[WIP] The Newton Trampoline

Share with us how are you using the powerrrr of the force

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Postby Julio Jerez » Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:13 pm

It is working now. I guess I do not know how to play I keep loosing right away.
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Postby cleathley » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:24 pm

damn.. was looking forward to trying this..

I also get the openAL error (can't assign a source). Also tried installing the little AL distro you included and still get the same error..
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Postby walaber » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:56 pm

hmm... I have no idea why OpenAL is not working... it works on both my PCs here...

try changing the number on the very first line of "sounds.cfg", it's the number of sources it tries to allocate... see if a different number works for you.
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Postby Sascha Willems » Sat Sep 24, 2005 5:51 am

I had the runtime for OpenAL already installed and used it myself in some of my projects (though I didn't really like it). So it works in other games, and changing sounds.cfg didn't help anything. So I dunno what's causing this. But does Ogre also support other Sound APIs like FMOD or BASS? If yes, it maybe good to let the user choose or also give him the option to totally disable sound.
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Postby _Tux_ » Sat Sep 24, 2005 6:11 am

i dont get an openal crash, but when doing story mode, i finished the 1st one and when i try do the 2nd it crashes inside ceguibase.dll
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Postby cleathley » Sat Sep 24, 2005 6:12 am

I agree with Sascha.. if you are doing a freewere project then I would recondmend fmod.. it's rocksolid and very simple to use.. last time I looked at openAL is was very soundblaster biased which (with onboard decent sound cards these days) is bit of a old fashioned look at things.
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Postby Sury » Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:46 am

Works fine here, and looks fantastic, though a bit slow on my machine.
Nice work walaber ! :D

As for the OpenAL it works great for me using DS device.Altough i don't know what will happen if i eventually release something...
In fact i had some problems with it at first especially with streaming, but they all turned out to be 'DLL-HELL' issues.
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Postby walaber » Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:20 am

hmmm... for the next alpha I will probably switch to FMOD (which I have already used in Stunt Playground), because I never had these problems with implementing it...

it seems there are a few other bugs as well, so I will try to fix the existing issues before releasing another alpha.
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Postby Sascha Willems » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:04 pm

Well, I just emptied the "sounds.cfg" (now 0 bytes "big") and then the game works. It then has no sounds but I'm able to play it.

As usual with your stuff it's already very polished for an alpha and runs smooth on my PC (Athlon XP 2600+, Radeon 9700). So far I tried the first two tutorials and found the game itself very innovative (I don't think that there is anything similar to this) but also hard to get into.

Maybe it's because I never had any intereset in trampolines, but even after the first two tutorials I find it very hard to play. One advice especially for the tutorials : You have certain tasks to do, but presenting them in a window is a bad Idea I think. You should show them half-transparent overlayed onto the scene (maybe at the bottom, make that spin-bar smaller and maybe vertically) so that one always sees what's the next task. Maybe you could also implement some "hint-mode" where the game gives you hints on how and what stunt to do next, this would be nice for beginners.

So I'm looking forward to the final version and I guess it'll gain som success. And if I have some time to spare this weekend I'll put more time into playing it and will give you some more feedback.
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Postby walaber » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:21 pm

thanks for the feedback Sascha. I understand that it must be difficult to play for those who have no interest in Gymnastics / trampoline. I have trid to think of ways to make the game simpler, and I'm thinking of including an "auto jump" feature, that automatically presses the jump button for you, so you can concentrate on just doing the tricks.

also I think the hardest thing is charging up the right amount of spin, and timing it so that you release the spin at the right time. even I, having played MANY MANY hours testing, am still not very good at performing combos of more than about 5 tricks.

I can't really think of another way to allow for variable spin speed, and precise timing, that wouldn't be even more difficult to control.


I agree that the current Task should be shown on the GUI somewhere, I will add that for the next release.

some kind of video-style examples would probably really help... I'll think about adding a "show me" button to the tasks, where the game walks you through a trick in slow-motion, showing when each button is pressed, etc. it would be a lot of work, but might make the game more accessible to new players.
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Postby MikeR » Sat Sep 24, 2005 4:09 pm

That was great. It was a tad slow at times, I kept killing myself, (but then thats normal when I get on a trampoline) but had lots of fun.
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Postby walaber » Sun Oct 02, 2005 12:03 pm

Alpha 2 released

Okay, I have released a second alpha for all to test. I have fixed all reported issues to my knowledge, so please- if you found a bug in the previous alpha, try it again on this new one, and see if it's fixed.

I switched to CEGUI 0.4.0, and FMOD, so all those who couldn't get the game to run, please try again.

new in this version
:arrow: AutoJump feature (options menu)
:arrow: JumpFocus feature (options menu) - slows down time each jump to allow you to prepare for the next trick.
:arrow: ShowMe option in Story mode, which shows a trick performed correctly, with an on-screen display showing the keypressed required.

Other than a few other fixes (some sound effects), the game is the same as before. if those who experienced bugs could please try again and confirm that they have been fixed, I would really appreciate it.

:arrow:http://walaber.com/trampoline/trampoline_alpha_02.rar - approx 21MB, RAR file.

I will fix any other reported bugs, and then continue working on the rest of the game.
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Postby Sascha Willems » Mon Oct 03, 2005 5:02 am

Great job! Just tried it out for around 15 mins (Freeplay) and besides the fact that I finally have sound now it's almost perfect. I haven't seen the character penetrating through the trampoline or so (like in the first Alpha, did you change something?) and after some minutes of testing and trying I even got some stunts finished. So keep it up, can't wait for the final version.
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Postby tomek » Mon Oct 03, 2005 6:31 am

It was running very slowly on my computer(Athlon 850, GF 6200, ram 512).
I assume processor was bottleneck.

Anyway great job 8) It looks much more professional now that the first versions. One thing I would suggest is to get rid of gouraud shading(it doesn't look good - especially in menu). I think somehting is broken - or triangles are too big. Perhaps you could easily add fixed-function dot-product shading.
But it's only small visual issue and doesn't dimish your work :)
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Postby hpesoj » Fri Oct 07, 2005 10:28 am

I thought I posted before, but apparently it didn't get through :S.

Fantastic work Walaber! This is one of the best indi games I've seen in ages. So fun, I love games like this, where you have to master the technical side of it. I can certainly do more impressive stuff on this that I can in real life ;).

A few things to note...

- If you press up just as you hit the trampoline, the player does a kind of twirl on the spot, which looks funny :).
- If you do a pike while doing a very low jump, and then release the pike, his legs stick into the trampoline. Also looks quite funny :).
- I'd say a "stomach drop" would be more commonly called a "front drop", and apparently (according to my brother, who does trampolining) a "layout" is a parcour term for a "straight flip", and the layout position on its own would just be called a "straight position" if anything (although I may be getting a bit pedantic :P). And you could call a "3/4 front flip-back drop" a "turnover" or "forward turnover". And "barany" is spelt "barani". Obviously these probably aren't a key bit of the game, but you know how some people moan about small things (like me ;)).

I think you should put the names of the moves you just did in bolder, more colourful text (the current text just looks like debug text, although that is probably what it is ;)). I think the names of moves in trick based games are one of the interesting aspects, so they should be emphasised.

It'd be cool to be able to do a seat drop, by pressing a seat drop button, like the tuck and pike jumps. I'm not sure if you considered seat drops, but they are a basic move in trampolining :). Also consider adding a straddle position (pike with legs apart)?

I also think it'd be good to have the ability to move your character up and down the trampoline (right ctrl & keypad0 maybe?). It is a bit tedious having to tilt your character and wait for them to bounce into the middle of the trampoline.

EDIT
Just thought of a few other things. I think in the story mode you should put the name of the trick you are meant to be doing in the corner, or to the side. I sometimes forgot what it was I was meant to be doing, and it'd be convenient to have a reminder there without having to go into the menu. Maybe also have what the actual trick is in brackets if it isn't implicit, ie..

Barani (Front flip-half twist)

Combos could be listed also.

Also when the task was to do something like a back drop or front drop, the task ended as soon as you landed on your back or front. It should probably wait until you get back up on your feet (or not get back up as it may be ;)) until the task is completed. Also, I don't like how the pop up screen comes up and the game freezes immediately as you complete a trick. Maybe it could just have some text laid over the screen to say "task completed" or the like, and then a second later the screen could come up. I think it would just seem nicer to have some time to think "yes, I did it!" before presented with the next task. Purely asthetic, but I think it'd be an improvement.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm complaining a lot, but I'm not. I'm making lots of suggestions because this is a good game, and I want to to be even better :D.
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