Java Web

Project Overview

Yakamon is a creature-collecting adventure game where a player explores a grid-based map to collect resources and capture magical creatures called yakamons. The goal of this project was to create the entire backend of the game by implementing a RESTful API.

Grade achieved: 100% in automated testing (moulinette) and rigorous code review.

Technical Stack

This project utilizes industry-standard frameworks to build a modern backend web application in Java:

• Quarkus: Used to define functionalities as entity methods, use a repository pattern, and implement REST endpoints.
• Hibernate ORM: The de facto standard Jakarta Persistence API (JPA) implementation used to handle all PostgreSQL database interactions from the Java code.
• Testing: Comprehensive unit testing using the JUnit framework.

Strict Layered Architecture

Adhering to a proper architectural pattern was a key objective, ensuring modularity and maintainability. This project strictly follows a layered architecture pattern:

Layer	Components	Responsibility
Presentation	Controllers & DTOs	Serve as entry points to the backend, validating requests, delegating tasks, and structuring data exchanges using Data Transfer Objects.
Business	Services & Entities	Contains the core logic of the application. Services coordinate data retrieval and updates, while Entities represent core business objects.
Data	Repositories & Models	Manage all database-related operations without any business logic. Models represent the database schema.
Converters	Data Transformation	Ensure independence between layers by transforming data objects (e.g., DTOs to Entities, Entities to Models).

Implemented Game Features

The API endpoints allow the client frontend to perform various actions:

• World Exploration: Movement across a grid-based map encoded in a custom RLE format, taking different terrain types (Grass, Water, Lava, etc.) into account.
• Capturing & Yakadex: Encountering wild yakamons, catching them using Yakaballs, and registering them in the Yakadex encyclopedia.
• Inventory & Evolution: Collecting resources like scrooges, feeding yakamons to increase energy points, and triggering evolutions when thresholds are met.

Conclusion

Yakamon provided an incredible opportunity to learn how real-world Java backends are structured. Passing all strict architecture tests, API response evaluations, and database persistence checks proved my capability to deliver robust cloud-native APIs.