Rise Of The Raiders - Outer Reaches Studios 'Big Boss' Entry

[AthenaOfDelphi]

<center></center>

Hi all,

Heres a link to the website I've set up to host all things OR¬?E, that includes the final 'Big Boss' submission. Theres not a lot there at the moment, but as the project progresses we'll add stuff to the site.

Our entry didn't get finished... the enemies are at this time simply static images, but this will give you an idea of where we're going with it.

The first startup will take a long time as it decompresses the game data and stores the uncompressed version, after that, the load times shouldn't be too bad.

We set out with the intention of making a retro style role play. We hit all the deadlines bang on, but at stage 4, it became clear that the implementation was heavily flawed... so much so, that we took the decision to rewrite the play engine. The net result is that the game lacks some key features. The key ones being the ability to shoot and the ability to die. However, this does mean you can take your time and have a good stroll around and take in the scenery.

We have a lot more that we want to put into the game, so development is definitely going to continue.

Thanks to WILL, the judges and everyone else (competitors and staff) who has been involved with the competition. Its been rather stressful, but ultimately, its been a great experience and its opened my eyes about developing client based games.

OR¬?E Homepage - Go here and visit the 'Downloads' section. There you'll find the final competition submission.

[WILL]

I tried d/ling it and it said it was corrupt. Maybe you got the URL wrong? Just left clicking sends me to your website.

[Huehnerschaender]

same to me....

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Huge Edit :-)

I've created a site for OR¬?E and I've uploaded the files... I had actually uploaded a file, but it wasn't the right one, so its a good thing I was half asleep :-D

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Just in case an edit doesn't flag up the thread... I'll spam it :-)

[aidave]

I played your game,
I wandered around and went in some buildings, and found a chalice, then an Earthquake started hurting me but I escape into a maze. I had fun running about the maze but it seemed that was the end.

the graphics are nice (reminds me of Ultima). Combined with your massive multiplayer game I think you could make some kind of "ultima-online-in-space", that'd be pretty cool.

[Traveler]

I've taken the time to download and play your entry for a while.
It worked pretty much okay for me. The initial loading time took a while as you wrote in your post (it actually made me think how long it would take on lesser configurations than mine (3ghz, 1gig ram)), but the second time it started a whole lot quicker.

I got as far as a bit after the second level, where I got lost in the maze.
In any case, I'm looking forward to see where this is leading to.

[czar]

Wow the initial startup took ages. I mean at least 3-4 minutes. I would suggest doing something about that. e.g. have a install that does that decompressing for you.

You guys have put in a lot of work and I hope you continue to develop.

Initially I could not work out why I was walking backwards. It took a while to realise that the mouse cursor was where the guy was pointing.

Couldn't seem to get into buildings.

Couldn't bring up the console. But FPS seemed very fast. The little man walks very quickly which makes him look nervous.

I couldn't walk in a diagonal line which seemed odd.

If you have a chance I would suggest that the fog off war could be less rigid, at the moment you have very sharp defined lines about what you can and can't see. If you can I would use some alphablending to make it foggy.

[Robert Kosek]

Startup was quite slow, but since it's a cached decompression I'm not to concerned about that. The cached load is much faster. By the way, the loading bar looks like a Cylon's eye.

One bug that forced me to restart is that of the infinite pause/inventory loop. While paused I accidentally hit "I" and my inventory came up. It's not a biggie, but when I closed it I was still paused. Try to resume and the inventory screen came up again. Hide it, and I'm still paused.

The animations were quite fast, far to fast for my taste. It makes the character look like they're running a marathon just to get 1 tile crossed. However, the teleport animation is perfect in speed and effect. I love that one.

I noticed that the teleport takes a few moments to trigger, you might want to make that happen just a tidbit quicker; I've teleported from 4 tiles away from the pad a time or two. And once I got stuck on a telepad and couldn't move, seemingly teleporting to nowhere (I went invisible) then appearing somewhere else 5 seconds later. I think it's tied to your sound.

Also, when walking to the end-level teleporter, rounding the final bend, my guy moved 2 tiles in almost 100th the time it normally takes. He somehow got semi-stuck there. I just encountered this 3 other times and noticed that it seems tied to the proximity of special spots... for instance I just found some Uranium in the 2nd level.

Overall the graphics are excellent and tie directly into the 2D RPG "feeling", but the sound leaves a bit to be desired. Also the game is VERY tempermental about loosing focus, which seems to be tied to the teleportation delay, and some sound delays as well. What previously was smooth has become very choppy as I've written this. I reassigned the console key to my QWERTY tilde/accent key (`/~) and after turning the FPS on, I noted that it's about -13 to -20.

Overall I liked it, and I hope you get some equipment, experience points and opponents into the game. It's a bit boring without them.

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Hi all,

Thanks for the feedback, its much appreciated.

I played your game,
I wandered around and went in some buildings, and found a chalice, then an Earthquake started hurting me but I escape into a maze. I had fun running about the maze but it seemed that was the end.

the graphics are nice (reminds me of Ultima). Combined with your massive multiplayer game I think you could make some kind of "ultima-online-in-space", that'd be pretty cool.

There is another level after the maze, you just have to work out how to get to the final island of the maze level ;-) The graphics... we both play Ultima (Chesapeake) and we both like the retro style, so that may explain it, but we owe a big thank you to my brother for them. As for Ultima in space... we have talked at great length about creating a client for our game... we've never gone down that road because I was too chicken... the prospect of writing a client blew my mind because I had no idea how easy it could be to create something that has potential. All I'm going to say at this point is stay tuned :-)

The initial loading time took a while as you wrote in your post (it actually made me think how long it would take on lesser configurations than mine (3ghz, 1gig ram)), but the second time it started a whole lot quicker.

Wow the initial startup took ages. I mean at least 3-4 minutes. I would suggest doing something about that. e.g. have a install that does that decompressing for you.

The load time is a huge issue, but its one that I'm going to be addressing. The compression was really only for the competition because of the upload limit. One of the limiting factors is not being able to quickly load a tile when I need it.

The initial startup does kind of do an install. It loads the compressed data, decompresses it and then saves the uncompressed version in the cache directory and timestamps it to the same as the source game file. After that, the engine does a timestamp check and only loads the compressed version (an re-caches) if the timestamps on the files change. If they are the same, it simply loads the uncompressed one.

Its strange actually, because on my Athlon 800, it takes less time to process the game data than it does on my 2.4GHz works laptop, and thats even when I run through the debugger.

Couldn't seem to get into buildings.

Couldn't bring up the console.

I couldn't walk in a diagonal line which seemed odd.

None of the buildings bar the shop on the first level are accessible at this time. We are waiting for the artwork.

The console key has caused issues for one of the judges IIRC. It is configureable so you can change it to suit yourself.

Couldn't walk in a diagonal... it can be a bit tricky to start a diagonal walk... hitting two keys near simulatenously on a fast machine could be pretty tricky I guess. Mouse move is much easier :-)

But FPS seemed very fast. The little man walks very quickly which makes him look nervous.

The animations were quite fast, far to fast for my taste. It makes the character look like they're running a marathon just to get 1 tile crossed.

After turning the FPS on, I noted that it's about -13 to -20.

The FPS isn't too bad. He does walk too quickly. I plan on implementing a self regulation routine so he walks at about 25fps regardless of refresh rate.

-13 to -20 - How strange... I'd be interested to know your machine specs. I just looked at the code in case I was doing something strange with data types, but I'm not so I can't explain that.

One bug that forced me to restart is that of the infinite pause/inventory loop. While paused I accidentally hit "I" and my inventory came up. It's not a biggie, but when I closed it I was still paused. Try to resume and the inventory screen came up again. Hide it, and I'm still paused.

There are a couple of initite loops possible in the state machine at the moment. Inventory Pause being one of them. Another occurs I believe if you try and access the console while its loading/initialising. I just have to tidy up the state switcher and include some additional gaurd conditions and they should be sorted.

noticed that the teleport takes a few moments to trigger, you might want to make that happen just a tidbit quicker; I've teleported from 4 tiles away from the pad a time or two. And once I got stuck on a telepad and couldn't move, seemingly teleporting to nowhere (I went invisible) then appearing somewhere else 5 seconds later. I think it's tied to your sound.

This could be as a result of the system running the scripts in a seperate thread, which it does to ensure the renderer isn't blocked, thus the teleport animation (and others) is possible. This should be relatively simple to fix, by blocking movement until the script processor thread has finished. Once I've implemented a fix, I'd like to hear how you get on with.

but the sound leaves a bit to be desired

I couldn't have put it better myself, but we quite simply ran out of time.

Also, when walking to the end-level teleporter, rounding the final bend, my guy moved 2 tiles in almost 100th the time it normally takes. He somehow got semi-stuck there. I just encountered this 3 other times and noticed that it seems tied to the proximity of special spots... for instance I just found some Uranium in the 2nd level.

You have discovered the movement costs system. I implemented it to make it more difficult to travel in certain directions (uphill, through bushes for example). Each cell can specify whether a particular direction is a slow, medium or fast travel, or it can completely block travel in a particular direction. Rounding the final bend of the maze level, you are walking up hill, so you slow down... going the other way, you are walking down hill, so you speed upt.
high speed direction

Also the game is VERY tempermental about loosing focus, which seems to be tied to the teleportation delay, and some sound delays as well. What previously was smooth has become very choppy as I've written this.

Could you check the log file in the application directory please Robert, and if it has anything interesting in it, email it to me please if you wouldn't mind. As for being tempremental when losing focus... it is... I have a fix implemented for that issue... its just no enabled at thie time.