JavaDegas 1.0.1 - Documentation
About JavaDegas v.1.0.1 JavaDegas is a Gradius-like, straight forward "Shoot'em Up" game. Use the arrow keys to move your ship and 'space' to fire. It can automatically fire, so you can just hold down the 'space' and it will keep firing. You can also use 'h', 'j', 'k', and 'l' keys to move your ship, just like the nice old vi editor. Certain enemies drop "Energy Capsule" when you blow them up. Pick them up to increase/decrease your power indicator, then select which power to obtain by pressing either 'm' or 'n'. At the end of the each stage, there is an enemy mother ship waiting. So far, I only wrote two stages. People out there can add more enemies, mother ships, and stages. It shouldn't be that difficult. There are 4+ kinds of energy capsules. [Green] -- moves power indicator 2 to the right [Blue] --- moves power indicator 1 to the right [Red] ---- moves power indicator 1 to the left [Yellow] - sets power indicator to none - - - turns power indicator to slot machine press 'm' or 'n' to stop Probably, you want to avoid [Red] and definitely [Yellow]. However, if you feel lucky, and/or you have nothing to loose, you can take your chances by picking them. One of them may turn out to be a "surprise" energy capsule. Who knows? You might end up getting the power you wanted so bad, or you might end up losing everything. There are 7 power up items. [Speed Up] -- increases speed [Slow Down] - decreases speed [Beam] ------ sets to default beam weapon [Laser] ----- sets to laser weapon that can penetrate multiple ships [Option] ---- adds option that acts like an extra ship [Doh!] ------ Doh! [Shield] ---- adds shield that's good for 5 hits About Music. . . I originally programmed full length music for this game, but when I converted them to au format, each of them were way over 1 mega byte. That was unacceptable. So, I had to trim down a lot of them. How sad. When I convert this to Java1.2, I'll replace stripped down au music with full length midi music. Stage 1 - Revolutionary Etude by Frederick Chopin Boss ---- The Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner About SFX. . . I made all sound effects using my old SoundBlaster16 and midi sequencer. I'd like to re-do them with better quality sound system when I have the opportunity. About voice. . . All voices were done by my 3 year old son, Christopher. Reported somewhat working platforms. . . As Applet: Sun Sparc Solaris 8 with Netscape ix86 Windows 95 with IE4/5 ix86 Windows 98 with IE5, Netscape 4.7 ix86 Windows 98J with IE4J/5J, Netscape 4.7 ix86 Windows NT5 with IE5 ix86 Windows 2000 with IE5 ix86 FreeBSD with Netscape As Stand Alone(no audio): Sun Sparc Solaris 7 with java 1.1, kaffe 1.0.5 History. . . In the late 80s, my brother showed me a video game called Gradius by Konami. I'd never seen anything like that before. Power up items were cool, background music were cool, graphics were cool. It was a "COOL" game. I was instantly hooked to this game. I must have spent a couple of months trying to clear all stages. Good thing, it was on MSX computer at home. I didn't have to spend any 100 yen coins at the arcade. Konami kept releasing sequels to Gradius and as far as I know, they all became big hits. Salamandar, Life Force, Gradius 2, Gradius 3, Parodius Da!, Gokujou Parodius Da! were some of them. Also, Konami added extra items when they ported Gradius to other platforms. For example, MSX version had an extra stage that didn't exist in original arcade version. MSX version also had a couple of secret stages, where you can get different kind of power items. No matter what platform, no matter which generation, I had real good fun playing Gradius series of games. These days, most games are street fighter style beat the crap out of each other kind of games or Wolf 3D kind of 3D shooting games. I don't see games like Gradius any more. I don't care too much for those fighting games, but I admit I enjoyed Wolf 3D and Doom. Other great games I enjoy playing are the Wing Commander series of games by Origin, but their newer products don't run on my old slow PC. Bummer. Actually, a lot of today's games don't run on my P120. Doh! I used to own a Sharp X68000 computer and played the Gradius series of games probably at least once a day for years. Did I get sick of them after while? Nope. I still miss Gradius. So, I thought I should try writing a game like Gradius. This is my second attempt writing a game, so it's not like I'm used to writing games, but I decided to try it anyway. I started out writing it in C++ and Xlib. At one point, event check routines (XCheckMaskEvent, XCheckWindowEvent) started dumping core. It happened on both Sun Sparc and PC Linux machines. After wasting so much time trying to figure out the cause and the way to get by, I decided to rewrite the whole thing in C and Xlib. I thought maybe C++ is screwing up somewhere in Xlib C API calls. Guess what? Same darn thing! Event check routines started dumping core at one point. I was pretty much fed up with Xlib calls by then, I started to look for an alternate GUI platform. Where did I turn to? Back to Java again. I was disappointed on JDK1.2beta, because it kept messing up the graphics on my PC, but JDK1.2 seems to run all right. I do have a problem running Java on my Sun Sparc20 with Solaris7. I cannot send any keyboard input to my applets. It's very strange. I talked to a friend at Sun, but he seems to have no problem at all running my applets on his UltraSparc. Probably there's some goofy component inside my Sparc that's causing it, or something. It's kind of stupid that Sun's own Java doesn't run right on Sun's own Sparc Station. No, I didn't buy it from a Sun dealer. I bought it at an online auction. So, I code and compile on my Sparc, then test it on Win98/J PC with IE4.0/J. That's the only way I can send my keyboard input to my applet. Why didn't I just develop and test on PC? I run fvwm95 on my Sparc and let me tell you, it's "nice". Besides, there is something wrong with my PC. I can open one dos prompt without a problem, but if I try to (re)open another one, it hangs the whole machine. Doh! Linux? Yes, an ancient version of it is installed on my PC. I could use Linux for development, but I paid a lot of money for this Sparc Station and I am going to use it to develop something! Despite this goofy environment, I somehow got it to work, so here it is. No, I haven't tried Visual J++ or J Builder. What for? I edit files in vi and compile with JDK's javac. Combine them with fvwm95 and I got my ultimate development environment. Even when I have to write something for PC, I use vi for windows to edit files. I only use one thing in the whole Visual C++ environment and that is the "Build" button. KDE? I haven't tried it, yet. I'll give it a try one of these days. A friend of mine suggested I should use Kopi and Kaffe to develop java freeware. Good idea. Once I upgrade my Sparc to Solaris 8, I'll install those tools. I also need a bigger hard drive for my Sparc, but can't afford "Sun" hardware. I'll probably get a generic SCSI drive and see if it works. Future. . . I haven't figured out how to do the background objects, like scrolling floor and ceiling. It would be cool if I (or somebody) can get the Moais to come up and spit those circle things. Then, I'd like to have a stage with a capital ship, like stage 3 on R-Type. That was fun destroying the huge ship. I'll also add a high speed scrolling stage. I'd like to add missiles once the scrolling floor is in place. I also like other classic games like Dragon Spirit, Thunderforce, Silpheed and R-Type. I'd love to see them become available somewhere. I'll see what happens. . . Special Thanks. . . Mike Chachich - for creating and maintaining official JavaDegas homepage. also, for helping on documentations. Thanks, Mike. Shinji Umeki (shinji@umeki.org) Sep. 9, 2000