Shoot'em'up Project

[CDU]

There're lot of guy here with good knowledge of Java and 2D tips'n'trick...  

One of my dream (as other here ) is to create 2D shoot'em'up game (like Project X on Amiga for example) with new possibilities and technics (640x480 16 or 32 bits graphism, frog effect, enormous sprite, good action with 50-60 fps...).

In my minds, good thing will be a collective project (open source ) ...

What do u think of project  
Various ideas or opinion  
Who are potentially interessed ??

PS : Sorry for my poor English ;-)

[Jacko]

I'm working on a shoot em up at the moment using LWJGL. I would be interested in sharing ideas/code with anyone else doing this sort of thing.

Think this would be "a good thing" as there are a lot of people wanting to know how to do this sort of thing. (Me included most of the time!)

[princec]

I've got plenty of ideas and code Feel free to ask away.

Cas

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

[Chman]

I'm also working on a "new way of thinking multiplayer shoot'em up" using LWJGL... It's pretty well advanced... But it's not in 2D...

[CDU]

Well... lot of guy begin something...

What resolution do u use ? for what fps
Do u have good code for sprite / scrolling

I've ideas for this games : its name... mmhhh sorry, joke...

- Parallax scrolling with 4 or 5 layers
- 32 or 16 bits colors... don't know which mode for obtain maximum speed... 16 bits enough for shoot i think...
- Frog / wave deformation / zoom / rotation effect for levels
- for music, a mod-like player... I think it's good compromise with quality / cpu time / file size... mp3 is good but cpu time intensive

Problem : I've lot of ideas but no code ;-|
Mmmhhh... we can begin to expose ideas i think, can't we ideas and technics first... code in second stage :-)

Who has ideas of any kind suggest ?? experience code

Last question : Are LWJGL the best to do this

[princec]

XAP is 800x600x16, run at 60fps, no less, no more.

Use LWJGL if you want to do flashy effects and other nifty 2D tricks.

I can only offer suggestions as to which way to go rather than direct assistance coz I'm terribly busy trying to earn a living...

Cas

[Jacko]

Not sure about flashy, but I've got a lot of mileage from doing my graphics with LWJGL. It does what I want without having to jump through any major hoops, and there are good docs available for OpenGL that just arent for Java AWT/Swing/2D.

As for music and sound... I'm just getting onto that, was thinking of a mod player myself. Will be interested to see what the people at josrts.org decide about this.

Maybe something along the same lines as josrts but for a 2D scroller would be a good idea?

[javatypo]

Oh so we are known across here? I'm part of the coding team for josrts.org

[markuskidd]

'Our spam travels far and wide on the winds of the superhighway...'

Anyway, one both good and bad thing about the situation right now is that there are no real tried and true methods available. For instance, we know about some things that probably *wont* work (using Swing and AWT for rendering if you need very high performance, especially with lots of rotation, translucency, etc.) but there are still a number of solutions which have the the potential to assume the "top" spot for developers. For rendering, you've got three big contenders:

JSDL
LWJGL
GL4Java

For wave-based sound, you've got the stuff in javax, JSDL, OpenAL via the LWJGL. For MOD, I have no idea but I wouldn't be surprised if there's stuff out there. I know that the J2SE libraries have support for MIDI, so you might consider starting with that.

[zparticle]

You can try MicroMod (search google) for playing MOD files. It seems to work pretty well.

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

[CDU]

Thx for all messages.

Mmmhhh, ok, LWJGL seems to be good for kind of project... I must find doc...

I read in 2D forum, Java works internally with 32 bits color so conversion are necessary made when u work with 16 bits graphics... what about this ???
In my minds, 16 bits are good for us... (and for memory usage)

800x600 at 50-60 fps... great but what's computer needing to do this ???


For the parallax effect, I wanna use 32x32 pixels motif for 1st layer, 64x64 pixels for 2nd, 128x128 for 3rd and doing precomputing like this :

1st buffer : (with use 4 and 8 pixel for example)

012345670123456701234567
012301230123012301230123

2nd buffer :

234567012345670123456701
123012301230123012301230

etc...

and only keep 2 or 3 layers for "fullscreen parallax", what do u think about ???

[princec]

Target system is around 350MHz with a TNT in it, based on a rough guesstimate from looking at the performance monitor on my laptop.

Cas

[Jacko]

And for music I fell over a project called Audiere today. Looks very good from the few tests I've done. It'll play mp3, mod, xm , wav, and ogg files. It's actually a C++ DLL, but it comes with java bindings. Got my shoot em up to play an mp3 in the background with it with no slow down that I could notice, and do gun fire zaps and explosions as well.

Very happy!

[princec]

Post a link to it, it sounds right handy that does.

Cas

[Chman]

try openal (with lwjgl), it works very well...

[Jacko]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/audiere

[CDU]

350 Mhz and TNT... great !!

My objectif :  500 Mhz and TNT2 to have 50-60 fps...

I forgot something important : project is horizontal 2D shoot ;-P ooppsssss (Thunderforce 4 , do u know ??)

there're lot of possibilities to play musics... mp3 or mod ??? I'm surprised to read mp3 player isn't cpu intensive... I'm waiting your minds with it ;-)

Are there volunteer for this project ??? (coder, gfx and muzax guys ???)
I know, it's little draft now but it's beginning and all suggestion (technical, ideas for games, concept...) are welcome

Open project so...

[princec]

The very first thing I do with every single game I have ever bought for the PC is on the title screen -> Options -> Music volume -> OFF.

I hate music in games. Mainly because it's always utter, utter, utter, shit.

The one exception was the CD music that came with Quake which is so good I just play it over and over while I'm coding to give me a suitably dark mood.

Oh, and the little loops in Strange Adventures in Infinite Space But they don't count.

Aim for a 350MHz system on a TNT and 50% more people might try the game.

Cas

[CDU]

Good music can greatly increase pleasure game... see Quake or Unreal : good music + good sound = good ambiance

For speed computer, as u, I HATE programmers who don't optimized code 'cause computer's speed...

aaaahhhhh... Jazz Jack Rabbit on my 486
Silkworm or Wing of death on my ST...  ;-P