Over the past couple of years, we’ve posted about the OCI Arcade. You can find the original article (here) and the repository (here). As part of the revamp, many things have changed and as such we’ve spent a little bit of time to make it better. Check out some of these new additions.
As shown in the original blog, this was it looked like and this is a side-by-side comparison to what it looks like now. Do you notice anything different?
Yep – we’ve updated the sprites. We created some sprites that better suited the theme of the OCI Arcade – replacing the user with a cloud; replacing the enemy with different coins and the bonus points as OCI cloud services.
And now you can make your own characters …
In the repository (here), we changed the way that the sprites are drawn and how the sprites are sourced. There is a new file called atlas.png which is a single grid of all of the sprites drawn. In an editor, the atlas looks like this:
Editing this file will allow you to create your own sprites in the game. Just update it with your own sprites and then start playing. There’s a couple of hints.
- The atlas itself is transparent. So, ensure you colour our sprites properly.
- The sprites about about 71×71 pixels. I suggest stay within the lines however allow some space too.
- The first line consists of the bonus points. There are 12 in total.
- The next four lines are the different enemies where there are replica of the enemy for each frame (you can make these look different).
- The next line is the enemy (if it is eaten or running away).
- The last line is the user.
Have a play with this and make your own.
If are wanting to change more than the sprites, this will need some more details in the javascript. I’m happy to help navigate how this works.
The editor of the atlas was interesting. Traditionally, I would have deployed this in the bucket and developed from there. But it took time. What I found myself doing is running this locally and installed Open JDK 18 (here). There’s a new feature that allowed me to run a web server.
It was as simple as:
jwebserver -b 0.0.0.0(where -b binds to the specific IP address and in the example binds to all IP’s)
And then in the browser I was able to connect locally to the game and start playing.
http://localhost:8000/consume-cloud/start.htm(where I did update the name of the game to consume-cloud)
The repository itself has been simplified. Over the course of the two years, there’s been some changes to the Always Free Tier and as such there’s been several different architectures experimented with. Though what we have consolidated on was the A1.Flex shape and Autonomous Database as the main services used for OCI Arcade. We’ve cleaned up the repository with a single branch to make it easier to understand.
Share your version with us … I’d be keen to see it and share it too.
RedThunder.Blog 