"Forest Mob"-my first game is ready!

[p(3.14)]

Hello,

after many days of work my first game is finaly ready! :D I found that game makeing isn't as easy as I first tought (especialy when there are only 2 people working on the game), but it is worth it at the end.I am especialy proud that I used UnDelphiX (in software mode) and could achieve decent graphics (which proves that UnDelphiX is not dead!).So here is what my game features:

-a somewhat wierd mixture between a shooter and rpg.
-cartoony graphics.
-3 levels.
-10 weapons.
-4 heroes/classical game mode.
-22 bonuses.
-17 items.
-8 skills.
-9 enemies, each with a unique skill.
-3 difficulty settings.
-cool music.
...and probably some more that I am forgeting about.
Its funny that this started as a project for learning UnDelphiX/Game programing and turned as a commercial product (trial available).

Here is the game website:
http://www.fmgame.sdrazki.eu/NavMain.php

And some screenshots (might be big):
www.fmgame.sdrazki.eu/ScreenShots/12big.png
www.fmgame.sdrazki.eu/ScreenShots/11big.png
www.fmgame.sdrazki.eu/ScreenShots/pg1.png
www.fmgame.sdrazki.eu/ScreenShots/pg2.png
www.fmgame.sdrazki.eu/ScreenShots/pg3.png

Well thats it.Have a nice day:)

[czar]

Hi,

From what I saw it looks like a nice game. Have you had many people try/buy it?

While I had a look on your website; I got this error. Also the background etc is being double up and doesn't look nice on a large monitor (1680x1050)


Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/max6/public_html/fmgame/NavMain.php:3) in /home/max6/public_html/fmgame/NavMain.php on line 17

[arthurprs]

looks great, everything is 2d,

how did you draw the shadows?

[tanffn]

Congratulations p(3.14), the game looks very nice!

I had the same problem czar had, plus the site loads VERY slow.

[p(3.14)]

Hello again,

It feels great to have someone like your work:).
I have sold only one copy and don't realy know how many people downloaded it (thats not bad considering it was released yesterday).I guess it is kind of hard to make your game noticable among so much other.
And yes the website is kind of bugy (thanks for leting me know about the error and the bg), but hopefuly I'll fix it in the near future:).I realy don't know why it is slow, my web host provider assured me they have 15mbps international speed.
About shadows in the game.
There are actualy no "real" shadows.Only immobile objects have shadows and those are pre-rendered in the picture itself.Because the game runs in software mode any effects built in UnDelphiX are very slow even on fast PCs ,so I had to find another way for doing effects.For the effects such as smoke I used alpha channel blending from png image format.I could've used this method for shadows, but chose not to as too much alpha channel blending pictures at once decrease perfomance significantly.

[marmin]

I d-loaded the .rar file, it gave me an error.

[Traveler]

Hi p(3.14),

Congrats on a finished game! I've tried it for a bit and I thought it looked and played pretty good. While overall performance was pretty good (solid framerate) there are some things I think you should look into, before you really start advertising this game, though.

First, two points about our site:
- Definitely change the background. The repeating background looks sloppy on anything else than 1024x678.
- Let people know they are going to download a 52mb file. In my case the download dialog didn't specify the remaining time, and if it wasn't for the myfreefilehosting.com filename, I would have cancelled it after roughly 4 minutes (which is a long time for me nowadays)

The game: (and I'll start with the most important thing)
- For obvious reasons, only implement some kind of time limit in your demo, if you're absolutely 100% sure that it works. I hate to say it, but yours doesn't. I could play 10 minutes at most, which is way too short.

- I seem to be unable to use the mouse to select levels, difficulty settings, award bonus points etc. Because of this, the userinterface is somewhat difficult to handle. Right now, I have to navigate my way through it, using various and not always logical keys.

- Alt-tab will crash Forest mob.
- In Vista I have this dialog saying D3DRM.dll is required. (I believe there was a fix for that mentioned on PGD, some time ago).

- A seperate option program is not necessarily a bad thing, but don't overdo it by removing a similar screen from your game. I had to start up your game twice, because the music was too loud and I could not decrease the volume.

- I'm sure you've tested it countless times and I probably wrong here, but I had the distinct feeling, that had hit the smaller and faster flying guys in the background, but wasn't awarded for it.

Anyway, because of the timelimit I was not able to play for very long and so these points are pretty much it. I hope they're still of some help to you.

ps. I bumped your post to news

[p(3.14)]

Hi,

marmin, I updated the download links and they should work now.If you have the patience you can try downloading again:)
Traveler, thank you for your advice ,your points make logic.I also was thinking to postpone advertising and I probably will.Actually if I am not mistaking the test time is only about 5 min. gameplay time:)Unfortunatly the mouse is not intended for interaction other than moving your gun ,but that would be nice.I used the build in collision engine in UnDelphiX ,so I can't really change much about the faster flying guys in the background.The routine for detecting collision is the same as for the other enemies.However because the bullets need some time to travel and the targets move this sometime creates the illusion for a hit that actually didn't happen.So I guess the player have to aim ahead of his target wich is not so important when shooting the bigger guys since the bullet is going to hit them anyway, but matters for the smaller targets.Could you please tell when the game crashed did you pause it before alt-tabing?It usually only gets some ingame graphics corrupted when switching back to game.
Btw it was the tutorials on your website that started me with game programming, so I guess it's another "thank you" :)

[Wizard]

Hi p(3.14), I don't know if this will help or not. The "old" way of collision detection is as follows:


procedure TPlayerSprite.DoCollision(Sprite: TSprite; var Done: Boolean);
begin
if Sprite is TMonoSprite then
TMonoSprite(Sprite).Hit;
Done := False;
end;
The "new" way, also used in unDelphiX 1.08 is:


procedure TfrmMain.CarCollision(Sender:TObject;var done:Boolean);
var
theMan : TMan;
begin
if (sender is TMan) then
begin
theMan:=TMan(sender);

if (not theMan.hit) then
begin
theMan.Image:=dximgs.Items[fBloodImageIndex];
theMan.Z:=-30;
theMan.hit:=true;

fScore:=fScore+100;
end;
end;
end;

Then in your _psStartingState:


Car:=TCar.create(dxspriteEngine1.engine,dximageLis t1,CarImageIndex,_startingGas); Car.OnCollision:=self.carCollision;

Maybe it will help you :-) My game written in unDelphiX is also full screen but I don't have the alt tab crash...

[Traveler]

Btw it was the tutorials on your website that started me with game programming, so I guess it's another "thank you"

That is always nice to read :)

The alt-tab crash happens when I go back to the game. A popup appears saying the canvas does not allow drawing.
Btw, I also noticed here that the main window name says Form1. It isn't a really big deal, since your game runs fullscreen anyway, but I think it wont hurt changing it in something more appropriate. :)

Bullet time sounds like a bad plan. Players dont know about it and will conclude that your game is buggy.

As for checking for a hit. I think there's a better way to deal with that.
Some years ago I made a small game called Pop the Balloon (http://www.gameprogrammer.net/zip/popballoon_full.zip). (] then doPerformHit()).
It's superfast and very accurate.
Only downside is that you'll need to figure out an easy way to load all sprites (including animations) into arrays. :D

[p(3.14)]

There is a new version of the game available which includes most of the recommendations people made here.The changes are:

Increased trial time (15 minutes), you can play even if your v1.0 trial period is over
Improved graphics
Changed the way bullet collision works, now its easier to hit smaller targets
Some sounds were edited.
Added in game and launcher volume control
Added some in game help screens
Fixed a bug where sometimes the current special mission wasn't displayed correctly
Fixed bug with displaying error "Canvas does not allow drawing..."
Fixed bug under Vista where a missing library is reported
Fixed bug where game will sometimes crash when trial time runs out
Added the option to use non transparent clouds instead of just turning of
the alpha channel effect.
Added option for disabling cloud effect.
Power of gold has been tweaked and is now easier to do.
And a few more...

Download page:
http://www.fmgame.sdrazki.eu/Downld.html

Any more suggestions or constructive critic is welcome:)