[j4k]fuzetsu (4k bullet hell game)

[agony]

A good friend of mine has now released a new game wich I really enjoy. The point is that it`s a game for a Java Competition so it must be equal or under 4096 bytes. So it has no Joypad support or something else (Mouse only)

Its a no button bullet hell game. You start to "fire" when you scrape bullets, the more bullets there are in your scraping radius and the closer they are the more bullets you start to emit. Score is directly proportional to the scraping. If you are close to the enemy alot of bullets will miss... so you can get more points out of that enemy

You can grab it here

Java 1.4++

Enjoy!

[Ghegs]

Wow, that's really impressive. Very fun and clever. Nice bulletpatterns, too. I got a bit over 220k on my first attempt. I did notice that sometimes when the enemy is destroyed and there are lots of bullets on screen, the slowdown suddenly disappears and you're left dodging a barrage of high-speed bullets.

EDIT: Nevermind, apparently you can't get hit after the boss explodes. Nice.

[sikraiken]

If you are close to the enemy alot of bullets will miss... so you can get more points out of that enemy

The only problem with this is that you can stay on the first form of the boss forever and just milk points.

Other than that, this is a nicely made java game.


All Clear No Miss

[captain ahar]

inspired. had great fun with it. couldn't top 600,000 after a few tries.

[ArrogantBastard]

Score: 711,909

[pixelcorps]

is this using bulletML?

[agony]

is this using bulletML?

no, he is using his "own" system
The Pattern Editor he wrote looks like this:

[landshark]

I love seeing development system screenshots - almost more than the screenshots of games themseleves.

[ArrogantBastard]

Also, he needs to make it harder.

[TheRed]

cool stuff! thanks!

[landshark]

Strange, can't get it to work. The "Java Loading" screen appears from java jumpstart, then it just disappears and nothing happens. The javaw.exe process also gets stuck in task manager and I have to kill it.

I have the latest java install from your link as well.

[agony]

hmm

I will ask him when he is online, hopely he has an idea

I also hope he will make a non 4k version with more features

I asked him:

Dunno whats going wrong there. Eventually its driver/directx related. I use some java2d flags, which improve rendering speed (about 30% on windows and about 15% on
linux). Doing so lowered the minimum system requirements to 500mhz on windows and about 600mhz on linux. Well, there is a good reason why that stuff isnt enabled by default (its less compatible)... so
eventually thats the problem. Updating the drivers and/or directx should help.
You can also try using this jnlp file, which doesnt set any flags:
http://kaioa.com/jws/jnlp_na/fuzetsu_no_flags.jnlp

[CMoon]

Would be nice if I could make the window larger. I hate having to turn my resolution down to make the game playable.

[oNyx]

I wanted to reply a bit sooner, but I had to wait for that activation mail, which never arrived. Well, duh.

>the slowdown suddenly disappears

Its actually an intentional speed up for cleaning the screen quickly. You need about 500mhz for getting 60fps.

>The only problem with this is that you can stay on the first form of the boss
>forever and just milk points.

Yea, I know... there just wasnt any space to fit some timer in.

>is this using bulletML?

BulletML would be way too big. The system I'm using is way simpler, but only uses 10 bytes per pattern and 3 bytes per arrangement (level). There are a lot of pattern which are impossible, but it turned out better than expected. I think it offers a pretty nice compromise between flexibility and size.

The whole thing is less than 400 lines of code (this includes the sprite generation). Just getting BulletML to work requires more than that. I'm not really a big fan of BML anyways. Its seems to long winded and the turn over rates are pretty bad.

But I think I'll use something similar in the future. But it will be some binary format, spitten out by some nice integrated editor.

>Would be nice if I could make the window larger

Fullscreen mode wasnt an option, because it needs signing (which in turn would have used too many bytes). And a bigger resolution... well, I didnt want to make it too big for lower resolutions.

Just be glad that its bigger than the prototype

[BrianC]

I wanted to reply a bit sooner, but I had to wait for that activation mail, which never arrived. Well, duh.

>the slowdown suddenly disappears

Its actually an intentional speed up for cleaning the screen quickly. You need about 500mhz for getting 60fps.

>The only problem with this is that you can stay on the first form of the boss
>forever and just milk points.

Yea, I know... there just wasnt any space to fit some timer in.

>is this using bulletML?

BulletML would be way too big. The system I'm using is way simpler, but only uses 10 bytes per pattern and 3 bytes per arrangement (level). There are a lot of pattern which are impossible, but it turned out better than expected. I think it offers a pretty nice compromise between flexibility and size.

The whole thing is less than 400 lines of code (this includes the sprite generation). Just getting BulletML to work requires more than that. I'm not really a big fan of BML anyways. Its seems to long winded and the turn over rates are pretty bad.

But I think I'll use something similar in the future. But it will be some binary format, spitten out by some nice integrated editor.

>Would be nice if I could make the window larger

Fullscreen mode wasnt an option, because it needs signing (which in turn would have used too many bytes). And a bigger resolution... well, I didnt want to make it too big for lower resolutions.

Just be glad that its bigger than the prototype

Wow. A post from the creator of the game! This is a very imprssive under 4k game. Very well done!

[oNyx]

Heh. Thanks. And thanks to all other guys for the nice comments (forgot to say that... duh ).

I'm a bit overwhelmed by the amount of nice feedback I got (all over the net). It certainly wont be my last shoot em up (its actually my first one ).

[ArrogantBastard]

I lack the programming expertise, but what's the best way to learn Java? I've been reading up a bit on the Java site (http://java.sun.com), but I'm not really grasping the concept of it.

I'd really like to learn a basic programming language to understand it and to try to utilize it in my shmup game creation.

So far I only know HTML, CSS, and XML; which says a lot about my programming expertise. :-/

[oNyx]

I suggest to get some general java book. Then you need to make your way through all those boring chapters and command line applications. It does take some time, but its really the fastest way. There are no (working) shortcuts. You need to understand the basics 100%.

After about 3 months you should know enough to make your first game. Try pong for starters. Its about as simple as it can get, yet it features all important bits of every other game (input, logic, render... some graphics, maybe sounds and some collision detection).

Some beginner (game) tutorials can be found here:
http://www.cokeandcode.com/tutorials

And the biggest'n'best resource on the net is this forum:
http://www.javagaming.org/

Oh and stay away from any 4k source. Its really bad style, often rather inefficient and usually very hard to read.

[ArrogantBastard]

Alright, thanks for the tips and advice, oNyx.

I will check into the links you provided.

[Zweihander]

675,989 final score... fun game but it's WAY too short, i hope your friend adds to it eventually, regardless of a final filesize-- i'm lovin this.

[oNyx]

Hey, I'm right here

A bigger'n'better version is already planned. With things like fullscreen, tate, joypad support, opengl (lwjgl) and lots of other funky stuff

Well, don't hold your breath. It will take a while. I also need to finish some other project first (which uses the same framework... its the one which was also used for prototyping fuzetsu). And uhm... well, there are many things to do, but eventually there will be some public beta test boss-battle-only version inbetween.

Apart from that I don't know any details myself. The prototyping stage will show what works and what doesnt. I'm not even sure how the bullet system will look like... eventually I'll use some byte code generation voodoo for hard coded execution speed (while keeping the flexibility of scripts).

[neorichieb1971]

[Zweihander]

A good friend of mine has now released a new game wich I really enjoy. The point is that it`s a game for a Java Competition so it must be equal or under 4096 bytes. So it has no Joypad support or something else (Mouse only)

Its a no button bullet hell game. You start to "fire" when you scrape bullets, the more bullets there are in your scraping radius and the closer they are the more bullets you start to emit. Score is directly proportional to the scraping. If you are close to the enemy alot of bullets will miss... so you can get more points out of that enemy

Enjoy!

I found your friend's 'scraping' mechanic inspiring, and I'd like to know if I could use it in a game I plan to make in the next few years. I'd credit his name for the 'scraping' idea. Could you ask him if it's alright?

My idea is for a full-length game, with stages. It would combine shooting and 'scraping', but scraping would rack in more points overall than shooting would. It's definitely closer to your friend's idea than, say, Psyvariar; I like your friend's idea of scraping as a necessity for attacking.

Just wanna make sure it's alright to incorporate his idea into my eventual game. ^^

[mrMagenta]

4k.. and java.. that's impressive! cool game dynamic, and the bullet editor looks nice. i'm playing around with java and lwjgl too, will be great to see what you'll cook out of it.

[oNyx]

[...]
I found your friend's 'scraping' mechanic inspiring, and I'd like to know if I could use it in a game I plan to make in the next few years. I'd credit his name for the 'scraping' idea. Could you ask him if it's alright?

My idea is for a full-length game, with stages. It would combine shooting and 'scraping', but scraping would rack in more points overall than shooting would. It's definitely closer to your friend's idea than, say, Psyvariar; I like your friend's idea of scraping as a necessity for attacking.

Just wanna make sure it's alright to incorporate his idea into my eventual game. ^^

Am I invisible or what?

Game mechanics can't be patented or anything like that. So, you can rip it regardless of what I'm thinking about it. Like everyone can make his own tetris, but you cant call it tetris (or *tris in this case actually), because the name is trademarked.

So, yea... I allow you that (I cant disallow it anyways... heh).

Just one thing... be sure to spend some time with prototyping. There are so many things you can do differently/better. Especially if you dont have to watch the filesize.

Btw I also want to do a bigger n better version and there will be at least on character/ship, which can actively shoot. Well, I dont really know anything else about it at this stage. Dont even know if that will turn out as well as I thought.

---

One a side note... I added some more pattern and managed to save some more bytes with the help of BJWFlate and zipmix, which means that I can add about 3 pattern more.

I'll post again once its online.

[CMoon]

Oh, I think people are seeing you, and in general are really happy with this game. It is great to see a game with very simple mechanics work so well (for instance, I really enjoyed the java based (I think it was java) noize2a which also required no buttons. Like this however, I wish the game could have been enlarged.

Sometimes simple really works well--some of the shmups are just getting way too complicated actually.

I think being able to shoot and have a visible ship might be very cool--especially if you worked this into a nice score system.

Here are some ideas I think could really work for your game:

-Visible ship

-Maybe the enemies can be something other than circles too? (if the enemies move that might be even better!)

-Time bonus / lives left bonus

-shooting

- +1 for every bullet that hits boss, +1 for every scrape (so you are both trying to kill the boss quickly and scrape/scratch a lot, but scratching without hitting the boss isn't worth as much

-this would require a substantially different build, but if instead of 'bosses' where each boss is a level, if the game itself was scrolling such that these boss type characters were enemies that would continue to attack until killed or scroll off the bottom of the screen.

Anyway, I hope to see your next upgrade. This is a really great start for a shooter.

[Fighter17]

This is cool.

Edit: My high score is 349,574.

[nj]

Fun game, I'm eagerly awaiting the extended version.

[landshark]

Ok, why am I the only one who cannot get this game to run?

[Dave_K.]

Ok, why am I the only one who cannot get this game to run?

Probably your JDK version. Uninstall the version you have, then click on the Java 1.4++ link in the first post and install the latest (will actually download v5 update 6...this works for me).