Verne-X final

[cairnswm]

I am busy Loading my entry onto my web page. It is 5.8MB big and that takes a while over a 56K modem connected at 45K :(

Anyway this will be the link if it succeeds:
http://www.cairnsgames.co.za/files/verne-X.zip

I will try to load it to the official site tomorrow morning.

I had a very successful last 5 hours of the contest :)

Made new levels, new enemies, new bosses (We finished with 4 mini bosses and a Mega Boss :) ), new code for quite a few sections. Extra sound effects etc.

I ended with 5 of the expected 9 levels - so anyone playing verne-X will find that Earth and Air point to the same levels :)

The Missions are based on the following jules verne books:
Water - 2000 leagues under the sea
Air - Around the Moon
Earth - would have been Journey to the Center of the Earth - but we never got to make the enmy units for it.

Verne-X is almost completely configurable. New enemies and enemy behavious is create in config and AI script files - so its very easy to extend.

I hope it works for everyone and I have sorted out all the Range Check errors that lost me points in the previous section.

Good luck everyone!

[Huehnerschaender]

Hi cairnswm,

I just installed your entry on my machine at office. It has a Geforce 2 MX 440 video card installed.

The game runs better on this machine. Maybe a little too slow, but I didn't got any shutdowns of the program.

But there is another issue: The levelbackground is just completely white. The tiles are drawn coerrectly, but there is no background. I bet you use textures non power of 2 for the background. Geforce 2 and some other video cards do only support textures sized power of 2 (64*64, 128*128 etc). Using other sizes results in white textures like I can see here.

Hope this helps. We have additional 24 hours. Maybe you want to fix this.

Greetings,
Dirk

[cairnswm]

Hi Dirk

Thanks for the Feedback. All my textures are power 2. But the background for the levels is 2048x1024 and I dont themnk the GeForce 44MX can handle textures of this size (interestingly my son has the same card and I will test it tonight).

I have made some changes to the speed values of the enemies. I hope overall its smoother.

Not sure I will make any changes - the deadline was in reality and I wont feel right making any big changes to the final copy now. I worked really hard last night to get it finished. And anyway I actually dont want to see the code for Verne-X again for a while :)

Tomorrow I start working on my new Dragon Shooter for the SHMUP-Dev contest :)

[Traveler]

Hi cairnswm,

I finally had the time to play your entry. It worked well. I didn't have any of the problems Huehnerschaender mentioned.
Overall I thought it was pretty good. The sound was unfortunately still, like in your previous games, a little scrambled. Although I do think it was a bit better this time.

I didn't came as far to beat the end boss though :oops: but I'll give it another try later. I had some trouble killing the first mini boss though. I gave it all I had, but it just wouldn't blow up. Eventually I had to let it pass by.

Only thing I thought was that it could have a bit more action.

[cairnswm]

Thanks Traveler.

Try use the fireworks weapon. I like combining it with the steam cannon.

Sound seems to be very effected by the versions of the SDL dlls you have. I have found that the SDL.dll affects the sound excessivly.

I have had reports that once you've died you cant get to play again.

Also still an unexpected crash at times. I thought I'd sorted out all my Range check errors but it seems not.

[chronozphere]

Hi cairnswm.

I have tried your game and its a nice one. :) :razz:
The graphics are quite cool but the sound is a bit messed up like traveller metioned. I dont have any versions of SDL.DLL installed so i just use the provided one. :)

When i played the space level.. i saw something boss-like but i missed it. :oops: It would be a nice idea to stop increasing the players X value and let the player destroy the boss before he can continue.

by the way.. the space level was quite short. :(

The fonts you used look great but are not very readable. The difference between an L and an I is hardly noticalbe. :(

Good luck with Improving and killing range-check bugs. 8)

BTW: I use a Geforce MX/MX 400 and i dont have any texture problems (so far) 8)

[cairnswm]

Thanks for the feedback :)

I quite like the font - I think it suits the rest of the graphics even the way it overwrites each letter.

I didn;t think of stopping the scrolling until the boss is dead :)

[Huehnerschaender]

Hi William,

did you had time to take a look at the "back to desktop" issue? I really like to play your game, but I can't...

And please also try to make gamecalculations work the same speed on every machine... otherwise I can't play, too...

Please please please... let me play your game! :wink:

[Huehnerschaender]

I finally found a trick to play your game at "low speed". I started FRAPS to capture a video of the issue and FRAPS limits the FPS of your game! Then suddenly with 25 FPS the game ran at playable speed. Before I pressed the record button it showed me 999 FPS, which seems just to be the highest number. I guess the framerate was even higher ^^

Maybe you should just set the VSync to true to solve the whole problem.

A tip: Don't do movement calculations in render procedure. Seperate rendering and processing...


Ok, now I played to the second fishboss... killed him, took the portal and back to desktop! But finally I was able to take a look at your good work! There are very small things (like the speed issue, which hopefully can be fixed very easy) that I would change. Graphics are nice, gameplay fits to the gamestyle, sound could use little improvements like mentioned before. But all in all a very good entry!

Greetings,
Dirk

[idee_fixe]

I've tried Verne-x too, but the random crashes to desktop drove me away. They didn't seem tied to any particular event, the game would just drop out.

Otherwise, the speed was fine on my machine, and I like the graphics style (sort of the same inspiration I originally had for Blocked!, that "steampunk" look).

If you know any ways around the bug (like is it a sound issue), I'd appreciate it, because I can't get through the first level without crashing!