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Program Announcements / Gravity Force X

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Dr Tank
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Location: Southampton, UK
Posted: 14th Dec 2010 18:36 Edited at: 30th Jan 2011 03:19
Latest version:

< CLICK TO DOWNLOAD GFX v1.2a >

ORIGINAL POST:

My retro remake of Gravity Force 2, officially the second best Amiga game OF ALL TIME.

A split screen game, player rotate-and-thrust spaceships about "Worms" style destructible landscapes, whilst attempting to kill the other player with cannon, and their selection of special weapon (bombs, missiles).



Here's its Work In Progress thread. <CLICK HERE> The version here is 1.0, but I am continuing to develop it.

Please tell me whether this works, and if it fails, please post the contents of the text file "loading_checklist.txt" generated when the game is run! It works fine on my computer (Windows XP), but I'm told it doesn't get past the menu on a Windows 7 machine. I have read that the DBP compiler has some issues with Windows 7 - do compiled executuables also have issues? Should I upgrade my DBP? (currently using 1.074)

I am also interested to hear what features you would like to see added. My current plans can be found on the WIP thread.
Rapidrory
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Posted: 17th Dec 2010 18:38
It's good, however i found it much eisier to kill my self accidentally than it was to kill the other player. even playing buy myself the other player usually wins... But apart from a few glitches like player 1 sliding down the edge of the screen on 'food fight', it was quite a nice game.

There is no such thing as "Too Fast!"
Dr Tank
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Posted: 17th Dec 2010 18:52
Thanks for playing! It does take a bit of practice. The glitch you mention has been fixed since. Trying to make the game a little more beginner friendly too.
swissolo
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Posted: 17th Dec 2010 23:23
The game crashes for me(Win 7) and it didn't seem to make a .txt file. I could see the menu, but when I started the game I saw the sheild, fuel, ect. then it crashed.

swis
Dr Tank
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Posted: 18th Dec 2010 00:08 Edited at: 18th Dec 2010 00:09
Thanks for posting. I was an idiot and only updated the mediafire link with the debug version and not the post attachment. Have ammended now. If you actually did use the debug version ("debug demo 15 dec 10.rar"), and it didn't output a text file, then that's a mystery, but I imagine you have the old version.

From what you say, if the shield, fuel etc thing is visible, this means that it's into the main game loop anyway, which means that the level loading / game setup works OK, but also means that the debug text file will tell me nothing and I therefore need to make a more serious test/debug version.

I should turn my attention to that now.
Dr Tank
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Posted: 18th Dec 2010 02:06
New version available. Also updated links in 1st post.

<DOWNLOAD v1.1>

If it crashes

This version has more debug information that should let me know what's causing the crash. If the game crashes for you, please post the contents of text file "loading_checklist.txt" created when you click "play game".

If it works

I've added 5 more weapons and 1 more level. Some other improvements too.
TheComet
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Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.
Posted: 18th Dec 2010 19:39
Nice game, I enjoyed playing it with one of my friends Control is a little hard, but it's just a matter of getting used to.

One thing I noticed after testing your game is that my code wouldn't run anymore... It is the ink command. Before I ran your game, this turned the ink color to green:

ink 0x00FF00,0
center text 320,240,"Hi"


But after running your game, the above would make the text invisible (And I don't mean it made it black... I mean invisible). Very, VERY strange... Could it be your game is doing something with a dll? I'll restart my computer and see if it still happens.

Anyway, after changing it to:

ink rgb(0,255,0,),0
center text 320,240,"Hi"


It worked...

TheComet

swissolo
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Posted: 18th Dec 2010 21:48
Still crashed... Here's the loading_checklist.txt


swis
Dr Tank
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Posted: 18th Dec 2010 23:38 Edited at: 18th Dec 2010 23:38
Quote: "Nice game, I enjoyed playing it with one of my friends Control is a little hard, but it's just a matter of getting used to."

Excellent! Thanks.

About the ink thing: I have no idea! Not doing anything with dlls in this. I imagine this is some kind of DBP bug. Have you tried explicitly setting the ink opacity? Instead of 0x00FF00 for green, use 0xFF00FF00.

Quote: "Still crashed... Here's the loading_checklist.txt"

Thanks very much. Someone on another forum obtained the same crash checklist. This tells me that the problem is when "sync" is called the game. Could be a lot of things. Will have a think and post up a new debug version.
Rapidrory
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Posted: 19th Dec 2010 00:54
Ah, much better. I'm LOVING the Bannana Bombs! Have to say the menu could do with a little work visualy, but otherwise it's really rather awesome. just a shame that the AI would probably be a total b*tch to do; I've only tested it against myself so far.

There is no such thing as "Too Fast!"
Dr Tank
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Posted: 19th Dec 2010 02:06 Edited at: 19th Dec 2010 02:07
Banana bombs are ridiculous.

The thought of coding AI for this fills me with horror! It's certainly an interesting problem that I would love to attack, if I could spare a year of my life.

The plan is to fix the mysterious Windows 7 crash problem and sort out online, so everyone can play together. The original game was just player vs player, and was great.

After that's done, I am contemplating some single player modes - like time attack destruction challenge. Any single player challenge/campaign mode could have multiplayer co-op too.
Dr Tank
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Posted: 20th Dec 2010 04:34
Please try new debug version. It calls sync a lot and should determine what changes between syncs that work and syncs that crash.

< Version 1.1+ >

If the game works there is a tiny update, including a new weapon: automatic grenades.
swissolo
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Posted: 20th Dec 2010 16:48
I didn't get as far as last time... the left half of the menu went black then it crashed


swis
Dr Tank
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Posted: 20th Dec 2010 17:27 Edited at: 20th Dec 2010 18:31
This sounds promising! Thanks very much. Here's a new version that hopefully will work.

<v1.1 ++ debug demo 4>

In the event it sill doesn't work, please change the contents of "debug_on_or_off.txt" to ON before generating the loading checklist as before. I am expecting it to work OK though.


What I think the problem was:


The command before the crashing sync is:



I load other textures this way with no problem. I believe the crash is happening because earlier, I load this texture without the 1 flag at the end (no tex stretching/resizing). I hope that by putting a ",1" flag at the end of the other load texture command, I have fixed this problem.
swissolo
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Posted: 21st Dec 2010 02:14
Didn't work

It appears to crash at the same point...

swis
Dr Tank
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Posted: 21st Dec 2010 05:42
That sucks, but I have had another think and hopefully the following will work in some mode:

<Click for Debug Demo 5>

At the start, I expect selecting mode 1 will lead to a crash, (it even crashes on my machine, although I don't think it's any different to before!) but hope that 2, 3, 4, 5 may work. Failing that, 6,7,8,9,0 may not crash, but will display wrongly. I really hope this one works!

Here's the relevant part of code that i've added :


Swisslo, you've been really helpful. Thanks very much!
swissolo
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Posted: 21st Dec 2010 17:43
2, 3, 4, and 5 work.
1 and 6 don't work. (crash at the same half-black screen point)

7, 8, 9, and 0 work but don't display the characters.

Quote: "Swissolo, you've been really helpful. Thanks very much! "

You're welcome!

swis
Dr Tank
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2010 00:34 Edited at: 23rd Dec 2010 16:55
YES!

Awesome news! Now I can concentrate on the game.

<DOWNLOAD V1.1 WORKING VERSION>
IBOL
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Posted: 1st Jan 2011 08:53
hi Dr Tank,
wow, amazing bullets and collision.
really cool looking. (found no crashes in ~10 minutes)
way way way way way way too hard.

Dr Tank
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Posted: 1st Jan 2011 10:41
Excellent to hear it works well. Do you think it's too hard?

Other people have found it hard too. I will put in some more open arenas, maybe with more air resistance and less gravity too. Also I think people might be confused by up-to-fire.

Rotate-and-thrust with gravity is the core of the gameplay, and a big part of what makes it fun once you've learned how to play, I think. The learning curve is initially steep. Once you're over that, it's only as hard as your opponent.

Online should be in soon.
TheComet
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Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.
Posted: 1st Jan 2011 15:22
Still haven't started with making any levels for this game (too much other stuff to do), but I haven't forgotten

I think you should make more than 2 players online, maybe 8 or so? And then also add some huge maps

TheComet

Dr Tank
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Posted: 1st Jan 2011 19:55 Edited at: 1st Jan 2011 19:56
The online code I am writing is very simple : It is symmetric, with each player sending inputs, and the game engine runs deterministically on each machine. There is no prediction, and if all inputs have not arrived, the game mechanics must wait.

Test code works fine over LAN, and I expect it to work OK for a good internet connection, but I don't expect it to scale well as players increase, since every player will experience lag when any other does, in short. This problem is compounded if i use client/server, since there is no direct path between all players pairs.

I could add in 2 players per machine, if there is a demand for it. Would be sweet to play blockbusters style 2 on 1!

1st thing is to get 1 vs 1 working. Then want to polish and optimise. Mechanics, levels, weapon balance, game modes etc. Plenty to do.

I will read up about and experiment with more advanced online techniques, but don't expect MMOGFX anytime soon!

About level size: levels are bigger now than you see here by a factor 4. If you make some levels: new width limit is 1024 pixels! No wider because I want to keep the joining split screen option.

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