The Probe

[farcodev]

cool work, i see that you've included even layers on it o.O

[paul_nicholls]

cool work, i see that you've included even layers on it o.O

Thanks mate
In The Probe the layers are like so:

Layer#0: warps, teleporters, travellators
Layer#1: TLS beam layer
Layer#2: main layer for player, walls, crystals, rocks, etc.
Layer#3: Acid

[paul_nicholls]

I have finally gotten other stuff into my editor like working switches, teleporters, and travel tubes...

So, this means that I am just about ready to release a simple demo version of The Probe with some test levels so you guys can try it out...finally! <phew>

[paul_nicholls]

Finally, I have uploaded a test version of The Probe to my DropBox folder:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1805932/TheProbe_Game.7z (2.46MB, Windows version only right now...Ubuntu version coming soon!)

Just unzip it to some location, it doesn't need installing.

If you don't get any sound, you need to install OpenAL...
http://connect.creativelabs.com/open.../AllItems.aspx

It includes a help file .pdf, and the executable even has various extra modes like an Editor mode, fullscreen mode, and stand-alone level mode!

Please read the help document first, and then try it.

The in-game menu doesn't have some options working so they are greyed out for now (load custom levels, help, and options).

Please give me some feed back as to what you think so far, and if you feel so inclined, even try making some levels using the editor so I can try them out. If the levels are good enough I might include them in the final game as one of the 'campaign' levels!

Enjoy!
Cheers,
Paul

[SilverWarior]

I would like to try your game out, but can't start a new game. The reason is a bit strange keybord hardware configuration of my laptop. Both Enter keys are acts as NumpadEnter (the only drawback of my laptop).
So it would be nice if you add support to use both Enter keys (VK_RETURN and VK_ENTER) for Executing menu commands.
Another thing that bothers me is the fact that you hide mouse cursor when user moves mouse pointer over the game windows, but don't handle any cursor drawing by yourself. So my cursor just disapears and I don't know where it is. Yes I do understand that in some situations this is neccesary, but I realy don't see need for this in the main menu.

[paul_nicholls]

Hi SilverWarior,
thanks for the report of the issues

I will add in support for KEY_KP_ENTER (my internal numberpad enter key) so you should be able to use the menu.
With regards to the cursor issue, did you want me to make the cursor appear in the menu at all times, but not in-game?

BTW, the menu will sometimes have GUI controls appearing that you can click with the cursor, and in these times the cursor will appear then.

cheers,
Paul

[SilverWarior]

With regards to the cursor issue, did you want me to make the cursor appear in the menu at all times, but not in-game?

Yes that's the idea. I do know that if you target other platforms it isn't posible to use cursor on all of them but when we talk about PC's having a mouse cursor is almost standard. You do know that for end user it is much easier to use mouse for executing menu actions than scroling through all menu items to get to the one you want.

And I don't hate disapering mouse cursor becouse this way I need to scrool trough the menu but I do hate it becouse in some cases knowing where the mouse cursor is very helpful. For instance let's say that your game has some bug and fires Access Violation Message. If you want to close that message you need to click on OK button of that message. So if youd don't know where the cursor is you will have hard time moving it into the Message Window to actually clik on OK button. Yes in most ocasions pressing Enter or space would have same effect but not always.
Once I even had a development version of some game wich was using the worst posible example for hiding cursor. The game actualy changed systemwide seting for default mouse cursor to use a cursor template where all posible pictures of cursor were just blank. So when the game crashed I ended up with Windows wich had no visible mouse cursor, even after the system restart. Luckly I quickly figured out why and fix it (I can do any operation in Windows without even using a mouse, but it does takes more time).
So that's why I try to avoid hiding mouse cursor until it is compleetly neccesary. In one off my currently discarded projects (it is discarded becouse of lack off neccesary knowledge) I even wrote a rutine wich took care that mouse cursor always showed if some exception was fired. The only drawback was that my rutine didn't notify me off what exception was fired in the first place. This was some time ago when my programing skils were a lot weaker. Today I would probably write it in a different way but stil geting the same effect.