Coke And Code - Java Games and Games Development blogs

Watch This

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:35:43 +0000

Eye opening
Exciting
Scary
Motivating

Pegggggggggggy!

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:48:20 +0000

My second entry for the 2009 Java 4K contest is ready to play. It's called Keggle after the the game that it's based on, Peggle.

You can either play it via Webstart here or go over to the Keggle Website to play as an applet and get some extra info.

Woo hoo for 4k games, it's so much fun!

Trucking Trucking Trucking.... get those...

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:49:16 +0000

Got my first 4k game out of the way. The aim was to:

a) Implement a 4K game to get going, I like to write more than one for each contest.
b) Write a physics system from scratch instead of porting and extending others work
c) Have fun

The first game has worked out ok, check out 4x4k. It's a simple terrain climbing truck game, balance the truck as it goes up steep slopes and complete the courses as quickly as possible. It's not turned out as fun as I'd hoped but it was a good test case for building the physics engine.

So, I used that verlet physics stuff to build a simple response simple based on primitive line/circle collision detection. The world is spatially culled, constraints are supported, restitution and friction all work correctly. I set the arbitrary goal of getting the basic physics fitting under 2k leaving 2k for the game. It came in at about 2.2k, so I had room to make the game look pretty (for a 4k entry).

All in all, a) check, b) check, c) check. Don't think it's a winner, but on to the next entry!

Games to make you feel fat and stupid

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 21:35:50 +0000

Two new games entered the house here this Christmas. The first, Wii Fit, is a lot of fun but is essentially designed to encourage you to keep playing by calling you fat and old and indicating that if you keep playing you'll soon be a fit hunky bodied player. The second, Big Brain Academy, is a set of brilliant implemented mini-games. However, it's premise is to call you stupid at the start and then tell you if you keep playing you'll be a rocket scientist within a few weeks.

Now, I've read and understand a bit about hooks in game design. It's interesting stuff, but I never thought anyone would take it to this extent. It's a bit of shame that the positive games (and they are positive games) have to start with this hack at the player.

That said, they're both wonderful games and I heartly recommend them. Those two, and World of Goo - which I've just downloaded via the wonderful WiiWare system. Beautiful game.

Nadolig Llawen

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:11:26 +0000

Happy Christmas everyone and to Jasper Nadolig Llawen.

Pics are on my webpage.

I hope everyone had a great day, we certainly did. This has to have been my best Christmas ever and I owe it all to my Meggie. She was fantastic and had such a good time. We woke up quite late for Meg which is always a treat. Meg went and looked for her stocking and realised that Santa had been and got very excited. She went and woke up Uncle Kris who arrived the day before and we all went downstairs and opened our stockings together. Actually I think Meg opened everyone's stockings for them.

I'm not sure that Uncle Kris will want to be here on Christmas morning again as Meg wouldn't leave him alone. He was shattered after being bossed around by her all day. He napped for longer than Meg!!!! I think he secretly loved it though and it was obvious that Meg loved it. She didn't want Mammy or Daddy, only Uncle Kris was good enough.

We all stuffed our Christmas dinner as you would expect and then back to playing with toys with Meg. My family came down after lunch and stayed for the afternoon and evening. I'm amazed that we got 9 people around our dining table. THe room is big enough but the table is small. We spent the evening playing with either Meg's toys or the Wii fit that Santa brought for me. We tried weighing Meg on it and she jumped off before it finished so the Wii thinks that she is a 3 foot talk anorexic and adjusted her Mii accordingly!!! I have to say I haven't had so much fun in ages. Oh and I suck just as bad at skiing in virtual reality as I do in reality!! But then I did ace the tight rope walking.

So now I'm enjoying a bit of peace while Meg naps and Kev and Kris play on the Wii. Happy Boxing Day to everyone as well. We'll be going to my parents place for the evening in a bit when it will all start again. I'm going to be exhausted after all this, but very happy. I think I know why people have kids now, its to make Christmas worth while again. I love my Meggie.

Happy New Year everyone.

Walkin' in the winter wonderland

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:56:27 +0000

Having Meg really does make this time of year feel festive. We had a lovely time last night. I wrote the Christams cards for the neighbours and after dark Kev, Meg and I went out to post them. Meg was wearing her fur coat that nanny got for her and really looked the part. We ambled around the street and Meg posted the cards through the letter boxes for me. She thought it was fantastic especially as we picked up Toby (next door's cat) along the way and he followed us around.

In our neck of the woods it seems that about 70% of the houses are lit up with a variety of lights this time of year. Meg was having a good time and commented on all the lights so we walked around a few streets so she could have a real close look at all the different lights. So we had Meg wrapped up warm in her fur coat swinging between mine and kev's arms while singing Twinkle Twinkle at the top of her voice!!

I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year. Meg is old enough to kind of get it and she's certainly going to make it for us. Kris is arriving tomorrow and staying a few days. Meg loves to have him around because she seems to be able to wrap all the men around her little finger, just ask Uncle Bob!

So all the shopping is done. the presents wrapped and under the tree (which seems to be bigger than last year's some how, even though it's the same tree!!), all our stockings are ready to hang out for Santa (including Kris')and we all have new pjs for Christmas eve. The food is all in and the cooking starts today. And for radio 1, yes I can and do make my own gravy and I don't understand how people fail to do it!! Interesting piece of news on the radio yesterday.

I decorated the kitchen as well as I guess I'll be spending a fair bit of time in there as I'll be doing Christmas lunch for 4 and tea for 9 people. We just got our bird freshly killed off the farm today. Kev has done a couple dozen mince pies and has some cookie dough in the fridge for tomorrow. On Christmas eve we sit down with Meg and make Santa his cookies. Maybe she'll even leave them uneaten this year! And of course there's a carrot for Rudolph and a glass of milk to wash down the cookies. This is purely because Santa mustn't be seen to be drink-flying and has nothing to do with Meg drinking it for him!

One step closer

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:30:41 +0000

Things seem to be progressing well with our plans to move to Aus. We've put together a time frame for things to happen and it seems that somehow we are ahead of ourselves. After all our research and finally deciding on Adelaide Kev has thrown a spanner in the works and opened the door back to California for us. It seems that we have some careful thinking to do over the next few months before we pay out any more money on visas for Aus.

We really like the sound of Aus and I'm still swaying that way but we also know CA really well and know exactly what we would be letting ourselves in for. I guess it's the safer option. We could even live in Davis where we were before.

We were looking at the property market in Davis and CA in general. We can get a house twice as nice in Davis (which is supposed to be expensive and quite exclusive) for half the cost of our current house. That's just absurd! Although we had a really nice apartment complete with pool and gym last time we were out there and that was considered 'good enough for students'. It's pretty much the same in Adelaide except that money goes even further there.

This is all really exciting. I guess we'll have to see what happens over the next few months and see which we go for.

Start Your 4k Engines!

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:46:57 +0000

It's nearly time again, the Java 4K 2009 Competition is just round the corner (it starts in Decemeber). In this epic battle the residents of the Java game development community come together to test the mettle by creating gaming masterpieces in JARs that come in at or less than 4,096 bytes!

The contest runs for three months and is judged by a distinguished set of judges (normally also from the community). In past years there have been awards for different facets of the games (technical, visual etc). It's not quite clear whats happening this year yet but I'm sure it'll be the normal crop of varying quality with some incredible gems.

And yes... I'm hoping to actually enter the year. Woo Hoo!

Test Cases

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:43:20 +0000

I recently got asked why I always ask for a test case when I'm presented with a bug on the Slick forums - is it a diversionary tactic or is there an actual reason? Well, first, yes, diversion is key. If someone really can't be bothered to create a test case it's not that important to them - I don't get much time so need to prioritize :)

More importantly, it's how I work when trying to solve bugs. I tend to try and boil the faulty use case down into a single class that demonstrates the issue. Then start tweaking the implementation and adding debug (or debugging) to determine whats going on.

So.. yes, it really is useful to have a test case. However, the more complicated the test case the less useful it becomes.

And.. so far... it's working out pretty well. Most people are happy to give a test case and it nearly always makes it pretty quick to solve the problem. Thanks all! :)

The Drugs don't Work

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:39:49 +0000

For various reasons I've been pretty stressed lately, unfortunately meaning I've not been sleeping more than an hour or two a night. Apart from being extremely unhealthy, it's made me pretty non-functional in the day. So.. I went to the see the doctor who as they tend to do, provided me with tablets to solve the problem.

Unfortunately, they don't work very well. I'm told the way they're supposed to work is to relax you before sleep, to quiet the mind as it were, allowing you to drop off naturually and sleep through. They worked pretty well for a day but since I've just been stuck with the mind spinning, stomach churning restlessness in bed... waiting to fall asleep.

I've tried warm milk, I've tried sleeping downstairs, I've tried tiring myself out playing with Meg - but to no avail. Maybe I need to go back to coding all night.. talking of which...

Pyjama party

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:05:27 +0000

I have another 30 minutes of quiet time before the Megster (conjunction of Meggie Monster) is back and all the chaos that she brings. Meg spent the night with my parents last night while Kev and I enjoyed a night in with a takeout and bottle of wine in front of children in need. Oh, why didn't we use their website to donate to children in need before? It was so much easier than going to the bank or trying to get through on the phone lines. Doh!

We had a nice relaxing evening and it was great not to have the bed time battles and constant running up and down the stairs to put little miss back to bed. The night before we went to bed and found Meg asleep on our bedroom floor!! Now she can open doors so doesn't stay in her room. I hope she wasn't the same for my parents, although generally she's better behaved up there. I imagine that they were all tucked up in bed together this morning watching tv while drinking their respective cups of tea or bottle of milk.

Meg has been asking to sleep at Nanny's for the last few weeks. It's not exactly subtle when she climbs up the stairs and tries to get into their bed. That and she creates merry hell when it's time to leave. So as she hadn't stayed for a while I picker her up from nursery early yesterday and after she packed her teddy and Tigger into her overnight bag off we went. Now it's time to have her back. Never mind. Hopefully they have worn her out!!

Watch out Meggie, we're coming to get you! Have a big cwtch ready for Mammy.

Ignite Cardiff

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:27:06 +0000

Got this at work from a friend, looks pretty interesting. If you're in the South Wales area and interested in technology at all I'd pop along:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only had 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?

Around the world, web enthusiasts, creatives and entrepreneurs have been putting together Ignite nights in answer to this question and now Cardiff Web Scene and Nocci are bringing Ignite to the UK.

Join us at Sodabar at 6.30pm on Wednesday 3 December. Entry is FREE and you don't need a ticket. Thanks to Skillset Cymru, there will also be some free nibbles so why not come along?

If you want to take part simply send an email to hello@cardiffwebscene.com letting us know what you want to talk about and we'll get back to you if your submission is successful.

For more information about the event please visit www.cardiffwebscene.com or www.noccinet.com.

The Ignite community is sposored by O'Reilly.

She's a little potty

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:20:53 +0000

It's been a wonderful day and it's all down to Meg being amazing. The first thing that made me laugh was driving to work. Both kev and I drive down the same dual carriage way for a bit on the way to work and Meg of course is in the car with Kev. Well this morning we were a bit late and got stuck in traffic. At one point I was alongside kev's car and I looked over to see Meg waving furiously at me from the back of Kev's car. Apparently after I drove on she was shouting 'Daddy! Drive!' and pointing after me. Kev had to explain that the car in front was in the way.

Today was Meg's first day of potty training in nursery. We postponed it for a couple of weeks because she has been really ill but she seems to be really up for it now.

We packed her bag last night with plenty of spare knickers, trousers and socks. She wants to be a big girl now like her friend Charlotte who she's been watching on the potty for a while. Monkey see... and she's certainly a monkey!

Well I wasn't expecting her to use the potty successfully today but she surprised us and actually did it. There were a couple of accidents as well and she didn't manage to hold it in the car on the way home. But hey, it's a lot better than either of us expected on her first day.

Bow down to Meggie.

By this evening though she was tired and couldn't be bothered any more. She wanted her nappy back on and then pretty much took herself to bed.

Windows vista

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:18:42 +0000

When I recently bought a new laptop, I was forced to upgrade to windows vista as you can't ask for XP anymore. I thought, ok, it wasn't a problem last time and I went for it.

My first impressions of vista are pretty much the same as I think of MacOsX. It might look swish but it has counter intuitive functionality. I'm getting used to it but it really is clunky. I also bought office as the last version I bought was, well far to old to admit really. I haven't faired very well there either. After knowing office inside out and being an advanced user (apparently) I find myself once again looking for the most basic functions. It's no wonder my work place are reluctant to upgrade. It would cost them a fortune in lost man hours while we all get used to the nice looking but useless interface.

In short, if I had wanted a mac I would have bought one. Come on microsoft, don't alienate loyal consumers.

They're moving to Flash, here's why...

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:47:35 +0000

This article (and it's subsequent parts) make interesting reading no matter on which side of the fence you stand. It fits in with some of the stuff I'm experimenting with at the moment - flash/flex development.

It's all pretty exciting to me at least. The last time I posted about Flash vs Java my attitude was pretty much if you want to write simple web games with loads of accessibility use the right tool (i.e. flash) rather than spending a lot of extra time trying to make things work.

That was, of course, based on just thought. I had a very limited experience of flash development. I've got a little bit more (still not much) but I have at least released stuff to the community and tried to sell stuff on. So far, it's much easier experience.

I posted this over at JGO and it's stimulated some pretty interesting conversation. The most poignant comment to me was this:

Pick your goals and market, then pick a technology that fits.

Right now, it's all just still an interesting experiment.