Cell game - testers needed

[Pyritie]

it would be smart if you put it into a jar file (i've got a java.lang.NoClassDefException)

Try running the .bat

I can't put the whole thing in a jar file because it isn't completely java. It's using a java wrapper for a language originally for C++, so the dlls and files need to be outside the jar in order to work.

 

[WhitePhoenix]

And no one wants you to start creating files in our program folder for such a small app.

Regardless I wouldn't mind seeing this finished...

 

[Pyritie]

Why would it start creating files in your program folder? It's entirely self-contained.

 

[WhitePhoenix]

I can't put the whole thing in a jar file because it isn't completely java. It's using a java wrapper for a language originally for C++, so the dlls and files need to be outside the jar in order to work.

The point was it's better to have all the files locally handled instead of a single installation file and then a single run file >.>, ya'know, because he just wanted it to be contained in a single file.

 

[Pyritie]

There are no installation files D:

The bat does the same thing as the jar except it adds a few extra commands. It works for some people when double-clicking on the jar doesn't.

 

[Pyritie]

• Now written in C#!
• Added 3D physics engine instead of the crappy 2D one (Newton, to be specific)
  • The physics engine is also framerate independent
• Rearranged code framework a LOT
• Some things still left to port over
  • Antibodies
  • Enemies
  • Sound

Can you guys check that you can run this? If it works correctly you should see a blue meshy ball in the middle that you control in another blue meshy level that is scaled wrong.
(You'll need the .NET framework)

Current bugs:
- doesn't work on xp due to me being a noob
- directx problems

We're also looking for some people to help as we're gonna be changing the art direction a lot.

Here is a concept:

(original)

Looking for a modeler or two and a level designer.

I've also got two of my friends involved in this as well so that should speed up coding a lot

Source available here.

 

[Vengeancekael]

Error:

Edit: cookie?...cookie....*cough*...coo....kie.......*Death Glare*

 

[Draknyte1]

Error

ERROR

 

[ronojales]

Current bugs:
- doesn't work on xp..

oh so that's why. it didn't work on me. but the previous one with the jar worked.

 

[Pyritie]

try this


it should work on xp too

EDIT: okay updated, it now has vsync so you shouldn't get insane FPS any more

 

[Draknyte1]

will test soon, and do bug reports

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Tested on XP with full service packs and it works perfectly

 

[Pyritie]

Okay this version is mostly working except the cells tend to spaz out. Which can be kinda entertaining.

Anyway you can now spawn enemies (they don't do anything) and shoot antibodies at them, and if the antibodies are the same color as the enemy then they'll stick.

There are a bunch of color cycles and you can select them by using numpad keys 1-5.
num1: left: red, right: blue
num2: left: yellow, right: green
num3: left: orange, right: magenta
num4: left: purple, right: cyan
num5: left: white, right: black
Anything other than these keys will make you not shoot any antibodies but if you try to spawn an enemy then it will crash. (I could easily add in a check but it's not worth it)

Press Z to spawn an enemy of the left color, and X to spawn an enemy of the right color.

Use the arrow keys to navigate.

Press 0, 1, or 2 to change levels. Level 2 is very big so it might take a while (15 seconds+) to load. It's supposed to be a stress test.

If it gets laggy for you, either reload the level (using the number keys) or you can turn off the blue debug lines by pressing =.

You can use - to turn the FPS and info overlay on and off.

If it won't even run correctly, make sure you have directx 9 and the .NET runtime redistributable installed.

Pix:

 

[The Reborn Devil]

I just did a stress test of your game.

I loaded Level 2 which took 6 seconds, then I filled the WHOLE map with enemies and on top of that I spammed anti-bodies. Nothing bad happened except mass lag. Btw, how do I remove wireframe?

Here's a screenshot:

At max I had approx. 152000 triangles.

 

[Deleted member 157129]

1.8 FPS, that's.. that's incredible.

 

[The Reborn Devil]

That was while stress testing, I had a stable FPS of 60 (which is the max because of the game doesn't allow higher FPS) until I filled 70% of the map with enemies. From there my FPS had a rapid decline.

 

[Pyritie]

You use ` to turn them off in that download you have or use = in the updated download.

(I changed it because some keyboards weren't working with the ` key)

Though if you do that then you'll also lose the FPS counter. I suppose I could separate them.

 

[Pyramidhe@d]

on Vista
the " ` " nor the " = " button works
level 2 takes 20-40 sec to load
800 batch count and 3 fps

when you hit a cell with an antibody at an angle it goes spas while if you hit it directly, it doesnt. also, the spasing cells seems to be really hard to move. can push a whole field of normal cells. cant push past two of spasers. sometimes it does this. its pretty random
cant see the antibody through walls

 

[Pyritie]

on Vista
the " ` " nor the " = " button works
level 2 takes 20-40 sec to load
800 batch count and 3 fps

when you hit a cell with an antibody at an angle it goes spas while if you hit it directly, it doesnt. also, the spasing cells seems to be really hard to move. can push a whole field of normal cells. cant push past two of spasers. sometimes it does this. its pretty random
cant see the antibody through walls

Is your computer particularly old?

 

[Pyramidhe@d]

4 years? i think

 

[Pyritie]

What's your graphics card?

 

[The Reborn Devil]

Py, the "=" thing doesn't work. "=" is on the same button as "0", so when I click that button I just change to level 0. Use another button like "w" (w for wireframe).


Edit:
You should maybe add some kind of anti-fail thing which terminates the game if there's just too much to do. I spawned so many enemies that my batch count reached 2000 on Level 0, but it didn't lag before I started to collide with them. Then the game just hung itself and I had to terminate the process with CTRL+ALT+DEL

 

[Pyritie]

Py, the "=" thing doesn't work. "=" is on the same button as "0", so when I click that button I just change to level 0. Use another button like "w" (w for wireframe).

Press whatever key your "+" is on then

You should maybe add some kind of anti-fail thing which terminates the game if there's just too much to do. I spawned so many enemies that my batch count reached 2000 on Level 0, but it didn't lag before I started to collide with them. Then the game just hung itself and I had to terminate the process with CTRL+ALT+DEL

Well in a normal game situation you'd never have that many enemies. And it didn't lag because the bodies are "at rest" so the physics engine ignored them. As soon as you started moving them then it had to do calculations for all of them, thus the massive lag.

Also you can use ESC to quit.

 

[Pyramidhe@d]

nvidia 7300

 

[Pyritie]

yeah that's pretty old, might be why

Is this without spawning any enemies?

 

[The Reborn Devil]

If you've added he possibility of the objects being at rest then I've found a bug. It doesn't seem like they can regain that status after being pushed even if they stand still.

 

[Pyritie]

no you just have to wait a while. There's not much friction when they're gliding around

 

[Tleno]

So Pyritie, what are your plans after this test will be finished? Expanding the game? replacing Will Wright with yourself?

 

[Pyramidhe@d]

i filled up lvel 2 with enemies.

 

[Pyritie]

So Pyritie, what are your plans after this test will be finished? Expanding the game? replacing Will Wright with yourself?

expanding it, lol. It's not much of a game at the moment

i filled up lvel 2 with enemies.

Ah, that would explain it

 

[The Reborn Devil]

no you just have to wait a while. There's not much friction when they're gliding around

Ye, but they were virtually standing still.

 

[Pyritie]

there might've been some moving off-screen

 

[The Reborn Devil]

Maybe.


Aaaanyway, add HDR, Bloom, Multibuffring, Multisampling, Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, Volumetric Lighting, Motion Blur, Depth of Field and all the others things I can't remember right now.

 

[Pyritie]

Got bored so I added sound.

[m] to toggle music (requires a level change to make anything happen)
to toggle sounds

music if off by default, sounds are on by default. You need to change level once before any sounds work.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Music worked fine, though the spawn enemy event gives an error

 

[Pyritie]

Could you be more specific?

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

An error box popped up saying that the object does not exist, you hit OK and the game continues like normal.

 

[Pyritie]

What does it say in ogre.log?

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

hmmm give me a minute - I'll screenshot it

Edit: Nvm - works fine now for some reason

 

[The Reborn Devil]

Py, have you added bump mapping and normal mapping as well as the others things I mentioned?

Btw, the sounds doesn't work, but the music does.

 

[Pyritie]

Py, have you added bump mapping and normal mapping as well as the others things I mentioned?

Urr, nothing needs normal/bump mapping at the moment?

Plus a lot of these graphics are just placeholders. My concept artists are busy at the moment with schoolwork and such >__>

 

[The Reborn Devil]

Lulz

You have your own concept artists?

 

[Pyritie]

Alright, I've ran into a few bugs. One is when shooting antibodies at things, sometimes it randomly crashes. I really can't figure out how to reproduce it though as it seems to be completely random. So any help at this point is greatly appreciated.

Few things you should know:
- Switching levels after doing something that involves sound (antibody colliding with enemy, turning music/sound on/off, etc) crashes it. If you need to restart the level, restart the program. I'm working on this.
- Due to me giving up about attaching antibodies where they touched, I just made it so each enemy can hold 6 antibodies.


Same controls as before. I have no idea where the white text buggered off to.

(make sure you're running the latest .NET and have directx 9 installed (if you only have directx 10+, this won't work)

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Wow, I didn't know you where still working on this

 

[Pyritie]

I am, on and off

Also whoops, I forgot the attachment >__> fixed

 

[Pyritie]

blah

been having several problems

- Every second it skips a few frames. It's most noticeable when you're moving around quickly (press left shift to turn off the speed limit)
- I made enemies follow around the player (using a timer) but any sort of timer crashes the program after a short while. (I turned off the timer in this build)

I have no idea what's causing these problems.

 

[Vengeancekael]

Hmm I guess this isn't compatible with win7? Because it crashes right after it's loaded.

 

[Dr Super Good]

- Every second it skips a few frames. It's most noticeable when you're moving around quickly (press left shift to turn off the speed limit)

That is the behaviour exibited if something has to be loaded from or written to backing storage. If you are pagging memory out too much or streaming model data on demand from backing storage (not caching models and textures into RAM that are used often) will cause such delay.

- I made enemies follow around the player (using a timer) but any sort of timer crashes the program after a short while. (I turned off the timer in this build)

Consider emulating a timer's behaviour via some code built into the program mainloop (afterall, the smallest unit of time that maters in your game is per update of all objects). Also if the timer starts a new thread it could be caused by unsafe thread usage of values (if a value is changed suddenly it can result in bugs which might in turn result in a crash).

 

[Vengeancekael]

Ehm which DX version does this need?

 

[Pyritie]

That is the behaviour exibited if something has to be loaded from or written to backing storage. If you are pagging memory out too much or streaming model data on demand from backing storage (not caching models and textures into RAM that are used often) will cause such delay.

I'm not doing any of that. Literally all that's on the scene is one model (the level) and the player model. Which totals about 14k tris, which is barely anything.

Someone suggested that it might be garbage collection but I don't know where the heck it could be leaking.

Plus the odd thing is that this just happened recently. If I go and check out an old revision of my game, I still get the same problem even though I am very sure it was never there before.

Consider emulating a timer's behaviour via some code built into the program mainloop (afterall, the smallest unit of time that maters in your game is per update of all objects). Also if the timer starts a new thread it could be caused by unsafe thread usage of values (if a value is changed suddenly it can result in bugs which might in turn result in a crash).

Someone suggested just using the built-in "time since last frame" and just adding that to a private variable. When that variable reaches a certain number, reset it to 0 and do the events. So that fixed that problem!

Ehm which DX version does this need?

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