J-Geometry Wars - updated!

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

Hello all, I stumbled upon this community today and decided to share the game I have been working on. I’ve been trying to copy the arcade game Geometry Wars (from Project Gotham 2 on Xbox) in java.

Download it and tell me what you think! (.exe and .jar files are included.)
http://home.columbus.rr.com/mswatkins/J-GeometryWars.zip

http://wopkins.250free.com/scrshot.jpg

You will probably want to hit ‘S’ to turn off the sound; that really hogs power and slows the framerate. If you have a solution for playing a lot of small sound files at the same time please tell me.

This is the first game I’ve written. It actually may be the first java program I’ve written alone (however the basic framework for it is from Kevin Glass’ Space Invaders tutorial). Keep in mind this is a work in progress.

#2

wow man, that was a lot of fun. The green boxes are dastardly. It ran great on my laptop: Win XP, 3GHz, Geforce 5200.

Good job.

P.S. prepare yourself for an onslaught of “I won’t play anything that’s not webstart” comments. Just a little warning.

#3

Ok well, I’m new at this and not sure how to set it up as a ‘webstart’.
Thanks

#4

Normally I don’t play webstart games, but for a geometry wars clone I’ll make an exception…

Faithfully done I must say :slight_smile: Although I miss ‘the claw’. Player (and the green bastards) were a bit smoother on the original but still bloody good fun.

Works surprisingly well with cursors+mouse as well. ;D

#5

[quote]I miss ‘the claw’…
…Works surprisingly well with cursors+mouse as well. ;D
[/quote]
About ‘the claw’: that would require a rotation of the shape and I never did quite figure out rotations…

It took a bit of thinking to get the controls close to something like in the real game, but I think they work.

#6

I have some occasional delays of like 2 seconds, and once the game continues, I’m long dead :slight_smile:

#7

I have a lot of the freeze Skippy mentionned making the game unplayable.
my configuration:
java 1.4.2
windows xp
2.0 Ghz
700 ram
geforce 4

#8

Runs great in an athlon1500+ 512 + gforce5200 over a kubuntu linux ^^

great game, are you planning to release the code?

#9

The game play is REALLY slowed down by the sound; did you guys play with the sound on or off?
If its not the sound I don’t know what it is.

And sure, I can release the code if anyone cares. I think I’ll do some more finishing touches first though.

#10

I just uploaded a newer version, same urls. It now has image rotations and a sweeter ship, more true to the original, among some other smaller changes.

Orangy Tang, the claw is back!

#11

[quote]If you have a solution for playing a lot of small sound files at the same time please tell me.
[/quote]
How are you doing it ATM?

#12

I’m making a new Applet.newAudioClip object every time I play a sound.

#13

Not a good idea…try something like the code i posted in this thread (it’s a german thread but that doesn’t matter…just scroll down a bit to see it): http://www.java-forum.org/de/viewtopic.php?t=17095

Edit: The main-method in the code is just for testing purposes. You are save to remove it. And even with that code, don’t make a new sound everytime you have to play it. Create it once and play it multiple times (like shown in the main).

#14

[quote]And even with that code, don’t make a new sound everytime you have to play it. Create it once and play it multiple times (like shown in the main).
[/quote]
Normally yes, but this case requires that the sound be played many times, sometimes at the same time, sometimes overlapping the same sound at a slightly different time. Is this still the solution you find best for this particular situation?

#15

Have you considered trying LWJGL for both rendering and sound? Might give you some boosts, and provide you with the tools to really up the visual splender. It will also give you access to OpenAL for streaming sound as well as regular channels.

This game is incredibly fun, and I find myself taking breaks with it quite a bit (top score 70,508).

#16

[quote]Have you considered trying LWJGL for both rendering and sound? Might give you some boosts, and provide you with the tools to really up the visual splender. It will also give you access to OpenAL for streaming sound as well as regular channels.
[/quote]
Well, I’m new to java, this being the first program I started “on my own” (kudos to KevGlass for the space invaders tutorial), so I don’t know anything about LWJGL yet, not even what it is (though I’ve guessed it is a method for more efficient rendering).

[quote]This game is incredibly fun, and I find myself taking breaks with it quite a bit (top score 70,508).
[/quote]
Awesome! I’m glad you like it!

#17

You can continue with kevglass’s tutorials making space invaders using LWJGL ;D

http://www.cokeandcode.com/info/tut2d-4.html

#18

[quote]Normally yes, but this case requires that the sound be played many times, sometimes at the same time, sometimes overlapping the same sound at a slightly different time. Is this still the solution you find best for this particular situation?
[/quote]
Yes. Just give it a try. It should work just fine.

#19

Game play note: I just reached 170,230 points. Which is well over double my previous best. Bet what was odd, is it felt like it was easier when I reached a high level, the extra lives were flying in, bombs were added, my guns were powerful, etc.

Perhaps, when you die your guns reset. And as the score gets higher, throw even more baddies at them.

#20

Yeah, I’ll do something like that. I’m still tweaking, not quite done yet :wink:

And haha I’ll believe I’ll try that tutorial too!