DOA: an up and coming 3D FAT engine game for 68k calcs

[AaroneusTheGreat]

chickendude: TIGCC for linux can be seriously finnicky. You're likely to have more luck installing the IDE version: KTIGCC with the package installer Yum, which is fedora's package installer. I've had quite a few strange problems setting up the command line compiler before. the TIChess Team board is a wonderful resource for questions about TIGCC installations. I hope that points you in the right direction.

UPDATE:

Well I'm getting very close to having things working in the manner they are supposed to. I think I'm at the point where I'm comfortable releasing an alpha version to the testers. I believe I've fixed all the major problems. I need all the volunteers to send me a personal message with your email address so I can send out a mass email with the alpha attached. This version is likely to have tons of bugs just because I haven't had enough time to test every feature myself. If you discover something weird, please let me know. I think I may be missing some storyline and such with a couple tasks and things like that.

Right now I'm focusing on tying up some lose ends before I continue progressing in the development. I need to make the code more stable before trying to add to it. Please make sure that when you run the game, there's nothing important on your calculator. Please assume it will crash and you will lose your data. So make a backup and start with a clean slate so as to avoid any problems.

[chickendude]

That's great! I'll send you a PM right now!

Also, after a couple days talking back and forth with Lionel Debroux, i've finally got GCC4TI (and TiEmu) compiled and working wonderfully

[AaroneusTheGreat]

The alpha went out last night to those who have given me their email address. I've added you to a list, so that I can send you all an email with the next version when I get it done. I wrote some simple instructions on how to install the game, but there's no readme yet, the controls are configurable. The menu choice selection button is f1 on a ti-92+ and voyage 200, and [2nd] on a ti-89.

[chickendude]

I loaded it up today and have a couple first remarks:
1. First and foremost, i think my computer might not support TiEmu very well (ie bad specs), the game runs much slower than in the screenshots. Which emulator do you use?
2. The first time i ran the program, i spent a while trying to figure out how to get going. There's a pistol laying on the ground but it didn't seem to pick it up, maybe because i had my fist out? Anyways, it seems like you start with all the weapons anyway? It took me a while to realize you have to shift out of that (i thought picking up the pistol would automatically change that). But yeah, i finally was able to pick it up and i have to say i love the little notification area and all the little messages (Don't shoot!, Caution, wet floor!)
3. When running over objects laying on the floor, it looks like you're pushing them.
4. This might be an issue with the FAT engine itself, but when you walk against a wall, instead of looking flat (like a wall) it looks like you're at a corner (see screenshot).

I've got to say, i can't believe how detailed this is and i'd love to load it up onto a real calc and go crazy. I haven't tested the minimode yet, though. The story mode looks to be incredible, i'll try to be a little more helpful in the future (i might have to buy another 89 ), things are and will be a little hectic for the next week or two over here.

[Madskillz]

I hope to load it up on my 89T later this evening and I'll let you know my first impressions.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

chickendude:

Ti-Emu tends to be much slower than the real thing with this game for some odd reason. Not only that but I've noticed that the performance does change from computer to computer, and even from OS type to OS type.

The pushing the items around thing and the walls flattening out is a product of the graphics engine's math. I think I know of a way to make a workaround for both of these problems though, and since it seems to be something that people notice frequently about fat engine games, I think this time I'm going to do something about it.

You do start off with all the weapons right now, that's to make testing things easier on me and the beta testers. Incidentally, you can jump to the next level with the backspace key if you feel like skipping ahead, another thing to make things easier right now. Neither of these things will be this way in the final product however.

It sounds to me like the code is pretty stable so far though, which is encouraging! So you haven't seen it lock up at all yet?

MadSkills: Take your time, I know you've got a life outside of here too. I've spent the last 48 hours putting together a League of Legends tournament at my school. It was a smashing success by the way. It even had a prize of $100 in gamestop gift cards. I was rather pleased with how it all went.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

So I've done another massive rewrite to the code, I managed to save quite a bit with the program size. I've gotten it down to 55760 bytes. So I've got nearly 10kb of space left for features now.

I've been reading up on a bunch of compiler switches, and tricks to speed up and slim down code. I think it might be time to send out another alpha version to see how stable things are. So far it seems as if my improvements have increased the stability of the code, it's having to compute less to address some things in memory, so in turn, less errors are possible with addressing.

I've still got quite a bit to do. I'll keep you all informed.

O.O Wow. I want this game O.O I don't even play FPS games, but this is something I would enjoy and I do happen to have a TI-89t on hand >.>

[AaroneusTheGreat]

Send me a personal message with your email address Xeda, and I'll put you on the mailing list for the next alpha version.

okay, I have done that This is going to be awesome! ^-^

Woaw I can't find my words to desscribe your project.
This really really incredible !

Keep the good work !

[Madskillz]

Hey Aaroneus, I'll give you a detailed analysis this weekend...I've been swamped at work and havent had as much time as I wished to visit the forums or dig deep into the alpha. But I'm impressed with what I have seen so far.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

@Xeda
hopefully it won't be too long from now.

@contra-sh
Thanks!

@madskills
Take your time!

PROGRESS UPDATE:

I've been spending a ton of time optimizing the game, and so far I've gotten the game engine compiling down to 49816 bytes, and it's faster than ever!

Hopefully when I have the yet again rewritten save and load game features working, I'll be ready to release another alpha for testing. Right now, the save game feature works, but the code to load the game from the save file does not! :O

I'm not really sure what's going wrong right now either. :/

[Madskillz]

First off let me start by saying well done on the graphics and story.

A few suggestions, being able to scroll through the text faster. I see you can skip it by hitting ESC, but I dont want to necessarily skip it. I would list the map button in the option menu...I came upon it completely by accident. As for changing the buttons for things are we only allowed to choose the X,Y, and HOME or will we be able to completely customize the button layout to what we want in the final release? If we are able to customize the buttons to our liking, could I do it by hitting a key instead of shifting left and right? When you pick up an object is there an announcement that you grabbed a new object? I might have missed if it did show up.

Haven't ran into game crashing bugs yet, I did run into an area I believe it was the third level where on my map it showed an area with like a doorway and a little section off to the right and I couldnt seem to go into the right.

I'll keep digging in through stuff and try to bring this game down ha.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

I can see what I can do as to making fully customizable buttons, as it is now, you can only choose keys that aren't taken yet when you shift left and right, so if you want to change something that's already taken, you go down to that, shift it over, then go back to the button and shift it to the one you want and so on until you have them all how you like them. I made the user have to choose from a list of buttons internally handled by the FAT engine for simplicity reasons when coding. It's probably overly complicated. I will work on changing it to a more user friendly method of input at some point in the near future. I'll probably go with the button press like you mentioned in your post.

As for the little area with the doorway, you may have stumbled on one of the many secret areas in the game. If you find a door that you can't see, try pushing the action button while facing the wall where you think the doorway is, you may get lucky and the wall will push in and you'll find a little stock room of items usually.

[Madskillz]

Ah I dont think I tried the action button, I'll have to go back and mess around some more.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

Well have fun with the poking around, there's a possibility you're seeing the map sentinel codes I'm using, are the little rooms without doors showing up at the very top left of the map? if so, that's what it is and I need to fix that. :-p but it should be an easy fix.

PROGRESS FINALLY:

I now have the save/load feature working as long as you save/load while the game is already running. Now the task is to get it working for when you start the game up and want to continue from where you left off. It's proving difficult due to the large amount of data that has to be stored/recalled and not have any of it screw up a sequence in the loading. To give you an idea of the amount of data that needs to be stored:

Saving the game on the first level generates a save file of 15295 bytes.

That's a bit more than half of the entire ram of a ti-82. This game has a ton going on internally.

EDIT:

Turns out, the loading is pretty quirky. It works in certain situations, but there are problems in other situations. I have some ideas on how to fix it though, so I may have a solution before too long. We'll see.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

Well I made a little progress. I've got the story mode game saving/loading working 100% now, but in the process I decided it was best to take away the ability to save during the mini-game. It kind of defeats the purpose of the mini-game to be able to save, the object is to stay alive as long as possible.

I'm also working on fixing a little feature that got broken during the major rewrite. When you kill a robotic enemy, they are supposed to drop items, but it's not working quite right. When they do drop the items, you can't pick them up for whatever reason. I'm probably missing some minute detail, but haven't figured out what that could be yet.

Next on the list is more levels and tasks. I'm open to suggestions as to different types of tasks to accomplish to make the game more dynamic.

Hopefully there will be more to come soon! I am trying to focus on getting something significant done each week with this, we'll see how well it goes. :p I'll let you all know when I do though.

[NanoWar]

Jep, there's never saving in a time attack mini game.

PS: I love screen shots!

[Madskillz]

Sweet, glad to see progress on this. I'm actually moving in a few weeks, finally got a job in my field of study. But I'll have weekends off so I'm kinda stoked to get back into things and you guys should see me around more often. Not necessarily working on projects but checking things out around the community.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

Good to hear that you'll be around more MadSkills.

Progress Update:

I found and fixed a really bad bug today. It was a bug that caused an actual crash, so it's good that it's gone .

[AaroneusTheGreat]

screenshot000.png (13.97 KiB) Viewed 36208 times

I added a little feature that when the marquee isn't displaying a message, it will now display the current time. This is the system time, same as the clocks on the wall in the game. Now you always know how much time you're wasting playing my game!

Also I've been spending quite a bit of time picking through the code and optimizing things as well as documenting the code really well. Documentation is a pretty big task, I just totaled up the lines of code I've written, I was blown away. 11,059 LINES! And that's the current version. I've rewritten many sections of the game too!

[NanoWar]

Yay screenshot. It looks fabulous with that random noise everywhere! Maybe add a space before and after "Health:" or so...

[AaroneusTheGreat]

Thanks!

What do you mean? Do you think it'd look better with the text centered over the status bars? I'm not sure what you mean by add a space.

[NanoWar]

I added some white space around the text and a few icons for faster perception.