Pacifica - New screenshots

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#1

THREAD MOVED

If you were following this thread, a new one is now up in the Puzzle/Casual board - Here with new updates and a new name.

Version 0.2 - October 22, 2005

  • Fixed problem where balls being left behind

  • Fixed bug causing player lives to go negative (resulted in crash when displaying lives remaining)

  • Reduced CPU load for collision tests (40 times lower, same accuracy)

  • Removed dependency on awt event queue that was stuttering music and causing stack traces on exit

  • Fixed bug causing target sights to remain if player died with the target assist powerup active

  • Fixed bug causing dymnamic textures to be rendered pixelated

  • Fixed bug where menus were displaying a 1x1 dot for the system cursor

  • Fixed bug causing pause menu to appear at end of level

  • Fixed music looping problem

  • Fixed problems with 640x480 resolution

  • Fixed memory leak when shadows enabled

  • Fixed lag in GUI buttons

  • Improved performance of shadows

  • Optimizations for LWJGL use of NIO buffers

  • Added version in log files

  • Reduced installer size to 13.6MB

  • Added level start sequence

  • Changed text color for chains and combos

  • Some gameplay tweaks

Download Pacifica 0.2a - 13.6MB

October 18: Second update - fixes a major performance bottleneck.

A bug in my Texture class was causing mipmaps to be ignored in favor of all out linear filtering. Big no no! On my machine this gives me a whopping 30% improvement in FPS. I hope it does for you too :smiley:

Update: Now logs console and errors to files - conosole.log and error.log - version number added to main menu

Already had to upload a new version - Thanks to Onyx for find the problem and presenting a stack trace

Hi all,

For the last month or so I have been trying to put my game engine to better use. I figure I will be 90 years old by the time Star Gauge is complete, and I fear the market is pretty niche for that game. So, I started developing a new game with more of a casual spin, but still harder core then most.

It’s not a clone, but it’s similar to Luxor/Zuma. Don’t be to disappointed in me. It’s 3D (which they aren’t) and I feel it has better potential for aciton (which is why I posted it in here instead of puzzles/casual). It’s along the same vein to be sure though. I am building this game with the hopes of selling it on the portal sites, and the users on those sites are pretty stuck in the kinds of games they like. Anyway, I like that kinda game. To me this is better though, because it feels more like a shooter.

This is my first attempt at LWJGL, so their might be some problems, I dunno - t works on my PC. The engine is conversion of the same engine I built for Star Gauge. It supports the zBuffer stenci shadows that I never got to show you guys. I am particularly interested in weather they work for ATI users, since I am not testing with an ATI card, but using some of their extensions.

The art work is FAR from complete, it’s more of a testing level then anything…don’t be to critical - I’ll get it upto snuff once the final portions of the game play and UI are done. I am actually looking forward to designing the levels, music, models and textures - I just can’t let myself do to much before the foundation is complete.

Screen shots:

Without shadows

http://vorax.thebodclan.com/downloads/pacifica1.jpg

With shadows

http://vorax.thebodclan.com/downloads/pacifica_shadows.jpg

This is currently a WINDOWS ONLY installation. I’ll get to a mac version later. It’s not webstart, it’s an install. Sorry, but the casual games market won’t accept anything less. Also, sorry about the size, it has an embedeed JVM (which I think is still leagal…thus huge).

Download Pacifica - 13.6MB

I suggest you change the options to whatever works best on your machine. If your having performance problems, try lowering the resolution. Only turn on shadows if you have a serious PC.

Please let me know how it goes

Thanks for testing!

#2

-The menu was very laggy… there was a rather big delay before the button switched to its hover state.

-The game itself crashed after clicking on new.

-The folders with images contain a thumbs.db file.

-You also might want to put those class files into a jar file (w/o compression). This way you save some hdd space (because you dont leave that many partially filled clusters) and loading is theoretically a bit faster, because seeking is faster.

edit… my machine’s opengl details here: http://lwjgl.pastebin.com/395917 (cat 5.9)

#3

Ya, the menu has a bug that makes it lag - it’s repushing the entire texture to the card, rather then the portion that has changed. The game is truly “Alpha”

It crashed on you eh? What’s your specs? Video card, PC, etc…

Can you try opening a command prompt, switching to the install directory and pasting this line to execute? Hopefully you can get me a stack trace:


java\jre\bin\java -cp .;.\java\jre\lib;.\java\lwjgl-win32-0.98\jar\lwjgl_util.jar;.\java\lwjgl-win32-0.98\jar\lwjgl.jar;.\java\fmod\NativeFmodApi_v3.0.jar -Djava.library.path=.\java\lwjgl-win32-0.98\native;.\java\fmod Pacifica

Ya, I forgot to clean the thumbs.db

I will make it a jar later, but I can’t be bother at this stage.

#4

I just saw your video driver specs. If you turned on shadows, it might blow up because you don’t have the correct ATI extension. I am probbly not testing for it somehwere that I should be, so I woudn’t be surprised.

#5

Creating new Engine instance: com.vorax.VoraxEngine@1cde100
System is bump map capable
System can use stencil wraps
Vertex Buffer Objects enabled
GL Init completed
OS Name: Windows 2000
local
Music player Initialized
Loading environment textures
Starting Vorax Engine
no errors
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.util.Hashtable.put(Hashtable.java:393)
at com.vorax.audio.SoundEngine.loadSoundFX(SoundEngine.java:278)
at com.vorax.GameLevel.(GameLevel.java:167)
at com.vorax.VoraxEngine.doStartLevel(VoraxEngine.java:722)
at com.vorax.VoraxEngine.startGame(VoraxEngine.java:420)
at com.vorax.VoraxEngine.engineLoop(VoraxEngine.java:886)
at Pacifica.main(Pacifica.java:27)

#6

Thanks! That’s exactly what I need to see :smiley:

IIf you turn off music it will probably run for you.

  • Vorax
#7

actually, looking at the line, it’s not the music, it’s the sound FX. A problem with my installer :frowning:

Uploading a fixed version now.

#8

Ye, works w/o sound. The rendering speed seems fine. The collision detection however, seems to be very cpu intensive. (I have only 500mhz, which seems to be good enough for that game… if the collison detection would be faster).

And there was some odd exception on exit… (btw it might be a good idea to redirect system.err to a file).

Creating new Engine instance: com.vorax.VoraxEngine@1cde100
System is bump map capable
System can use stencil wraps
Vertex Buffer Objects enabled
no errors
GL Init completed
OS Name: Windows 2000
local
Music player Initialized
Loading environment textures
Starting Vorax Engine
Caching Images
Loading environment textures
Loading lens flares
Loading level: models/pacifica1.obj
Level loaded
Loading: models/talisman.obj
Loading: models/stop.obj
Loading: models/blaster.obj
Loading: models/color_blaster.obj
Loading: models/turtle.obj
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.TargetAssist@49d67c
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.ColorBlaster@179dce4
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.Blaster@14520eb
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.Stopper@19e8329
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.ColorBlaster@1a68ef9
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.Blaster@dc67e
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.TargetAssist@1b0bdc8
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.Slower@16a9b9c
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.Slower@8de462
com.vorax.gameobjs.powerups.Slower@88df60
Exited game loop
Loading environment textures
java.lang.NullPointerException
at sun.awt.Win32GraphicsEnvironment.displayChanged(Win32GraphicsEnvironm
ent.java:90)
at sun.awt.windows.WToolkit$4.run(WToolkit.java:734)
at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:178)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:454)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForHierarchy(EventDispatchTh
read.java:201)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThre
ad.java:151)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:145)

    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:137)

    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:100)
#9

Thanks for testing - the new version has been uploaded. If you wouldn’t mind being a guinea pig again, I would like to know if I fixed the sound fx problems. The sound FX are pretty good and make the experience much better IMO.

I’ll work on the collision detection. Right now, it’s definetly ruff and can be improved. Glad to hear other then that it was going ok for you on 500Mhz.

About the exepction… I just noticed it myself when I rand the command line version after install. I have no idea what’s causing it?? LWJGL related maybe? It doesn’t happen when I run inside eclipse?? Maybe I cut something out of the rt.jar that I shouldn’t have? Glad it only happens when you quit the game.[quote]
[/quote]

#10

ATi 9700pro
WinXP
512M
P4
1.44" FDD (!!)

STDOUT

Creating new Engine instance: com.vorax.VoraxEngine@1cde100
Found ATI seperate stencil extensions
System is bump map capable
System can use stencil wraps
Vertex Buffer Objects enabled
GL Init completed
OS Name: Windows XP
local
Music player Initialized
Loading environment textures
Starting Vorax Engine
Caching Images
Loading environment textures
Loading lens flares
Loading level: models/pacifica1.obj
Level loaded
Loading: models/talisman.obj
Loading: models/stop.obj
Loading: models/blaster.obj
Loading: models/color_blaster.obj
Loading: models/turtle.obj

STDERR


no errors
Exception in thread "main" org.lwjgl.opengl.OpenGLException: Invalid enum (1280)
        at org.lwjgl.opengl.Util.checkGLError(Util.java:56)
        at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.update(Display.java:567)
        at com.vorax.VoraxEngine.update(VoraxEngine.java:994)
        at com.vorax.VoraxEngine.doGameLoop(VoraxEngine.java:438)
        at com.vorax.VoraxEngine.startGame(VoraxEngine.java:423)
        at com.vorax.VoraxEngine.engineLoop(VoraxEngine.java:886)
        at Pacifica.main(Pacifica.java:27)

At the end of “LOADING” screen.

HTH :slight_smile:

Update: … sometimes I wish we had DebugGL in LWJGL, because an error found @ Display.update() is very very very hard to debug remotely. >:(

#11

Dang eh? FIgures right after loading :slight_smile:

DId you change any of the settings in options? I noticed it found the ATI extensions, were shadows on? Fullscreen or windowed?

#12

Yeah, I changes the options, I increased the resolution to the desktop-reso, same for refreshrate, enabled shadows… will try without now

#13

It’s probably just the shadows. I’ll have to hook up my wifes PC to test the ATI extensions I am using. If you disable shadows, the refresh and resolution are probably ok.

#14

The uninstaller left the following files/directories:

http://lwjgl.pastebin.com/395960

#15

Yes, it was the shadows. Worked fine without them.

The response-time is not only a bit low in the menu, but also in the game. that might be due to a low framerate, but i think i’m well over 40fps.

Overall quite nice game, but for the market you are targeting, gfx have to be superb! as your scene is kinda small, you can add lots of nature, and if polycount becomes the bottleneck, just use imposters.

Next thing: that very same target audience demands downloads well under 10MB, preferably under 5MB (check indiegamer.com). So distributing a plain JRE won’t do you much good.

Keep up the good work!

#16

Thanks for the info. I’ll fix that

#17

The sound works with the new version. The music is very nice btw :wink:

But it doesnt loop. Eg when the track ran through there is no music anymore (until you go back to the menu).

#18

Ok, back to the board with ATI extensions then :slight_smile:

What resolution were you at? I find at 1024x768, or 800x600 (which I will make default), frame rates are pretty good.

Thanks - I’ll be improving the graphics alot. Right now, the level itself is pretty much just filler. Only the powerups, effects, balls (not the pushers) and the player’s icon are about the only things done graphically. I’ll be getting much fancer with the levels once the core itself is done.

Well, there are several casual games out there that are over the 10MB barrier, but your right. It’s pretty big. The problem is the damn JVM :frowning: I’ll be able to compress my sound, graphics, etc but the JVM will still ad another 13MB or so if I “play by the rules” :frowning: It’s an issue, but hopefully it won’t be a show stopper.

Thanks!

#19

Thanks! I actually made the two songs in the game for Star Guage, but didn’t feel they fit with it. They fit nicely with this though.

Yet another bug. Heheh, not a serious one though. Right now, my sound engine is still using the Java FMOD API, I’ll be switching it ot use the LWGJL FMOD or OpenAL API. That will save some space as well - right now, both are in the install.

#20

I actually made the two songs in the game for Star Guage

Heh. You made em? Ever thought about selling some tracks? :wink: