Leaderboards are up! YAAY! Can you make it to  #1?!

I like LWJGL better because it also includes timers, input, and OpenAL. You may also want to check out Slick. It's LWJGL with a lot of stuff specifically for 2D games, like particle effects and physics and the like (erm well maybe Phys2D just can come with it, not sure on that one). Either way you've already got physics I know so that part of it probably isn't interesting to you.

I personally would go with Webstart because it's much more large application oriented. Applets are great but seem better for smaller ventures because of the loading time required and everything, and with Webstart resources will stay cached permanently. Applet caches are subject to browser resets and the like. However, you get the obvious benefit of your game appearing embedded within a webpage, which is nice.

Is it that much effort to deploy with both methods?

I do acctualy like the applet version as you dont have to launch it separately from the browser.

Hopefully the JavaFX/ Applet thing will take off so that having it as an applet will be significantly more useful in terms of portals etc...

The game is as cool as usual and a multiplayer version sounds awesome!

I would rather just have one way of deployment. So your for applets then.

1. Wow good news, or dumb news, I completely forgot that the only reason I signed it was because of old code that I took out. So there is no need to have it signed, so its taken out. lol how embarrasing....
2. Yea the long white screen is due to http loading of music. I know there is a way to have a loading bar, but I haven't looked into it yet. If anyone could direct me to a thread or tutorial of it, I would appreciate it.
3. I'll start on it right now, I just have to do an options menu, for it.
4. I'm pretty sure the slow down is caused by the music, but i'm not sure, hopefully having the music off option will show if this is true or not.

Thanks for replies, all feedback is useful.

When I do put it in a thread is there a way to count how many bytes have been loaded? That way I can put a loading bar. Or is there a way to even know when they're all done?  Even with that I can have a waiting screen and you would still be able to play around with enemies or something. I guess at the end of the thread you would do some kind of notification.

*Edit: Ok, I added the options menu, and it turns out having the music play has a big influence on the FPS, as well as the sound effects. So if you want to run the game at its fastest turn both off. Or just turn one off to run a little faster.

Basically I would just have my SoundManager class (or whatever you have), have its list of AudioClip's (or however you're doing it), and at the start you tell it to preloadAll(). preloadAll() does this:


That should give you the idea. Basically the sound manager chugs along trying to load the sounds and you continue to call play() as usual from the rest of your program, but it will obviously only play if it has been loaded already. In SoundLoader you would want to put more important / smaller sounds first, then stuff like background music later. getNewAudioClip would just be a method that loads your clip from your resources however you would want to do it and then returns that clip.

On firefox I only get the pause screen.

java.lang.NullPointerException
   at TestShooter.stop(TestShooter.java:256)
   at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Guest 683e05145631de62822f746e53f8d892  Loading Maps/titleScreen.data map.

On IE it works but it's like there's no verticle sync.

Thanks for the info. I uploaded a fix for that.


Thanks, I'm working on some new episodes and features. I'll post when I get more done.

Yes, the graphics are rather low res. Maybe that's intentional due to supported bandwidth? About character design, well I guess that's subjective. I'm fine with it.

It says paused, click to play! I click inside applet, and nothing happens...

Ah I'm still working out the loading screen. It will load while it says its paused, and once it says Loading complete... then you click inside the applet and it should run. The loading might take a little bit initially but once you do the initial download it will run fast the next time around.

Idk if anyone cares but I was featured on http://gamecareerguide.com
Its on the front page under features. The direct link is http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/683/inside_the_igf_2009_sneak_peek_at_.php

Dude, virus effect is an awesome game, I really enjoyed playing it (#8 on leaderboards lol), but here are some quick things off the top of my head that you might want to consider changing:

You should give the gravity gun some other effect so that users are tempted to use it.  Other guns, such as the grenade launcher, are just much more useful.  You could add a bunch of secret areas to make it worth while, or upgrade it so that it paralyzes the hit enemy units.

Next is the flamethrower, which also feels a bit watered-down.  You should give it a higher base damage if it has one, as catching an enemy on fire is fairly easy, but it takes for them too long to die.  Another effect that might be good is that fire will continue travelling after it hits a target, so that you can really create the apperance of a fire storm.  This would be great on that intro level with the huge mass of boxes.

You might want to tone down a bit how much an enemy flies back when shot, or make it based on the weapon strength and the enemy weight, since rapid fire weapons seem to send enemies flying (especially the last boss on level 7).  You could also add some code to remove some of the stacking that occurs when several enemies are chasing you at once, which is especially noticable with blobs.  That's basically it for monsters

Some other things I've seen are that the mouse scroll will move the page, that the background music heavily impacts the game's performance, and that often times those health and armor powerups get stuck under a stack of boxes, which gives it an unrealistic feeling.

This game is already great, but imo with some of those things buffered out, it can really get popular.  Your 'X' version is comung along great too, can't wait to see it.

Thanks, my method for getting people to help is by telling them they can work on a real indie game that is actively progressing and that they will be credited publicly. That and giving them freedom to create stuff they want to see in the game.

Those are some great suggestions. For the Anti-Gravity gun I was thinking of having an impact speed added to enemies, so if you slap them against something they get hurt or die. I'll try out the stun effect also.

The thing with the weapons, I initially thought I was gonna make enemies drop weapons and have different stats for them Diablo style. But I haven't gotten to that point so i'll raise they're power like they used to be. I'll try out the flame still moves past what it hits idea.

Lol the hit fly back power. Yeah I threw that in there one day when I was bored, the algorithm that I used to calculate how much it flies back is poor. Heh, i like the stacking, makes them look smart when they're trying to reach you at a high platform, lol.

Yes in internet explorer when you scroll the whole page scrolls. Does anyone know how to fix this, is there some kind of grab mouse method in applets?
Yes the music playing does affect the game, I'm using a .wav as a sound file, played in a thread. Does anyone know of a better method?
Hmm, I wonder how I could fix the power ups getting stuck under boxes. I always hated how that looks, I assumed gamers didn't notice or care since no one said anything.

When ever you're logged in and you go to the game page. If the loading of the applet takes too long, the authentication timer expires, so you have to refresh the page to be authenticated. If the 90% you speak of is still after refreshing, then that's a problem I need to fix.

Thanks again everyone. 

Edit: I just put up a new version that contains more balanced weapons. The Anti-Gravity gun can now be considered a weapon, through the use of accelerating enemies to the point where a sudden stop against, lets say a wall, does some damage. The flamethrower and dual shot have increased damage given.

I expanded upon Episode 2, although I don't know if its easier than episode 3. I edited room 3 episode 3, but there are probably other rooms with the same blocking issue.

I increased the authentication timer by a little bit, please tell me if you still get the issue so I can increase it more if needed.

Thanks.

I quit. Level 6 is just stupid if the enemies don't collide with you. You'll easily get overlapped by 8 or 10 at once (that you can't see until you're already mobbed) and then you die instantly. It's huge problem when: 1) There are enemies below you and there is no way to look. Holding down should look downwards a lot further so you can see what you're jumping to. 2) There are enemies directly on the next screen when you walk over. There is no time to react to this so it also gets stupid.

Plus, when you've got the new way of collision, both of these occurrences will totally screw you. When an enemy is close quarters hitting you it can't be shot (at least not with the AK-47), so you have to jump away to even hit something that is already totally point blank, which typically leads you into even more enemies and therefore is the end of you.

Other times I get annoyed is when there is literally no way not to get hit... a lot. Like in level 6 at the beginning of the second screen where you've got to jump up the shaft with the gravity gun, no matter what you will have 4 or 5 slimes dropping down onto you from the top spire. There is no way to "react" fast enough because they're already on you by the time you've landed. There are quite a few instances like this in the levels. I think the design could be worked on a bit.

I really like stuff taking collision damage, though, that's pretty sweet.