The blog has now moved!

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Breakout returns, now with flashy colours!

I got up after a very nice lie in. This was the first Thursday in about 4 months where I had not had to go in for a 3 hour lab. I spent most of the day programming Java, some of it was spent playing DotA and even less was spent running WoA. Java. Well, Java itself is great, the language is fairly easy to understand, there don't appear to be a large number of stupid things about it. The key difference between it and C (what I did last year) is that it's called "Object Orientated Programming" or OOP. C on the other hand is, okay, I don't know what it's called but it's pretty linear. The 1st Semester of Year 2 was all about OOP, I was already mostly familiar with it and as such, I feel very comfortable with it. Alas, I have vast numbers of problems with it. Specifically, they're all related to drawing graphics in Java. I don't know why, but I find I come across many many problems the moment I put in a user interface. As such, one of my suggestions to Ioannis (I think I got the name right this time) will be that in the 2nd Semeseter to have a choice of project that doesn't need a GUI. I think that despite the problems it has given me, learning how Java creates a user interface is important as I believe other languages use a method that's not too dissimilar. Anyhoo, enough about the problems that mysteriously crop up for me and onto the improvements for V0.5 - Download from here - Ioannis mode now works, I wanted to make it activate with a key-press but alas, it just won't work and I think I've exhausted every possibility - There are now unlimited numbers of levels - The fonts are now of various sizes - A proper win sequence (sort of) Also, my last exam is on the 7th of the 6th, my first is on the 21st of the 5th. I'll have a pretty timetable for them up tomorrow or sometime later.

2 comments:

Tim H said...

Heya tei!

The breakout game is good... especially Ioannis mode which was entertaining. :P

To run it on a PC you need to have java installed and then do a command prompt.
Then navigate to the folder where you put the '.class' files and then type 'java breakoutProgram' (without the quotes)
If it doesn't work then java is not installed properly.

Tim

Teifion said...

I've found a way to create a .jar file, with the next release which will mean you don't need to do that, in the meantime however you will have to. Thanks for the information on how to.

Glad to hear you like Ioannis mode :)