Droid Assault Gold Award

General Discussions
#21

Maybe it’s the guitar noises and shader wankery that got to me :slight_smile:

On PSN, I just saw that it was the best selling game there and it got good reviews. I downloaded the trailer too so I kind of knew what to expect before I bought it, and well, it was only 7 or 8 euro’s or something. Apart from the presentation, I like how the chain reaction system is different in each level, and that it’s difficult enough to keep interesting. SSDHD otoh is repetitive, the style and artwork is totally forgettable, and it’s too easy.

#22

this=crazy crazy talk :):slight_smile:

#23

LOL, what do you expect from argueing personal taste :smiley:

But let me explain my crazy talk:
Repetitive: shooting asteroids over and over again. Some other baddies too, I’ll give you that, but that doesn’t really change much in the gameplay mechanics.
Style and artwork: A spaceship shooting asteroids. Okay, they’re pretty asteroids, but it doesn’t get more generic than that!
Too easy: Just keep upgrading your gold melter while circle shooting. This tactic gets you way too far without any skill involved. When it’s starting to get challenging I’m bored to death already.

Of course I’m exaggerating :slight_smile: but really, EE kept me interested a lot longer and I think DA will too, but really, 6.77 euro is too cheap! :o.

#24

Is Droid Assault made with Java?

In any case it’s cool as hell.

#25

Yes it is.

#26

Does it run on a virtual machine? Or is the coding Java, but then the engine something home-cooked?

I’m just not sure how it works, and I’m curious.

#27

It is entirely written in Java. He use LWJGL to access OpenGL. He uses Jet to create an executable for Windows.

#28

So he wrote his own engine around LWJGL?

Anyways, I’m pretty new to all this but it’s interesting to see what’s available.
I easily see the pro’s of something like Jet, that it’s hard to reverse engineer and from what I’ve read at least, faster. Also, is not depending on the users Java installation… right?

Are there any open source, or at least free alternatives to Jet?

#29

You can try using GCJ ( http://gcc.gnu.org/java/ ) but people always complain about it (slow GC, not all of the API implemented, etc.). Targetting an older VM is a much more practical way of doing things (I write for 1.4 and havn’t had anyone complain about not having a VM in years).

#30

It’s not Jet, it’s just plain old JRE6 client in there. The “engine” if you can call it such is just a nice sprite library I wrote.

Cas :slight_smile:

#31

If I have an application I’d like to package the same way you did, how would I do that?

Subquestion: Do you always have to base this on an executable jar? For example; I have a working webstart, but it can’t be executed stand-alone (the jar).

#32

You need to do two things:

  1. Make a JNI exe launcher. This is basically what javaw.exe is, except the one you write has all the parameters hard coded into it so people can’t dick around with it. The parameters include the classpath jars, and the main class. There is no “executable jar”.

  2. Then you Molebox the jars and exe into one big exe. Molebox is pretty inexpensive but deters all sorts of hackery and easy piracy. If you’re not too worried about that though, Molebox is overkill.

Cas :slight_smile: