Anatomy of a Framework

I have known for a while that I was going to use Java to develop a game to enter this years 7DRL contest. The last time I tried using Java to compete in such a contest was disastrous. I did not know how to do any graphics. That puts a cramp in your game development abilities. This time I was going to be prepared for a strong showing. Therefore I started working on a gaming engine well in advance. You could call it a framework.

I figured I could just use a toy app to develop, mature, and test my framework. That worked out pretty well. I got some good code written and tested. The problem was that the framework became highly coupled with my sample application. Now that I am trying to make use of the framework for the real thing, I find myself ripping out the example code to get at just the engine.

Note to self: create an API that is truly separate from any demos. That way I will be ready for reuse. I guess I need to put that to the test early as well. I should have created a second sample app that tried to use the framework. The issues would have been clear from the beginning.

Libjcsi to the Rescue

I have previously written about my recent exploits in the game development field. To make sure I gain Java programming skills during this exercise, I am writing the whole game in Java. So far I tried rolling my own graphics drawing code. That turned out to be difficult. Some output looked ok. Other graphics were slightly off. This was painful.

Another developer recommended that I use their graphics package libjcsi. This package covers simplifies console output for you. I tried compiling their sample program. In 10 minutes I had a graphical user interface up and running. In an hour I had a bare bones screen of my game going. I was pleasantly surprised that this package also handled keyboard input. So I quickly coded up user input to control the direction of the main character. I now got a guy running around my simple screen. Life is good.

Next I think I will try to place objects on the screen that represent gold. Then if the user walks over top the gold, I want to register that the user picked the gold up. These all seem like baby steps. But once I get the basics down, I can rocket into more complex ideas I have about my game. I will say that I still do not have the hang of Java packages. Perhaps by the time I complete my game, I will have them nailed down.