GetEm is a simple game of reverse tag / hide & seek written in Java.
Each player is represented by a colored circle in the game field and they move the circle around the game field by clicking on the game field where they want to move. The player's colored circle will draw a colored path as they move across the game field to follow the location of the mouse click.
One player is designated as the "it" player that everyone must chase down and attempt to tag. You can tell which player is "it" by the color of the GetEm bar above the play field.
Once one of the players tags the "it" player then that player becomes "it", the play field is reset, and all the other players then begin to chase down the new "it" player.
If a player holds down the Ctrl key on the keyboard while moving on the play field their circle will change to invisible and cannot be seen on the play field. However, any invisible players who move across the colored trails left behind by players then the colored trail will be erased and will hint other players to the location of the hidden player.
GetEm does not require any special installation steps but it does require that Java is installed before you can run GetEm.
Download the getem.jar file to your computer and from a command line you can use the following command to run the game.
java -jar getem.jar
Download the getem source tree to your working directory.
There are two steps required to build getem, the compile step and the jar creation step.
To compile getem change your working directory to the source trunk below the getem directory that contains all the java source files and execute the following command.
javac -classpath .:getem/* getem/*.java
You may receive a warning during the compile step but there should be no errors. If there are errors while compiling then you will need to address these errors before continuing.
After the compile completes successfully then the jar file for getem is created by executing the following command. jar cfm getem.jar Manifest.txt getem/
You should now have the file getem.jar in your source trunk.
Use the following command to run getem.
java -jar getem.jar
After running the game you click on the Start Game button to start the game as a server. Up to 7 other players can then join your server over your network connection.
The server uses UDP port 3000 for the server so this port must be opened on your firewall and you may need to configure port forwarding for UDP 3000 on your router if you are on a shared Internet connection.
After running the game you click on the Join Game button to open the join game dialog. In the dialog you enter the IP address or hostname of the server and a unique player name. Click Ok and the game will start if the connection is successful. If the game does not start then the connection may have failed or the name selected is already taken on the server.