should be working now, sorry for the confusing.
I have posted a new client. I apologize to those who signed up yesterday the 21st. My format file was overwritten so you guys will have to click the register button. Again this is not a huge update. Better network code, rotation of remote players now used locally(you should see others rotate as well as move in the x and y dirs), and an improved “docking” screen to show what is coming up.
Client version control is in place that notifies you when your client is out of date( I have not set up an auto download as of yet).
Again, just connecting, moving around a bit, clicking some of the control buttons and logging out is a great help on my end, thanks!!
Your system would not accept one of 5 different display modes, exting...
On a geforce2. Whatever screen modes you’re checking, they’re obviously not very good choices if a GF2 cannot reproduce them…
Is there a schedule as to when the servers are up? I’d like to try your game, but recieve the “All known internet servers are offline” message.
I have a geforce 2 ans it runs fine. The max resolution I was detecting in full screen mode was 800*600. I have modified to a windowed mode for testing, so it should not be an issue now.
As for server time, I try to keep the server up all the time and only restart it when I have made a significatn client change as then talk to each other for version check. Webstart version now available as well.
http://68.57.89.45:11211/gt6/gt6.jnlp, though not well tested.
Trade code nearly complete. You can now buy and sell products at space stations and when you log out, any product/cargo you still have is saved. You can pick up where you left off when you return.
Next stuffs:
-flesh out player skills and ship parts.
-add multiple sectors and flesh out some other stations so trade is a little more fun.
-work on weapons and shields…leading to limited combat
-gadgets…little things to add to your ship like scanners, cloaks, etc.
-begin planet development
Webstart link is in above post.
[quote]I have a geforce 2 ans it runs fine. The max resolution I was detecting in full screen mode was 800*600. I have modified to a windowed mode for testing, so it should not be an issue now.
[/quote]
Works fine now.
Webstart works fine.
But…
This game looks great, but the UI is absolutely dreadful. I felt like I was playing a game on a CPC-464 again, where games often had controls that didn’t work and you had to press things in a certain order to get a game to start (with no advice) or the “press S to start” should have read “press F to start” etc. (this isn’t what happened, but it felt as frustrating as those games were).
Right now, you have what looks like it might be a great game but isn’t. These are all negative comments, but don’t be disheartened; they’re all UI issues.
[] The decision to not allow mice is very strange, and will probably make some people refuse to play the game, but I think for me it would be OK if the keyboard controls actually worked and worked well. (see following comments…)
[] The opening menu has a highlight on the selected menu item that is so subtle it took me > 30 seconds just to discover that it was even there. I think something like 20 pixels changed from black to green, and some more changed from “bright green” to “very bright green”.
[] Your KB-menus are broken in places - e.g. when registering, if you hit up after registering, the selection vanishes (nothign selected) and the “hit enter” message vanishes too. You have to hit either up then down or down to get back to the enter message
[] You have no cursor. This is such a standard of UI’s for the last 30+ years that people find it hard to work without them. Primarily they tell you where you can start typing. This is especially true in your text GUI where it looks very similar to many games GUIs that are the same but you have to hit enter on a selection to make the cursor appear; this is not your fault, but it’s an expectation that many players have so it would be a good idea IMHO not to confuse them
[] You need to fix your networking protocols - I had a > 0.5 second lag for anything to happen and I’m on broadband with no other network transfers at the same time.
[] It’s very non-intuitive to move around. Just pressing the up arrow does nothing at all; you have to hold it down for a little while (it seemed just a hundred ms or so was enough…). This means it took a very long time to discover I could move.
[*] Worse, your decision to ban the mouse means that when you jump into the game there is a reasonable expectation that the player is still in your focus-based text menu system - especially since the messages on the screen talk about “selecting a system”, and something in the middle of the screen is highlighted. With nothing happening in response to cursor key presses, I thought I had to select a planet using cursors, but nothing seemed to be happening, By accident I eventually held down the up arrow for a while and discoverd the tiny ship.
ouch…uhmmm, I quit!
Points well takin on the non-mouse/keyboard only issues. I decided to go with a keyboard only game so you could sit with your hands on the keyboard to play and they would never have to leave the keyboard. Apparantly not the best solution. :-/
BTW, I did post an instructions page on my website, which is available at the beginning of this thread.
As for the network code, its a byte array packet type thing that I borrowed through GNU and have spoken with the author. His implementation allowed for some very neat usage that I liked and would take a while to circumvent. It may very well be true that I am not implementing it well. Many things seem instantaneous when the packet is created and sent immediatle when you fire off a command, but movement packets are sent once every frame.
The server takes these, which are speed and direction, and is continually computing your location. Then, at an attempt to match framerate, the server sends a packet to each player for each player(in the same sector) with there location info. I have not implemnted any dead reconing…it is purely, here is where things are from the server. ANY tips would be greatly appreciated.
With the exception of the network issues below, I could revert back to my old login, which was its own Frame with textfields and buttons(very easy and intuitive) and I could add mouse usage (it already exists, just does a system println of x y location of cursor) will a small effort. I may do this and get back with you guys. I would love to have kevglasses networl smoothness in his miniadventure!
Thanks
If you were serious I’ll happily make the (uncommented and slightly out of date) source available on the web.
All I do it send a TCP packet 5 times a second for every actor in each direction if they’ve moved and the target client can see them. Then I do some smoothing on the client so that no-one ever actually “jumps” they always walk smoothly. It means the client might be out of sync by a “5th of a second + lag” but doesn’t matter too much if its not a twitcher.
Kev
That would be great! thanks!
My packets are going about 30 times a second! And, as you saw from blahblahblah, it was a half second wait until his ship actually started moving.
Client sends his move to client 30 times a second and server, calcs all moves, gets locations, then sends those to each client in the sector only if he can see him as well.
I have reverted to my old login frame so login/register should be a little easier and more intuitive. No other mods to gui have been made yet.
I also noticed the “white screen.” I must have some class loaded graphics messed up. When I run my jar that is in the webstart directory, I get the login, then a white screen, then my space screen. When I run my local jar, I get my “grpahics loading, please wait” screen and never get a white screen. hmmmmm
The movement was very choppy. I think it would be better if you let the client calculate the movement, and send the absolute position to the server. Or do somehting to make it easer to control the ship.
Could not get anything to work except move. Nothing happened when I pressed “/”, “d” or “~”, nomather where I were.
Btw. you need to change the “~” key. On my keyboard I have to type “Left ALT”+“A key left of enter”, then press space, to show it in a text editor. Maybe the tab key instead?
When I pressed Esc a sending logout request was printed to the console. I lost control of the ship, but the frame still shows and it still renders. Had to kill it in the task manager. I would like it to quit right away when I wan’t to exit. There should be no need to send a logout message to the server. Instead the server can detect the proken socket.
I don’t mind it being a keyboard only game, but it needs a help system. There should be “press F1 for help” in a visible place when you start. The there should be a menu describing how to play, key shortcuts etc.
Looks like it could be a nice game. Keep it up.
Thanks tom. What OS? The send logout is in addition to disposing of the frame, so it should have disappeared. hmmm
THanks again… more to come as I make some big code changes in the next few days to incorporate some recent comments/suggestions in this thread! 
WinXP, java 1.4.2_03
thanks tom and thanks kev!!
Kev…my java code, when done at work is clean, modular, etc… but when I am building a game, my code is convoluted and mish mash…too exicted about the game and graphics are not my thing…
but your game code is beautiful! I am truly jealous of your code layout and design. !!
Um, thanks I guess ;D Probably due to a lot of practice.
EDIT: Badly needs comments tho.
Kev
I have added some instructions on the trade screen, added a cursor to any active typing location and provided mouse click selecting in the main sector screen, i.e. when you are flying you can use the mouse to select space stations, then ‘d’ to dock.
Mouse functions in trade menu coming soon. Any comments appreciated!
Thanks!
The new login works fine, although for some reason the bottom 1/3 of all the letters in the name, password, alias boxes was being cut-off?
(nb: The cursors worked well enough that I forgot that had been a problem originally :). This is how it should be - people don’t even notice the UI, it’s just “there” :).)
Have you updated the network code yet? It seems to be exactly the same. The instructions in top right are helpful (but I’d suggest that when someone comes into the game for the first time, you have those instructions appear in the middle of the screen with a “press any key to continue” prompt, or flash momentarily to draw attention, etc - if you’ve never played before, there’s a lot on screen and it might take a while to spot those instructions) and the mouse aiming makes a big difference, so that this time I made it into a dock (although I had to randomly bash the keyboard - didn’t rememeber what the dock key was. Shortcuts are great once you’ve used the game/app a lot, but for beginners the non-shortcut way should be more obvious (howabout a 5 second popup every time you move over a dockable thing and/or each time you select a dockable thing that says “Fly over the thing and press D to dock”?) but the netcode problems meant that trading was impossible:
[] Press t to trade. Nothing happens.
[] move up and down lots. Nothing happens.
[] Nothing happens.
[] Nothign happens
[] Suddenly trade list scrolls.
[] Get excited, press up / down again
[] …(nothing happens for several seconds)…
[] etc
I think that is probably the numero uno problem at the moment 
thanks, feedback is great. Once you press t for trade, you should be able to use the arrows to move the list up and down. Right arrow buys item in box, left, sells if you have them. It will be mouse driven soon!!!
Mouse press on space station or space object will launch a usage menu over the object soon as well.
No network code changes yet…soon, as soon as I figure out what to do lol
Thanks!