Hey, my first playable 4K game, based on Rocket Jockey

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2008
#1

This is my first attempt at the java 4k competition. I’m learning to program, and i thought this would be a fun challenge. Here’s the first version of my game rocket4k. It needs a lot of work but the basic mechanics are there and its still under 4k. I haven’t tryed to make the code more compressable, so the source is probably ineffiecent size wise.

the controls are up and down accelerate deccelerate. left and right shoot out grappling hooks. the grappling hooks must hit the pink pylons to stick. Space releases the grappling hook. Try to get the ball, and don’t hit the black square.

you can download the .jar file here:
http://rubleeproductions.com/rocket4k/rocket4k.jar
for some reason my internet browser shows it as a .zip, so you may have to download it and rename it to a .jar

any suggestions would be much appreciated as this game is still in the very early stages of development, and you still can’t die. Thanks, and have fun

UPDATE:: I changed the controls a bit, so that when you are swinging around and you press the oppisite grapple key, it releases and that grapple shoots out, thanks for the idea; space still releases with out throwing out a grapple
also, i’m finding it difficult to make a working webstart, i feel like a fool!!!

WEBSTART WORKING:
webstart version

#2

It’s not a self-executable jar. Webstart would be nice, too :slight_smile:

EDIT: Never mind, it was my browser being silly. It started just fine.

EDIT2: Interesting gameplay, I hadn’t seen it before - good fun. I’d like to be able to release a specific hook by pressing the same button again - how about it? :slight_smile:

EDIT3: http://www.cokeandcode.com/webstarthowto <-- kev’s tutorial, try it out :slight_smile:

#3

yeah, i have to figure out how to do webstart i’ll search around

#4

Updated the post above a few times, just making sure you’ll notice :slight_smile:

EDIT: Oh, and about signing jars - you probably won’t need that for 4k games. As long as you can run your program in sandbox mode (no writing to memory, no full screen, etc) you can just cut out the stuff and skip signing the JAR.

#5

dude, that game is awesome!

#6

Nice idea! Would feel a bit more natural if the pink squares were circles though…
Why not do an applet version like I did for z4rch? If you haven’t got a webstartable server (like me) it’s quite easy to make an applet version for people to try out, then just submit the final webstart version for the competition.

BTW you don’t need the manifest file in your jar - use ‘jar cvfM’ to ignore it.

#7

If he’s sticking with an auto-executable jar, he does need it…

#8

Thanks for the comments, and the tutorial for web start, finally got it working,

can you submit a php file to java4k instead of a jpnl or whatever?

#9

Thats an awesome game! There seemed to be some text in the top left corner but it was mostly off the screen, I suppose thats my score but I couldn’t read it.

#10

i’ve noticed that on macs the acceleration is really slow, but the speeds are very similar. Does this have something to do with how macs handle keyboard events. All motion is based of System.nanotime(), and i don’t really try to make a fixed frame rate or update rate. All my keyboard event handling is done in the game loop, per the 4k wiki suggested method of handling keyboard events.
And i thought java was supposed to be platform independent :slight_smile: