Zplax 1.0b

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

For those that look at the Xith3D forum sorry about the cross post but I guess I should have put the notification about the beta release of my game here.

Zplax is a shooting puzzle game developed with Xith3D and jogl. It needs a 1.4.2 or later JVM to run (I think). You can get it from http://zplax.alistairdickie.com/.

Anyone can download the game and be a beta tester. From a bit of feedback it seems the Mac installer does not configure everything correctly. I have not worked out the exact problem yet. Any feedback from Mac or Linux users is especially appreciated.

Regards,

Alistair

#2

Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t figure out what to do ???

I read the help and it listed keys, but how do you fire the weapon? Where are the balloons? All I could do was rotate the gun around the lake and make it look up or down.

#3

I should make this clearer. Right click to load the gun, then right click again to fire and reload.

You need to have started a game. Click on the icon in the top left corner then click Start Game.

Regards,

Alistair

#4

Now I have a made it JWS compatible. This has temporarily broken the ability for users to create skins and add them to a skins directory however by the production version there will be a way for dynamic skin additions.

Go here

http://zplax.alistairdickie.com/zplax.jnlp

I have also made a few little changes like dismissing the start-up sequence by clicking, a help file loader and the way scores are temporarily exported.

Regards,

Alistair

#5

Still no luck getting going, but I know what it is now. Right-click is not working for me so I can never load the gun. (works for other things)

Windows XP

#6

Zorax,

Please confirm that you start the game (i.e. the big column of balls comes up in the crater) but that you can not right click to load and shoot? In any case I am just uploading a new version for the JWS. In this version (1.0 beta3) you can use the space bar to load and shoot the gun in addition to right clicking. Also if you right click or press space before the game has started it will bring up the dialog for you to start the game (same as clicking on the icon in the top right corner).

http://zplax.alistairdickie.com/zplax.jnlp

If you are not using jws and you used the installer just get zplax.jar and replace the one in your installation directory. Because of the way it is now signed you will also have to get xith3d.jar and replace that too.

http://zplax.alistairdickie.com/dist/jars/

Regards,

Alistair

#7

When I tried before to start (by using the menu in upper left), I got a yellow/red blob in the center (lava?) and water fills up on bar to left.

Now I get the lava, the water fills up and then a transparent column starts to rise up, then disappears and that’s all it does. I can still move around the gun, but I never see the balloons. Tried on easy, medium, etc. All the other keys to turn on the wa I guess it’s not starting the game properly and thus right-click doesn’t load the gun.

#8

I think for some reason it is ending prematurely. Please confirm the version by clicking on the help (?) and then about. Also please post your system specs.

Regards,

Alistair

#9

I noticed that latest Java 5.0 version had the insane habit to switch my mouse 2nd and 3rd buttons.

So a right click will be a middle click. Maybe the problem why the gun is not reloading is VM-related.

#10

[quote]I think for some reason it is ending prematurely. Please confirm the version by clicking on the help (?) and then about. Also please post your system specs.

Regards,

Alistair
[/quote]
I did see some baloons this time and was able to load and fire 1 time, but after that the balloons disappeared. They reappeared a few times for about half a second, then vanished again. I could never reload. I also noticed that the time is stopped at 37 and doesn’t seem to move (timer problem of some kind?).

Game version is 1.0 beta 3.

Windows XP, Java 1.4.2, AMD2600+ (2.13 Ghz), 512MB RAM with a Geforce FX 5500, 256MB RAM

#11

It works fine here and looks great. It just wasn’t obvious to me that I needed to start a new game before I could start playing. Once I did that everything worked as it should: I can shoot baloons at the center column and knock other baloons into the water, nice waves :slight_smile:

#12

Thanks - you system specs are very similar to mine so the game “should” be running fine. If you are using teh JWS version can you pop up a console to see if there are any error messages.

The timer I am using is the hidden sun.misc.Perf. Maybe you have an early version of 1.4.2 that did not have it, or mayber it is returning something funny? I have tested it with 1.4.2_07. Before you start the game press c to get the little window in the lower right show up. What fps and rn% are you getting before the game starts? If these figures are all screwed up it could be that the timer is doing funny things.

Regards,

Alistair

#13

Unfortunately completely unplayable :-/

After 1s of smooth framerate, there is a 5s pause,
then 1s smooth (high fps!), then 5s pause etc etc etc.

Update:
Same happens in Xith3D+ODEjava demo with car.

So it might not be related to your game, but to the APIs

#14

Skippy,

What are you system specs? If I wind down the amount of memory available to the JVM I get similar behaviour.

Thanks for giving it a go.

Alistair

#15

[quote]Unfortunately completely unplayable :-/
[/quote]
Similar problem here, and sometimes reboots linux.

I only have 256 Mb ram (should be more than enough for a game, but doesn’t look like it; runs quake3, UT, etc all fine + fast).

Perhaps you need to do a mem check on startup and scale-down graphics / etc? Or … allow a smaller window size, perhaps?

Maybe not, just suggestions … might be worth a try just to see what happens :slight_smile:

#16

I think I will make a smaller windowed version. I have done some memory profileing and the UI stuff is churning through quite a few objects. I will discuss this more on the Xith3d forums.