Android Game API, 2 Projects Off the Ground, Java FX in JEMS

Well, I haven't seen this blog for quite some time but it seems about right for an update and to get back to this as its an exciting time. I've been working pretty consistently over the past 8 months and its kind of hard to believe that(besides school) so much has been done... I had a beta build of Color Shafted finished during the summer, ported JEMS to Android and improved it vastly, adding mixed functionality between the Android UI and the Game Engine. Also, I have finished my seminar project which was Chinese Poker Online... it was the most interesting thing I could get approved, and although it didn't quite get to a public release, it is a fully functional game in Android built from the ground up : ) Its too bad that it can't be sold because of the school's Copyright over seminar projects.. ahh well.

On another good note, there is an official website for a company that I'm launching called WhateverSoft(Yeah haha, another thing I had to do as part of school was to pick up some web development experience.. although I suck but I have an awesome partner, Mr Choyos to re-design it : )). It's a good start though! I haven't uploaded the database although I did find hosting so the site isn't up yet.. but here is a screen of it:

So, for the next few weeks I'm on vacation, and(besides getting some sanity :P), I'm going to be exploring the Java FX 2.0 API to build on the JEMS engine which will help with 2 things: we will have portability between Android and all other platforms on the desktop, and then another benefit will be to have a much nicer UI with vector based elements.

Happy Holidays, by the way :D

~Rob

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PS: Here are some videos of what I've been working on through this time of neglect xP

Chinese Poker Online for Android Seminar Presentation:


Color Shafted Progress Video(will be re-done with new API and help from Choyos for new art : ))

OCJP

Alright well, it has been a really busy week. There is a little bit of progress on J.E.M.S. and Color Shafted. Last week after making that post, I got JARs to compile -- which means I can now send my artists work which would be much better for collaboration : ) Besides that, my friend EJ sent me something that would make for a pretty good logo for Color Shafted and Ed sent me some better-looking Color Blocks. I also did some other minor work and uh... I don't even remember what it was now lol.

But yeah, at the beginning of last week I decided to completely drop everything and just focus on getting certified once and for all. And as a result? Well, I'm now an "Oracle Java Certified Professional"! Hopefully better at Java too. Thank god; I was reading almost daily for it for 3 months. The only bad thing is I don't want to see Java now lol. I put in about 30 hours last week of studying(mostly on the weekend) so I'm burnt out as hell. Anyway gonna skip the gym for the day. Try to recooperate and get my sanity back. Speaking of that, I'm going to continue working on this but probably not so much since school work is going to get harder and I don't want to go on vacation as a mess. Anyway, I'll keep you all updated on things.

Autosaving Leaderboards, Blog Make Over

It's been a productive day here. This is a small update but (local) Leaderboards now support saving and loading. In ColorShafted, the leaderboards  auto-save. Besides that I played with the layout of this blog a bit, things are looking a bit sexier now : )

Some Optimizations

Alright so, not too much this week. Was really caught up with midterms this past week and studying for the Java certification... along with whatever else happens on weekends when you want your sanity. Anyway. Some good news, I've been trying to apply some of the specific stuff I've been learning that I've gotten from studying for the SCJP and I made a few things more efficient. Theres now an animation lookup table using a HashMap, this speeds things up as all of the objects load from the same pool of animations(that are created at the game's instantiation) rather than creating a new Animation object in memory along with all of the images at run-time. Its a very minor performance hit because of the act of actually looking up the animation references but this only occurs once and eliminating so many objects at runtime definitely outweighs the negatives.

Besides that, another small optimization fix: I've replaced Strings with StringBuilders where it made sense. In Java this helps a lot since regular String objects store all objects in a String pool which is really inefficient in a constantly changing environment like a game or multimedia app.

Unfortunately, I STILL can't compile testable versions. Something about the way Eclipse loads resources from .JAR files. I'm going to try to find a professor who knows; my current programming professor doesn't use eclipse or know much about graphics... ah well. whatever. It will happen really soon. In the meantime, theres a lot that can be done.

LeaderBoards

Got a bit of work done today. Just messing around with creating Leader Boards -- Spanish Soap Opera style tonight. Oh yeah.

(Also note: this isn't seriously what it's going to look like. Just programming functionality here lol :) So yes I am super aware that its ugly)

Saving and loading isn't supported at the moment but I'll add this next and the Windows version will definitely have an auto-save feature for high scores. Hopefully with a little PHP magic later down the line and finding a dedicated server there'll be online competitive high score boards too.

J.E.M.S.

Allriightt.. so its been a while. I actually forgot that I have this place here :)

Well, I've surprisingly done what I've set out to do for the last 2 months. Since then I've gotten a lot better at Java. I've actually not been trying to rush through things, trying to go with the flow of everything. Also, during the process of learning Java and working on originally a "game engine", I've created an extensible sound/graphics/interactive system called Java Extensible Multimedia System, or Jems(which I'll be using from now on). Basically, it is a system of basic Java classes that are related to each other and can be extended to build entire games without anything besides a good understanding of the Java language. So far, it uses the basic Java language and the Java Swing and Java2D API and as far as I know at the moment should be fully portable to Android when complete!  Also(thankfully!), I've gotten it approved to be my senior project next year : ) May even have an open source release sometime in September.

working with Jems on a videogame project in Eclipse : )
(you can see some of the basic classes that are used to instantiate everything in games so far in the Project Explorer)

Besides that, I have a project I'm working on that I have been thinking about for some time called "Color Shafted!" which is a real time puzzle game. I would provide specific details on the gameplay, but I hope to release this soon so I'll be making these posts private in the meantime.
But hey, here's a screen shot(And the graphics WILL be revamped, right now the focus is really on the programming side of things until Ed gets some time and I get things straight ^_^)

aw yeah, colors

very makeshift menu that I programmed yesterday now that gamescenes are supported, 

background swirls

Lastly, I now own an imaginary company called "WhateverSoft". Our mission is "to make awesome stuff, whatever that may be". And after the first official release, well, will it be imaginary? Who knows : )

Also of course, I have to give all of the credit out that is due, which, really, I can't do enough of. While I can handle some design and artwork I'm not good at everything so things would not be going so well without my team : ) Anyway, for music my good friend Renee(aka DizzyUrine) will be composing a lot of techno/dubstep/dnb music in FL Studio. For art Ed("MasterRaichu") will be giving me some of his help, which I appreciate since he's a professional graphic designer : ) As for the other stuff, well I'll get by with my "Programmer Art"... lol.
There's also my friends who are super supportive of these projects that I'm working on and it wouldn't be as meaningful to work on these things without that.

Anyway, I'm hoping that for system specifications, like diagrams, lists of classes or how things work together I will have updatable postings that will be marked "Tech Document". For other things like updates, well you'll just see new blog posts. For artwork, IF i can show it(you know, I plan to sell some of this stuff), I will definitely fill you in. Anyway, at this point I'm not sure if I'm writing this for myself or if anyone is interested but thanks for reading!

~Rob

Introduction

Welcome to my development blog.

You'll probably never guess, but my name is Rob. Since I was about 10-12 years old I've been really interested in creating video games(as a hobby mostly). Well anyway, recently I took about a 5 years off from any of this stuff really to serve in the military, and now I am  a college student with enough time to get serious about this. So, I'll be keeping a blog case anyone is interested. And also because its much easier to see how far I've gotten when I'm blogging about it. Another project I had started in the summer(that unfortunately was lost, damn these harddrives) can be found at http://corruptedchaos.blogspot.com(RIP)

At the moment, I'm studying pretty routinely for the Sun Certified Java Programmer certification, and on the side I'm working on a 2D Java Game Engine(I've noticed theres quite a lack of them). The goal is to make it very versatile and scalable. Now, mine isn't going to be fancy or large scale or anything like the few in existence, but I plan to use it to make life a little easier to use in a lot of projects. And hey who knows? It may help somebody else too.

So yeah, besides all of this Java stuff I have a few other hobbies. One of the things I love most is to work out, and besides that I've started playing piano. I'm also really into techno. So yeah, you will have to forgive me if I go on a tangent sometimes when you just come to look at code-oriented stuff lol.

Anyway, thanks for visiting. Hope you'll enjoy your stay, and that you won't be bored to death : )