Caimans quest (Finished)

[savage]

As Dean said, using Interfaces is the only *built in* way of reference counting.

I would suggest getting into the habit of knowing where your pointers and objects are. Even though your are not getting any "low virtual memory" messages that does not mean your are not losing memory. If you are nilling pointers and not keeping track of it, then you should maybe think of implementing things in a different way so that you are as close to 100% certain that you are not leaking memory through unfreed memory.

Gamer's won't like it if everytime your game is run, memory is lost.

[Smotsholle]

Finally, the school project is finished.

All that awaits is a final presentation and the approval of some of the teachers.

I've put the current version online:

http://webserv.nhl.nl/~kampe001/Caiman05.zip

One thing, don't bother doing the search game bit on the multiplayer game. We had a java server running registering anyone who joined on the server. Unfortunatelly the linux servers at school don't support internet access.

Well, Anyways, this is a raw version, so just go and test it . This game should be good for about 4 hours of gameplay.

It starts off a bit boring, but the game gets nicer and nicer as you porgress.

For those who want to, post any bugs here and "IF" I find the time, I'll fix some of them.
The guys doing the network part decided not to continue this project, I myself have programmed the single-player part so I can fix the bugs there.

Have fun.

[Smotsholle]

Upload fixed, should work now.

[Smotsholle]

Not to nag or anything, but I was wondering if anyone has tried the game yet, I'm curious about any bugs you may have found, so I can fix them.

[jdarling]

I actually went through it for a bit. Here is what I found before I got aggrivated and quit playing (sorry):

1) Movement of the combat cursor is cayotic at best. I was having to try extremely hard not to overshoot my target, usually mashing the keys as quickly as possiable to still have to hit the opposite direction until I got it where I wanted. This actually caused me to move at times when I wanted to attack .

2) Movement in the map environment was SLOW, very very SLOW compared to the attack movements. If they were both the same speed I wouldn't have noticed and I wouldn't have a problem with it

3) I couldn't understand what I could and couldn't walk into on the map. For example the buildings on the first screen couldn't be walked into even though they looked like they could.

4) The first "Guide" that tells you to fight his spider, it took a long period to load the combat screen (I actually thought that my PC had locked up) then it jumped into the combat screen.

On the up side:

1) The graphics are quite nice
2) Little to no flicker (only when I had alot of things running did I see a problem)
3) Lots of explinations, from what I saw just the right amount of information

Overall nice first effort, and I hope you continue on.

[Smotsholle]

1. Odd to see the cursor moved too fast and the battlescreen takes a lot of time to load. On the crappy pcs we developed it it was the other way around. I can fix the cursor so it only moves when you press, and not when you hold, would that be a better solution?

2. Do you mean the movement should take up half of the frames or should the scroll be disabled to increase speed?

3. What suggestion do you have with the buildings? I don't want to remove them because this would remove the town-effect. I could draw a closed door on them, but would that solve it in your opinion?

4. Don't know how to speed up the battle-load screen, though I'm still surprised it took your pc that long. Sorry, can't help on that.


BTW. We had to speed up the programming process at the end and this left a couple of things like the ones you just named. When I have time I'll see if I can fix em.

Thanks for the report.

[aidave]

1. Odd to see the cursor moved too fast and the battlescreen takes a lot of time to load. On the crappy pcs we developed it it was the other way around. I can fix the cursor so it only moves when you press, and not when you hold, would that be a better solution?

yeah that would work better
i also found the cursor moving around too fast, when i just tapped it.
it might be the user's cursor speed rate, i know i always set it to the highest repeat possible.

[jdarling]

1. Odd to see the cursor moved too fast and the battlescreen takes a lot of time to load. On the crappy pcs we developed it it was the other way around. I can fix the cursor so it only moves when you press, and not when you hold, would that be a better solution?

2. Do you mean the movement should take up half of the frames or should the scroll be disabled to increase speed?

3. What suggestion do you have with the buildings? I don't want to remove them because this would remove the town-effect. I could draw a closed door on them, but would that solve it in your opinion?

4. Don't know how to speed up the battle-load screen, though I'm still surprised it took your pc that long. Sorry, can't help on that.


BTW. We had to speed up the programming process at the end and this left a couple of things like the ones you just named. When I have time I'll see if I can fix em.

Thanks for the report.

1) Yes, this would make much more sense and make it more controlable
2) Well fixing 1 would make 2 pretty much a mute point
3) Closed doors would at least make it look like you couldn't enter. When the user clicks on one you could also post a message that the door is locked.
4) Just an observation, maybe place a loading screen between them in case it takes time.

[Traveler]

Sorry,.. I had forgotten about this game after I read this post at work the other day. ops:

Anyway I took it for a spin as well. I didn't have most of the problems aidave was running into, but I can't really say it was a smooth ride either.

Overall it worked pretty well. The graphics are alright, although the mixed 2d/3d style isn't really working for me. Could be a work in progress though.

As far as controls go, they're good too. Although I agree with aidave on this one. Selecting a square to move on to isn't always easy. I've had my share of misses too. Fortunately nothing too serious to loose the game or something (not even sure thats possible actually). An easy solution for this would be the use of the mouse.
The fact that you also need to confirm your melee action while there is no action possible gets a bit annoying after some time. Another issue is that's hard to see if you can move onto a square that's behind trees.

The combat worked okay for me. No slowdown in loading time or things like that. There were issues with AI though. Sometimes the enemy wouldn't move while it had good reason to (ie it stood only a square away to hit) The lizzard guy from the village was quite easy to kill too. I think he was able to hit me once, then he ran off. A turn later he realized there was no way to go to so he returned only to get shot to death by my archers.

Speaking of them, I would suspect they're not invincible either. I managed to get one killed, but after the battle he was back again. Seemed a bit odd.
At another point an archer got himself killed in just a single blow. He was infact the first one that got hit.
I also noticed that is impossible to shoot arrows at enemies that are on different levels. Archers next to enemies are unable to perform a melee action as well. I'd imagined they would be a ble to use a knife or something. Perhaps they'd do not as much damage as your main character, but still something.
At one time I managed to get an archers trapped in a corner by two enemies, and I really missed a skip turn option or at least a knife action.

The level with the wizzard (at least that is what I think it is) had the odd thing that one of my archers got hit by something unknown and dropped dead, while it was not the enemies turn.

The level with the red zombie ended the game for me as it kick me back to Windows. Nothing odd in the log btw
STATUS INFO : @ 21:46:51 MSG : move: IN : 4-6-6-7-213
STATUS INFO : @ 21:47:44 MSG : Terminating Application IN : Finalization

Some other minor things:
Your spelling is sometimes off (The lizzard's text for example).
I'm not entirely sure anymore but I though the mushroom guy said a needed to kill four of his kind, while I fact I had enough by killing just two.
The battles tend to get a bit repetitive and boring after a while. This is mainly due to the fact that your archers dont die so you can just use them as cannon fodder, while your main takes em out.
When after a battle the XP gets sorted out, archers and/or both your main character appears to float in mid air.

In all, it hink it could be a good game though. Keep it up!

[Smotsholle]

1. Movement, will be fixed asap. You just need to tap your way towards a square.
2. Mouse will not be implemented, the assignment was to give it a GBA style to it, GBA has no mouse
3. Loading literally freezes the screen, so I cannot put in a loading screen or I need to load threaded, I'll see what I can do, but don't expect anything.
4. Archers have low HP on purpose. They are ranged and can easily be protected by caiman.
5. Lizard is supposed to stay there after you beat him, he just has a different text when you talk to him again.
6. The terrible AI is due to the AI-class we followed for this project, it insisted on us using the Alpha-Beta algorithm, and to be frank that's not the most suited for this kind of game.
7. Haven't noticed the pointless archer kill. Could you tell me by the map coordinates (press M ingame) where that happened?
8. Before the game quit in the zombie bit, did the game go slower?
9. I'll check the lizard spelling.
10. I'll check the triggers for the mushman bit.
11. Battles will be less repetitive later on. You will find more diversity in the battlemaps and the team of units. Everything up to the mushvillage is purely meant to be for learning.
12. The xp midair float is a known bug, the classes for them are recreated thus they get coordinates 1,1 which is the top of the screen...

Now that I know more of these bugs I'll fix them ASAP.

There is a bug #13, which gives you a joining archer twice. This bug has allready been fixed.