SpaceGame

A Simple, Networked Multiplayer Game

Game Description

This game is primarily written to be run as a Java application. You may, however, also run it as an applet. If my server is currently running, you may play the applet version with a couple of friends right now.

This is a simple game for multiple players. It reminds a bit about the good, old Asteroids arcade game, but there are no asteroids here. Instead, there are other space ships, controlled by other players. This game is useless for you if you either a) don't have any friends, or b) don't have access to a computer network (modems may be too slow). You may be able to find additional reasons for it's uselessness.

In your window, you see only a part of the world. Your ship stays centered in the view all the time. In the lower right corner is a radar display showing the entire world. A gray rectangle marks the area of the world you currently have in your window. Enemy ships appear in the radar as green dots, while weapons left by dying enemies are shown as red dots.

You ship's status is shown in the lower left corner. A ship damage meter shows how far you are from being blown completely away. If this meter goes high, you should bail out of any battle you attend to, and spend some time on you own. The ship will then slowly repair itself. There is also a bomb count in the lower left corner, along with a phaser temperature meter.

Which brings us to the weapon systems. There are two weapons available. The phaser, of which you have an unlimited supply, fire in the direction of you ship's nose. Multiple phaser hits are needed to take out an enemy. Note that the phaser cannon tends to go warm after intensive shooting. When it overheats, it will no longer work, and you'll have to wait for a while for the cannon to cool down. Initially, your ship is also equipped with a few smart, targeting bombs. These shoot-and-forget missiles will follow your closest enemy until they run out of fuel. Two to three bombs are required to destroy a fully functional enemy ship.

If your ship is destroyed while you still have bombs left, the remaining bombs are left for others to pick up.

If you're kind of a hacker (in the original sense of the word), you may be pleased to know that you may write your own robot clients using a rather well documented API... Don't tell anyone!

Screen Shot (Rather Old)

Download

You may download the game from my Java Software page.