java game - alien breed(!?) - (applet or .class?)

DBC,

That sounds like a pretty wicked game for a first year, but it is not impossible. I remember Alien Breed on the Amiga, and I am just finished a year of Java programming myself (College also).

I wrote a small game in java a few months back, and I learned a trick or two.

You mentioned that you wanted to use transparencies in your game. To achieve this it is all in the graphics. For a game like this (2 dimensions), all you are concerned about is using code to move images around. So what I would recommend you do is go in to something like Paint Shop Pro and design your in game graphics (characters, background etc) and make their backgrounds transparent (transparent GIFs). You see transparent GIFs have the transparency encoded in to them so you don't have to worry about writing Java code to make the transparent (this is important). Once you have your images created all you have to do is insert them in to your Java code, like this:

Image gameImage = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit.getImage(String pathToSomeImage);

Then to draw them on the canvas of some GUI component such as a panel or Frame, override the paint method of the component, to make it look something like this:

public void paint(Graphcs g){

g.drawImage(gameImage, 0, 0, this);

}

That would draw the image on the top left of the drawing area.

I don't know if you are passed all this, and perhaps I am just rambling on. But if you have any more questions give me a bell.

:-phobos-)