Tilt 4k

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2005
#41

[quote]Crikey, you’re quick! Yep, KG special, simple cheap collision detection. Its the only way! You know its true!

Area sweeping is just far too much like hard work. If the frame rate is so low you need it the game isn’t playable anyway :slight_smile:
[/quote]
LOL. I know, I know. And despite telling myself each time I see it in a KG game, the fact is these games do tend to stutter at odd moments, and it just looks so bad when they do - so much so that I think you need to move to always doing sweeps (except in 4k contests). Classic examples are stuff like first use of a sound in Survivor (game lags for a second or 3). In a 4k contest, it’s more than excusable, but a nice bit of polish not to have it.

There wasn’t, but it does now.

PS please could you center the window? it’s a pain having it off in the top left. Maybe the title bar failed to show because it got painted underneath the Start bar (could be a random bug in X windows)

Two other probems:

  1. your mouse-cursor-re-centring is imperfect (Are you Robot’ing it back into position?) and with my graphics tablet it took me four attempts at quitting and reloading to realise that I had to be very careful not to move too far or else it would stop centring and the game would just stop responding. Particularly obvious when you drag the window to the centre of the screen! This puts your mouse out of the control box, and you can’t seem to get back in?

Maybe unsolvable, at least in 4k, but it’s sad cos I bet I could kick ass using my tablet at this game 8)

  1. Frame rate is now good, board looks great, BUT the ball is stuttering at 8 FPS across the board - presumably this is your sweeping? Is it supposed to do that, or is it supposed to smoothly interpolate the graphic between successive positions?
#42

I’ve just tried the mouse control and suggest you’ll have a look at NEVERBALL where they have a really good mouse control system running.

Great game though, especially < 4K.

#43

kG - My typical list. :wink:

  • Love the ball and board now. Great checkerboards, with the changing colors each level.

  • Change LEVEL to LVL to shave a few more bytes in the text.

  • I think the mouse is ok, though I preferred the keys myself. The recentering of the mouse in the box is distracting to me. I’d swap it so you click to activate it, then use the position inside the box to determine how much tilt to give. If the person moves outside the box, auto pause it. When they move back in, they have to click again.

  • The board doesn’t feel like it has enough tilt to it for some reason. Maybe the mouse is too sensitive right now? Maybe take more movement to produce tilt.

  • You could make squares appear and disappear for added fun. You could either have N number of squares toggle on and off in unison or you could make them have different rates. Probably easiest and less code to just link them all cycling at the same time. My vote would be to make 10 levels, but add this new feature. Once the competition is over, add as many levels as you want.

  • For fun, you could have multiple exits appear after getting the coins. Each exit would go to a different level. Sorrta like the arcade version of gauntlet.

  • What about adding a ‘jump’ to the ball? Hit space bar and you will bounce into the air.

I’m out of ideas. HTH. Great stuff as usual!

Dr. A>

#44

I’ll try to do this one tho I’m right on the edge at the moment.

Is there another way other than Robot to move the mouse? I think the results you’re getting might be a Java/Linux bug… I can’t simulate them on windows here. Just to clarify… you’re saying if you move the window the mouse doesn’t stay in the box anymore?

The movement should be the same as it was in non-antialiased mode before. Only the logic() is interpolated, the drawing is as before. Although I’ve not see this slowdown on my 733mhz windows machine… most odd. I’ll take another look again tonight.

I tried to play it just when you posted before but it wouldn’t run for me… would you mind explaining the mouse system for me (how its different etc?). Anyone for that matter :slight_smile:

I think that’d be pretty annoying since you’d keep slipping out of box, pausing the game and losing (the apparantly stuttery flow). I’ll try it of course :slight_smile:

Re: Jump - though about it… if I can find room, yes. But’ll it probably be on right click or something.

Re: Toggle Squares - no way! Way way to hard.

Re: Exit to random level, I like that… I could utilise a spare bit I have in the file format to support it too. Watch out, this might be going in. At level 7 you might just have to get lucky to make it to level 8. :slight_smile:

Thanks for all the wonderful feedback,

Kev

#45

Right, seeing as the new mouse control system went down like a lead balloon I’ve changed it again!

Just drag now… please let me know what you think.

Kev

PS. I’ve removed the sweep style collision detection to see if its causing the 8fps problems. You shouldn’t need it now anyway seeing as the frame rate should be right back up there.

#46

Best so far. Frame rate is perfectly smooth, and no problems moving the window any more. But it’s bitching hard :(. Haven’t got beyond teh face level this time!

Problems:

  • had huge problems on Z level (3?) which I thought were sensitivity problems (not sensitive enough) but eventually I worked out I was visually trying to move the mouse cursor to where I wanted to go, something that works in 99% of mouse-controlled overhead games (RPGs etc). Perhaps just make teh cursor invisible whilst dragging (moused down) ? Cos it’s distracting having the cursor whizzing arond. Might be annoying to have no cursor, and slip off the edge of the screen, but I suspect it would be OK.

Ideas:

  • since it’s much harder with mouse, perhaps instead of getting 3 lives, start with just the one - but give one extra life per level (even better, give one life if you complete the level in “under par” with a par time shown for each level).

By the time you get past the two “impossible to lose” levels you’re up to the current 3 lives, but you’ve also got something to compensate for the difficulty of the later levels.

…and, if you use the “par” concept, there’s a much bigger incentive to complete them quickly, especially if there are particular levels where you’ve never made par, so you’ll concentrate on doing them better.

Anyway, it’s working out great. If it weren’t for the free 1 year subscription I just got for Anarchy Online (available to anyone…just go to their website) then this would be my biggest timewaster at the moment :).

#47

Couple more things:

  • there’s some bug/glitch in the collision handling when you’re going very slow or stationary next to a wall - it’s easy to “glue” to the wall and until you move literally away from it you are stuck (instead of rolling along it)

  • Level 6 is now positively evil. The mouse is much harder partly because you cannot independently control X and Y tilt, which made 6 easy on kb. Shrug. Not a bug, I’m just pissed at getting there with all lives intact and then getting creamed ;D

  • Mouse definitely is too insensitive IMHO, using tablets at least. HAve to move so far to get anything to happen. Probably no room to do anything about this, since one man’s correct sensitivity is another man’s impossibly unplayable…

  • It would be nice to have a “tilt gauge” that shows precisely how much you’ve tilted. Perhaps draw a white box again, and just stick an arrow inside it showing the tilt vector. When wiggling around corners and things it’s often hard to tell what vector you’re imposing on the ball (or, perhaps, just draw the tilt vector as a white arrow with origin = center of board, making it a HUD; part of the problem is youi don’t have time to carefully look at the edge of the board and decide where you’re tilting)

#48

Mouse scaled back a bit in sensitivity… makes it more enjoyable to play…

I liked the Par idea so much I went away and implemented it immediately. All pars are 50 at the moment but its part of the level format so that can be changed easily. Start with 2 lifes, 1UP for each level completed with more than par time left.

Also added a couple of sound effects. Used the ones that mlk pointed out that exist in the rt.jar. Sound is toggled on/off (mute) with ‘s’. If the rt.jar sounds arn’t present the sound comes up muted and won’t unmute.

I quite like the sounds… what do you guys think?

4095 bytes now.

Kev

PS. This 4k stuff drives you insane… I found myself touching the keyboard very carefully earlier as ‘not to disturb the code’.

#49

The coloring is nice and the mouse control is better now, but still too hard for my taste.

For the par thing… use your own times and maybe add ~5 seconds.

I don’t get any sounds, but I well… 1.5 is kinda broken for that matter. I guess there isn’t room for the software mixer workaround.

#50

All the mixer stuff I could find just took up load of space when I tried to use it… so I’ve resorted to using the .wav files that exist in the rt.jar and Applet.newAudioClip(“blah”).play().

Not sure if there was a cheaper/more compliant way. The only reason you should get sound at the moment is if the sounds have moved around in the rt.jar. Unless there’s some other bug??

Kev

#51

Unless there’s some other bug??

Ye… it’s that “sound is broken (silence) in 1.5 on most machines unless you explictly use the software mixer or trigger midi events directly”-bug. :-/

They broke about every thing out there by introducing this little change. Check the sound forum for details.

Well, you can’t do much about that. Just leave it like this. It works with 1.4 and maybe it will work again with the next JRE.

#52

Just crammed some more in. Learnt that you can run KZIP before and after obfuscation - can save a few bytes. Also had my first real punters try it out today…

Additions:

  • Bug fix for sticky walls and corners.
  • ‘q’ now quits your game and takes you back to the start.
  • You now play the levels through forward and backwards… 22 Levels in all.
  • Just because its difficult you can now select the level you want to start from using left/right cursor.

Ah yes, I added back in some stuff to do with sweeping so if you get stuttering again don’t be surprised (but do post! :))

Please let me know what you think of the additions…

Kev

#53

What a great little game Kev!

It’s amazing what 4k can do isn’t it! Keep up the good work!

Hauk