go die instead of collect points.

Have to look into the speed thing... Should be same speed on all computers (time based movement).

I recycled the badies and made the particle system of them when game was over, so I used no extra data storage, and very few extra lines in code. But I have extra space, so I have added it for you . You are right, it is just soo much better with some particles getting the green ones!

Got to 180, and died... tragically. (on the last ball, spawned very slow, collected it - and immediately died to the newly spawned ball trio >_<)
I think you should get a points bonus for clearing all the balls, at the moment it is better to sit and wait for a 2nd ball to appear before collecting the last ball on screen.

180  That is pretty darn good! Haven't been close to that 
I changed the minimum speed of balls so that it cant be that slow, so should prevent a ball from "getting stuck" in top left corner. I added bonus points (5) for clearing screen, but I also realized that I had to change the game so that it will be a bit harder for good players and easier for not as brilliant players, so now the balls are spawning faster if there are few balls on the screen and a bit slower if there are many. Hope this makes the game more fun for everybody. Let me know what you think (and what your score is )

Its like one level of Super Dudester! Nice work!
Kev

Ah, have to have a look at that one again to get steal more ideas   It is really a remake of the only game I created in DirectX. The API was so damn annoying that this was as far as I got before I gave up on it. Thankfully at that time Java started offering some possibilities for creating games and I was saved 

Your template class as done its job   I have been inspired to try my hand a 4k entry.

Cool! guess that means that I now can keep that as a template and spawn off some more games. Rally 4K looks quite good.

Well, I have made updates according to suggestion. Hope you like them, and let me know if you have more ideas.

[kappa]

oh love this game, very simple and amazingly fun, however pushing it a bit more on the graphical side might just give it a better edge in the contest.

[Malohkan]

Wow I love the new effects and bonuses!  It takes the game to an even better level!  Great job

[jojoh]

oh love this game, very simple and amazingly fun, however pushing it a bit more on the graphical side might just give it a better edge in the contest.

Thanks! Improved gfx a bit. Probably still more room for improvement. Also made it aaliased and decided to add an fps counter, since that might have a bad effect on framerate for som ppl. For me it runs @ 120 - 200 fps and gfx looks very smooth, but I use very simple sleep loop, so would be good to know if this works for everybody.

How is the difficulty level after the changes?

[OverKill]

Very nice!!!!!

[Malohkan]

89 woo best score I've gotten!

AHH  111!!  New best!  I love this game

All the settings are perfect!  The speed, control speed, all of it is great   I'm very happy

[jojoh]

All the settings are perfect!  The speed, control speed, all of it is great   I'm very happy

Wow thanks. However, I thought it would be even better with some sound.  Good sound would have been yet better  but I don't know how to do that into 4K soo... you can always turn down the volume  That means less space for bonuses and other stuff that I sort of had planned...  Should I add bonus stuff rather than sound? Thinking bullet time, 2x scoring for some time, shrinking size of badies, speedups, smartbombs.