The first iteration of the asteroid shooter is now ready. In the latest version you can blast asteroids with your over powered lasers. There are some minor graphical issues. They will be worked out soon. Anyway, have fun and feel free to let me now what you think.

--Marc

Latest version of the game now has a minimap in the top right corner.
Try Latest Version

So far the game is very simple. In fact, it can barely be called a game. That being said here is a list of what you can do and how to do it:

Fly: Flight is controlled by the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Shoot: Yes, by popular demand, you can now shoot things. Use the spare bar or either control keys.

Debug Options:
If you are curious about how the game is put together, you can take a little peek under the hood with the following options.

Camera Zoom/Lock (C): The play area of the game is an never ending, looping space-scape. To zoom all the way out and see how the ships move around independent of the camera, hit 'c'.

Region Grid View (V): The game renders only what is within view of the view of the player's ship. This is managed by regions. To see the region's borders, hit 'v'.

Bounding boxes (B): jME debug utilities allow for easily viewing certain things. One of these is the bounding volumes of individual Nodes. Hit 'b' to see how the scenes are made. Combine this with 'v' to see how objects change nodes by moving between regions.

More to come,
--Marc

Well, its seems like everyone already has one, so why can't a video game? Yes, XSpace is now blogging. This blog will be used to inform players about new features as they are released and as a place to discuss technical issues.

I am Marc Faulise. If you don't know me, I have no idea how you found your way here. In either case, Welcome! I am the developer behind this game called XSpace. It is a hobby for me which I have begun spending all of my free time despite my girl friend's threats.

If you are interested in following the development of this game, try registering for the RSS feed here: http://lefty2shoes.com/blog/rss.php. If you're interested in learning a little about the technologies I've been using I will be occasionally posting some articles about what I have learned and some of the problems I've had. If you happen to be any of the developing members of either jME or LWJGL, thank you for your hard work.

Enjoy!

--Marc