Chapter 6.   Swingin' Light Saber

When I was a youngling, I vowed to learn the ways of the BlackBerry and become a RIM-i master. I went in search of Yogurt the Wise!, Yogurt the All-Powerful!, Yogurt the Magnificent! Just plain Yogurt to his friends.

I learnt of a young RIM-i named Dark Helmet, who was a pupil of Yoghurt's until he turned bad, and helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the RIM-i Knights. Dark Helmet was seduced by the Dark Side of the BlackBerry, stopped washing, and so became the odious black knight.

Only a fully trained RIM-i Knight with the BlackBerry as his ally will conquer Dark Helmet. But read this chapter first, for if you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path as Dark Helmet did, you may become an agent of naughtiness.

---

If you're interested in the adventures of Dark Helmet, Yogurt, and others, I recommend Mel Brooks' movie Spaceballs.

---

Sadly, I'm not going to make a piercing beam of bluish light shoot out the top of your BlackBerry. Instead, I'll describe the SwingSaber game shown at the top of this page.

The light saber can be swung to the left and right across the screen, to destroy laser blasts dropping from above (three can be seen in the picture above, with one of them exploding). The current playing time and score are displayed, and a medley of exciting theme tunes plays in the background, often drowned out by explosions (which occur when your saber hits descending blasts). The light saber in the picture looks a bit odd because a 'trail' of light follows behind the main blue beam. The trail is made up of three lighter beams which disappear when your saber stops moving. The saber can be swung by shaking the BlackBerry, touching the screen on the left or right, by moving the trackball, or by pressing the left and right arrow keys. The BlackBerry vibrates a little whenever you destroy a blast.

At the end of the game, the black knight makes a comment on your prowess with a saber. You can quit at any time by typing the escape key, or the BlackBerry Green and Red keys (the Send and End/Power keys) on either side of the trackball.

The game has an introductory screen, shown on the right, which appears when you first select the game icon.

An introductory screen like this is a good place to supply game instructions or other information. The game begins when the user selects the "New Game" menu item, clicks on the screen, or presses the enter or space keys.

Novel game features include:

• several fonts and colors on the introductory screen, made possible by an ActiveRichTextField component;
• game animation employing an update-draw-sleep loop running in its own thread;
• animated explosions read from image strips;
• the utilization of reusable Sprite and ExplodingSprite classes, which aren't based on MIDP 2.0's Sprite;
• a sound clip playing class (ClipsPlayer) which can handle MIDI, mp3, AU, tone sequences (JTS files), and individual tones.

Downloads

• The zipped code for this chapter (1 MB). Last updated: 22nd February 2010.
   

• Up to the Learn BlackBerry Games Development Index Page
• Back to Chapter 5. Security and Selling Your Game
• On to Chapter 7. Play against a Live Opponent with SMS

Dr. Carol Hamer
E-mail: carol.hamer@gmail.com
To Carol's blog

Dr. Andrew Davison
E-mail: ad@fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th
To Andrew's home page