Sorry, was just me forgetting to upload a jar. Clear your cache and try again 
Cas
21 October 2007
Realised that the points value for collecting a key or opening a lock is rather stingy so Iāve upped both to 500 points apiece. So opening a lock is now worth a total of 1,000 points (and therefore, an extra shield).
I discovered something strange today which warrants some investigation. It might be a driver glitch because Iāve never noticed this before so itād be nice if yāall who are reading could follow these steps and post your results here:
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Start the game in windowed mode. Observe how scrolling is ever-so-slightly glitchy because updates are not vsynced (yes? no?). Note CPU is mostly idle (yes? no?)
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Go to options screen and switch to fullscreen. Observe now that scrolling is smooth as a babyās bum and vsynced. Also note 100% CPU usage. (Yes? No?)
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Now switch back to windowed mode. Observe how scrolling is still silky smooth, and CPU usage is still at 100%, because somehow the windows is vsynced! (Yes? No?)
This is really quite peculiar behaviour and Iād like to get to the bottom of it!
Chazās birthday today! I will send him a crappy graffiti cake on Facecrack.
Next build will have final moonbase level in it and everything all done up nicely, so itāll be a week or two.
Windows XP Pro
Asus Radeon 9600PRO 128MB
512MB Ram
AMD64 3000+
What you are describing does not happen to me. I get smooth scrolling whether I start in Windowed or Fullscreen. I also get low CPU usage even after switching. Canāt see the CPU usage in full screen.
(Start Task Manager before you run the game and then go look at the performance graph afterwards).
It seems to be Nvidia that are causing the 100% CPU thing - their vsync code does it.
Cas
- Yes, Yes
- Yes
- Nope, goes back to āever-so-slightlyā and āmostly idleā.
On laptop using external lcd as primary. Only thing I could think of as somewhat out of the ordinary. Java 1.6, winXP and ATI Mobil. Radeon 9600.
Shaping up nicely. Best of luck!
Ok. In fullscreen it uses 100%, but when I switch to windowed from fullscreen, it drops to about 17% CPU.
Grr. Well, it looks like the drivers are doing that. I suspect a busy-wait on vsync in the driver code for accuracy and bedamned the environment or your laptop battery.
Cas
22 October 2007
The message effect has finally been revamped, code-wise: now instead of a daft label appearing in the middle of the screen you get a scientist in the bottom right corner of the HUD speaking to you with a little speech bubble. How cute Iām going to ask Chaz to do a āgrainy transmissionā animation of the scientistās face like heās a long way away or something.
Iāve put player pivoting back in, having had another think about āwhatās annoying meā. What annoys me is two things. One is that I tend to run around with the fire button jammed on a lot and I end up targeting things that then run behind crates or walls, and something meaner and nastier gets closer and I walk into it. The other thing that annoys me is that I want to stand still and shoot in a diagonal direction which is more or less impossible to do in a frantic tight situation. So pivot is back in and it fixes the second problem and helps a lot with the first.
I spent today killing myself in the gym under Alanās somewhat fierce gaze and completely redoing moonbase0 as a tutorial level. Chaz spent today recovering from his birthday. I suppose I might upload the latest stuff with the tutorial to get a bit of feedback from you. Tutorial any good?
Music: Pixies - Trompe Le Monde, Radiohead - OK Computer
23 October 2007
While playtesting the alpha last night I was on moonbase2 when I got told to hurry up, and the extra nasty gidrahs turned up and kicked seven bells of crap out of me. Trouble is, I was only halfway through the level, and I pretty much know what I was doing. So I need to find some way to correlate the size of the level with the time that the āHurry Upā message occurs.
So Iāve come up with a quick and dirty heuristic which counts the number of floor tiles in the map and divides it by 12, and adds 20 per level.
Here are the map sizes so far:
Moonbase0 474
Moonbase1 1423
Moonbase2 1560
Moonbase3 2137
Moonbase4 1544
Moonbase5 885
Wonder if itāll work out universally or turn out to be a hack.
Discovered a band called Tomahawk thanks to a posting on TIGsource. Seems Mike Patton has been busy! It rocks, hard.
[size=0]Music : Tomahawk - Anonymous
24 October 2007
Took a break from playtesting and twiddling to fix a few long-standing bugs in the game framework that have plagued all our titles since Ultratron, namely when you move the mouse too quickly over the GUI somehow the buttons sometimes remain visibly āarmedā though they arenāt, actually. Was quite a bugger to find but in the end it turned out to be that just setting an are to its āunarmedā image didnāt actually stop the animation from when it becomes āarmedā - doh. So thatās fixed.
Also fixed a lot of little UI horrors in the save dialog now, and got it to remember the last slot saved.
Chaz is working on doing the proper UI graphics for the menus and load/save slots at the moment. I imagine the title screen and such will follow in due course and look fantastic.
We had another worry about the name āTreasure Tombā again last nightā¦ hopefully the madness will pass and weāll stick with it.
Music: Tomahawk - Mit Gas. Amon Tobin - Out from Out Where
25 October 2007
Bunch of work done on the menu with Chaz today. Fixed lots of little quirks and buglets in my āguiā code in order to get it working nicely, which it almost does, perfectly. End-of-level stuff is looking nice too with some little icons; Chaz will be finishing that all off tomorrow with a bit more graphical flourish. Hopefully manage to blag a ātreasureā out of him as well so I can put it in moonbase6, to be guarded by the boss.
Did a little More work on moonbase6, have a general outline of the map done. At some point Iāll have to code a boss AI. Actually I might just use one of the existing AIs like Chase which should probably be sufficient, though I might have to do a bit of code tweaking to cope with the fact that the boss is more than 1 tile wide.
I think the boss robot lurking in the bowels of moonbase6 is probably going to be armed with a rocket launcher. Muahahahahaa.
As of next week Iām going to be very sketchy, as Iām moving house, fixing cars, riding motorbikes, getting trains, etc. so internet access will probably be rare and intermittent. Then Iām immediately going to Wales after moving for a week, to start this new contract. Weāre kinda hoping to get a ādemoā ready by the time I vanish but canāt promise anything. In particular music and sfx are ābehindā for one reason or another (just canāt bloody rely on musicians, tsk).
Music; Tomahawk - Anonymous; Mit Gas, The Breeders - Last Splash
26 October 2007
Did a bit of moonbase6.
Weāve now got a tile called a āspaceā tile which is just black, and represents ābottomless pitā. Youāre not allowed to move into it (because youād die instantly) but you can shoot over it. Flying gidrahs can move over it too, as well as platforms.
Music: Cool Keith - The Lost Masters
2 November 2007
Iām in the throes of moving house at the moment, and then off to Wales for a week for some work related tedium, so there wonāt be much in the way of diary. Also just got my new bike - BMW F800ST - which is a hoot. It does 61mpg on average! Pootling around Iāve seen the dial reading 95mpg! Handy in this day and age of super expensive petrol. And still it somehow manages to do 140mph and 0-60 in under 4 seconds. I advise you all to get one
In the meantime, Chaz has tweaked and prettified moonbase4, and Iāve tweaked the gobbler powerup to make all spawners currently visible immediately spawn a (scared) gidrah.
Decided my current moonbase6 design is pants and Iām going to completely trash it and start a new one with lots of scary black areas and strobes. Have to be cunning to make sure that player canāt possibly miss the treasure at the end of it. Probably by sticking it in front of the exit. I shall probably move the sonic spanner here too.
Anywaysā¦ no updates for a week or two. By which time maybe the demo will be finished
Music: the sound of an 800cc 360 degree parallel twin thrumming away
Pfft, what you want, is an 800cc, horizontally opposed, air cooled, twin exhaust BMW, like mine
Ok, the economy sucks, 0-60 is 5.5 seconds, and the top speed is less than your new one, but the sound is fantastic.
Endolf
I just sold my 1200GSA with fully open Remus pipe on it Sounded like a howitzer going off. But it was too silly for everyday use really.
Cas