Farmer John and the Birds 4K

[Grunnt]

Hey all, this is an updated version of my entry to the Java4K contest: Farmer John and the Birds!

Farmer John wakes up to find a swarm of nasty birds coming to eat all his precious corn. Help him kill them all before it’s too late!

Instructions:

Click anywhere on the screen to fire John’s gun at that location. The birds will try to avoid you, so you will have to move quickly. Each level brings more and faster birds.

There’s different bird types that require slightly different approaches to kill. Sometimes the birds drop an egg. Shoot the purple eggs to get 10% reduction in reload time, shoot the yellow eggs to get extra ammo slots.

Here's an embedded applet; compressed using pack200 its just under 4k:

Warning! Untrusted content: Grunnt submitted an applet to JGO.

 

If the applet asks for permissions, it will have full access to your system. (read more)

• If you allow to launch the applet, it will run in sandbox mode by default.
• Signed applets will popup a security-dialog, which asks for permission to full access to your system.
• The applets are launched from a seperate sub-domain, to protect you from eavesdroppers.
• Only run applets of people you trust, regardless of whether the applet asks for permissions or not.

JGO cannot be held responsible for the contents and/or behavior of the hosted applets.

You can also play it on the Java4K site or my site.

[Gjallar]

Oh my god, those cute birds 

I .... I can't play this

[Grunnt]

Oh my god, those cute birds 

I .... I can't play this

Oh come on, just shoot them. They're nasty little pests!

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[masteryoom]

It's really good.

[Jimmt]

It's really good.

No wonder you're number one effective pithiest...

[Apo]

Simple but very polished game.

Nice work.

[CaptainJester]

Good job.

Found 1 bug. Your max shot count is not reset when a new game begins.

[Grunnt]

Good job.

Found 1 bug. Your max shot count is not reset when a new game begins.

Ow thanks, I can fix that.

[Grunnt]

I fixed the bug, and managed to squeeze out a few more bytes with an improved compression chain (read about that in my blog if you like).

It's got some extra graphics, slightly tuned gameplay and some more minor improvements.

[Rorkien]

How am i supposed to shoot them if they are hiding in behind the top border?  

Also why the score resets every level? 

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[Ultroman]

What's with the eggs? I can shoot them, but I don't seem to get points for them.

[Grunnt]

What's with the eggs? I can shoot them, but I don't seem to get points for them.

They give a bonus to your gun, I quote the instructions: "Sometimes the birds drop an egg. Shoot the purple eggs to get 10% reduction in reload time, shoot the yellow eggs to get extra ammo slots."

[Grunnt]

How am i supposed to shoot them if they are hiding in behind the top border?  

Also why the score resets every level? 

Well, the birds fly away from the cursor, so that may be why they hide above the top border. I'll see whether I can make it less so.

Also, it seem that the score reset is a bug, sorry about that! I'll fix it right away.

[Grunnt]

Okay, the bug where the score reset after each level is fixed and the new jar online!

[Grunnt]

Oh my god, those cute birds 

I .... I can't play this

I made them just a little less cute  (they no longer look scared when you point your gun at them)

[gouessej]

Hi

I got some slowdown the very first time but it worked flawlessly after that. I use Icedtea-web + OpenJDK  (who said applets don't work with them?).

How am i supposed to shoot them if they are hiding in behind the top border?  

I find it annoying too.

[Alan_W]

Great stuff.  This just oozes style. 

[Grunnt]

I've just made a wrapper for my Java4K games and compiled it using Excelsior JET, so that people can download and play my 4K games without internet connection, and without the need to have Java installed. Of course, that means the size has increased by a bit

Download the collection here if you like.

[StephR]

Your take on the so annoying a***y birds is original and really welcome ! One of the best design I have seen in a java 4K game. And I like the gameplay too. Simple and efficient.

A small problem with my last game session : on level 21, the game suddenly froze, then a white screen appeared.

[Grunnt]

Your take on the so annoying a***y birds is original and really welcome ! One of the best design I have seen in a java 4K game. And I like the gameplay too. Simple and efficient.

A small problem with my last game session : on level 21, the game suddenly froze, then a white screen appeared.

Thanks a lot :-) Hmm, the freeze is weird, I can't think of why that would happen. I guess some kind of exception. I'll see if I can find out how that happens.

[StephR]

I couldn't access to the java console anymore since I upgraded my system to Java 7 ( yes, call me an amateur programmer ). What you wrote about some exception crashing your game lead me to solve my console problem - I just had to enable it through the system configuration panel.

Then I started to play Farmer John and the Birds 4K again. I reached level 22 this time when the game froze, in the middle of this level. The white screen appeared when I scrolled the page containing the applet. Then I opened the java console - a black screen appeared on it ! I waited for a while. The java console came back to normal, but no exception was indicated.

My Windows 7 system is running Java 7 Update 9, 32 bits version. I played your game under Internet Explorer 9. Later this week, I will try it again with Chrome.

[Grunnt]

I reached level 22 this time when the game froze, in the middle of this level.

Great, thanks for testing. It's a weird bug, especially since it comes in so late. It must be something I my code, I could not yet reproduce it (I've "cheated" a few times to level 21, but no problem so far).

[StephR]

I tried once the wrapper version, and experimented no problem at all beside very short lags ( never more than half a second ) when many birds were on screen. I lost on level 25.

Then I tried the java4K version with Chrome. The freezing bug happened again on level 22. I took a screenshot of the frozen game :



However, I was not able to take one with the Java console and its blackened screen on the foreground.

Also, I noticed a strange and short lag that happens on the very first shot of every first game session, even in the wrapper version.

[Grunnt]

Wow, thank you for taking the time to do this testing. I've found the cause of the mysterious delay at the first shot: the sound system. I've fixed that one (not deployed yet). I'll try to reproduce the freeze with Chrome & normal applet soon, but currently I'm a bit busy at work. Thanks again.

[Grunnt]

Another update (new jars already uploaded):
- fixed bug: short delays at the first shot
- improved the sounds
- tuned the difficulty: it should be harder to get to higher levels now
- some minor bug fixes

I could not find the cause of the crashes you encountered StephR (I cannot reproduce it on my system), but I've cheated a little:  difficulty is up now, so it should be much harder to get to that level. 

[StephR]

I confirm the game is much harder now, and I'm ok with that. I went as far as level 13, and I believe I will never be able to go beyond level 14 or 15. And maybe even less far as I noticed another change into the game : now the gun loader is not reset at the start of each new level. If it was some unvoluntary change, when you fix it, the game will be even harder.

And sorry for warning you so lately about these problems. I lacked time to test games on the first half of the contest.

[Grunnt]

And sorry for warning you so lately about these problems. I lacked time to test games on the first half of the contest.

Are you kidding me? Haha, finding someone willing to test a game like this is a rare gem, so no way you're allowed to say "sorry".

Now the gun loader is not reset at the start of each new level. If it was some unvoluntary change, when you fix it, the game will be even harder.

You're right, I kind of forgot to mention that. The reset at the start of each level was unintentional, I'd like bonuses (e.g. increased ammo and faster reloading) to carry over to next levels. This should compensate a bit for the increased difficulty.