Introducing: Jario

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Jario logoYou saw Hario, and you revelled in its technical prowess. Now, the summer (winter) blockbuster of 2011 has arrived.

Jario is a port of Hario, and is similarly a very basic Mario clone, the quintessential platformer. From Hario’s C++ and HGE, Jario is running with Java and the Slick game library, as well as the brilliant Artemis entity-component framework, and it is an exploration of how to apply such a framework to a platformer-style game.

It’s currently in its very early stages after about a week of development from scratch, but it runs, and it already has more features than Hario. And although you may not believe it when you see it, it has superior graphics as well. There is no art more noble than that of a programmer.

It’s important to note that Jario is not a game so much as a proof of technology for the foundation of a game. As features are implemented it will become more game-like, and if I ever ‘finish’ it then it will perhaps be a game, but in my eyes it is just a body of code. The good news is that I can now refer to this code as I discuss Artemis and entity-component frameworks in general, which I certainly will get around to now. Jario is just the first step on the path to bigger and better things.

As usual, you can download the Web Start or run it in your browser. In addition, since it’s basically a piece of tech, I figured I should release the source code on Bitbucket to get some feedback from those with a little more Artemis experience. Finally, for this release there’s also a bonus feature: a pretty button for launching the Web Start! Behold:

Launch Java Web Start button

NOTE: Google Chrome users (such as myself) may find this button just downloading a JNLP file rather than launching anything tangible. To resolve this, click the little down arrow next to the downloaded file on the downloads shelf (the toolbar across the bottom) and select “Always open files of this type”. This will tell Chrome to launch JNLPs automatically (as well as downloading) rather than making the user do it, just like the other browsers.

Jonathan Blow on How to Program Independent Games

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Braid image

I’ve just got done listening to a university presentation by Jonathan Blow, creator of the fantastic Braid, on his insights into independent game programming. It’s very good.

The talk is about 38 minutes with another 40 of Q&A, and he talks mostly about the “aesthetic” he maintains for being “brutally productive” the way he is required to be to create (and finish) something like Braid (with around 90,000 lines of code) by himself in just a few years.

Since it’s a talk to a group of computer science students it’s a little technical but not especially so. The key points are about not making things more complex than they need to be; effectively Keep It Simple, Stupid.

  • Avoid premature optimisation, including sophisticated algorithms and data structures, which are essentially about optimisation.
  • Don’t generalise a program more than necessary, even to the point of avoiding refactoring a 1,000 line function.
  • A “good” programmer will get things done quickly and solidly, and simply, with an emphasis on actuallygetting things done.

This is very congruent with my mentality, which is why you’re unlikely to see my writing about fancy algorithms and data structures (or the dreaded topic of “web scale“; warning, justified language). I like doing things, creating things that don’t already exist, and although I’m still relatively inexperienced I do very much hope to one day reach that point where I can put together something like Braid given a good enough idea.

Anyway, I’ve embedded the talk below (audio + slides) because I can (the embed code was provided). As an added bonus, you get to listen to him talk about The Witness (or more precisely, it’s editor) which he’s happily showing off on a different screen.