Genus Prime - 8bit compo WIP

[DaiHard]

"Expelled", or "Driven out"? suggests a forceful, active, removal, but hopefully not a brutal/terminal one?

D

[Derron]

Phew ... hay fever time. After these sunny days hazel nut et cetera start to bloom as if there was no tomorrow - so much I needed to take a Cetirizine - once done I know that the followup hours are "sleepy" and kind of "boozed" (which is why I won't take such stuff during serious work days).

Back to ontopic - got half an evening now to do something (after getting exhausted today by the kids - and the medicine).

- run it in debug mode and fixed some incorrect array accesses, color retrievals (wrong player color..)
- added gamestats and gamestats archive (so you can later see some curves on how you develop during a mission)
- AI now uses the tech tree and buys some missiles for planetary defence
- start screen now contains some animated stars (looks a bit less static)
- tweaked some values ("balancing")


Still a bit to do:
- [optional] diplomacy + diplomacy visuals/GUI
- missions (only a dozen or so)
- game profile (so storing missions you played/won already)
- music/sfx
- screens/windows: settings screen (audio, gfx, ...)
- screens/windows: help screen ("instructions / controls")
- screens/windows: loading/saving screen (or just provide 3 slots, might be more "c64 like")
- screens/windows: missions select screen
- screens/windows: skirmish setup screen


bye
Ron

[Derron]

Had a short peek during lunch break today and somehow ... on my windows laptop the ships slightly "flickered". Dunno if it was the laptop driver or the SDL opengl-BlitzMax NG connection.
I then added a "DrawRect(lastRenderedX,lastRenderedY,1,1)" with a gray color before I drew a rect of the same size, (almost) same position but the player color - and the flickering was a bit less visible. After rendering I updated "lastRenderedX/Y" to the current position. A bit like a "ghost effect" (but not always visible - as I updated positions during rendering, not during update/logic/physics).
Also I was of the opinion to see the "1,1 scaled to 2,2"pixels to look a bit squashed from time to time - as if the scale/rotate/... matrix is borked up. So I disabled scaling and let it play in glorious 320x200 - and it still kind of flickered.
If I "paused" the game (ships do not move) then no flickering was visible at all.

All ships only render at integer positions and the flickering seems not to be based on "x/y varieties" but as if the colors "flickered" a bit. VSync was on.
Rendering the ships with "w=2,h=2" instead of "1x1" and there is also no flickering visible - so its the "movement" which creates the effect.

Now I am back on my home computer and closely looked on the screen: it did not flicker. And yes I use delta timing etc. - and both computers are capable of maintaining the constant update/physics rates.


The laptop uses odd 58 hertz refresh rates - dunno if that "cheats my eyes"? I created screenshots and the image was crisp and the colors correct.


So why do I write the above? Such kind of "flickering" could create headaches/feeling of dizziness - which I do not want you/my fellow coders to experience. I dunno if I should add an option to the game which allows some "anti alias". If that was checked then I would draw a "alpha = 0.2 or so rectangle at the old position" or draw it at float-coordinates so that the movement isn't that "flickerish". Did not try yet so maybe it doesn't even help.

And as said: on my linux box it does not happen --- oh, now that I've typed this post it came to my mind that I could boot up linux on that intel/windows laptop to check if it is the display (for whatever reason). Will do once the kids are in bed.


bye
Ron

[Derron]

Think it might be an issue with the laptop itself - booted Linux and it has shown very similar issues while it run at a display refresh rate of 60Hz.

When I moved the application Window of the titlescreen I saw the stars ("burned" into the title screen image) to vanish while moving - as if some algorithm is trying to "cache" content.
Also the rocket "smudged" while doing so. As soon as I stopped dragging the window around all returned to behave as it should.
It used a 40Hz refresh rate (?!) and kept having this issue when going to a 60Hz refresh rate.

Ok ... thought about replicating it while moving a chrome window around - and guess what, grayish "thin" fonts were hidden during drag-around too. So I guess it is either a Windows issue - or something specific to this laptop.

As a screen cap does not show that issue I assume it is a Windows-Laptop-combination-thingy not worth to repair for now. Time is running out already.


bye
Ron

[3DzForMe]

Yes indeed, time marches ever onwards, still, just a under 6 days left 

[Derron]

Had less sparetime than thought - but at least finished a more or less "complete" statistics screen which for now is displayed after you won/lost. Maybe I just add an extra "button" or icon somewhere on the screen so you can have a look during play.



- chart curves
- clickable statistic entries will display the corresponding curve
- clickable player colors to display the stats of the player


bye
Ron

[Xerra]

I love that statistics screen. Great work !!

[Derron]

It is only there to satisfy the desires of statistic junkies. I know there are players around who want to see such stuff ... and others who skip this stuff for sure.


Bye
Ron

[3DzForMe]

Love the graphs, seeing as I was Blitzplotter in a former life/forum, stands to reason really 

[Derron]

Finished writing some GUI widget stuff and painted widget sprites.
Settings screen (sound + graphics) done now - including effects (so setting the resolution changes stuff accordingly).

I can properly adjust volume now for effects and music (will come handy for my TVTower game) - yet there are no sound files to play for now

Lot of trial and error to position stuff the way I could accept it ... and then, 2 hours gone already (wife enjoys watching True Detective now so my place is on the couch not on the computer).




Hope to find some time tomorrow to create the skirmish/mission screen + Loading/saving boxes.

bye
Ron

[Qube]

Looks like it coming all together nicely - I know you love to critique, so here's mine. Fix your letter N

[Derron]

Gui-stuff is interactive. There could of course be a lot of more stuff configured here and there - but I doubt anyone will really use it the next time.


@ Qube
The letter N is ... a bit hard in 3x5 pixels ;-) Especially if "M" and "H already just differ in the position of the vertical "1px bar".

wondered why you didn't blame my 4px-height-font's "3" (in fact there is no 8 as I was not able to pixel it in 4x4 and this restricted palette)

bye
Ron

[Matty]

You're amazing Derron.  That's so much work.

[Qube]

Cor, a C64 GUI, nice one - Look forward to playing the final game. Also don't forget to fix your weird shaped N. It would work better as an "n" shape #TopTipOfTheDay

[Derron]

Also don't forget to fix your weird shaped N. It would work better as an "n" shape #TopTipOfTheDay

You mean this way?


Fixed that TTF and licence is "100% free" so I am not sure if I was allowed to provide a "fixed" font file or better render everything as bitmap(font).


bye
Ron