GemChase Alpha

[Robert Kosek]

The smoke already was behind the player, but I found it looking like the player was glued onto the scene when thing only happen behind him, so I changed 50% of the smoke to appear in front of him. I can vary this value to a little lower, then it will not be so much disturbing. But I really don't like the look of the complete smoke behind the player.

In that case you've done well splitting it like that. Otherwise it still will obscure the player's ship. However the black on black nature of the smoke on the background is slightly defeating, so you could go with a dark gray instead if you wanted to experiment.

The bugged level had an artefact in leveldesign. There was a spawnpoint behind the GUI (which I have overseen when I changed GUI layout) *lol* Fixed that.

Oh. Hahaha. I saw that and thought that you slipped in the level editor.

You're welcome Dirk.

Btw, did you see the new Ini-File in the game directory? You can change the starting level in it! I will add a level-code system later.

Yep, I spotted that when I first started playing yesterday.

[savage]

To give the ship some depth can you not fake a shadow, or will that be in congruent with what is happening on-screen?

[Huehnerschaender]

Dom, on which objects do you want the shadow to be cast on?

Robert, I will try it with a lighter smoke particle.... new update will follow in the evening.

[Robert Kosek]

In beating level 7 I started in 8 where I left 7 and blew up a mine (hurting myself) and then teleported to the launchpad. All in a split second. Might want to look into that. I started pretty damaged.

Oh the irony... I just died on the last meteor on level 9 that I tried to avoid. :roll:

Level 10: Dirk, you evil madman... meteors plus "you know who" makes that level painfully difficult. I love the missiles though! Maybe it could randomly alternate between the standard, and a frag one that sends bouncy particles out that do a little damage even if it doesn't hit you.

[WILL]

You could change the ratio of the 'in front' and 'behind' smoke... so that it's more like 25% in front and 75% behind so you still have the smoke emanating from the ship visually while not obscuring it as much.

As for the blocking... you could simply alpha it more as it gets higher...


So this one has a level editor huh? Hmm... alright, it's gonna need 50 new features! :twisted: I'll write them up and send you a copy tomorrow. :lol: [size=9px](inside joke)[/size]

[Huehnerschaender]

@Robert:
Another little bug. On levelstartup the position of the ship is set to startingposition, but the collisionshape is not moved. So in the very first frame the ship is at the starting point and its collision shape is at the position you left the last level... fixed that. Thanks again! You wouldn't recognize it until you stop a level at a position where you hit an enemy in the next level

About the new enemy... its a new one, not the last So let us proceed slowly to more evil things It's already hard enough to beat level 10 (which of course is not final, just to introduce the new enemy). The weaving rocket is quite hard to assess in its movement, even if its regular, you have to quickly decide in which direction you try to avoid.

@Jason:
I already fixed the smoke problem... I like it exactly like it is now... Out of 15 smoke particles, 14 are behind the ship now... looks ok and is not obscuring the ship too much.

Which blocking are you talking about? I don't understand that...

And finally: *lol* I am awaiting the list... But... I guess I can take the last list we made one year ago

[jasonf]

I can't get it working at all on my work machine, an Alienware P4 3ghz, with 2gig ram and Radeon x800 Pro video card.

I get a corrupted screen and a message..




Seems like some people have been getting similar errors but then fixed them.. I scanned the posts but didn't find a solution... any ideas?

[Huehnerschaender]

Did you download the 35MB version or did you download from the first post (which is not up to date)?

Which OS is installed?

I have a P4 2,8 Ghz, 1 GB Ram, Radeon X800 Pro (WinXP SP2) here and just tested it.. Works like a charm!

If you downloaded from the first post, please take a look at this:


http://www.dino-it.de/GemChaseBeta.zip

[Huehnerschaender]

Today I fixed some bugs mentioned here and I spent a lot of time on tweeking the visual effects by making new particle graphics trying out different blendmodes.

The result can be seen in this little video here... See me beat level 10, nearly without a scratch!

http://www.dino-it.de/gemchase.wmv

Greetings,

Dirk

[jasonf]

Still explodes and I have to kill it in task manager... hang on...

DirectX settings were Debug.. you might want a more elegant error trapper than is there at the moment. Each time it crashed, I had to force it to close.