Galaxians (aka Starbugs)

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

Hi, folks!

I’d love some feedback on my version of Galaxians.

http://javagamesfactory.org/views/view-game?name=Starbugs

Be warned that it requires JRE 1.5 (since I wanted to try out Generics, nanoTime(), etc).

In particular, I’d really like to hear about:

  1. Any technical problems. Whether it runs okay on different systems, whether it runs at a sensible speed (I’d hope so, considering how old my PC is), etc. There’s no sound as yet (to make it safer to play at work!).

  2. More interesting: is it fun to play? Too easy? Too difficult? Lost interest after 30 seconds? What was your top score? What would be different in your version of Galaxians?

Cheers,
DM

#2

nice little game :slight_smile:

I liked the cutise little aliens and animation, not sure about the background :slight_smile:

I did find shooting a little slow though.

performance wis eit was fine here, Ubuntu Linux with an ok ish Athalon.

not really my cup of tea though I’m afraid ::slight_smile: with regard for type of game so I can’t really comment on that (having said that it’s more than I have ever done so…)

keep it up,
Dan.

#3

Looks cool, it could definitely use some sound.

The player ship model looks neat.

However, my machine here uses double-tap control to activate the switchview, so control doesn’t work out for me as a fire key :slight_smile:

Heheh

#4

Tried it on OS X… it didn’t respond at the title screen. Just sat there saying “Press any key to continue.”

#5

Same here with standard Win XP. I clicked several times on it and pressed a lot of keys but it just wouldnt start.

#6

Ouch. To state the bleeding obvious, that’s not supposed to happen.

I’ll try to insert a suitable giveMeKeyboardFocusAndDontJustSnatchItAwayAgain() function and repost.

Thanks for your patience.
DM

#7

Yes, I can see that that might slow down your rate of fire a bit…

I haven’t come across that use for the control key before. Is it a common practice? (Am I hopelessly out of touch?)

The reason I chose the control key is that it’s one of the few that the keyboard (my keyboard, at least) registers you pressing while other keys are held down. Does anyone have recommendations for better keys to use?

Cheers,
DM

#8

tried on linux same problem as above!

#9

I dunno if control is commonplace for switchview, but its what most ppl here at work use. Space is pretty common for a fire button, why not make both control and space work for fire? Then you will satisfy the 0.0001% of your market who uses control key for something else :slight_smile:

PS I also got the unresponsive ‘press any key to start’ title screen on XP, the first time I ran it. When I shut it down and re-ran it it worked.

#10

Okay, I’ve uploaded a new version. Hopefully it should be better at remembering where it left the keyboard focus.

Also, “space” is now the official fire key (although “control” still works, to retain backwards compatibility with the author).

Cheers,
DM

#11

OK, it works now.

Pretty good. Nice animations and cool background. But “space invaders” is not my type of game, but thats my problem, not yours.

#12

Thats rather nice. :slight_smile: Feels very smooth and slick (even if the pusling background makes my retina bleed). The control explaination is good too.

Your explosions are well done - are they a pre-canned animation or are they generated on the fly?

#13

Heh, bags of style. Black and White aliens are in again this year :wink: The disintegration when you hit them reminds me a bit of asteroids, when the lines fly off in all directions. The background is perhaps a touch too distracting although again it has style in spades

Alan
(Win XP, Java 1.5)

#14

The space-for-fire makes me a lot more effective! :slight_smile:

#15

Cool, stylish Galaxians/Galaga clone! Feels slick and smooth.

A few small suggestions:

  • Choose a colorscheme for the background with less contrast to make it less distracting
  • When your ship explodes, the particles fall down. For the aliens, it’s cool, but for your ship I would make it a bit more impressive (more particles, faster particles, going in all directions and eventually falling down).
  • It would be cool to add some bigger aliens which can capture your ship, which you can recapture again for more firepower (like in Galaga :))
#16

The behaviour of the debris is calculated when the bullet hits (using what I remember of conservation of angular momentum, plus lots of random numbers to fill in the gaps). I have to say, I’m pleased with the effect – it makes the game seem a lot more solid, like the player’s actions are really influencing things.

Funny you should mention asteroids…

This upload is dedicated to all those people who thought the background in Starbugs wasn’t colourful enough!

http://javagamesfactory.org/views/view-game?name=Squaroids

Squaroids is the sister game to Starbugs. I’m afraid it’s yet another version of asteroids, but is exciting and different because… errm, it involves more right-angles.

Hopefully, it should run okay (thanks to the debugging people have already helped with on Starbugs). Please do let me know what you think.
DM

#17

I’m trying to sort that out right now so that JGF auto-downloads Java 1.5 properly. When I first tried to set it up, Sun hadn’t made 1.5 avaliable for webstart-download yet, so I couldn’t test it out, but now 1.5 has had a few bug-fixes there’s no excuse any more for me to leave it in the half-working state :-[

#18

Now I get “No JRE versionfound in launch file for this system.”

I see you have 1.5.0+. I think that should be only 1.5+. I don’t think you are allowed to use + and a dot-dot spec. Though it could be because I am running 1.6.0b45

#19

I’m getting the same error and I have 1.5.0._04

#20

I tried running it and got an error … I’m running Win2k and JRE 1.5.0_04

An error occurred while launching/running the application.

Category: Launch File Error

No JRE version found in launch file for this system