About the smooth loadingbar… it seems to be doing nothing the first 75%. There is no output on the console, and the smoothness is so extremely smooth it’s hard to imagine anything is happening at all The output begins after 75% and the smoothness is gone - like it should.
Could you shed any light on this?
Further, you might want to resort to the processbar-common-behaviour:
Indeed. but the average user (=when you don’t develop the game) don’t mind at all… I don’t wanna know what’s going on, just wanna play ! And smoothness makes me wait until the end of the bar is reached (maybe I’m the only smooth-loving guy out there ^^)
Wow, thanks for the all great feedback, feel very motivated now Webstart has been updated (no native updates yet - not that I expect you lot would use them :)). Details below.
Thanks again, awesome stuff! (coo, how american do I sound these days?)
Done - you can now view purchasable levels - however, most of them arn’t designed yet so you’ll still get a “duff” noise on these. The nag screen also shows demos of the later levels rolling around.
Yep, LWJGL. Unfortunately when I did this I got 3 reports back of a NV bug which causes the windows machine to blue screen when using FSAA and textures under 64x64 in size. Given I’ve not had many people try it out yet I consider 3 a reasonably signifcant number. Blue screen = too scary to risk.
Fixed I think. It was when it was trying to access the clipboard for your license key
Ooops! My english teacher would be appauled.
I’ve changed this where I notice the problem. Thanks for pointing this out - its a nice detail. For me its key that when you mouse is over the text it highlights, if theres a bit of a border thats ok - just makes its easier to select quickly.
This is the only one I’ve not done anything about this time. I’ve been round this loop several times now - trying to make it feel right for more people. The problem with views other than straight down is it makes it hard to see areas when the board is tilted (other parts of the level obscure). I even had the suggestion that I make it 3rd person view - turning it into super monkey ball - its just a different game!
Sometimes, you people astound me! You just picked a bug that I really hadn’t noticed! You’ll now note that start up time is about 5 times faster. Why - I shaln’t say - its way to emabarrasing
You said kicks right? not sucks
You’ve just topped the kev-o-meter for these requests - had feedback asking before but you’ve just made the feedback big enough. Both are in:
Keyboard - on by default - Enter/Space to click, cursors to control. Note that if you use a gamepad keyboard and mouse controls are turned off. All menus should as a side effect work through keyboard also.
Fullscreen - theres now an option in display settings for fullscreen (which can also be toggled with F9). Switches into the res of your desktop.
Thanks again for the encouraging feedback, apologies for the long post.
Well, ya see, once you can buy the game - you can complete say another 10 levels on target and you’ll reach the star target! - what happens then? Why something magical of course!
Fraid it wasn’t even that nice. The code to cause the textures to load at the beginning of the game was a graft on top of my old texture loader. So each of the different components of the game request textures at init(). Instead of just loading the textures the texture loader adds them to a list. Once everything has initialise the loading state cycles through the list causing things (textures, sounds, music) to be loaded.
However, what i didn’ t factor in was mutliple sources using the same texture. So the first time the texture “a.tga” gets requested - it gets loaded - fine. The next 200 times its requested in the list its gets retrieved from a cache - hence the very smooth loading bar where it appears nothing is happening. Just pants.
At the moment the star times are rather variable, with some easy to beat and some quite hard. Something to think about is having several levels of achievement instead. It would definitely add to the replay value - the levels are fairly short and I imagine many players will get the star times (as they are now) without much effort. Hamsterball had I think 4 levels of awards, and you had to play it quite a bit to get good enough to get the top.
Oh, and there are some graphical glitches on some of the text - for example the “e” of Leccy bill or one of the "o"s in the nag screen.
The star times for the demo levels are intended to be fairly variables and not too challenging. The demo IMO has to be something that people can complete reasonably easily (although you also have to remember that seasoned gamers arn’t really the target market - some of my testers still can’t complete all the levels in the demo, let alone with stars).
I see that you added the first row of non-demo levels. Maybe you should make them colored too (another color) so that people click on them - with the current ‘inactive’ color people won’t even try - I think.
Last but not least, great to see how Tilt4k evolved
Thanks for the kind words. Tilt4k really has come an awfully long way Wonder which of my other 4k entries could have the same transformation?
Given the new feature creep I’m suffering and the number of levels I need to produce looks like it’s going to be a couple of months. It has to be finsihed by October when we’re expected a new arrival in the Glass household that might zap up rather alot of my time
Have you changed something recently? It seems to be running a bit faster after a recent update. I saw your post on cokeandcode about garbage collection, but I’m using the web start version so I don’t suppose that affects me. Perhaps you changed the friction or the maximum amount of tilt to make it play faster.
Anyway, I’ve noticed a couple of physics bugs. Sometimes walls with gateposts in don’t seem to be smooth. I first noticed this in the Pinball level. The area at the top left has a gate. If you roll back and forth across the bottom wall of this area sometimes you bounce as though hitting a bump.
I was going to say that otherwise the physics was excellent - which it is - when I thought I’d just have a play with the sliding metal bars to commend you on those. I had been impressed by the way their corners could push you back if you didn’t quite make it past them. But then I realised that they can push you through the wall if you are directly in the way. It’s easiest to achieve on One Way Or Another. At least it doesn’t crash, it just restarts the level.
I don’t know why but I’m still playing this with the same old levels. Probably the anal retentive in me loves beating my own times. And I can see the new levels but I can’t play them. Aargh!
I’ve changed a couple of things recently. The improvements in gargbage usage do in fact give performance imporvements in both versions - GC in SUN’s JVM is great - but still takes “some” time. I also spent a bit of time improving the rendering system so hopefully that pays off a bit.
Yeah, I know about this one but haven’t resolved it yet - the problem is hitting the corners of blocks that are next to each other. I guess I just need to add a priority system for collisions - i.e. flat surfaces weigh more than corners. However, I’ve not found that one annyoing enough to fix yet - it just doesn’t happen often enough. I’ll try and fix it soon - but so many other things coming
Yep, sorry this is the nature of an alpha version. This was reported recently and is fixed locally. New version in about 12 levels times. There is now a mailing list (add yourself via the webpage) which I’ll use to notify of the new versions if you’re interested
Well, any time now the full version should be done and I’ll be looking for beta testers if you (or anyone else here) have time. Mostly cute unlockables are going in at the moment and I’m still plodidng along trying to get the levels done.
Well, it’s almost ready for release. I’m hoping I can enlist a few more people to beta the full game. If you’re interested in playing through a fair section of the game and reporting back issues please let me know by emailing beta@tiltilation.com. If I’m lucky enough to get too many responses I’ll probably have to select only a few.
Things I’m especially interested in:
People willing to try the native versions which are less tested than the webstart as you can imagine
Install/Registration Process quirks
Bugs and places you can get stuck in the levels
How far you get through the game - it gets pretty hard later on.
I’m also interested in feedback on the website including the new shiney best times page:
Thanks for all the support from everyone so far! Again, if you’re interested in betaing the whole game please mail me at beta@tiltilation.com including the following information:
Full Name
A name to appear on the highscore table
Hardware
Operating System
Intended Testing Version (Webstart/Native)
The output begins after 75% and the smoothness is gone - like it should.
