GAGE - Genuine Advantage Gaming Engine

News

Vincent van Beveren has been kind enough to share his SortedSprites class with us. This class will sort and render sprites in the Y dimension (either top to bottom or bottom to top). Check it out and see if you like it! If I get enough time, I may even consider adding it to GAGE2D. If you have something you'd like to share, email it to me and I'll add it to the Contributed Code list!

A new version of GAGE2D has been uploaded. Some of the changes:

• Bugs that prevented rectangular (vs. square) maps have been fixed.
• CollisionMap is now part of the distribution.
• A new type of sprite known as "StatefulSprite" has been added. This sprite binds together various other sprites to allow a game character a full range of actions and movements.

Please be aware that the new APIs have not been tested well. If you encounter any bugs, email me and I'll see about getting them fixed.

Added a psuedo-FAQ to this page to fend off newbie questions and help direct people to their proper destination.

Okay, I admit it. I flubbed. Durandel was nice enough to point out that I misspelled "missile" as "missle". Quite consistently too. I've updated the 2D packages as well as the docs. You might want to blow away your old copy of GAGE2D before you install the new one though. I'd hate for someone to miss the 'i' key and have it actually compile.

Added a side scrolling shooter as an example of all the APIs working together. It's a little messy since I was using it as a test platform for the APIs, but it works. Besides, I added a few comments in to point out the juicy bits. Next game will be clean code, promise. No really, I do. :-)

I think you're missing the point of GAGE. GAGE is meant to be a library that helps get a game up and going by providing code for some of the most common needs. Everything else you not only have to write yourself, but the API is *designed* that way. For example, the existing sprite classes are most likely not going to meet the needs of a real game. However, you'll notice that the Sprite class is an interface. This is so that you can plug in new sprites that are specfic to your game. It even means that you could write code to do vector sprites instead of raster sprites and still get the benefits of collsion detection!

I'm sorry, but I have limited time. There are tons of tutorials and forums to help you out. Make sure that you are first are aquainted with the JavaDocs and Java Tutorials that Sun has produced. 99% of what you need to know is already there. If you still have questions, go to JavaGaming.org or JDC Gaming Forum and search for the answer to your question.

You should almost never have to ask a question in a forum unless it is a complicated one. Why? Because all your "urgent" questions have already been answered before. Just think, you'll get your answer faster AND you won't have to bother anyone! If you still can't figure it out, post yout question and the fine folks at these forums will try to help you out.

No. For games you shouldn't need to create extra threads. Everything possible should be done inside the main thread. The WaveEngine, for example, pulls the sound rendering into the main thread. Networking can be solved by using NIO channels to read and write from as many network connections and files as necessary. Plain and simple. If you create a thread, you're most likey doing something wrong.

If you're running flat out, the input thread isn't getting any time. You should be able to fix this by using the AdvancedTimer sleep methods to lock your framerate at a reasonable level. Usually, it's best to use AdvancedTimer.sleepUntil(...) like this:

AdvancedTimer timer = new AdvancedTimer();
long sleepTime = timer.getTicksPerSecond()/60; //60 fps
long ticks = 0;
 
timer.start();
 
while(true)
{
    //draw stuff
     
    timer.sleepUntil(ticks+sleepTime);
    ticks += sleepTime;
}
 
The beautiful part about this algo is that it automatically catches up if the game falls behind. 

License? We need a license? Huh. Odd thought. Let's just call it public domain. Do whatever the heck you want with it. Go make money off of it, learn from it, whatever. Enjoy yourself! My only request is that if you use GAGE, I'd like you to shoot me an email telling me what you used it for. This isn't required, but I'd be interested in knowing what happens to GAGE and where it gets used.

Amazingly enough, this is not a bug! It's a feature! No. Really. I'm not kidding. Stop laughing!!!

Seriously, GAGETimer makes use of Thread.yield() to perform sleep operations. Its use of Thread.yield() means that any CPU time not allocated to other programs gets allocated to the timer. This allows the timer to be as precise as possible. Thread.sleep() may not return for several milliseconds past the time requested. GAGETimer returns as soon as the clock turns over. This behavior does not have a negative impact on other programs. They will still get any CPU time they request.

The GAGETimer sleep methods are not subject to the system clock drift caused by calls to Thread.sleep() with values lower than 10ms. If you've noticed that the clock on your Windows machine runs faster than all the other clocks in your house, this bug is probably why.

If you are writing a game server, it is important to avoid the GAGETimer sleep() functions. You can still use it for timing, but the sleep methods will degrade the performance of a multithreaded program.