I started to make several small JavaFX game demos. I’m doing that to fell where JavaFX is good to make this sort of game and what patterns would be frequently needed to implement, where I will place a little framework for fast development of simple casual games. What I’m calling now just ‘GameFX’. My first experiment was to creating a side scrolling animation that’s is usefull to create the parallax effect in side scrolling games. For that I created the class Slidding. You create an Slidding with a set of nodes and they will slide from right to left and when a node reaches the left side it back to the right side.
You create a Slidding with a list of Nodes at content, a clock (that will determine the speed of that animation) and a width. If you don’t provide a width, the slidding will do the best effort to determine one. You can use this approach to create more complex scenarios, using more Slidding groups.
This is a example of that:
import javafx.application.*;
import javafx.animation.*;
import javafx.scene.geometry.*;
import javafx.scene.paint.*;
import javafx.scene.*;
import gamefx.Slidding;
var SCREENW = 500;
var SCREENH = 400;
/* the sky is a light blue rectangle */
var sky = Rectangle {
width: SCREENW, height: SCREENH
fill: LinearGradient {
startX: 0.0 , startY: 0.0
endX: 0.0, endY: 1.0
proportional: true
stops: [
Stop { offset: 0.0 color: Color.LIGHTBLUE },
Stop { offset: 0.7 color: Color.LIGHTYELLOW },
Stop { offset: 1.0 color: Color.YELLOW }
]
}
}
/* the ground is a olive rectangle */
var ground = Rectangle {
translateY: 300
width: 500, height: 100
fill: LinearGradient {
startX: 0.0 , startY: 0.0
endX: 0.0, endY: 1.0
proportional: true
stops: [
Stop { offset: 0.2 color: Color.OLIVE },
Stop { offset: 1.0 color: Color.DARKOLIVEGREEN }
]
}
}
/* a clod cloud is like an ellipse */
class Cloud extends Ellipse {
override attribute radiusX = 50;
override attribute radiusY = 25;
override attribute fill = Color.WHITESMOKE;
override attribute opacity = 0.5;
}
/* we create a slidding of clouds */
var clouds = Slidding {
content: [
Cloud{centerX: 100, centerY: 100},
Cloud{centerX: 150, centerY: 20},
Cloud{centerX: 220, centerY: 150},
Cloud{centerX: 260, centerY: 200},
Cloud{centerX: 310, centerY: 40},
Cloud{centerX: 390, centerY: 150},
Cloud{centerX: 450, centerY: 30},
Cloud{centerX: 550, centerY: 100},
]
clock: 0.2s
}
var SUNX = 100;
var SUNY = 300;
var rotation = 0;
/* the sun, with it's corona */
var sun = Group {
rotate: bind rotation
anchorX: SUNX, anchorY: SUNY
content: [
for (i in [0..11]) {
Arc {
centerX: SUNX, centerY: SUNY
radiusX: 500, radiusY: 500
startAngle: 2 * i * (360 / 24), length: 360 / 24
type: ArcType.ROUND
fill: Color.YELLOW
opacity: 0.3
}
},
Circle {
centerX: SUNX, centerY: SUNY, radius: 60
fill: Color.YELLOW
},
]
}
/* animate the corona changing the it rotation angle */
var anim = Timeline {
repeatCount: Timeline.INDEFINITE
keyFrames : [
KeyFrame {
time : 0s
values: rotation => 0.0 tween Interpolator.LINEAR
},
KeyFrame {
time : 2s
values: rotation => (360.0/12) tween Interpolator.LINEAR
},
]
}
anim.start();
/* a tree is a simple polygon */
class Tree extends Polygon{
public attribute x = 0;
public attribute y = 0;
override attribute points = [0,0, 10,30, -10,30];
override attribute fill = Color.DARKOLIVEGREEN;
init{
translateX = x;
translateY = y;
}
}
/* a forest is a lot of trees */
var forest = Slidding{
content: [
Tree{x: 20, y: 320}, Tree{x: 80, y: 280}, Tree{x:120, y: 330},
Tree{x:140, y: 280}, Tree{x:180, y: 310}, Tree{x:220, y: 320},
Tree{x:260, y: 280}, Tree{x:280, y: 320}, Tree{x:300, y: 300},
Tree{x:400, y: 320}, Tree{x:500, y: 280}, Tree{x:500, y: 320}
]
clock: 0.1s
width: SCREENW
}
Frame {
title: "Side Scrolling"
width: SCREENW
height: SCREENH
closeAction: function() {
java.lang.System.exit( 0 );
}
visible: true
stage: Stage {
content: [sky, sun, clouds, ground, forest]
}
}
Producing:
If you want to try these examples, place this Slidding implementation as Slidding.fx in a directory named gamefx, or grab here the NetBeans project.
package gamefx;
import javafx.scene.CustomNode;
import javafx.scene.Node;
import javafx.scene.Group;
import javafx.animation.Timeline;
import javafx.animation.KeyFrame;
/*
* The slidding group of nodes for side scrolling animations.
*
* @example
* Slidding {
* width: 300
* content: [
* Circle { centerX: 100, centerY: 100, radius: 40, fill: Color.RED },
* Circle { centerX: 200, centerY: 100, radius: 40, fill: Color.BLUE },
* ]
* clock: 0.05s
* }
*/
public class Slidding extends CustomNode {
public attribute content: Node[];
public attribute clock = 0.1s;
public attribute width: Number;
public attribute autostart = true;
public attribute cycle = true;
public attribute anim = Timeline {
repeatCount: Timeline.INDEFINITE
keyFrames : [
KeyFrame {
time : clock
action: function() {
for(node in content){
node.translateX--;
if (node.getX() + node.translateX + node.getWidth() <= 0){
if(cycle){
node.translateX = width - node.getX();
} else {
delete node from content;
}
}
}
} // action
} // keyframe
]
} // timeline
public function create(): Node {
// if width is not setted, we try to figure out
if(width == 0) {
for(node in content) {
if(node.getX() + node.getWidth() > width) {
width = node.getX() + node.getWidth();
}
}
}
// normaly the slidding will start automaticaly
if(autostart){
anim.start();
}
// just a Group of Nodes
return Group {
content: content
};
}
}
Is not the final implementation but it’s a idea. Soon I’ll show a demo game I did using theses codes.