Joust4k

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2005
#1

Hi there !

Here is my first game and it’s for the 4k contest.
Its a remake of the old game Joust (ATARI).
Grab it here

Any suggestions welcome !

Greets ! :wink:

Dose

PS: there was no space for a manifest file, so i included a batchfile.

#2

Hey Dosenbier,

Great Entry! Here’s a few tips for making it smaller so you can cram more stuff:

  1. Don’t use a package name. In fact, you can save a few bytes by using a single character class name.

  2. You can pack a manifest, but you can’t use the JAR tool. Just add a file called META-INF/MANIFEST.MF and have exactly three lines in it:

Main-Class: MyMainClass

Note that the last two lines are carriage returns. :slight_smile:

  1. Make sure you’re not using any methods unless they get called REALLY often. Inlining everything tends to save a lot of space.

  2. Use a single character name for the GIF file. There’s no need for the “.gif” extension, or the joust4K directory.

  3. Use the command line version of 7-Zip or KZIP to shrink your JAR file even further. For example, I used the following command on your files:

7z a -mx=9 -tzip joust4k.jar joust4k/Joust4k.class joust4k/joust.gif META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

The result was a 4011 byte file WITH the manifest I described above. Even InfoZip comes up with a 4061 byte file using:

zip -9XJ joust4k.jar joust4k/Joust4k.class joust4k/joust.gif META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
  1. If you use a method call, make sure you use the same form of it everywhere. Redundancy improves compression!

Anyway, hope those tips help. Now if I can get a few gameplay requests in:

  • How about some platforms like in the original Joust?
  • Can you change the “Space” to “Enter” for starting the game? I keep missing whether I won or not, because I was trying to fly.
  • How about a full screen version? You can resize the images on the fly using the version of drawImage() that takes width and height.
  • Could you add levels? i.e. The first level has 1 bad guy, the second has two, the third has three, etc.

And in case I didn’t say it before, great game! :slight_smile:

#3

Don’t for ProGuard obsfucation for shrinking aswell!

Nice game…

Kev

#4

[quote]Don’t for ProGuard obsfucation for shrinking aswell!
[/quote]
Good point, I forgot about that. I personally prefer JoGA myself, but you can use whatever works for you. :slight_smile:

#5

Hey thanks for the tips ! ;D

Currently its fullscreen, has no package and has no methods
(except one for the keyboard input - thanks onyx for his help)

I’m going to use jarg and kzip in the final version.

Platforms are in progress, also different levels (each level will have less plattforms then the one before)

Good idea with using enter for starting…

Next version will be online on monday (i hope so), because i’ll not be able to code this weekend (visiting parents…)

Greets !

Dose

#6

Ok, next Version will be up Wednesday…
no time to code right now… :frowning: