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Today I decided that I'm going to make a game, as in a full on desktop thing that you can install and play ! My idea so far is based on this video I found



I think the dark room with the lighting looks awesome, and a top down shooter looks like an easy first project right ? Although it was an accident in this video, lighting as a game element is not something that people use very often, it's normally there just to look pretty.

Oh, if anyone is curious it's in Java using LWJGL, because Java is the only suitable language I know a the moment

Fun !

Try it Out
Download the game launcher from here http://jacekk.co.uk/Lux/LuxLauncher.jar and run it with your favourite JVM.
The launcher will handle the downloading of the necessary library files for you and will also check for updates and download those for you if there are any, good eh.

Development Screenshots

30th May 2012


3rd June 2012


7th June 2012
The screenshot looks the same so I won't bother but I have made the launcher for the game to make it easy to play and update The movement of the player has been tweaked a little and collision detection with the walls added.

9th June 2012
You can now shoot


15th June 2012
Playing around with some lighting and GLSL shaders (which are not simple )


19th June 2012
Threw out my old lighting code and did something entirely custom in GLSL, you have to do this to have more than 8 lights on screen WTH !


20th June 2012
This is what lights are actually meant to look like I think. It looks a bit flat because there are no shadows yet. Most importantly it's not fixed in world space rather than being a random glow in the corner of the screen. I also made the mouse wheel control the level zoom.


2 November 2012
After a very long break from the project I found some time to work on it a bit. Mostly I have been working on collision detection and the movement of the player which is not really nice I've also added textures to all of the faces so it can hopefully start looking like the thing in my head soon.

I did a similar thing but I also did it in C++ a few years ago.
It was pretty cool, except when I broke it and when you touched the walls it crashed...

EcazS wrote: except when I broke it and when you touched the walls it crashed...

Pretend it was deliberate, ultimate death

Cool idea
I did a project similar to this in Visual C#. It had a forced sideways movement though, similar to the old Super Mario games. I too accidentally destroyed the source files which made the game glitch badly. Never got around to re-doing it.

First thing that comes to mind when thinking of a name is Luminus or Lux or something similar like that.

Please do keep us updated on your progress. I love seeing different stages of development

Lux is pretty cool ! I will rename my folder !

It's really frustrating to have exams at the moment, I keep thinking of ways to do the coordinate system and want to code it but then I have to read something about how lasers work instead.

I can't post a screenshot, but I managed to make the wall blocks 3D and the perspective work nicely so that you can see more of the wall for the far away ones. OpenGL is awesome

I will have to take a look at OpenGL. I've heard so much about it but never actually bothered to check it out.

Also, lasers are cool!

Games are fun.

They sure are!

Temor wrote:Also, lasers are cool!

Laser weapons are also pretty easy to animate since nobody really expects them to bounce off things

I would expect a laser to bounce off some things But they are generally pretty easy to animate indeed.

Temor wrote:I would expect a laser to bounce off some things But they are generally pretty easy to animate indeed.

bricks ?

I was thinking more like mirrors or very reflective glass panes, or maybe even extremely shiny metal.

Bricks? BRICKS?!

I don't even know what to say...

EcazS wrote:Bricks? BRICKS?!

I don't even know what to say...

Hmm, we need a "+1" rep button.

Temor wrote:I was thinking more like mirrors or very reflective glass panes, or maybe even extremely shiny metal.

I will make the wall textures not those things, problem solved

jacek wrote:Hmm, we need a "+1" rep button.

Yes we do.

jacek wrote:I will make the wall textures not those things, problem solved

That seems very wise.

It now looks like this



I think the next think might be some textures

That layout is physically impossible, unless the walls aren't vertical (at 90deg to the floor) because top and bottom has the slants there;)

Messes with my head

bowersbros wrote:That layout is physically impossible, unless the walls aren't vertical (at 90deg to the floor) because top and bottom has the slants there;)

Haha, that's the perspective correction. It's 3D, makes more sense when you move it around and will look better with lighting and textures.

I might upload a version that you can play with as an applet actually. Would be cool to keep a record like that.

jacek wrote:I might upload a version that you can play with as an applet actually. Would be cool to keep a record like that.

That'd be cool, if the first post was the applet, so we could try it out

I don't think you can embed a Java applet in the forum, but I can put a link to page with it on

Really does not do very much at the moment though

jacek wrote:but I can put a link to page with it on

Do it! Do it naow!