RhythmSphere

[ShannonSmith]

This is my first 4K entry and I must say it was more difficult than I imagined. I had a hard time packing a sequencer/synthesizer song and game logic into 4K. My first cut was over 20k, and after some ruthless optimization I finally got it down to about 5K. I was beginning to despair until I realized statically initializing a massive array of shorts with what look to the Java compiler like int literals is a bad idea. Used a unicode string instead and hey presto I'm down to 3228. Room for another couple of songs even, any requests (keeping with game tunes)?

 

[tom]

Fantastic! Finally a game that uses a synth.

[moogie]

am still alive ...

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[Addictman]

Really cool Good job!

[moogie]

You could save more space by injecting the song data directly into a compiled class file as an Attribute.

http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/tool-to-inject-data-into-class-files/17869/view.html

[Jono]

Fun game! For me it was more like "guess where the ball is heading next" until I'd played enough to have an idea of the tune. Are we supposed to know the tune beforehand?

Also, it's probably just be my crappy pulseaudio setup, but a couple of times I heard what sounded like over/underflow or clipping.

Now to try hard level 

Edit: Hehe. I'm an idiot. Just worked out what the rain is for. 

[pjt33]

I get "Bad version number in class file". Is it 1.6 only?

[ShannonSmith]

@pjt33 Thought I had it compiled for 1.5 but I'll double check tonight.

@Jono It's not pulseaudio it is the crappy default Sun Audio Mixer. You can change it by editing a properties file for the JVM. I can also get it to work by searching through all mixers on the system and picking the first one that is not the Sun Mixer that supports the AudioFormat I am using but it uses up quite a few bytes.

[Eli Delventhal]

Fantastic! Finally a game that uses a synth.

My game uses a synth. 

Also, this game won't run for me. Is it in 1.6?

God I am tired of asking that. Apple needs to hurry their butts up and get me 1.6.

[ShannonSmith]

Yeah, I think I must have compiled for 1.6 (lost track in all the optimization steps). I'll recompile for 1.5 tonight.

Edit: Ok, should now be 1.4+ friendly for those of us still in the Cretaceous period.

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[tom]

My game uses a synth. 

I should have specified softsynth. General MIDI is not used much in 4k games because the JRE don't have a soundbank. Very few people will hear it and the judges are instructed to ignore the sound when setting the score.

[Eli Delventhal]

Really cool. Unfortunately, I found it really hard to correspond my fingers with the music, unlike I have done with Flash Flash Revolution. Do you think you have enough bytes left to change them from small droplets to arrows? Having that extra visual association always really helped me. I'm much worse at Guitar Hero because I basically start to lose track of where my fingers are relatively. If the keys are up/down/left/right then you always know which one you'r pressing. If they're in a row, however, you can't be sure if you're pressing 2 or 3.

Does that make sense?

[ShannonSmith]

Does that make sense?

Sort of, but generally I find if I have one finger on each button I am fine. Are you suggesting I switch to the arrow keys? I think that would confuse the hell out of me (I am used to Guitar Hero). I was thinking about using different coloured notes/spheres to help with spacial orientation but I preferred the all blue look.

[Abuse]

hmm, not sure the enabling/disabling of the channel(s) with the notes in is working properly for me.
Sometimes I get the blue pulse indicating I hit the note, but hear either nothing, or the tail end of the note.

I don't think that bouncing ball thing helps at all 

p.s.

The tune & timing doesn't seem completely right to me either, some notes appear to be missing & the pace seems a little too slow too.

p.p.s

Also, after 2 or 3 runs I start getting pops in the audio =/
Java Sound isn't realy selling itself to me 

[Eli Delventhal]

Sort of, but generally I find if I have one finger on each button I am fine. Are you suggesting I switch to the arrow keys? I think that would confuse the hell out of me (I am used to Guitar Hero). I was thinking about using different coloured notes/spheres to help with spacial orientation but I preferred the all blue look.

That's true, I guess I'm just not liking it because I'm bad at Guitar Hero and good at DDR. If you switch it then it will probably be the same for people in the opposite case. Oh well.

[pjt33]

How are you meant to play? Is it like DDR where you have to hit the key at a certain point or like Guitar Hero where the key has to be down at a certain point?

[ShannonSmith]

More like DDR I guess, you have to hit the keys at the point the ball bounces on the appropriate sphere.

[Morre]

Very neat!

I'm not sure all the sounds play properly though... it feels as though it misses a note here and there, much like Abuse said. I had much the same problem when I tried to use a synthesizer though... I'm guessing it's the java synth that isn't all that great. :/