Slick - 2D Game Library based on LWJGL

Games using Slick

Kevin Glass — Sat, 10 May 2008 22:29:27 GMT

It's been a while since I checked around. Here's a list of games that are complete using Slick (a couple are mine of course).

Highnoon Remake

Mootox 2D Truck Racing

Cute Planet Puzzle

SlickRocket

SpiderTrap

HarryPotter Quiz

Spark

If you know or any others, let me know!

Distance Field Generation

Kevin Glass — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:30:44 GMT

Recently one of the regulars from JGO, OrangyTang, showed some fantastic work using a technique invented by the wonder Valve, see details on the post

Essentially it allows you to scale stuff up from tiny images, maintaining some pretty convincing detail levels. The magic is in another image thats generated from a big version of the image, storing alpha values describing the detail. As you can tell I don't really understand it, but with Orangy's help and a bit of code I've added generation of these fields into Hiero. You get this sort of result with low quality settings:

Ok, so why is this better than using true type fonts and generating them at run time. Well, it's not generically better - there are cases for both - the pro's of this are pretty compelling tho:

1) No generation at startup
2) Much lower use of graphics card resources
3) Fonts can be scaled up and down without regeneration

Great feature. Many thanks to the hard work of the folks at Valve and of course the Tang.

I'm still wondering whether we can get it to support a texture rather than the plain old image and of course whether it's possible to get back some antialiasing.

Moved to LWJGL 2.0b

Kevin Glass — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:29:54 GMT

Slick has moved over to LWJGL 2.0b. This was for various reasons, but mainly to pick up the great work thats being done on making applets more viable.

See the forums for more details.

Platformer Example

Kevin Glass — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:19:11 GMT

The platformer example is now commented up and tidied up to a much more useful state. The src is now browseable (and SVNable) here:

https://bob.newdawnsoftware.com/repos/slick/trunk/SlickPlatformer/

You can also get it as a zip here

Documentation Effort

Kevin Glass — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:40:18 GMT

So, there's a whole bunch of games being written and more people are slowly coming on board to try out Slick with their projects. Thats great!

However, theres now a whole list of things that needs doing to support these folks. The primary goal at the moment is documentation and examples. There's been a small tank scrolling example for a long time which users have found useful, but we're starting to get into more interesting areas now..

First, thanks to the community members who have decided to get involved and start adding to the wiki in the sections that they're either using or feeling needs some expanding. Great job guys! It's really appreciated.

Second, last night I found some time (around that Applet game, network library, slick updates and real life (tm)) to knock together a platformer example making use of Phys2D with slick. At the moment it's not optimisied and the code needs lots of expanding - but it's a start. I'm planning to update it again over the next few days to resolve the remaining issues where possible and document what the problems are and how they might be approached.

Enough text, an image speaks 1000 words:

It's available to try via Webstart. The source code is available but you'll need to get slick and phys2d yourself. Remeber also that this is just a first cut (and evening's hacking) so it'll get cleaner and more interested soon.

Time Ticks On..

Kevin Glass — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:47:03 GMT

Slick is progressing nicely, we've a great body of useful and productive code which is slowly becoming stable. However, since there's a set of new games on the way we may see the code base growing and new feature adds in the near future. This might make the rest unstable again for a while, but it'll be better in the long run...

Honest ;)

Anyway, let me know if you're working on anything cool or need any new features (since we're in that mode anyway) let us know.

Internal/Infernal Refactor

Kevin Glass — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:12:12 GMT

Spent a few hours yesterday refactoring how the internal code works for OpenAL and OpenGL. This is to allow the core of slick to be used as a utility library for LWJGL development outside of using Slick as a whole.

This has now produced a new artefact, slick-util, thats a library of stuff that Slick uses internally to load textures and audio. This might be useful to some one. The javadoc for this package can be found here:

Slick Util JavaDoc

Interesting new API for simplicty includes these two:

AudioLoader
TextureLoader

The packages (JAR and distribution) are available here

Here comes Star Trek

Kevin Glass — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 19:39:09 GMT

One of the Slick users is working on a great looking game, take a look!

Great stuff!

Pack U Like

Kevin Glass — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 18:55:27 GMT

In the past I've used the Image Packer to pack my sprites into sheets. Unfortunately it doesn't want to maintain the alpha of my sprites in the latest project.

After hunting around for 3 hours I still couldn't find an alternative, so guess what - I wrote a primitive but good enough version:

It's in SVN, will be in the next release.

Transitions

Kevin Glass — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:52:48 GMT

The Slick transitions package has been in there since the start, it allows visual effects as you transition between states in your game. There has never been much in there, I'd always assumed the people would use it, build their own and submit them back. Seems it was a bit too open ended - meaning too complicated. So, I've updated the package to have a few more features and set of example transitions for "cooler" effects.

Check them out here:

Transitions Test

Press space to transition through the states.

CSG in 2D

Kevin Glass — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 07:15:04 GMT

Just started on a feature inspired by Drag and Don on #lwjgl. This new stuff lets you cut one shape from another, it still doesn't deal with completely enclosed holes but at least it'd be pretty cool for destroyable physical environments!

Updates - Build #178

Kevin Glass — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:07:32 GMT

So, whats been going on? Well, I forgot to update the blog here for one thing! :)

Slick continues to progress, the whole thing has slowed down a bit at the moment as the code gets beaten and reshaped into something more stable and complete. Users keep on coming and it's getting really interesting to see what's coming up.

There are of course some new features popping, most recent being some path finding support and some new game types that allow you to rescale your game without having to think about it. It's all good! :)

SVG supports has been improved with several users using it as there level format now - this seems to be a real trend since it allows us to make use of the great and powerful Inkscape.

Slick is in a test and fix mode atm, but as always it can always do with suggestions of appropriate features that get 2D game developers to the game itself faster and faster!

Alpha Maps

Kevin Glass — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:33:16 GMT

Just added some alpha mapping support. It's done using the framebuffer rather than multi-texturing at the moment. We'll have to see how it works out.

You can now paint into the alpha buffer using the shapes and image drawing stuff. You can then switch mode and paint with a texture or shapes based on the alpha values you painted... get it... hmm.. maybe a picture:

So, the image of the left was drawn normally. The image on the right was draw over an alpha map with a pattern on it. Nice weird effects ahoy!

Scalable Vector Graphics

Kevin Glass — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 20:17:56 GMT

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a xml format for describing vector based images - i.e. stuff made out of geometry. Several times in the past I've used this format for defining levels where a game isn't based on tiles or entities, but rather geometry. This is often the case when a game is physics based.

Slick has just grown a rudimentry SVG loader. The loader can read the basic geometry nodes and create appropriate data objects (including Slick geometry objects) for the SVG. Additionally there's a simplist renderer that attempts to render the geometry using the normal fill/draw methods from Slick. It's a useful addition that hopefully will grow into a more complex implementation with time. However, the stuff that's in there now supports loading levels as complex as seen in Mootox.

It's also capable of rendering the the LWJGL logo SVG, albeit with some issues. Note that there arn't any holes in the small letters under the main logo. This is due to a triangulation issue which is being worked on:

Abstract Input System

Kevin Glass — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:37:29 GMT

The RFE for an abstract input system has been hanging around since the project was started. It's finally been implemented and I think it's pretty cool.

The central class, InputProvider, allows you to bind abstract physical device controls (keyboard, mouse or game controller) to arbitrary objects which implement Command. When one of the input sources triggers an event is fired indicating that a command should be enacted.

In my case this allows me to seperate the game commands from the configured controls - it also allows me to set up configuration for gamepad and keyboard control in Mootox without having to fiddle about in the central code.

It's a nice simple feature, and a great addition! :)

Slick Gradients

Kevin Glass — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 23:22:42 GMT

Lots of stuff going on, lots of games being produced (Fantasy Tales Online, Spark, Project Europa, Mootox ;)). Some great extensions pushing through (SUI, SlickSet).

Latest feature add is Gradients, so simple to get nice effects: