Asteroid Battle 8.1
Two
fleets of ships fight each other in an asteroid field. You are
piloting one of those ships. Your ship's power can be used for
firing, or for maneuvering and (any energy left-over) for shields.
You can accelerate or decelerate in any direction, and you can fire
any direction you choose.
Neither weapons fire, nor the explosion of a destroyed ship, will penetrate an asteroid, so you can hide behind them, but don't run into them (or into an enemy ship, for that matter). Watch where you're firing, because friendly-fire incidents are definitely not appreciated!
If you've never played this game before, check out the help information in the link below to quickly learn how to play it. Otherwise, the opposing fleet will have its way with you while you try to learn by way of the school of hard-knocks...
New Features In Version 8.1
The game is now an application, and therefore you can re-size its window (or even make it fill the entire screen), as you see fit.
The context-sensitive help has been improved, and can be accessed within the application itself.
The numeric key-pad can be used as an additional game controller, allowing multi-player games.
The current game-parameters file is displayed in the Title-Bar.
There are now sound-effects, and a music soundtrack included. For the music soundtrack, the full-permissions version is required.
You can watch a video of it's Demo-Mode below:
The link below takes you to the help information:
The application runs with all permissions, as a normal application. To download it, right-click on the link below, and choose “Save Link As” (or whatever similar choice is offered in the popup-menu by your browser). As is required by Java security requirements, it uses a trusted, revocable, code-signing certificate (of Laeramin LLC, by DigiCert, on AeresRealm.com).
With Java installed, you can verify the authenticy of the software by entering the following statement in a terminal session, having first changed directories to the directory (such as Downloads) where the jar-file is stored:
jarsigner -verify AstBat81-ap.jar
On Windows, where just the Java JRE is installed, without the JDK, the ‘jarsigner’ program is not available, so you can’t check it.
On Windows, you can run it as an application, by opening it (double-clicking on it). If you plan to use it a lot, you can put it in your desktop folder.
On MacOS, you need to option-click (2-finger, or right-click) on the downloaded jar-file, and specify it is opened by the Java launcher. The first time you try to open it, it will complain it can’t identify the developer, asking if you want to open it anyway. After choosing to open it, you won’t have to answer that again.
On Linux, you probably have to right-click on the jar-file, select “Properties” from the popup-menu, and specify it is to be opened by “OpenJDK Java 11 Runtime”, or alternatively, “java -jar”. You will also have to change its permissions to make it executable.
When run, it allows you to save your favorite sets of game-parameters, and keeps track of high, low, and average scores. It also includes a music soundtrack, and allows you to use the “Help” button (which uses your Internet browser). You are required to accept the license agreement to use it.