Java4K judging results: 3rd and 4th place!

Turns out my Java4K entries for this year were quite successful: Farmer John and the Birds 4k (91,7%) got to third place, and Wizzy 4K (90,3%) to the fourth place. Galactic Conquest 4K – II (79,7%) got to a respectable 19th place out of 68 entries this year. Here’s some quotes from the judge’s reviews that make me a very happy Grunnt:

Probably one of the most graphically pleasing 4K game I’ve seen. This game is a perfect example what you can do with colors and shapes, and if anyone is looking for how to do graphics in 4k, just look at this game. Doing a gradient background doesn’t require many bytes. If I didn’t know better I wouldn’t suspect this being a 4k game. (Arni Arent (appel))

Hahaha this game brought a smile to my face as I tried to kill “those little buggers”! I love the farmer’s mutterings and the cute little birds and the fitting sound effects! I was almost cursing myself with every single time I missed a shot. No problems or complaints found after almost 20 minutes of playing this! Excellent job! (Roi Atalla (ra4king))

See the judging results here. There’s a lot of other interesting games and concepts here, worth a look. The winner, Flywrench4k, for example is a very cool new game concept, try it out!

Constellation Control update

After working on my Java4K games for a while, I’ve now switched back to Constellation Control development. The direction I was going in with Constellation Control was rapidly adding more complexity, which started to become unmanageable for a team of this size (i.e. me) and not what I had in mind when starting out with the project.

So I decided to refactor the whole game code, and switch to the LibGDX framework instead of Slick2D. Slick2D isn’t maintained very actively anymore, and I started running into some issues that turned out to be hard to resolve without delving deep into the library code. So instead I switched to LibGDX, which as an added bonus means that I now develop simultaneously for Windows and Android! (and possibly in the future an easy port to Linux, Mac, iOS) The game has been significantly simplified along the way, but not any less fun.

User-interface wise this is an interesting challenge: how to make a UI that works well both on mouse & keyboard and on touchscreen interfaces? So far this turns out to be quite doable, and developing for a touchscreen forces me to keep the UI simple, which was the plan all along anyway.

Visit the Constellation Control page to find out more.

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Inspiration

It seems my entry to last year’s Java4K competition has inspired someone! This year a new entry named ‘tiny_world‘ was created by dapo, a JGO forum member. He says:

The game was inspired by this post about random terrain generation, plus a couple of great little strategy games from previous J4K contests, especially this one from Grunnt (I hope you don’t mind). - dapy

Well, I definitely don’t mind; I think this is awesome! It’s a great little game, and I’m happy to have offered someone a little inspiration.

Feedback is Fun

Making a game for the Java4K tiny games contest is an excellent way for me to try my hand at some different types of games, and see what challenges are involved in each of them. Apart from the learning experience and experimenting with different game types, it turns out that another positive aspect of participating is that nice people giving positive feedback gives me a nice boost in confidence. Maybe I will be able to make a “real” game that is really fun to play some day :-)

I’ve also posted my Java4K games on Java-Gaming.org, a great community forum for anyone involved in or interested in game development. Here’s some of the positive feedback I got there on Galactic Conquest 4K:

   ”I got hooked for a couple hours…..wow. Good job!”

   ”I already liked the version from last year, and it happened again: I’ve lost several hours to this game… Thanks!”

   ”Awesome!”

   ”Really cool game this one, and only 4K. Excellent!:)”

   ”I’m really impressed ! It is the most addictive 4k game I ever play !”

And on Farmer John and the Birds 4K:

   ”Simple but very polished game. Nice work.”

   ”Great stuff. This just oozes style.”

   ”Your take on the so annoying a***y birds is original and really welcome ! One of the best design I have seen in a java 4K game. And I like the gameplay too. Simple and efficient.”

And finally on Wizzy4K:

   ”Wow! That’s nice! I like the graphics And the gameplay also. Good work!”

   ”This looks fantastic. There is absolutely no feel of something missing despite the size restriction. Game-play is nice, graphics and sound really go well together.
Well done.”

   ”Very elegant presentation and mechanics”

Now all three are very simple games, and there’s a lot more impressive games on the Java4K site. But it really is fun to get feedback like this, especially it turns out people actually do play these games :-)