Firefighter Quest

Overview

Firefighter Quest is a 2D Java game where the player navigates hazardous levels, avoiding enemies and traps while collecting items and managing health. It was built from the ground up in Java 21 — no game engine — which meant implementing the game loop, physics, collision handling and UI directly.

Goals

• Build a complete, playable game using object-oriented design
• Implement core game architecture — loop, entities, physics, collisions — by hand
• Support multiple enemy and hazard types without duplicated code

How it works

The game runs on a loop that updates entity state and renders each frame. Entities — the player, enemies, traps, collectibles — share a common base class and override behaviour where they differ, so adding a new enemy type means adding one class, not touching the loop. Collision detection resolves interactions between the player and the world: taking damage from hazards, picking up items, blocking movement against solid objects. A HUD tracks health and collected items.

Decisions and trade-offs

• No engine: using plain Java meant more upfront work but a much deeper understanding of what engines actually do.
• Entity base class + polymorphism: the classic OOP approach fit naturally here and kept the update loop free of type-checking special cases.
• Simple collision shapes: axis-aligned bounding boxes were accurate enough for the gameplay and kept collision code fast and debuggable.

Lessons learned

Real-time systems fail differently from request/response code — bugs are often about ordering and timing rather than wrong logic. Building the loop, physics and collisions by hand made concepts like frame-rate independence and update/render separation concrete instead of theoretical.

Future improvements

• Sound effects and music
• Additional levels and a level-loading format
• Gamepad support