Konfigurats: The First Configuration

This game has it all: spaghetti code, unreadable fonts, terrible UI, clunky animations, security issues, and questionable hitboxes! Relive the worst parts of the golden era of Flash games, except this time with Java and without the rose-tinted nostalgia glasses.

Konfigurats is a multiplayer PvP game roughly based on the Warlock mod from Warcraft III, which hilariously I've never played. What I did play was the Warlocks Arena 2 Flash game based on the mod. You can still likely find it online and run it via Ruffle to check out the story mode, but its multiplayer servers are most certainly offline.

This is my first (semi-)finished project that I've worked on as I was learning programming and Java in general. While it does have some documentation, don't go looking for tests or clean code. Let's just say that instead of the SOLID principles, this particular project followed the YOLO ideology on every step.

The game was never released as such, but maybe it's for the best. After roughly 10 years of sitting on my hard drive, I've decided to release this project as a learning exercise, or perhaps a cautionary tale of how not to write your multiplayer game. Here be dragons.

How to play

Enter an arena, choose your avatar, select a spell from each element, and face other players!

Enter the server IP, create an account, log in. Choose an existing room or create one on your own.

Customize your character and enter the game. Click to walk, press 1-4 to cast spells. Try not to die.

Unfortunately, the game does not have any bots, so you do need some friends to actually test it out. Is it worth the effort? You decide!

How to run

With JARs

Download the JAR archives from the releases.

Make sure that the 42666 and 43666 ports are free. Place the konfigurats-database.script in the same directory where you execute the server JAR. Run the server:

java -jar konfigurats-server.jar

Make sure that the server is reachable in your local network or globally. Now the clients should be able to connect.

To play the game, mark the konfigurats-client.jar file as executable and run it with your Java Runtime Environment. Java 8 and 11 should be fine, but newer releases might not be able to run the game. Enter the server IP after the assets are loaded.

From sources

Clone the project.

# HTTPS:
git clone https://github.com/czyzby/konfigurats.git
# SSH:
git clone git@github.com:czyzby/konfigurats.git

Make sure that the 42666 and 43666 ports are free. Run the server:

./gradlew server:run

Now the clients should be able to connect.

Run a client from sources:

./gradlew client:run

Export a client JAR from sources:

./gradlew client:jar
chmod +x client/build/lib/konfigurats-0.99b.jar

The state of the project

The project consists of 3 modules:

• core: common libGDX module.
• client: desktop/LWJGL3 client that runs the core game.
• server: a standalone application that handles the game logic and multiplayer capabilities.

Main libraries include:

• libGDX: game framework.
• Box2D: physics engine.
• KryoNet: networking library.
• HSQLDB: database.

The project is roughly in the same state as all those years ago, but I did update it a little so that it's easier to work with. For the curious, this is what I've done:

• Recreated the project with gdx-liftoff for a modern project structure and updated Gradle scripts.
• Updated from libGDX 1.1 to 1.11. Quite a version bump, but unfortunately there weren't many changed APIs.
• Changed the client backend from LWJGL2 to LWJGL3 to avoid errors on newer JVMs.
• Removed libs/ folders and replaced those with proper Gradle dependencies. Yep.
• Included the server as a Gradle module in the same project to simplify setup.
• Changed all maps so that they can all be entered by up to 12 players for convenience during randomized setup.
• Made the "elite" player check optional with environment variables. I think this was some rough attempt at monetization that I no longer understand nor care about. Just know that every player can now play as every character, but you can turn it off if you really want to with the SKIP_ELITE_CHECK=false environment variable.

I've made no attempt to format, fix, refactor or optimize the code. You can enjoy it in all its glory. Needless to say, it aged like fine milk.

What's with the name?

I guess it's sort of a pun on "configuration" and "illuminati"? I don't get it anymore. This is a non-judgement zone, and I will not question my teenage self.

Are there any official servers?

Yeah, no. Hosting this thing seems a bit scary.

Credits

See the in-game "Credits" screen. Most assets were taken from the OpenGameArt platform.

The code is available under the CC0 license, and Gods help you if you decide to use it anywhere. You have been warned.