Rimscape

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#21

I’ve made changes to speed up the game overall, and to also drastically speed up the menu’s. Game saving is also now available. If you are logged into GameLizard, and you click the link to the game, you’ll have game saving enabled when you run Rimscape.

I also fixed it so it works with 1.5 again, but I’ve noticed that on my machine, performance in fullscreen mode is much worse than windowed mode at the same resolution! Weird… let me know how it works for you guys now!

Also, some art has been created for engine trail stuff, so it’ll be coming into the game soon :slight_smile:

#22

It works now with 1.5RC1 - thanks. After a bit of play, when I have attacked a ship, game stopped with following exception at console


java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: -1
      at com.gamelizard.games.rimscape.n.a(Unknown Source)
      at com.gamelizard.games.rimscape.n.a(Unknown Source)
      at com.gamelizard.games.rimscape.e.J(Unknown Source)
      at com.gamelizard.games.rimscape.g.a(Unknown Source)
      at com.gamelizard.games.rimscape.g.a(Unknown Source)
      at com.gamelizard.games.rimscape.g.a(Unknown Source)
      at com.gamelizard.games.rimscape.Rimscape.c_(Unknown Source)
      at com.gamelizard.games.rimscape.RimscapeRunner.run(Unknown Source)
      at com.gamelizard.games.rimscape.RimscapeRunner.main(Unknown Source)
      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)
#23

wow, very nice. Played last night. 1.4.2_5 on a tablet pc with tablet xp edition. again, very nice!

M

#24

Yeah very cool. I actually quite got into that but I never worked out how to hyperspace to a system other than the start one.
My only gripe is that your server emailed me with my username and password. It helpfully told me that the password was encryped on your database. But the violation of sending my password over the internet in an email is a much bigger violation of security than how you store it locally as anyone can intercept an email and read its unencryped contents.
Oh yeah and when I pressed q for the quests the game always locks up for me. I am using 15 beta 2 if thats any help … and err, svaing didn’t work for me either. I could see the autosaves but nothing would load, I don’t think it could actually save but I expect that was my security settings unless the saves are on the server.
Good game though. I really liked it, blowing up those damn freighters.

#25

I’ll address your security complaint, thanks for that! I agree, I’ve never liked things emailing me my password… so why should I have my site do the same? :slight_smile: It does that now because PHPBB does it automatically and I let it take over the user addition process. Thanks!

Q locking up the game… I don’t know what that is, try with a different version than 1.5 beta 2 and hope for better results I guess :slight_smile: I have it working with all the 1.4.2_0#'s and 1.5 RC1.

To jump between systems, fly out far away from things until you see a little star icon at the top left of your screen. That means you can jump. So stop, and press Action (Enter) or the Nav Menu button (Shift) and you’ll get in the nav menu with the ability to jump. Then you can click on a destination system then click the Jump icon, or traverse and do the same with your arrow keys.

Not QUITE sure the source of your saving issue, but I know you can’t save unless you’re logged into the site. You say you saw the Autosaves, I assume that means when you landed on a planet you got the notification that it had autosaved? If so, then saves are enabled. Saving is done on the database so security issues shouldn’t matter.

I think what may have happened was you could have been using the buttons wrong. To load a game, you have to first click the Load icon, which is the “up arrow” icon thing at the bottom left. Put your mouse over it and you’ll see “Load” at the top, and THEN you click the slot you want to load. Otherwise you just get the description of the game.

Try that, and also try a non-screwy release (I had many issues myself with 1.5 beta 2 while developing) and let me know if things are ok!

PS: In 1.5 RC1, sounds are dorked. It only lets one line per sound be open, whereas with 1.4.2 I can have as many as the sound card will handle and it’s all good. I hope that gets caught before the real 1.5 goes out!

#26

I need some help. The first 4 lines of my code in main() are:

System.out.print("args: ");
for (int i = 0; i < args.length; i++)
    System.out.print(args[i] +  " ");
System.out.println();

If you go to:
http://www.gamelizard.com/webstart/rimscape.php

or
http://www.gamelizard.com/webstart/rimscape.jnlp

You’ll see the output. If you save either of the links, you’ll see the stuff in the tabs. If you’re logged in to gamelizard.com when you go in, you SHOULD get the first output to be your user id.

However, if you’re not logged in, you get -1. The weird thing is that the .php and .jnlp show my correct user id in the tags, which is 3, but when I run the game, it prints out -1.

Can you guys look at those and try to give me some insight on how to fix this?

#27

Rimscape now has a tutorial! This should be very helpful (I hope) for those of you who were wanting to learn about the features you were missing. I’d very much like some help with ideas for improvements to the tutorial. Bang on it, try to break it (not like by being stupid, but by being free) and see if there are any bugs to work out. If anything isn’t clear, let me know about that too. The purpose of the tutorial is to teach, so it should do exactly that. Let me know what you think!

To reach it, start the game, click Play, then click Tutorial

#28

awww I’m sad. No one wants to try my tutorial? It only takes about 5 minutes to run through.

#29

Well, I’m sorry, I’ve been meaning to try it out but I’ve been very busy with my own work :slight_smile:

The tutorial is very very good. I now understand everything to start up a new game and get far. The only problem I had was that the messages at the top of playing screen would sometimes move up and off the screen to fast for me to get my instructions (Usually when near other ships that were talking).

Also, the main menu runs really slow on my setup. If the lower left hand number is fps, mine was 8-12.

I have P4 1.6ghz running WinXp and JVM 1.4.2_05

But actual playing screen is like ~36-38

#30

thanks! :slight_smile: I’ll try to tweak the movement of the messages then. Was that when you were asked to attack other ships?

As for the FPS, were you in full-screen mode? I find that the same resolutions in windowed mode actually run much faster… I have no idea why.

#31

Yes, the messages came from shooting other ships.

Yes, I was trying fullscreen mode. :stuck_out_tongue: Windowed mode gives 40-50 for menu and ~40 for game play.

#32

The Launcher now saves your settings with a Muffin, woohoo! Some additional tweaks to the Tutorial have also been made to make it easier to understand. Let me know how you guys like it!

#33

I’ve just made a pretty significant enhancement to speed up the game. Could you guys try it out and tell me what frame rates you get when flying out relatively alone in space or when you get in the middle of some ships fighting? Both extremes are useful to have results for. Thanks!

#34

I tried it out, noticed some improvment in windowed mode. I’ve got a P4 1.6ghz JVM 1.4.3 and some type of Intel video card.

Fullscreen - 12 fps at intro and menu, barely playable. 40-56 with no one around. 18-~20 with a group around.

Windowed - 22-48 at intro and menu, which was descent beacuse the intro at that time had alot of stuff going on. 26-30 in crowd fighting someone.

As usual, windowed mode on my system runs much better, but I only noticed a small improvement in speed during actual game play in windowed mode.

Hope this helps, good luck at getting it to run smoothly everywhere.

#35

Does anyone have ideas on why Fullscreen mode would be slower than Windowed mode? So far everyone has had this experience.

#36

Quick problem I just had. I was going though the tutorial and I think I managed to remove my weapons on the trading screen. When I later tried to fire the primary weapon in the tutorial the game crahed back to the desktop.

Dan.

#37

hehehe whoops. Thanks for that! :slight_smile:

#38

Every few seconds I get a white flash (single white frame). No flashes when I don’t touch the mouse btw.

It may be a special-effect for which I couldn’t find the cause :wink:

#39

Wild! I just put a new update with many bug fixes, check HERE to see the list. One of the improvements involves a conversion from Frame to JFrame and also properly accelerating the Graphics context so hopefully that’ll be enough to fix the problem you were having :slight_smile: Give it a shot now!

#40

Do you still get the same effect now Skippy? Also, does sound work for you in my game?