Dinosaur Exploder

Dinosaur Exploder is a free, open source shoot 'em up video game
written in Java using JavaFX and the FXGL game development library 🦖.
Now featuring a companion website built with Next.js 🎉

📃 Table of content

• 🚀 Goal of the project
• 🌐 Project Website
• 🧑‍💻 Installation
  • 🛠 Installation on Windows / Linux
  • 💻 Installation Locally
• 🎮 How to Play
• 🎥 Gameplay
• 🙏Contributing
• 🌍 Support
• ✍️ Licence
• 👨 Creators

🚀 Goal of the project

Note

I initially developed a very basic game in 2022 and created multiple issues to encourage contributions from the community. The main goal of this repository is not just to build a game, but to provide an open-source project where everyone can contribute step by step.

🌐 Project Website

Explore our modern Next.js website here!

While this project is primarily about Java and FXGL, we've added a web front-end to welcome more contributors and showcase the game.

The website features:

• 📑 Game documentation
• 🖼️ Image galleries
• 📰 Latest news
• 💻 And, most importantly: spaces to contribute to the web front-end! rather than just Java

You can also check the /website folder in the repo to run it locally. I would suggest to use Visual Studio Code to work on the website rather than IntelliJ IDEA

🚀 Get started locally

cd website
npm install
npm run dev

🧑‍💻 Installation

Important

Be aware to download the version of Open JDK 21 before installing. I bet you can download any JDK you want, it just needs to be version 21. Run the command java --version to make sure Java 21 is installed.

🛠 Installation on Windows / Linux / Mac

🚀 Quick Start:

1. Download the latest release ➡️ Click here and grab the appropriate JAR for your platform:
   • 🪟 dinosaur-exploder-win-<version>.jar
   • 🐧 dinosaur-exploder-linux-<version>.jar
   • 🍎 dinosaur-exploder-mac-<version>.jar
2. Run the game by executing the following command in your terminal:

   $ java -jar dinosaur-exploder-<platform>-<version>.jar

💻 Installation Locally

💡 No need to install JavaFX or FXGL manually—Maven will handle dependencies automatically!

📥 Clone the repository

1. Fork the repository ➡️ Click here.
2. In your terminal, run:

   $ git clone [email protected]:<your-username>/dinosaur-exploder.git

🏗️ Build & Run

➡️ Using an IDE (Recommended)

• Open the project in IntelliJ IDEA (or any Java IDE).
• Sync the Maven project.
• Run the main class:
  • Locate com.dinosaur.dinosaurexploder.DinosaurApp.
  • Hit Run ▶️

➡️ Using the Command Line

• Generate the JAR:

  $ mvn package

• Run the game:

  $ java -jar target/dinosaur-exploder-1.0.jar

➡️ Run in the Browser

• Start a local web server:

  $ mvn jpro:run

• Open http://localhost:8080/ 🌐

📖 Need more details?
Check out our installation guide for in-depth instructions!

🎮 How to Play

Play the game with these controls:

• ⬆️ Up Arrow: move spaceship up.
• ⬇️ Down Arrow: move spaceship down.
• ⬅️ Left Arrow: move spaceship left.
• ➡️ Right Arrow: move spaceship right.
• ⏸️ Escape: pause the game.
• 🔫 Space: shoot.
• 🛡️ E: shield to protect the spaceship during few seconds.
• 💥 B: eliminate all the dinosaurs on the screen using a bomb.

🎥 Gameplay

Here is a demo of the actual game. Dare to play it now 🎮 !

dinosaur-exploder-demo.mp4

🙏 Contributing

Tip

I am very much open to contributions - please read our code of conduct and contribution guidelines first.

🌍 Support

Any question ? 🦖 Feel free to write us something :

• You can ask any question on GitHub Discussion.
• To be updated of everything, follow us on Twitter.
• You can post an article on our Website blog.
• For quick communication, feel free to join our Discord server.

✍️ Licence

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details.

👨 Author

Initially, the project was a collaboration between three creators : Dylan, Maxime, and myself—as part of a school project at the University of Cork in 2022. However, after the semester ended, I took over full responsibility for the project, while my teammates moved on to other endeavors.

@jvondermarck
I am responsible for all aspects of the project, including project management, documentation, web development, and game programming.