Bubo 4k

[ReBirth]

Okay this is my first entry for java4k comp. First, really first ever.

If you ever look up HTML5 demo there's a game called Chain Reaction. And this one is remake of it, with more rules but less difficult. And different name.

All you have to do is just choose a point and start making a growing ball. React all balls by make them collide to an exactly same level of reacted ball (same color)or to a reacting ball for white ball. A reacted ball can increase its level by one by causing one reaction on other balls (white or same level one).

+ white = level 0 (can grow to any level)
+ green = level 1 (stay for 3s)
+ blue = level 2 (stay for 3.5s)
+ red = level 3 (stay for 4s)
+ yellow = reacting

PLAY HERE

Fact: I didn't compress it with anything, just jar and shrinked 40% to 3kB. There's still lot of bytes left. I'm still looking for creating procedural sound to add. I tried Synth4k but it won't compile. Further all, I hope I can reach 1,000 downloads at comp's end.  

UPDATE : here

[ra4king]

I am completely confused on how to play. Plus I think there are rendering issues where the screen doesn't refresh at all. There was nothing going on until i scrolled the page and some little green particles moved a bit.

[Bonbon-Chan]

I don't see the point of this game too 
I confirm the problem with the game. The white ball move but when I continusly scroll down/up, the yellow/blue ball grow far quickly. On level2, the movement of some white ball was not stable too.

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[Mike]

Either scroll or move the mouse inside and outside the applet to make it move... interesting choice IT looks like you aren't calling redraw on a timer and that the logic is linked to the redraw?

Mike

[ReBirth]

Thx for replies. I'd blame myself if everything went well on my first try 

@ra4king
the gameplay is quite creepy, you click anywhere to start the first growing ball to make chain reaction.

@Bonbon-Chan
not stable? every ball has different dx and dy speed. I don't know why scroll up/down would do something to the applet  if you mean blinking, yes it happens when you scroll the webpage but I can't solve it.

@Mike
I did redraw as I followed template on resource page,

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do{    long n = System.nanoTime();    d = n - l;    a += d;    t++;    if (a >= 1000000000L) {        a -= 1000000000L;        fps = t;        t = 0;    }    //update logic   l = n;    //just draw everything   do {       Thread.yield();    }while (System.nanoTime() - l < 0);    if (!isActive()) return; } while(inGame);

is something wrong here?

[ra4king]

No we mean that the applet itself doesn't do anything unless we scroll/resize the window/minimize and maximize, which is the sign of system-triggered repainting. This means you are not calling repaint() every frame.

[ReBirth]

What? no animation? I tested it on my windows which has jre1.7 (default) and jre1.6. I tested it on eclipse which I set to use jre1.6. Everything work as should. Sorry but I think the problem not on code.

However there're 3 ppl reporting same problem. If the applet really works only on me, then how can it be approved and how about the mad of 200 ppl out there?

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BufferedImage b = new BufferedImage(800, 600, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB); Graphics2D g = (Graphics2D)b.getGraphics(); Graphics p = getGraphics();

I draw everything on 'b' through 'g', then draw the 'b' to container (applet) through 'p'. The source is up on java4k page, please help me figure out what happens.

[BoBear2681]

Seems to work fine for me, Vista, 1.6.0_??

[ra4king]

Hmm it looks like it's working fine now, I see the FPS changing every second and the balls are moving extremely slowly. However, I'm still really confused on how to play

[ReBirth]

Thanks BoBear for trying out.

+ra4king
thanks for still reporting. what did you mean by "looks like"? To play you go click anywhere you like to start reaction, that simple. How about your fps? I got 65-80 here depends on ball counts.

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[ra4king]

I get between 700 to 750 FPS

Ok I click anywhere but it looks like nothing is happening. After a while I see the balls moved a tiny bit.

[ReBirth]

Really I can't find out the problem if you find the problem, I'll be pleased to see. My last try is I'll switch back to canvas and go double buffering then see what'll happen.

[jojoh]

Nothing happening here either after the first dot has been place. ~700FPS. It seems like ppl w high FPS have less action. Makes me wonder if it could be a problem with a timebased movement. Could it be that your delta tick get so small that you round it off to 0 and therefore no movement is done? Just an idea.

[ra4king]

Yep I was suspecting the same thing as jojoh and that suspicion has been confirmed: I went on my old laptop which ran the game at 100-150FPS and the balls were moving fast and I could see collisions and reactions. #1 rule of any physics game is a steady FPS so it should be fine if you limit it at 60FPS.

[ReBirth]

thanks for the info both of you

so the problem lies on fps limit which should be there. I'll correct it ASAP.

[ReBirth]

FPS fixed to 60. Someone please try it

[ra4king]

Nope I still see 300-350FPS and barely any movement

[philfrei]

It played well for me. I'm on Windows XP Home, using Firefox 8.0. Once or twice the screen got a little weird, for example when clicking on it and then moving down to see the instructions. I'm not sure exactly what I did. But only a portion of the screen would animate. This went away a soon as I reloaded.

It took a long time for the Level 20 to succeed. I felt like there was a lot of luck involved, that there was little I could do to affect the outcome. It was fun to watch the chain reactions.

One suggestion is to allow the last explosion to complete before moving on to the next level. The levels seem to end so abruptly. If the explosion is allowed to play out, one has time to glance at the various scores before they get cleared/set back to zero.

I didn't have my headphones on. Was there sound? (Checking. Nothing there.) This could really use some nice sounds for the collisions and pops, nice musical tones. How much room do you have left? Ahh, this is a 4K competition.

[ReBirth]

@philfrei
Thank you very much for trying

For weird screen, I find small glitch on it. However until now I can't find the problem. I have double buffering by simply create a bufferimage before drawed to container's. Should I try using canvas? or has it something to do with renderinghints for anti-alias? I'll check it out.

Yes it really needs luck. The original also. I played CR for many times and realised that skill has nothing to do here For tips, start your first ball on empty place so it can grow to max.

Thanks for the suggestion. Current level change is trigerred by last ball removal. Will change it to last particle out.

No sound for now. It only 3K without proguard, just simply jar. I save so many bytes for sound. Still can't find any good sound for growing ball. It shouldn't creepy because we have to hear it soooo many times. I created one with sfxr but it has 23KB 

@ra4king
おもしろい... here is my "new loop" btw

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for (long delta = 0, start = System.nanoTime(); inGame; delta = System.nanoTime() - start, start = System.nanoTime()){ //update //render Thread.sleep(2L); }

help?

[ra4king]

You will need to sleep for: Thread.sleep(16 - (System.currentTimeMillis()-start));

[philfrei]

I would suggest only sound cueing the collisions and pops.

The collision/creation of sphere could be bell-like, maybe a little crystalline sounding. (I am partial to windchimes, after all.) It should have a crisp start, then fade to a low level until the pop. (Or a slight increase in volume before the pop.) The pop could be a second cue, started as the bell is turned off.

If you could vary the rate of playback of a single bell-like cue, you could get many different pitches, creating a very colorful mass of sound.

I can think of a couple different approaches to coding this, but not in 4k! and not before 2012. I made a variant of the Java Clip that allows multiple playbacks, concurrently, AND pitch variation. If you can find a way to adapt the code, you are welcome to it.
http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/audiomixer/24999/msg/214001/view.html#msg214001
You'd probably want to eliminate the stereo, use a cheaper audio resolution, and you'd have to handle going directly to a SourceDataLine output rather than to the AudioMixer output.

Anyway, your game is fascinating to watch, and not every game has to be for brainiac strategizers. There is a definite nice, artistic "generative" aspect that I like a lot.

[ReBirth]

Anyway, your game is fascinating to watch, and not every game has to be for brainiac strategizers. There is a definite nice, artistic "generative" aspect that I like a lot.

Thanks, that encourages me a lot especially after I feel not success on LD22 yesterday.

I can think of a couple different approaches to coding this, but not in 4k! and not before 2012. I made a variant of the Java Clip that allows multiple playbacks, concurrently, AND pitch variation. If you can find a way to adapt the code, you are welcome to it.
http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/audiomixer/24999/msg/214001/view.html#msg214001
You'd probably want to eliminate the stereo, use a cheaper audio resolution, and you'd have to handle going directly to a SourceDataLine output rather than to the AudioMixer output.

I'll try it after I get free time 

[StephR]

Difficult to write a better comment than philfrei's one, who shared a lot of my feelings about your game. My first thought was that it would fit well in some interactive exibition of modern art...

But I persisted, and when I understood how it worked, I passed the first levels without too much difficulty. Then, I literally flew over level 5 to 19, but I had to restart many times level 20 before winning. At this point, it seemed that I was playing to some kind of new age casino game, as I had the feeling I didn't control anything.

I also searched and played to the HTML5 original game, and found your remake almost as good. A better feature of the original game, is that it anticipates sooner when the game is lost. Thus the rythm of the game seems better.

Interesting work anyway, as I didn't feel as I was wasting entirely my time !

[Pit]

Really cool game. Even if there isn't much to do, it's still quite fun to watch the chain reactions. And I managed level 20 faster than I would have expected after the first try^^

But I agree, the right sound effects could add a nice touch to the game.

[ra4king]

All these compliments make me really want to try out this game, but it still runs at 333 FPS for me and there is no movement at all

[ReBirth]

Still haven't find a way to fit sound into 4KB. However I did update on gameplay. Now you can choose between two modes, original or skill. Skill mode is same, except
- higher number of balls to pass
- balls don't bounce on wall hit, but translated to opposite wall
- you can click any small ball to change its direction randomly (either change dx or dy)

@ra4king:
I also change the sleep value as you suggested, and it works like charm!

1	16000 - (System.nanoTime()-start)

please try it again. and tell me how you got this value 

[toasten]

Hi,

just tried it. On "Fate" the balls often hit the wall and then just move along the wall. Balls often change directions, looks like they are "drunk"..   

[ra4king]

You can't sleep in nanoseconds! It runs at > 1000 FPS for me and nothing is happening!

1	Thread.sleep(16 - (System.currentTimeMillis()-start));

And if "start" is in nanoseconds, then do this:

1	Thread.sleep(16 - Math.round((System.nanoTime()-start)/1e6));

[ReBirth]

@toasten
that's the annoying little bug which I can't get rid. I did it like this

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if (y[i] < 0){     dy[i] = -dy[i];     y[i] = 1; }

however I change the code a bit by make it do that check before moving a ball. Hope you want to try out once more after I posted this

@ra4king
still 30fps for me. your case is really unique. Okay I'll change it once more to your second code (above) and tell me how it work.

Updated again:
- with sound (OMG!) - you can tell me if the sound is creepy or annoying, it's my first try of procedural sound afterall.
- with shake effect when a ball explode

[ra4king]

Oh hey it works now at a constant 65FPS!

I still kinda don't understand how it works though :S I just place the ball randomly and wait for reactions

Also is it a feature or a bug where some moving balls go through reacted balls?