Alien Flux Alpha Test 3

[princec]

It is far too easy to begin with once you’ve got the hang of the controls, but the difficulty starts to ramp up by about level 4. When I’ve given the Cubes of Doom their Borg lasers you should be having to keep your wits about you. And I put the Boss Tringle in last night to see what it looked like

It’s supposed to be just difficult enough by the end of the demo that you want to find out what awaits you on the next level, but just easy enough not to scare off first time players. And the first three levels are nice and short so you can “warm up” by breezing through them collecting powerups. Facing the Boss Tringle without a gun powerup is actually bloody hard as it takes 400 hits to kill it with the normal laser, but only 100 with the biggest laser.

Cas

[soupface]

i get the menu (from both .exe and webstart), but when i click on new game…

      at org.lwjgl.opengl.CoreGL.drawRangeElements(Native Method)
      at com.shavenpuppy.jglib.renderer.Renderer$StateList.render(Renderer.java:155)
      at com.shavenpuppy.jglib.renderer.Renderer.draw(Renderer.java:373)
      at com.shavenpuppy.jglib.renderer.Renderer.render(Renderer.java:256)
      at xap.features.BackgroundFeature.render(BackgroundFeature.java:407)
      at xap.BattleZone.render(BattleZone.java:78)
      at xap.GamePanel.renderBackground(GamePanel.java:409)
      at xap.gui.Component.render(Component.java:1269)
      at xap.gui.Component.renderChildren(Component.java:1328)
      at xap.gui.Component.render(Component.java:1277)
      at xap.gui.Interface.render(Interface.java:555)
      at xap.Game.main(Game.java:260)
      at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
      at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
      at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
      at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:324)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeApplication(Unknown Source)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeMainClass(Unknown Source)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.continueLaunch(Unknown Source)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleApplicationDesc(Unknown Source)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleLaunchFile(Unknown Source)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.run(Unknown Source)
      at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:536)

[princec]

Whoops, that’s my own stupid fault. (You be usin’ old drivers but I should’ve checked before I called drawRangeElements).

Cas

[cfmdobbie]

The latest EXE release worked on my desktop! Hurrah! Win98SE, 700MHz Athlon, 32MB GeForce256 DDR. Works like a dream, smooth as a mercury spill.

A few comments:

I’m really not finding it “fun” at the moment. I expect I’ll get into it, but the learning curve is pretty steep, leaving me more frustrated than rewarded. :-/

The purple/black spheres are very hard to see against the background, making shooting them down more luck than skill (um, for me!)

While you’re porting in, all the homing gidrahs travel to the place where you’re going to appear, making you die immediately. You have to hover around one area, then zoom away to somewhere else just before you appear… ruining the whole point of the zoom-in period.

Oh, and you have to change the sound the Blobs make when you shoot them. It’s waaaay too tempting at the moment to blast away, just to hear that little squeak as they expire… ;D ;D ;D

[princec]

I think I just need to brighten the graphics up a few shades in general; the gamma’s way out on my LCD screen.

I reckon you’re getting old and out of touch if you can’t handle level 1 now You’re invulnerable for 2 seconds after res-in, which should sort half your spawning problems out; I’ll fix the other issue (telepathic gidrahs) in due course. I can’t really make it any easier though or it’ll be dead boring - however, we’re going to put a Trainer on the demo, which just lets you fly around some targets which you can practise shooting at until you get bored (eg. infinite lives, no score).

How could you shoot poor Woo Woo?

Cas

[EgonOlsen]

I still need an OpenGL compatible videocard, because my Radeon 9700pro isn’t one in the eyes of A.F.

Edit: Still running XP Home on a P4-3.06Ghz(@3.25) using the Catalyst 3.2 drivers

[markush]

Worked for me with the radeon 9700pro using winxp and the latest drivers (i think).
Cool game by the way, but i suck completly Stupid furballs are allways in my way.

Tested on
WinXP
radeon 9700pro
athlon 2.2
1.5G ddr

[princec]

I’ve narrowed down the problem to two things, both to do with monitors:

1. LWJGL basically doesn’t cope with dual monitor setups. If it works - good - but it’s probable that it won’t. We’ll have to fix it. Unfortunately there’s no hard and fast rule to making it work properly; I suspect I just have to use windowed mode or stretch the window to cover both monitors. Fortunately dual monitor setups are very rare.

2. A.F. requires a 60Hz display and filters out all the modes that are above 60Hz. However it seems some expensive new monitors no longer support 60Hz @ 800x600 (!), which IMHO is a rather major oversight on the designer’s part. So I’ll be altering the code to get any mode it can. If it can’t get 60Hz you might experience a little glitch in the animation. Fortunately such naff monitors are rare

3. Some cards just won’t do fullscreen 800x600 no matter what I try. I’ll try an 800x600 window as a last resort before bailing out completely. Fortunately such strange video cards are rare

The next (and final) alpha test will be in a few days; I’m just putting in all these tweaks and fixes and working on the low-end renderer. You’ll also get to meet the Boss Tringle at the end of level 5.

Cas

[cfmdobbie]

[quote]How could you shoot poor Woo Woo?
[/quote]
How could I not? ;D That little squeak is delightful! It’s a bit like Prince Herbert falling out of the swamp castle in Holy Grail…

[soupface]

[quote]Whoops, that’s my own stupid fault. (You be usin’ old drivers but I should’ve checked before I called drawRangeElements)
[/quote]
so all i need is newer drivers then? uh, okay.
it works now, but locks up on exit (my computer still works alright, but the application goes [Not Responding]

great game.
thanks

[EgonOlsen]

1. LWJGL basically doesn’t cope with dual monitor setups. If it works - good - but it’s probable that it won’t. We’ll have to fix it. Unfortunately there’s no hard and fast rule to making it work properly; I suspect I just have to use windowed mode or stretch the window to cover both monitors. Fortunately dual monitor setups are very rare.

I don’t have a dual monitor setup but i do use the DVI-output for my single (analog) monitor. That’s because the Radeon 9700/9500 series has some problems with interferences from whatever when using the primary VGA output. But that shouldn’t be problem, should it?

2. A.F. requires a 60Hz display and filters out all the modes that are above 60Hz. However it seems some expensive new monitors no longer support 60Hz @ 800x600 (!), which IMHO is a rather major oversight on the designer’s part. So I’ll be altering the code to get any mode it can. If it can’t get 60Hz you might experience a little glitch in the animation. Fortunately such naff monitors are rare

My monitor can do 800*600@60Hz for sure, so that shouldn’t be a problem. BTW: Forcing 60 Hz is ridiculous in my EYES… It flickers like crazy…it hurts the eyes…just don’t do it, please.

3. Some cards just won’t do fullscreen 800x600 no matter what I try. I’ll try an 800x600 window as a last resort before bailing out completely. Fortunately such strange video cards are rare

Again, the Radeon 9700pro does for sure. I can play whatever i want to in 800*600 (not saying that i really want to…but if i have to…)

So i’m hoping for the next release to fix my problems with A.F.

[zparticle]

Just a note, I’m using dual montiors and it is working for my set up.

[swpalmer]

For the record it doesn’t work at all on Mac OS X with the recent 1.4.1_01 JRE release.

The app loads and then simply hangs with no UI whatsoever. I didn’t see any stack traces or other error messages in the console.

[princec]

LOL! I’d be kinda amazed if it did run on the Mac seeing as the first thing it’ll try to do is open a native library that hasn’t been written yet!

Cas

[swpalmer]

I figured… but it could fail more gracefully…

Now when is that native lib gonna get done?

[princec]

Don’t blame me, it should’ve bailed gracefully when it didn’t find the dll! Gregorypierce of this parish is working on it but he’s quite busy right now thanks to the fools liberating Iraqi oill^H^H^Hpeople.

Cas

[NielsJ]

FWIW: AF runs on my dual-monitor setup (one TFT, one CRT) but it did require the most recent NVidia drivers. (So, in relation to recent discussion: the 16MB drivers would have been a larger barrier-to-entry than the 8MB JRE which I already had )

The default drivers supplied by Dell were too old (the machine is less than 4 weeks old), and caused the mysterious “not OGL compatible” error some of you have seen.

[swpalmer]

Who should I blame? Like I said, I didn’t get an unsatisfied link error or some such exception in the console window - and I usually do when that error happens.

[vrm]

seen few bugs on linux

after quitting the game, the Display & Keyboard are weirdo

you do
Keyboard.destroy();
Display.destroy();

at exit ?

else it’s very fun , a bit hard for my dumbness
there is some graphic glitches in 16 bit mode (how can I take a screenshot?)

[princec]

F6 does a screenie (won’t work in the exe). Any probs in 16 bit mode are down to your drivers.

Cas