Bouncing Viral Alienz...

[Hsaka]

Hi guys,

These are some games that I made for a Java Game Development course which I took this semester.
These games were developed using only the Java 2D API. (A constraint imposed upon us by the lecturer)
Each one was created as an assignment submission as we progressed through the course.
They all run on Windows (as per the lecturer's specifications) and require Java 1.5 or later installed.

Assignment 1: Alienz [Puzzle Game]
Download: http://hsaka.webs.com/Alienz%20Release.rar


Alienz is a puzzle game where the object is to survive as long as possible by removing as many alienz from the game board as you can. The top 8 highscores are saved. All the instructions for playing the game are provided in-game.

I intended this game to be a simple one (as per the lecturer's instructions), however, many people seemed to have trouble understanding how to play the game... 

Assignment 2: Bounce [Platformer]
Download: http://hsaka.webs.com/Bounce%20Release.rar


Bounce is a platformer in which you must guide a wheel to the goal. (Why? who knows...)
Unlike traditional platformers, however, you do not actually have direct control over the movement of the wheel... Instructions are provided in-game.
This demo version has the first 10 levels.

This assignment was intended for us to develop familiarity with the AffineTransformation classes of the Java 2D API as well as platform game techniques.

Assignment 3: Viral [Turn-Based Strategy]
Download: http://hsaka.webs.com/Viral%20Release.rar


Viral is a turn-based strategy game designed to teach basic programming skills in C.
It contains a tutorial to teach you how to play.

For this assignment, we were told to design a game that could be used to basic C programming skills to Year 1 Computer Science / Information Technology students.
Note: This game asks for a Student ID to play. You may enter any number here (this was necessary for logging purposes..)
----

Please try them out if possible.

[oNyx]

Try tinypic.com for image hosting. Oh and webstart would have been nice.

[Hsaka]

Thank you sir, for the image host suggestion. Unfortunately, I am not yet versed in the ways of Java Webstart, but I will try to find some way to rectify this.

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

[Eli Delventhal]

Take a look at Kevin Glass's tutorial:
http://www.cokeandcode.com/webstarthowto

[nva225]

Mmm okay, have not tried games #2 and #3, but I did try #1.

I actually really liked the idea here. Something about trying for large sequential combos was fairly mathematically appealing, without being too complicated (I'm not sure who would think the game is confusing, really?). And the game itself was pretty fun too, got to level 3 or so in it.

Unfortunately I had to close the game because it lagged my computer worse than Fallout 3. I could barely use gmail at all while the game was running, and was (regrettably) forced to close the program because of it's performance when it wasn't the window in focus. I'm sure this was an easy concern to overlook when developing it, but sadly was quite a real issue practically.

ALSO, although I hate to complain about nitpicky things, the 25 seconds (so says my timing) that you force the user to sit through at the beginning is really quite silly. This should be cut down to around ~5 seconds, in my opinion, or have a skip key (I hit escape the first time and closed my game trying to bypass it). If you want to impress people with smooth sliding effects, make them sharp and quick, not agonizingly slow.

Sorry if that sounded a tad negative. Really quite good concept, I'm glad you didn't just go with another puyo pop or tetris or columns or whatever. I haven't seen this concept before and I really quite like it, and would enjoy playing this in a smoother implementation. But yeah, technical issues do exist. Any chance you could sort out those in a short span of time?

[Hsaka]

Thanks for trying the game 

I agree with you about the length of the intro. It was done in an attempt to choreograph the intro with the background music. I have changed it to include an option to skip the intro.

As for the lag issue, I really don't know why it's happening for you. The games run without noticeably affecting the other programs I have running on my computer. Also, I have tested the games on several computers in my university's computer lab and I did not experience the problem you described.

In an attempt to rectify the situation affecting you, I have changed the code so that the game loop becomes paused (no rendering, updating etc.) when the game window loses focus. I hope that this will resolve the issue for you.

If it does not, I'm open to any suggestions you guys may have to fix this problem.

[nva225]

Wow, that was a really fast fix.

Also, problems happily resolved

Playing now.

edit: also as to why it happened, I'm not really sure. I'm running it on a pretty fast computer (2.0 ghz, core 2 duo) but it is a laptop, perhaps some sort of strange power management feature was reacting oddly to the application? Not sure. Maybe I just need to reboot every week or two. But anyway, I think it's good you added this regardless, as there's really no need to waste the cycles.

[Hsaka]

I'm glad that the problems were resolved for you.

Thanks again for playing