Looking for more testers/feedback

I am hoping some more people out there might be interested in trying my LWJGL alpha version game.

I am looking for performance numbers across various spec machines and what you think of the game in general - areas to improve (yes graphics need improvment, but what else?), things you would like to see, interesting ideas you may have, etc.

The thread with screenshots and download is here: Original thread

Things on my TO DO list are:

Game Play

DONE - When ball reaches pusher; should squish pusher,
chain with no pusher appended to previous chain
DONE - Smooth out inserting of balls into chain
DONE - Bonus multiplier displays
DONE - Number of men remaining
DONE - Player dies if ball reaches end of path
DONE (for now) - Improve ball shot collision detection
DONE - Rotate player based on next path
DONE - Level end summary

  • Purple and dark grey balls
  • Level start animation
    • Fly around level
  • Progress map
    DONE - Fix shadow clipping
  • Pickup powerups
    • Needs animation when powerup captured
      DONE? - Optimize
  • Implement “shootable’s” that have something collectable and block the players path to the balls. Pop these up on some event? (what event… random?)
    DONE - Player’s model thing needs more (Textured? different design?)
    DONE (but may need more?) - Throwaway ball
    DONE - Cache objects like poweups, etc…they load each time currently.
    DONE - If current ball is not on board, auto-swap to another
    [MAY DO…MAY NOT]
  • Swap next and previous ball when right clicking, rather then getting a new random ball
    [/MAY DO…MAY NOT]
    DONE (KEEP CHECKING EVERY SO OFTEN) - Fix memory leaks

Levels

  • 20 levels?? 40? 80??

Story??

Music

  • Game launch music
  • At least 3 other scores of music
    – 1 done…maybe 2

Sound Fx

DONE - Insert into chain
DONE - Powerup revealed
DONE - Pusher death by squish
Others??

Power ups

DONE - Design model for “Targeting assist”
DONE - Implement “Targeting assist”
DONE - Design model for “Blaster”
DONE - Implement “Blaster”
DONE - Design model for “Stop”
DONE - Implement “Stop”
DONE - Design model for “Slow”
DONE - Implement “Slow”
DONE - Design model for “Destroy a color”
DONE - Implement “Destroy a color”
[MAY DO…MAY NOT]

  • Design model for “Reverse”
  • Implement “Reverse”
  • Design model for “Wild card”
  • Implement “Wild card”
    [/MAY DO…MAY NOT]
  • Coins to collect?

General

  • Remove un-needed code
    DONE - Game Font
  • Game name (Pacifica?? dunno)
  • Splash screen
    PARTIALLY DONE - Main menu
    PARTIALLY DONE - Options menu
  • Tutorial screen
  • Save/load game profile
  • Credits
  • High scores
  • Nag screen
    DONE - Installation package
  • license checking
  • trial time expired checking

gah - totally missed that post!
very nice game indeed.

Things to improve - besides the obvious lack of polish:

  • cut down size - the game loads fast enough, you could therefor consider using ogg files for sfx, and decode them to wav on first run.
  • remove not needed lwjgl components (if any)
  • use the fmod component in lwjgl instead of nativefmod (since you are using lwjgl already)
  • obfuscate own class files
  • remove 1px cursor
  • better looking cursor in options screen (generally the gui needs an overhaul)
  • 2d mode - birdseye view powerup
  • change color powerup
  • slowdown powerup
  • negative powerups - like randomize, and speedup
  • Very late after polish: consider having non-game related bonus things to shoot (a spider walking across the field)

* Matzon heads off to play it some more

oh - and no issues at all on:
Windows XP, SP2, GeForce 6600GT, latest drivers and all updated

Thanks Matzon - Great feedback!

I am not entirely sure about what happened, but I think I picked up a powerup and then a blue ball somehow appeared near me - and stayed there throughout the game ??

http://matzon.dk/brian/pictures/bluebug.jpg

Ahh crap, I forgot about that bug. I had it all worked out what was happening about a week ago, then got distracted for a day and forgot what caused it…DOH! I think it was to do with pickup up the blaster powerup, can’t remember :frowning: I’ll figure it out eventually, thanks for reminding me it’s there :slight_smile:

From your screen shot, it looks like you have another bug showing as well - if you die while you have the target assist, it should go away, but you have it in your screen shot; yet you aren’t in the over-the-sholder cam view.

What kind of FPS are you getting with shadows on? I am drooling at the thought of a 6800GT :slight_smile:

anywhere withing 150-60 FPS - usually around 80

Any chance you could download and try it again? I found a bug in my texture params that was signifigantly hurting performance.

On my machine (without shadows at 1024x768) I was getting 110FPS, I now get…140! Huge difference. WIth shadows on, I get between 35 and 50…prior to this it was unplayable for me with shadows at 1024x768. This bug was causing LINEAR interpretation to happen all the time, which completely bypassed the mipmapping. That’s basically a 30% improvement in performance from changing 2 lines of code…scarry :slight_smile:

This bug was probably doubly nasty for people with weak video cards and CPU’s. Geez, sometimes I surprise myself with these stupid bugs. It was probably some test I was doing for performance and forgot to restore it.

Performance seems to be a tad nicer now :slight_smile:

-The “loading…” thing looks uglier now
-One power up thing left lying next to my… uh… slingshot
-It crashed after some minutes

What you really should do next is adding simple logging (just redirect system.err and system.out to a file) and you could also show the version number somewhere (having some version number makes the whole testing process more manageable).

Good points Onyx, I’ll start redirecting output and add a proper version number :slight_smile:

I played till game over with shadows off, then went to the menu, turned shadows on and started over. I died a couple times and then (right after dying I think), the game crashed. I was shown a dialog that said: Fatal Exception has occurred.

I get about 60fps without shadows, 20fps with. Geforcefx 5200 and an amd64 2800+ (this was in the version you originally posted).

I definetly need a version up with logging for these fatal exceptions.

Logging and version number now added.