Hi Guys,
Just wanted to let you all know that the GGJ is going ahead in two weeks: http://globalgamejam.org/
I’ve never done it before, but it sounds great! You meet up in a university or some other place and have one weekend to make a game with your team! I’m going to try and join the Sydney one.
Is anyone else planning to give it a go?
“18+ only” T_______T
Its hard to be an underage programmer, huh? Oh wait. I actually envy you.
Anyway, my knowledge is inadquate for game jams atmo. Hope others will do well!
That’s really dumb that there’s an age limit. I reckon that if you showed your work ra4king then they’d let you join in. I think that they just want to avoid having young kids joining who only know how to play games and can’t program. You’re actually talented and clever so I’m sure they’d love to have you on board.
Tonight in Sydney there’s a pre-GGJ meet-up at a pub in newtown. Should be funny since everybody has to wear different colours to indicate their skillset :
[quote]The ‘Wear-Something’ Guide:
Programmer! – Black / Dark Grey
Artist! – White / Light Grey
Audio Music Person! – Red / Brown
Designer / Writer! – Blue / Purple
Other Creative or Technical Human! – Yellow / Orange
Producer / Business person! – Green
Media / Marketing / Journalist! – Pink / Purple
[/quote]
Why thank you! blush
I just realized I can’t go anyway, busy during that weekend 
[/quote]
hahaha that should be interesting
Pink? LoL
Hehe true, nowdays kids jumping higher than monkey. Age doesn’t conclude anything. Btw ra4king, I don’t doubt your skill and SEE you everyday here (fortunately not on twitter), why don’t you make another game? just still find 3 on your site.
Way too busy due to school :’(
then drop your school!
Holy, all countries around mine have hosted this jam. Why my own country not?! I’m rage!!!
Just started global game jam!!!
Got a cool team mate, have a plan, should be fun. He brought a sleeping bag lol. I’m going home to my nice bed tonight
Progress so far:
applet: www.keithwoodward.com/snakeinthegrass
webstart: applet: www.keithwoodward.com/snakeinthegrass/snakeInTheGrass.jnlp
feedback welcome!
Known bugs:
Graphics are terrible
No sound
Mouse-down without dragging causes player to stop.
Ahmed and I are working out butts off. We’ve got 12 hours before the judges start doing preliminary testing…
Final deadline is in about 16 hours and I still need some sleep. I got 5 hours on friday night and will need the same tonight
Ahmed got sound working so that’s cool, but it’s not in the version i uploaded
This is pretty fun!
Stays on the loading screen forever for me 
: start 0
: start 1
: start .1
: start .2
: start .3.
: start .4
: start 2
: start 3
: start 4
: start 5
Exception in thread "Thread-24" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeBuiltinLeafInfoImpl
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeTypeInfoSetImpl.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeModelBuilder.createTypeInfoSet(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeModelBuilder.createTypeInfoSet(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.ModelBuilder.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeModelBuilder.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl.getTypeInfoSet(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl$JAXBContextBuilder.build(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.ContextFactory.createContext(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder.find(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at game.WorldSVG.fillTerrainLists(WorldSVG.java:46)
at game.World.init(World.java:190)
at game.MainApplet$1.run(MainApplet.java:56)
Me too. On Java splash, it loaded completely. When I got ready to play, just nothing but white screen. Stacktrace maybe same as ra4king’s.
Thanks guys, I think it’s fixed now… judging is happening soon so I hope there’s no more surprise bugs
applet: www.keithwoodward.com/snakeinthegrass
webstart: applet: www.keithwoodward.com/snakeinthegrass/snakeInTheGrass.jnlp
Applet loads forever.
With the JNLP, a window opens up but says “Loading” forever. I get this in the console:
Exception in thread "Thread-14" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeTypeInfoSetImpl.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeModelBuilder.createTypeInfoSet(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeModelBuilder.createTypeInfoSet(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.ModelBuilder.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeModelBuilder.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl.getTypeInfoSet(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl$JAXBContextBuilder.build(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.ContextFactory.createContext(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.ContextFinder.find(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext.newInstance(Unknown Source)
at game.WorldSVG.fillTerrainLists(WorldSVG.java:50)
at game.World.init(World.java:190)
at game.MainFrame$1.run(MainFrame.java:47)
Caused by: java.security.AccessControlException: access denied ("java.util.PropertyPermission" "mapAnyUriToUri" "read")
at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPropertyAccess(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.System.getProperty(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.model.impl.RuntimeBuiltinLeafInfoImpl.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
... 22 more
The Webstart version works for me though.
(Ubuntu with Sun-6-JRE)
If I have an “Eagle” on my tails, is there a way to outrun it?
I’m hoping that’s just because the applet cached itself and you’re still using the old version… You can clear the cache in the java console (delete files) by opening up the java menu in the control panel.
You can’t out run it but if you duck under a ‘tree’ (the big green polygon) then the eagle can’t see you or cross the tree.
It’s a pretty bad game. But thanks for trying it guys.
We were a 2-person team, both programmers. We were supposed to use the 2D vector drawing program ‘inkscape’ to draw polygons over nice image backgrounds. The image back ground would be shown in the game, and the polygons would be used for path-finding and hit-testing etc but would not be displayed…
But it turned out that getting the polygon data out of the inkscape SVG file was more difficult than expected since the polygons had transformations applied, and the transformations were complex too since they cascade in the xml file, so the polygon (or path) could have a translation matrix applied, and so could its parent group, etc. I couldn’t work it out within the time limit. This meant that our grpahics ended up being polygons with no nice back ground images.
Our animal graphics were pretty bad to, they were literally photos of hand-drawn art, haha. But i thought that was funny.
The next time i do a game jam where there’s limited time, i’m going to get a prototype out ASAP know my tools better, and not rely on anything I’ve never tried before, like inkscape and SVG files.
But it was a fun weekend. I met some cool people, including the guy who made fruit ninja (http://www.halfbrick.com/our-games/) who was one of the judges, two devs from google who worked on chrome browser and did a cool html5 game, and lots of other really interesting guys who were really into games programming.
One funny thing was that there was the ‘Sydney Gamers League’ going on in the hall next door and they were really loud. Playing games like League of Legends and shoot em ups. Whenever the gamers would howl or curse loudly the game jammers/programmers would parody them by yelling out something dumb. It was funny since they’re the end-user, the audience, but the programmers looked down on them.
In terms of tech, most devs were using unity. At least half of the 30 devs were using it. I was really surprised. I talked to them about it and watched them use it and saw that it was really a graphical programming platform with lots of menus and stuff. No code. I asked them if it was frustrating that they couldn’t see the code behind it and get down to business but many said that they loved the fact that they didn’t have to see any code. I guess they must be designers more than programmers. There were a one or two teams who used C++, one or two using C#, about 5 teams using adobe flash/flex/air (not sure which). Our team were the only java guys. It was actually impressive what the unity teams were able to come up with. 3D and 2D games can be churned out quite quickly with their platform.
Interestingly, when it came time to demo their games it was only the flash guys who could just jump on the computer on the stage and play their game. Everyone else (esp unity guys) had to bring their own laptop to the stage so deploying unity mustn’t be easy.
Our game was obviously pretty bad so the judges didn’t have much to say about it, but at least we finished which is more than some other teams managed. There was pone team of 8 C++ guys and I don’t think they got anything to the demo stage. That would have been a nightmare to try and organise a team that big. There were about 6 or 7 one-man teams too.
I cleared the cache but the applet still loads forever. I also get this now:
java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Read timed out
at java.net.SocketInputStream.socketRead0(Native Method)
at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(Unknown Source)
at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(Unknown Source)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.fill(Unknown Source)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read1(Unknown Source)
at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.parseHTTPHeader(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.parseHTTP(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.deploy.net.DownloadEngine.getJarFileWithoutCache(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.deploy.net.DownloadEngine.downloadJarFileWithoutCache(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin.PluginURLJarFileCallBack$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at sun.plugin.PluginURLJarFileCallBack.retrieve(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.protocol.jar.URLJarFile.retrieve(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.protocol.jar.URLJarFile.getJarFile(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.protocol.jar.JarFileFactory.get(Unknown Source)
at sun.net.www.protocol.jar.JarURLConnection.connect(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin.net.protocol.jar.CachedJarURLConnection.connect(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin.net.protocol.jar.CachedJarURLConnection.getJarFileInternal(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin.net.protocol.jar.CachedJarURLConnection.getJarFile(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.deploy.security.DeployURLClassPath$JarLoader.getJarFile(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.deploy.security.DeployURLClassPath$JarLoader.access$1000(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.deploy.security.DeployURLClassPath$JarLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at com.sun.deploy.security.DeployURLClassPath$JarLoader.ensureOpen(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.deploy.security.DeployURLClassPath$JarLoader.<init>(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.deploy.security.DeployURLClassPath$3.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at com.sun.deploy.security.DeployURLClassPath.getLoader(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.deploy.security.DeployURLClassPath.getLoader(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.deploy.security.DeployURLClassPath.getResource(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2ClassLoader$2.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2ClassLoader.findClassHelper(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Applet2ClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2ClassLoader.loadClass0(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2ClassLoader.loadClass0(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2ClassLoader.loadCode(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager.initAppletAdapter(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
I don’t remember the exact jar that caused this timeout, but I remember it had “batik-ext” in it.
After I let it sit for about 5 minutes, the applet went gray and a million exceptions were being thrown continuously in the console :S
The webstart opens immediately but still gets stuck on the “Loading” screen with that same exception I posted.
Hmm that’s odd. Thanks for the report. i can’t see where that’s coming from my code… Deployment in java sucks.
[quote]I asked them if it was frustrating that they couldn’t see the code behind it and get down to business but many said that they loved the fact that they didn’t have to see any code. I guess they must be designers more than programmers.
[/quote]
I used a gameengine (for a too) long. Still I had access to the code at all times.
When only using prefab functionalieties you can get easily stuck in “feature/update dependancy”.
Though making impressive results is much qicker, when making something more than a staged/pretty scene, the saved time
can be lost when searching, tweaking and working around the provided engine functions, to make an actual game.
-> especilly if the gamemechanics are not “standard”.
Witch access to the code at all times, many problem dont even come up.
An engine like unity is nice for beginners to get something done quickly,
or when having a larger team with specialist-skills to use the engine effectively.
(eG, Artists and designer can use a well designed gui and WYSIWYG editor, instead of XMLs or selfmade editors, while programmers know how
to write the fitting scripts)
That’s one reason why it’s great to use open source libraries. If there’s a problem with the standard way it’s supposed to be used, I can sometimes dive into the code and pull out the feature I want and tweak it just right. It also avoids importing all the bloat that comes with the library.