Paradroid3D

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

Hi,

do you remember Paradroid? (maybe this will bring back the memories: http://www.jpct.net/pics/c64.jpg).

After playing a SDL-version of it yesterday (Edit: http://paradroid.sourceforge.net), i decided to try to make a kind of Paradroid3D (or whatever it will be called in the end). Today, i wrote this pre-alpha to get a feeling how it may look and if it’s a good idea at all to move this great game to 3D. You can get this preview here:

www.jpct.net/para3d2/test.jnlp

Albeit jPCT (the engine i’m using) supports LWJGL, this version is software rendering only and all you can do is move around with the cursor keys, shoot with CTRL, switch between two different cameras (‘c’), resize the window and exit the application (esc).

I’m especially interested in how you like the second camera setting (press ‘c’ once) compared to 2D-ish default look. I like it somehow, but i’m not sure if anybody would play in this mode. Personally, i tend to use the 2D-look in such cases. But that would mean that the whole idea of a Paradroid3D is questionable. What do you think?

#2

!!! My eyes popped out when I saw this post with 3 magic ingredients in it: Your Games Here, EgonOlsen, and Paradroid, all clustered together.
/me whacks that download link
47fps in “2D”, 35fps in perspective, on a 3GHz HT laptop, and it’s looking fantastic. I like the 3D view.

Cas :slight_smile:

#3

Works, but it’s very slow on my (very slow) 500mhz comp. Btw that do the light stuff every x frames opt is pretty obvious with that framerate :stuck_out_tongue:

I get like… 8 fps. Well, it’s ok-ish (25-30fps) if I shrink the size to something like 200x150.

#4

41 FPS in 2D, 31 FPS in 3D. 3GHz Intel.

I liked the 3D view a bit better. Looks like a good start. Amazing software renderer (although I always thought so on your other demos).

#5

[quote]I get like… 8 fps. Well, it’s ok-ish (25-30fps) if I shrink the size to something like 200x150.
[/quote]
It could do OpenGL as well…i was just too lazy to add it ATM. Anyway, this is not meant to be a performance test in the first place. I just wanted to hear some opinions if it makes sense to make such a game. Doing a remake of a classic game like Paradroid and change some things (like the perspective) which will affect gameplay in one way or another is like doing a remake of Life of Brian…it’s hard not to lose…
BTW: The lighting is done per frame, but it’s vertex lighting with a low tesselation. That’s why it appears to be jumpy.
Well, it’s a pre-alpha test case and the result of 4 hours of work, so… :stuck_out_tongue:

#6

Looks nice, works fine, and the 3d mode looks much nicer.

We had the same issue with perspectives for the next release of Survivor: making the 3D look nice comes at the cost of “ruining” the game.

However, we made the 3d mode have fully adjustable camera settings, and some extensive fiddling later discovered various positions from where you can play pretty well. Survivor is a bit easier since you have huge numbers of enemies on all sides, and you can shoot simultaneously in 4 directions, so orientation is not quite so important. But I’d give it a go with a 6 DOF camera control and a game with some enemies and look for the sweet spot if I were you…

PS the ligting calc on the red light has an interesting glitch to do with vertex lighting :slight_smile: but I’m sure you know that already.

PPS I love the bullet marks on the walls

#7

I just wanted to hear some opinions if it makes sense to
make such a game.

I’d never played the original, therefore I only wrote something about performance :wink:

#8

[quote]I’d never played the original, therefore I only wrote something about performance :wink:
[/quote]
I’ve edited my first post with a link to a SDL port of it. It’s not 100% like the original game (i’m really missing a digital joystick for this) but it comes close.

#9

I like it a lot too! I think if you add some vertical challenges to the game, like gates that rise and fall, or maybe even things you have to climb, or perhaps little things floating around that you’d have to aim up and down to shoot, it would encourage use of the 3D mode. I think you can really do good things with it. Good luck!

#10

I love the 3d view. I don’t remember the game on the C64. (May it never die!) I like the ‘zoom’ you do when going from camera 1 to cam2. You should do the same type of transition when going from cam2 to cam1.

The bullet holes are a nice touch.

For 4 hours of work, thats pretty darn groovy!

Dr. A>

#11

[quote]do you remember Paradroid? (maybe this will bring back the memories
[/quote]
Yes of course I remember. For me, Paradroid90 is one of the greatest games ever. It’s the graphically much improved version over Paradroid, done by the same autor: the genius Andrew Braybrook (hi Cas). It’s the reason I’ve got an UAE (Amiga emulator) for years now.

[quote]Today, i wrote this pre-alpha to get a feeling how it may look and if it’s a good idea at all to move this great game to 3D.
[/quote]
Very nice!
Are you saying you needed just one day (or not even one) to do this demo? That’s impressive, really. It looks like your roughly 1000 times faster than me with 3d programming. :slight_smile:

Can’t wait to see it in OpenGL.

To your question: The option of a 3d view is a must. Without it indeed the whole game will be questionable. The two cameras of Pompom’s great “Spacetripper” I found to be very smart. (It’s a 3d version of Braybrook’s other genious 2d classic named Uridium.)

PS:

#12

I wrote to Andy Braybrook once, when I was but 12 years old or something, asking him how to do raster interrupts on the C64. He sent me a beautifully handwritten 4-page letter in reply! He’s a great guy and it’s a huge shame he’s not in the industry any more.

Maybe someone could tempt him back :slight_smile:

Cas :slight_smile:

#13

Great start, the 3D view works great!

#14

Thanx for the great feedback. It’s good to see that many people are still loving paradroid and it really keeps me motivated to continue this project.

#15

I didn’t play the original - but I liked the demo - the response to the controls is nice and organic - particularly like the camera tilt as you speed up from being still,

Go for it eddie!

#16

I’ve uploaded a slightly modified version that supports OpenGL and offers a crappy dialog window for display mode selection at the beginning. It also uses a different approach to lighting…should look better now.
URL stays the same: http://www.jpct.net/para3d/test.jnlp

#17

got an exception with the new version:

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
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(Unknown Source)
Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: init
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.init(Native Method)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.(Unknown Source)
at com.threed.jpct.GLRenderer.getAvailableVideoModes(Unknown Source)
at com.threed.jpct.FrameBuffer.getVideoModes(Unknown Source)
at naroth.start.StartFrame.init(StartFrame.java:46)
at naroth.start.StartFrame.(StartFrame.java:23)
at naroth.start.StartFrame.main(StartFrame.java:19)
… 11 more

#18

[quote]got an exception with the new version:
[/quote]
Hmmm…are you having some older LWJGL related stuff lying around somewhere in your classpath? Can somebody verify this? I tested it on 5 machines (XP, NT4 and Debian Linux) and it worked fine on all of them.

#19

Very nice.
As expected: many FPs now and smooth highres graphics. Also the lights light up well now.
Some 120-150 FPS on a Radeon9600pro.

#20

I’ve uploaded a slightly modified version that supports OpenGL

Easyly get 100+fps now (640x480x32) :-*