Hallucinogenesis alpha test

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

Hey chaps & chapesses, if you haven’t already given it a quick whirl, would you mind having a blast on the latest build of Hallucinogenesis for Win32 and Linux and let me know

a) if it works or doesn’t work and your system specs/graphics card

b) if it’s running at a nice steady 60fps

c) if it’s fun

Recommended min specs are 700Mhz and a GeForce but I don’t know yet for sure.

Sorry I’ve only put a few levels in at this stage and the menus etc etc etc aren’t in yet but Chaz is dead busy doing other things.

Further information about Hallucinogenesis:

  • Total time spent on the game by me: 75hrs
  • Total time spent on the graphics by Chaz: 20hrs
  • We’re gonna run a level design competition in a couple of weeks. Get some ideas together!
  • Will be available in a month or so with any luck and we’re going to sell it for the mad, mad price of $1.99 (yes, you read right!)

Here’s a screenie for those that can’t be bothered to try it out:

http://www.puppygames.net/downloads/hallucinogenesis/screenshot00.jpg

Cas :slight_smile:

#2

Still much the same on linux as it was in the earlist build I tried: unplayable.

  • the menu screen paints at approximately 2 FPS
  • the menuitems highlight (with click noise) when mouse cursor is nowhere near them, and dehighlight when you get near (looks like a buggered mouse-cursor-position-to-screen-co-ords mapping)
  • clicking had no effect. But then, I’m not sure where the game thought the mouse was at the time. I tried clicking when the play menu was highlighted, and nothing happened - but maybe I missed (hey, at 1-2 fps it’s hard!)

Will try again and see if I can hit anything this time.

EDIT: clicking all over the screen had no effect at all, must have clicked 30+ times in different places.

Forgot hw (although note that this played alienflux OK IIRC):

  • Geforce 2 Go 16Mb
  • Intel P3 @ 1Ghz
  • nVidia drivers for linux, approx 3 months old (but they update the linux ones a lot less frequently…)

EDIT 2: Actually, AF has the same problem (1.5d - although it complains it’s over two months old, yet this is the JNLP :))

#3

Its a pitty in only works fullscreen … and a warning about epilleptical dangers cannot be wrong … (whew … still seeing dacing stars everywhere) ;D

#4

a) runs fine on win98/j2sdk1.4.2_04 (excepted an annoying bug, see below)

b) didn’t notice fps counter but it’s fine

c)yes it’s fun…when you understand how to aim and what to do in the current level ^^

ps: i have a little problem when i launch the game: menu/cursor appears and the game is refreshing but it looks like the game freeze (nothing happen when i move the mouse).
When i do a ctrl-alt-delete to have the “close programs” window and immediatly press escape (i don’t do anything just a ctrl+alt+delete, i don’t try to end any task!)the menu works :/.
I have the same problem with Mini Adventure (aka lights of laminos) with an help window, a little ctrl alt delete and everything run fine again. You shouldn’t take care about this since i am the only one with this problem, the problem probably comes from my computer.

#5

It works in windowed mode too but I haven’t done a JNLP file for that yet :wink:

Cas :slight_smile:

#6

I had a problem with the mouse freezing on me as well, but I’m pretty sure my webstart install is borked. (I cant just click on something, I have to copy and paste the jnlp address into webstart)

#7

blahblahblahh, forgive me if you’ve done this already, but make sure you are using the nvidia drivers and not the nv driver. The nv is software only, you must download the nvidia driver, it doesn’t come with the distribution. This always bit me because 2D runs great, then I’d do anything with GL and it ran like crap (including things like screensavers).

#8

[quote]blahblahblahh, forgive me if you’ve done this already, but make sure you are using the nvidia drivers and not the nv driver. The nv is software only, you must download the nvidia
[/quote]
LOL no worries, I’m definitely using the nvidia drivers.

Since I can run the JOGL reflection, refraction, and vertex-shader programs sickeningly smoothly I’m pretty sure OGL is working too.

(not to mention that all other 3D apps seem to work as if hw-accelerated).

#9

-Works.

win98se/k7 500/gf2mx/128mb/sb128/dx9.0/deto 32.82 (opengl 1.3)/1.4.2_03

-60fps… mhyea guess so

-fun… still fighting with the controls

Other than that…

#1 Intial screen mode change is weird. Black, normal, black and there it goes… often it doesnt get focus.

#2 Something with the mouse… you use (obviously) absolute coords, therefore you just slow down if you get near the screen borders. Also you can get stuck if the mouse is moved very fast (don’t know why). So… why not switching to relative coords? It would solve problem A and eventually B on the way.

#3 fade/dodge of the hud is nice. Wasn’t sure how dodge would turn out, but it’s really nice this way :slight_smile:

#4 the warp effect produces artifacts if it’s next to the screen bounds (since there isn’t something to warp around). Making the floor a bit bigger should solve that.

#5 there was sometimes a strange sound. Wich disappeared each time I released the shoot button (it wasn’t the shoot sound).

Min sys req - 500mhz and some kind of geforce seems to be good enough for a non crippled gaming experience :slight_smile:

#10

Oh yeah, and should have said that apart from webstart not playing for me…

a) works fine on Duron 1300, Radeon 9600, w2k.
b) very smooth
c) uh-huh!

#11

Win XP Pro nvidia geforce mx

Clicking on HELP takes me to a completely black screen that I can’t exit from.

Some levels make sense. Others are so completely strange that I don’t like playing them at all. e.g. Magic Mushrooms - what the hell am I supposed to do? Why is my health/energy going down? Why does the fire button appear to do nothing yet make a sound? Why did I die?.. no fun at all.

But overall a fun distraction. Worth every penny of the $1.99 :slight_smile:

All you need is some goats and llamas and it would remind me of some old C64 games :wink:

Is the top row of ‘room squares’ supposed to not be colour cycling like the rest?

#12

a) works fine on my P3 1GHz, GeF4, WinXP
b) seems bloody fast - I’m sure some peeps won’t believe you did this in Java (again!)
c) ah well - It is quite fun. But as I am dense, I couldn’t work out the Strawberry room. My Elvis couldn’t shoot. I guess that was intentional?!

Jury is out on the controls - personally I don’t bother with the RMB and get by with just LMB+moving madly around the screen seems to do the trick! No real skill required :wink:

Oh yeah - a count of how many things you are supposed to collect would be nice!

20thCB

#13

a, Works great! Athlon 900mhz, geforce 2mx, gentoo linux (nvidia 5?.?? driver)
b, Couldn’t notice any slowdowns/pauses/anything non-smooth :wink: in my ~5 minutes of playing.
c, Yep :slight_smile:

#14

Looks great, works great, great fun :slight_smile:
AMD TBird 1.4 Gforce TI4200.

#15

Just had an idea during my coffee break… it’s… another control scheme (duh ;D).

So what about:

-if shooting makes sense in the current level you fire all the time (*)
-LMB cycles through the 8 fire directions counterclockwise
-and RMB cycles through em clockwise

(* avoids confusion why you can’t fire in some levels - eventually a no-i-won’t-shoot-pose for elvis would be a good idea)

I think that would work quite well. Also the difficulty of the controls would be decreased quite a bit, because no hold/press sequences are involved.

#16

Thanks for all the +ve feedback :slight_smile:

oNyx - you’ve not played Binary then (northeast-ish of the start room)…

I’ve gotten really used to the new controls. I like the way you can just tap and drag the RMB to flip shoot direction. I’m thinking I might quantize it back to 8 directions again though.

Cas :slight_smile:

#17

So when’s there going to be some Mac support? :’(

#18

Indeed. But hadn’t found it yet.

Déjà vu ::slight_smile:

[quote](Jason Colman) I find it scary how bad I am at usability issues. I got my Mum and my wife to have a go the other night, and they found it totally unusable too. And yet to me the controls seem so intuitive! I guess once you’ve coded something and played around with it, pretty much anything feels natural.
[/quote]
So… how long has it taken getting used to these controls? Will players spend as much time as you or will they give up earlier? The first bunch of minutes is very important - either you hook 'em or you don’t.

Right now they are rather hard to learn, because you need to use hold/release sequences together with sharp turns. Also the learning effect is a bit low, because there isn’t some kind of direct visual feedback. Hm. Ok… you could also stop moving completely if RMB is pressed and the shoot direction is then indicated with a “crosshair”(eg a little star) wich can be moved then.

“No big difference”, I hear you say. Well, each time the player presses RMB he/she can clearly see that it makes a difference (aim mode) and what the difference actually is (changing aim direction). Also you stop moving towards enemys/obstacles automatically, therefore the mouse turns are less sharp.

Alternatively you could just disable movement only - that would at least tone down the necessary mouse movement skills a bit and you get slightly better visual feedback for free. However, with absolute coords it would be totally weird (worse). (yet another reason for relative coords :P)

That would make it more predictable. Dunno how you calculate the angle, but on my comp it’s almost each case 8-way-ish. My mouse runs at 200hz… so if you only take the last one into consideration it will be just a tiny step away.

#19

I poll the mouse at 60Hz and ignore distances of less than four, so you need to give it a determined nudge to get it to change direction rather than a slight wiggle. Seems to work best like that. I did indeed try the very control method you suggested with the crosshair but it was so complicated feeling to use I immediately changed it back to what it is now. When the instructions sprite is done correctly it’ll be very clear about how to fire in different directions. I think I might make level 1 much easier too, with only 1 alien on screen at a time.

Mac support is going to happen the moment LWJGL works properly with the Mac :slight_smile: I’ve got someone looking at it but as is the usual case with Mac developers there’s a huge user-culture and bugger all developer-culture so no-one knows how to program the damned things or can be bothered to figure out how.

Cas :slight_smile:

#20

Cas,

Is there a list of problems/issues with the Mac platform? I’d like to lend my support (even if it might be just testing) to developing LWJGL on the Mac.