JevaEngine - Outbreak Online

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#1

JevaEngine - Outbreak Online

Networking not thoroughly tested
It will probably be a ghost-town on the server (I’m going to bed soon)
(Still worth shouting out in chatbox to find anyone else)

This is a simple game I made with the latest implementations to JevaEngine. The servers will be online for ~5 days and may be down arbitrarily between that span of time as I discover bugs in the server\client.

Gameplay:
 - Simple sandbox map. No particular objective. Once all the NPCs are killed the map will reset. There are about 80 of them, the spiders won’t attack you automatically, the zombies will (zombies are easier to kill.) Some drop loot (i.e, a health pack.)

Download:

  • Windows Executable, GameJolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/rpg/jevaengine-underground-online/16225/
  • Not available as an Applet currently. Several configuration lengths not worked out.

    Known Issues:
  • Map loading is slow, reason know, but low on priority list.
  • If latency is as unexpected by the server (and I believe it will be) player will likely ‘twitch’ sometimes as they move.
  • Server may crash arbitrarily - while I am leaving it running over the night, my graphics drivers are having some issues which causes my PC to freeze thus causing clients to time-out. Sometimes the computer crashes D:
  • Looting requires the player to be directly adjacent and horizontal\vertical to the target they are looting, diagonal does not work.
  • When you die, you’re dead. You will never live again. You must relogin again by restarting the client.
  • Someone reported issues with game chat input – I have no idea how this is possible, so if someone comes across this, please tell me how you’ve reproduced it.
  • Probably a million other things that I haven’t discovered but will start spawning out of nowhere as people start using the server.

Experiencing some problems?

  • Java defaults to OpenGL, this means drivers with poor support for OpenGL will experience poor frame-rates.
#2

Thanks for those who gave the game a try, I cought a few bugs that caused my server to hang.

I can’t reproduce the path-finding error, I’m thus not sure what the cause might have been.

I performed several server-side & some client side network optimizations that I hope will be dramatic but I can’t comfirm this until tomorrow where I have access to a remote machine. Updates will be more frequent, consqeuently the bandwidth will suffer due to lightly lower compression ratios and more frequent snapshots being send over the network.

I’m going to start making my server spatially aware of what needs to and what doesn’t need to be updated on the client-side. I.e, if the user is 30 tiles away from a zombie, they won’t be able to see that zombie and thus the zombie will no longer need to be updated by the server. This could have a significant improvement on bandwidth consumption.

#3

I’ve done a lot over the last couple of days that JGO made impossible for me to share, I guess now I’ll be more careful with thread merging.

Anyway, I’m importing some assets for a from an old abandoned project called PARPG. Here is how it looks in game:

You can download the preloader for the game from the link in the original post. It should be the last time you need to download anything manually. The preloader will check-in with a remote repository and keep your version current with what I commit there.

Here is some footage of the mockup map in the editor:

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Here is some footage of an old menu for another game (the engine is compatible with both, the only difference is in the data files):

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The very plain updater\preloader (powered by github)

#4

Wow that art is looking good, it gives the game a sort of sad feel. I like it!

#5

I must say WOW. How long did this take you to make the engine? Its looking great and the amount its polished is amazing. Outstanding!

#6

Are you using a library for your networking or just the standard Java networking? I have to start implementing networking into my game and I’m just trying to see what people use.

#7

Thanks guys. I really appreciate the feedback. The art is all from either the Flare Project or an abandoned PARPG project. Both projects have their graphics assets under permissive licenses.

The engine has been in the works for at least 4-5 months now.

The networking in JevaEngine I wrote myself, but for object serialization I use Kryo since data I’ve seen suggests it outperforms Java when it comes to speed and size. I wouldn’t mind open-sourcing the communication library I created (though I must admit I’d need to polish up some of the code first, add some more thorough javadoc etc.)