Wurm Online

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#81

[quote]Yeah, wait for ATI to get their act together. :wink:

Seriously, I added a “skip OpenGL version check” option, to let people who “almost” have opengl 1.4 to still play. :slight_smile:

That option will most likely be removed towards release.
[/quote]
Thanx, it works fine now (after disabling the check) and runs @ 30-40fps with everything maxed. Just make the version check a choice-dialog, where it’s telling me that i should not continue, but i may do so anyway. I hate it, when applications are telling me what i should have and do and not giving me the option to say: “I really don’t care…continue!”

#82

Good suggestion!
When I remove the checkbox in the options, that’s what I’ll do.

#83

Get the OSX version working. That is all :slight_smile:

#84

sure, if I find someone insane enough to run osx. :wink:

#85

And that has the developer preview of 10.3 :slight_smile:

What are the chances of people paying for upgrades to the later version anyway?

Kev

#86

I just realized the .jnlp for Wurm doesn’t even support osx yet. I’ll have to look around for some examples.

#87

[quote]And that has the developer preview of 10.3 :slight_smile:

What are the chances of people paying for upgrades to the later version anyway?

Kev
[/quote]
Chances are pretty good. Same as who upgrades from win98 to win2k to winXP etc. This are not just minor os patches, these are major upgrades. Apple just chose to keep the 10 as the release number.

Secondly, Jaguar (10.2) was the same (reported) price as panther (10.3) and now it’s required for a lot of programs. I’d say a majority of users have upgraded now.

#88

Is this really true? If so, you’ve put a bunch of my fears to rest.

Thanks Monkey,

Kev

#89

I keep reading in Mac World from whiners that write in saying they like the Classic OS 9 environment… clueless dolts!
I know that 10.2 is required for a lot of things and was apparently quite a significant upgrade. I think the cost is $99 US to upgrade… not too much considering what you get. But the Apple users seem to be very finicky if you ask me. They are split over the whole OS X/Classic thing… I suspect most of them see the huge leaps forward that is OS X… it is just a vocal minority that get upset over such silly things as the trash can icon moving to the dock.

Unfortunately the Mac market is still small enough that it hardly matter if they upgraded to 10.3 or not… they will still represent a tiny percentage of your users :(… I think a lot more people would be running OS X if Macs were a bit cheaper. But after ‘switching’ I can definitely say “you get what you pay for”… even though the graphics performance in Java 1.4 on Mac needs a good dose of optimizations.

Anyway I know that I will be upgrading to Panther when it becomes available, sometime this fall - September is what I’ve heard.

#90

Yay, your game runs ok on my home computer (I’ve been on a long vacation :)!

Almost spooky walking around the forrest - the trees look angry (noticed the “evil” faces they have if you view them from a certain angle? ;D

10+ fps when all maxed out and walking in heavy forrest - otherwise ~20-30 fps (even higher when swimming :slight_smile:

running at 1024x768 because it looks like when it tries to change display mode it selects a very high refresh rate (150hz) which my monitor can’t handle.

900mhz athlon
geforce 2mx
win2k + java 1.4.2

#91

That’s ok fps for that system. =)
Try all lowest settings. You should get around 60 fps or so, i think.

And good catch with the refresh rate… I should add a “max refresh rate” dropdown in the options.

#92

What’s still annoying me, is that “hick-up” i get everytime it changes the LOD in the distance…don’t know how to describe it better. If you are moving forward and new trees are popping in, i always get a short but noticeable pause…so it feels like a stop-and-go movement somehow.
However, it’s impressive as it is…

#93

I know about the hickup. It’s because the dynamic terrain textures are updated when you move into a new tile… and that’s also when all the trees and surrounding tile decorations get recalculated.

It really bothers me… it makes moving around feel “tainted” for some reason.
I’ll probably end up tweaking it a bit to make it less obvious somehow later on, but I’ll leave it in now as it keeps the code reasonably clean to do it this way.

#94

MP if you need help testing the OSX version drop me a line. I’ll be done with JInput for OSX this weekend (looks like anyways). JOAL should be at most a recompile and a couple of tweaks (looks like anways) so I should have lots of time to work with you on getting the jnlp and WebStart running and OSX happy. You’ll impress even more of my commercial friends if you get that puppy running on OSX - trust that :slight_smile: OSX is a SKU that many publishers don’t really want to ignore anymore.

#95

wilco. =)

By the way, does anyone know where to start when looking for artists? We’re getting fairly desperate. All our “friend-of-a-friend” leads are failing.

I think the fact that there’s no money in it at all until release scares artists away more than it does programmers. :wink:

#96

Good artists are harder to find than good Java programmers, for sure. I think because programmers can usually make decent money at their day job, and have the time and inclination to work on games in their spare time. Whereas artists have a hard enough time making ends meet as it is, much less donating their spare time for free…

We have tried a combination of using (paid) interns, and downloadable artwork from art sites, and part-time graphic artists who are working for sweat equity. None of them are 100% satisfactory, not like it would be to have an experienced game artist at your beck-and-call.

You could try advertising on various sites, but if you can’t pay people something (at least food) then it’ll be pretty hard to find them.

I’d recommend trying to find art school students who would work for the job experience, or for as close to free as you can get them. You should definitely review their portfolios and filter on style before picking one, because the only thing harder than finding a good artist is trying to convert one to your “style”…

BTW – your screenshots look very nice! I haven’t tried the demo yet because my machine at work has to be “corporate standard” and doesn’t have the right JVM… :stuck_out_tongue:

#97

Good artwork, especially 3D artwork, is VERY difficult to get. You can find people who will work on a contract basis generating a certain number of pieces of art for a certain price on elance (my folk have been doing that to get their art stuff out of the way).

#98

Ah, crud. That’s what I thought. =/

I really hope we don’t have to abandon Wurm because we don’t find any artists…

The graphics we’re using now are just placeholders found via google image searches… we don’t have the rights for any of them, but they’re all “free” for non-profit purposes.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t include the final version of Wurm.

#99

You know, I remember seeing on gamedev cds for sale loaded with textures and stuff for use in commercial games. As well as CDs with sound effects. That may be a better route then hiring someone to generate custom graphics.

#100

You can also get some free stuff from idevgames.com. Some of the artists there are just interested in seeing more games come out for the Mac and their license just says that you must release a Mac version if you use any of those assets. Since we’re all cross platform here, that should be a non-issue. Once I can take off my development hat and put back on my business development hat I’ll drop them a note and see if they want to play ball with us as a group.