Xtreme Space War - Online multiplayer space shooter!

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#81

XSW version 0.21 is up!

Among other things this version contains:

  • 2 new maps (one HUGE for 3 teams, and one 2on2 map).
  • Team chat + chat “macros” (Shift + numkey lets you say a predefined message)
  • Lowered bandwidth usage, more players should be able to play on the same server.
  • Bug fixes - should be more stable now.
  • and more…

We’ve had some 15 players playing at once before, but the server couldn’t quite handle that. Hopefully that will work now.

Looking forward to some intense space battles!

nva225> Some images are translucent, like the clouds in the background. But you’re right, it could’ve probably been done without… but better to give the artists freedom :).

#82

Woot! Nicely done, hopefully that reduces the noticeable lag you start to see when you get 8-10 players. Timing is always crucial when a missile is flying towards your face.

#83

XSW version 0.22 is up!

New in this version:

  • minimap to help you navigate
  • small improvements to the hud
  • accelerated turning to help you aim slightly better
  • server sends messages to clients at different times (should reduce lag slightly with many players)
  • One cool new map - (and 2 not so cool)

download at http://www.xsw.se/eDownload.htm

enjoy! 8)

nva225> hopefully it did, I haven’t been playing with more than 8 since last update so I don’t know for sure. With 8 players I noticed no lag, hope to go over 10 soon :slight_smile:

#84

I am going to try again once you have it available as webstart… If you use Ant, I wouldn’t mind sending you my build script. One mouse click and Ant builds you the deployable, packed etc. webstart files.

#85

Yes, I am using Ant (started using it a few weeks ago… what a time saver! :)). I’d be happy if you sent me the script. If it’s as easy as you say, we might have a webstartable version soon… :slight_smile:

#86

Alright, I emailed you the files ;D

#87

After months of silence… finally a new version of XSW has arrived! :smiley:

The big news in XSW 0.31 is:

Player accounts!
Player rankings!

Also lots of small changes and improvements have been implemented. Check the news section on www.xsw.se for more info.

I think competing for ranking will give alot more enjoyment to the game. Also player stats for each player can be viewed on the homepage. This has been long in the making, and I wouldn’t be suprised if a few bugs crept in, please report any bugs you find to me.

If you want to try out the game without creating an account you can log in as guest - but not on ladder servers. Currently I’m only running a ladder server (as I have very limited supply of server computers), but you can easily start your own non ladder server to try out.

Have fun everyone!

#88

Very cool game. Would be seriously awesome if more people would go online. :slight_smile:
Runs great on my beast. Average FPS was about 400, at it’s peek it was about 480 frames per second.

RAM: 2GB DDR2 800MHz
Video: nVidia GeForce 7600 GT 256MB
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Dual Core 3GHz
Windows XP Home, OpenGL 2.0, DirectX 9.0c
Resolution ran at: 1280x1024x32 @75MHz (fullscreen)

#89

Glad you like it! :smiley:

Sometime soon I will try to spread it a bit more, right now I’ve only posted here and told some friends. Keep the “notifier” running and chances are a game with a bunch of players will start. Nice FPS, I wish I had your computer… I’m actually running on a laptop with integrated graphics most of the time… and on that the game stutters pretty bad. (All java games does, maybe it’s something with sharing the memory between cpu and graphics card?)

#90

Yeah, my laptop stutters quite a bit too. I don’t use it for gaming. The stuttering is caused by a slow video card or it doesn’t have enough video RAM. With a slow video card and/or low VRAM, it takes longer for it to transfer memory. And obviously when you have low VRAM, it must use regular RAM for storing graphics (well, depending on how a game loads it’s images, it might not even be using VRAM at all).

#91

Yeah nice game! The smoothness in the network sync’ing is amazing. Later I’d like to ask you how you did it 8) (but don’t bother yet, I’m stilll working on my network-game framework and I haven’t come across all the issues I would like to ask yet).

About the stuttering, I recently bought a 3Ghz pentium 4 single core (with HyperThreading, 500m RAM) which doesn’t have a video card and noticed stuttering on my game when I had music playing. I think it’s because all of the graphics memory processing is done by the CPU rather than the video card’s GPU, so when the CPU is busy doing something else (like playing music or whatever) then the graphics just don’t update. Does this sound right?

Keith

#92

Your almost correct. However, you can’t not have a video card (yes, that’s a very incorrect sentence, but how else can I say it). When you have a video card with a very low RAM built-in, the GPU “transfers” the required video memory to the regular RAM, which is much slower to access than what a good video card can handle.

#93

It must be something with the graphics card that makes it stutter, though I’m not sure why it would, since between the stutterings it runs smooth… I’ve profiled it to see if it’s gc, but the gc seems to be very fast only a few ms.

CommanderKeith> glad you like it, if you need any networking advice just ask :). I spent some time tuning it, though I wouldn’t say it’s perfect yet…

Had several games running with 7 - 11 players today, it was lots of fun. Saw that I had some bugs at some rare instances. Those ugly ones that turn up when alot of people have been playing for awhile, hard to track down…

Aramaz (Emperor in game)

#94

Hi everyone!

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted on this forum. Working fulltime and having a family to take care of doesn’t leave much room for game development. Anyways now I’m happy to announce that a new version of XSW is available!

XSW version 0.45
www.xsw.se

  • A new game mode has been added, Base Attack, where the purpose is to destroy the other team’s powercore. (pretty much the same as onslaught in UT).
  • A new weapon has been added Tnt
  • Many bugfixes and small improvements (proper installer for windows etc, etc)

Have fun,

cheers
-Aramaz (The Emperor in xsw)

#95

I was not able to connect to any server (there were the “Emperor” servers) :frowning: - the app just hung up

#96

Your game seems to be interesting. Why did you choose not to use Java Web Start?

#97

irrisor> Too bad. My cousin had problems connecting, but then it started working again for him before we found out why he couldnt connect. Most people seem to be able to connect without problem. Maybe it’s a firewall issue? It’s strange that you can connect and see the servers, but not connect to the servers, I’m using the same connection method for both…

goessej> Mainly it’s my time constraints, I actually haven’t investigated that option at all. I’m not really fond of java web start myself for other applications (don’t have any JWS apps installed at the moment). I think most windows users prefer a standar exe installer to JWS, but I could be wrong…

Maybe if I get some spare time I will investigate JWS, but it’s not on my high priority list, so it probably wont be anytime soon…

#98

Starting an own server and connecting to that one results in:


02-23 18:25:11  S: level initialized
02-23 18:25:12  S: ServerId: 1003537438
02-23 18:25:40  S: Connection request!
02-23 18:25:40  S: nimrod entered the game!
02-23 18:25:40  S: RESETTING SERVER!
02-23 18:25:55  S: Connection timed out: nimrod
02-23 18:25:55  S: nimrod has disconnected... (Connection timed out)

No useful information in the client log, tough (neither with local nor inet server).
Anything I can do to help debugging that? Switching off personal firewall does not help, but I’m in a NATed home network…

#99

You are correct, most Window’s users prefer an installed exe. Most Java developers prefer webstart. And right now if you are looking here for texters you will get a lot more people willing to try it if it is webstartable. It is very easy to do, it should take less than half an hour to set up.

If you go to http://www.puppygames.net/ look at the Linux downloads. They are webstart files(.jnlp). Right click and save as and you can see how they are made.

#100

irrisor> Actually it does tell me something. You could connect to the server properly and both send and receive data. (I saw you connect to one of my server and then drop out also). For some reason the handshaking protocol must fail somehow. At least I know in what loop it times out. Unfortunately I don’t have time to investigate this further today. I’ll spend some time on it on monday. I would really appreciate help with resolving this issue.

CJ> Thanx for the suggestion, I’ll take a look at it. Does it require some special server configuration? I’m limited in what I can do on the download server as I don’t have full access to it…