Escape from Monster City - Ludum Dare 21

[KevinWorkman]

For those of you who don’t know, Ludum Dare is a gaming competition that gives participants 48 hours to write a game around a theme. This time the theme was “escape”.

I was going to wait until after the competition to polish my game and post it here, but then I saw kevglass posted his game, so I figured I’d post mine as well.

Here is the game homepage: http://code.kevinworkman.com/EscapeFromMonsterCity/index.html
And here is the Ludum Dare entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=5364

http://code.kevinworkman.com/EscapeFromMonsterCity/screenshot1.png

In my game, the player controls a guy trying to escape a city infested with sleeping monsters. The player has only a flashlight to navigate the night (monsters sleep at night) and must sneak past the monsters without waking them. If they do wake up, they will chase the player, and the player must escape down an alley without running into more monsters.

I’m pretty pleased with the results, especially since I only worked for 12 hours and also used that time to learn Processing. I think I captured my original goal pretty well, as well as the theme, and I think the game is pretty fun (especially for such a short development time).

That being said, there are three main things I know I could improve (and probably will, once the contest ends)- there is a bug that occasionally freezes the game, there is no way to beat the game (or get a high score or anything), and the monsters sometimes spawn inside buildings.

All in all, I had a lot of fun participating in the competition, and I’d love to know if anybody else submitted an entry. If not, I recommend entering the next competition!

[kevglass]

This is fun, like the style. Few suggestion:

a) Add sounds
b) Give me more chance to run from the monsters, at the moment as soon as they wake I’m dead
c) Change the level geneation code a bit to give me more places to dodge too.

Still, in 48 hours, great job!

Kev

[KevinWorkman]

Thanks! Yeah, I pretty much agree with you on all three points.

Adding sounds to my programs remains a mystery to me, but that’ll be one of the next things I learn.

I’ll probably improve the monster behavior as well, but I wanted the player to have pretty severe consequences for waking up a monster, hopefully making it scarier to see a sleeping one. But did you try running away by holding in Z? The player runs faster than the monsters, but it can still be pretty tough to get around one.

And about halfway through the contest, I realized I should have used something more like a maze generation algorithm instead of randomly placed buildings, but by then I didn’t think I had enough time to pull it off.

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to play, it’s definitely appreciated!

[ra4king]

Here is a nice tutorial about adding sounds using JavaSound: http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/sound/index.html

[KevinWorkman]

@ra4king

Here is a nice tutorial about adding sounds using JavaSound: http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/sound/index.html

Thanks! I’ve looked through that tutorial, but it seems to be all about midis, which seems outdated. I’ve put together a program that plays a wav, but wav files are HUGE. I know it’s possible (and probably even easy) to play an mp3 (using JMF or something), I just haven’t looked into it very much yet. To be honest, sounds aren’t a big deal to me- I usually play games with my computer muted and some music on. I know I should add sounds because other people care more about them, I just have trouble getting motivated about it.

[ra4king]

Try OGG files! They are small yet high quality. However JavaSound doesn’t support them by default.
You can use this SPI for JavaSound to be able to play them. All you do is just stick that jar file in your build path and it will automatically add the needed services to play OGG files.

[KevinWorkman]

@ra4king

Try OGG files! They are small yet high quality. However JavaSound doesn’t support them by default.
You can use this SPI for JavaSound to be able to play them. All you do is just stick that jar file in your build path and it will automatically add the needed services to play OGG files.

Oh cool, I’ll have to check that out. I’ll add that to the list, along with getting a high score board working, android development, putting a game on facebook… Sometimes my ignorance astonishes me!

[Z-Man]

@ra4king

Try OGG files! They are small yet high quality. However JavaSound doesn’t support them by default.
You can use this SPI for JavaSound to be able to play them. All you do is just stick that jar file in your build path and it will automatically add the needed services to play OGG files.

Sorry this is off topic, but I’ve never used sounds in Java at all. So how would I go about using this or any kind of sound. I’ve looked at PaulsCode, the SPI you linked to, and I’m just confused now >_<

[ra4king]

@Z-Man

@ra4king

Try OGG files! They are small yet high quality. However JavaSound doesn’t support them by default.
You can use this SPI for JavaSound to be able to play them. All you do is just stick that jar file in your build path and it will automatically add the needed services to play OGG files.

Sorry this is off topic, but I’ve never used sounds in Java at all. So how would I go about using this or any kind of sound. I’ve looked at PaulsCode, the SPI you linked to, and I’m just confused now >_<

Paulscode makes using OpenAL easier. JavaSound is the javax.sound.* subpackages. For basic tutorials on playing sounds, refer to the link I pasted a couple posts up. The SPI (service provider interface) I linked allows OGG files to be played. JavaSound works by using Services that handle different types of files. JavaSound only includes services that play AIFF, AU, WAV, and MID files. Additional services that allows the support of more audio file types can be added by just sticking the jar in the build path.