Neb4k

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2005
#1

I missed 4k games so much in the last week I had to write another one based loosely on the classic Nebulus :).

Story:

The Roundlings (read circles) have been invaded by the Evil Red Squares (so called because of their colour, shape and disposition) who have occupied the most sacred Roundling temple - the Tower of Ovals. As Ben a young Roundling adventurer you must climb the tower to free the magic within.

Yes… the story is very very poor. Never mind huh?

Current features:

  • Coins - Bonus Points
  • Keys/Barriers - Let you into areas
  • Evil Red Squares - patrol the level and knock you down.
  • Doors - Allow you into the tower and back out at a different location.
  • Teleportals - Bean you up and down levels
  • Fall Away Blocks - Step on one of these and it disappears letting you fall straight through.
  • Finish Point - Lets you complete the level

Controls:

Left/Right Cursor - Move
Up/Down Cursor - Use current square

Webstart: http://www.cokeandcode.com/games/4k/neb4k/neb4k.jnlp
Jar File: http://www.cokeandcode.com/games/4k/neb4k/neb4k.jar
Main-Class: N
Screenshot: http://www.cokeandcode.com/games/4k/neb4k/screenshot.gif

Its only got test data in at the moment but I’m honestly working on the level. Infact I’ve made the level designer available as a seperate download (if anyone’s interested). If someone has the time to come up with a decent level maybe I’ll include it! :slight_smile:

More details:
http://www.cokeandcode.com/games/4k/neb4k/

Sorry, long post.

Kev

#2

I swear kev you pump these 4k games out like there was nothing to it…lol. Keep up the good work.

#3

Very cool!

#4

Neat :smiley:

Now you only need some real levels :slight_smile:

#5

Yet another great 4K game Kev!

Very good game idea. I wasted quite a lot of time playing the original Nebulus :slight_smile: Amazing how well it looks with such simple geometries! And how feature-complete it seems to be, all in 4K. Can’t wait to see more levels.

There is an old applet version of same game here:
http://www.javaonthebrain.com/java/cross/
And some more applets on that site, for anybody who is interested. “Graviton” should also look familiar :slight_smile:

Don’t slow down now, only 4 more weeks to go :wink:

#6

Made a little level :slight_smile:

http://kaioa.com/k/d

The editor is pretty cool, but somewhat odd to use if you don’t know the tiles (tooltips would have done the trick).

#7

FYI, the correct link to Onyx’s level is http://www.kaioa.com/k/d

Onyx, I improved upon your level. See if you can beat it!

http://java.dnsalias.com/4k/d

Great work Kev! Why aren’t you already in professional game development? :slight_smile:

#8

The link also works without www (it does work for me at least).

And yea, I was able to beat your’s jbanes. But I had a leftover key at the end and there was another key-thing which was unreachable.

edit: uhm… no it’s not unreachable, but the teleporter pad next to it is dead

#9

[quote]The link also works without www (it does work for me at least).
[/quote]
Odd, it doesn’t for me. :frowning:

[quote]edit: uhm… no it’s not unreachable, but the teleporter pad next to it is dead
[/quote]
Dead? There are no dead pads on my watch! :slight_smile: That pad is useful for going up or down. Also, I fixed it so that you can no longer win without getting to the top. There’s only one key now, the rest are yellow circles. Just redownload to play again.

Edit: Sorry, it didn’t upload right. If the level seems unchanged, you need to redownload it.

Kev, do the doors work at all?

#10

Made a new one. It’s much better :wink:

http://www.kaioa.com/k/d2

Special features are a little secret and path hinting with coins. Try to get all 7 coins :slight_smile:

do the doors work at all?

Ye, dunno how they are supposed to work. Creating a link is rmb-clicking there and then rmb-clicking somewhere else, but I don’t know what its supposed to do.

Hm… I think I should hurry a bit with my “bre4k” game. Hopefully there will be some time left for getting level submissions, which will be included at the end. Right now I guesstimate there will be room for about 10 levels :slight_smile:

#11

Oh… ok… doors work…

Put a door (gray thing) there and another one somewhere else… then rmb one and then the other. There is even a neat animation for entering/exiting doors :o

#12

http://www.kaioa.com/k/d3 :slight_smile:

Level making is fun :smiley:

#13

[quote]Special features are a little secret and path hinting with coins. Try to get all 7 coins Smiley
[/quote]
Just a little “leap of faith”, and you’re there. :wink:

[quote]Oh… ok… doors work…

Put a door (gray thing) there and another one somewhere else… then rmb one and then the other. There is even a neat animation for entering/exiting doors :o
[/quote]
They seem to be really buggy. I already figured out the tunnel pieces. Unfortunately, when I tried to use them I got the following:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 50
        at N.a(Unknown Source)
        at N.<init>(Unknown Source)
        at N.main(Unknown Source)

Similarly, the tunnels on your level seem to stop working after a few uses. Instead of going to the destination, the character pops in and then out. :-/

#14

the tunnels on your level seem to stop working after a few uses

Hrm.

Hadn’t tried em more than once. Well, Kev is to blame ;D

Regarding that exception. Delete the links and add em again. Most likely one of em points to nowhere (a non door tile).

#15

Coo! Well thanks guys. I ended up going to get some sleep so missed all this. I’ll work out whats going on, add the tool tips etc tonight.

Cheers for the feedback tho! If I only I could fit more than one level into the game :frowning:

Kev

#16

The door links are one-way and they seem to work about right in that regard.

If I only I could fit more than one level into the game

I think you can put in about 3-4 levels. Right now I can put the class and 2 levels (the last one from me and the last one from jbanes) into one zip and it ends up with 4027 bytes (7zip).

The levels gets compressed very well, but the per level overhead is huge(*). So… just put all levels into one file and you have that overhead only once. (I’m doing the same for bre4k for that reason ;))

(* about 150 bytes. The levels themselfes compress down to 60-90 bytes)

yet anther edit:

Two way doors can be used for “interesting” things. Like somewhere at the beginning is a barrier you can’t pass, you take a door to some other place, grap the key, go back through the door and finally go through the barrier :slight_smile:

It’s a pretty nice game design pattern, which you can see in a lot of games like… zelda. Somewhere at the begining is a rock in the way… later on you get bombs… go back and nuke the rock away.

The “secret” I’d added was also similar to that (in an abstract way) :wink:

Oh and in the editor… the door links could be drawn as lines. Usually entity connections are shown like that in editors.

#17

Right, thats it, what settings are you using for 7zip, and how are you using it command line/windowed? I can never get it to be better than kzip which is what you’ve got.

3 levels, that’d be stonking. Little bit more logic to handle the level change and voila! Excellent.

Going to start another game today at work but will return to this tonight.

Kev

#18

Right, thats it, what settings are you using for 7zip, and
how are you using it command line/windowed?

I used the latest beta. Marked the files -> add to archive… zip/ultra. Nothing else.

I can never get it to be better than kzip

kzip produced a smaller file with 4021 bytes (6 bytes less). I just ran it with:

kzip k @list

(and the list file just contained those 3 file names)

Excellent

That’s what I thought :wink:

#19

Hm. I just took a look at the original jar. The reason why it compresses so bad is because of the level, which only compresses down to 275 bytes. It’s filled with junk (=bad compression) and the editor even hangs if I try to load it.

Mystery solved :slight_smile:

#20

Interesting, the level supplied (as you’ve no doubt seen in the game) is full of empty space (0’s). I would have thought that would compress pretty darn well.

Weirder still, that level was created with the level editor and pushed back and forward plenty of times. Unless! Hmmm…

Also… are you finding the the end block actually lets you win? Just tried the webstart and it seems to reset me to the start.

Kev