Hello! I''we made a java-applet game called "deathstar hunt". I would like to get some feedback on the game concept and on how the game works on different browsers/systems. Its not finished yet but the basic concept is there.. the link is: http://members.fortunecity.com/jippi_mail/ hope you enjoy it!

Nice! The game worked good on my system: P3 866 IE5 I when I played the game and clicked outside the window i lost control with the mouse, then mousecontrol came back after about 3 seconds. I tried it again and it worked okay. Good Work!

Very nicely done. Worked well on my system with IE 5.5. I played it for a few minutes.

Comments:
1) needs an advancing skill level - I didn''t see any change in objective or difficulty in the 5 minutes I played it. If you do have harder levels, then ignore this comment.

2) ship reactivity - i felt like I was sliding on ice. The ship was always behind the mouse just enough that I felt a lack of control.

Michael

Happy to hear you liked it!
This is just a really old first version of the game, one of my first applets acctually.
Now that I''m a bit more advanced, I would like to develop it further. Therefore I am gratefull for more comments, which will make me motivated to continue developing!

"1) needs an advancing skill level - I didn''t see any change in objective or difficulty in the 5 minutes I played it. If you do have harder levels, then ignore this comment."
Well, the game has advancing skill levels. Slowly the tie-fighters come in bigger and bigger vawes... But I will make greater difference between levels later on. Alson you cant die, so it doesn''t really matter I''ll do something to that to!

With the sliding on ice, I kinda like the effect.. Not total controll, but still controll.. Please post more comments on the controlls! (Maybe this is a mayor flaw which I dont realise..)

With the x-wing getting stuck problem I''ll see what I can do about it. Shouldn''t bee to hard to fix! The only problem is that this is some really old code so I belive I''ll rewrite it all and put it into classes and stuff (Only one class in this version ).
Next step is to rewrite it and then insert some cool fx like particle explosions and nicer interface. I''we got tons of plans for this game, but I''ll take it one step a time!

Things to come:
*totaly amazing graphics
*amazing fx
*More enemies than just tie-fighters
*different weapons (one for right mouse and one for left)
*shadows
*interface with shields, health, kills, level and more
*a wait before the game starts

and more...

More comments please!


[edited by - Jippi_programming on March 24, 2002 12:31:14 PM]

Hey, great game!

I have a question for you: This is a design question that might sound dumb, but for having the laser shots be on screen, did you just have an array of laser shots that were being drawn and tested for collisions? I have been wondering how to do this (right now in this one game, i just have one bullet being shot and drawn). Is there a best way to keep track of all bullets being fired?

again, very fun game...

riz

Well, to Riz:
Im not a very experienced programmer myself, all of games programming I know I've learnt from my own mind.
For this game I figured out my own technice which I don't know if it's being used by professional programmers. Still it works very nicely. Hope I understod your question:

For each laser shot I have a x, a y and a active value;
int x[], y[];
boolean activelaser[];

Every loop I go through all the active lasers and give em y--, which means they'll go uppwards the screen:
for(int n=0;nif(activelaser[n]){
y[n]++;
}
}
Then I check for collisions with ties on the laser coordinates in the same loop.

Anyway, the clever part of my method comes here:
When the user fires a laser shot (clicks mousebutton) A loop like the one above goes through all lasers until it finds a laser that is not active. Then it makes it active, gives it the ship's current coordinates.

When ever a laser hits something or goes out of screen it becomes
activelaser[n] = false
Which meen that it will not be updated, painted or anything!

hmm.. Hope that explained some of it.. Im not very good at explaining.. Ask more if you didn't understand..


[edited by - Jippi_programming on March 24, 2002 2:17:33 PM]