14 replies to this topic

[Dookie]

Hey guys. I'm a budding DirectX programmer and I'm working on a 2D quad engine using Direct3D. It features quad rendering through Direct3D, sound through DirectMusic, and controller management through DirectInput. It doesn't use DirectPlay or support networking yet, because I'm still pretty new to DirectX programming. So far, I'm at the point of testing it to see whether it works on everybody else's system and not just mine.

It's a pretty cool game engine, in that it can reproduce most effects that debuted on Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and other awesome consoles of the past. Like the Super Nintendo, sprite rotation, sprite scaling, transparency effects, multiple fields of scrolling, etc. are all possible with this engine, as well as stereo sound and music support. Except that my game engine will go up to 1600x1200 and play at over 300fps on a P4-1.8gHz system with a Radeon 9600 Pro installed (if you have a better system, and you most likely do because my system is pretty old, then you'll get MUCH better framerates).

But my quad engine is still in the beta phase, and I'm having a hard time finding forums that are active enough to offer beta help. Help in this aspect is pretty simple and fun:
1) You tell me if this is a place where I can post a beta.
2) You play a sample game done with my quad engine (Atomic Pong).
3) You tell me whether or not it worked on your system, and if it did, then tell me in excruciating detail how it ran on your system (did the animations jitter or were they smooth, did the sound work, did the controller work like you expected, etc).

I don't know how to link pics, but I'll try... If it works, here's a pic of the Atomic Pong game demo:



The site where I linked the pic is an old Startrek Elite Force site that I just haven't updated yet, so don't bother surfing that site for any info on my programming projects. I used to mod Eliteforce game code, but sadly the scene died and I lost interest. So I'm currently just using the webspace to post images and betas of my current works-in-progress. BTW, in that last pic (lower right), the angled block is active rotating and the ball realistically bounces off of it as it rotates! And yes, the ball is ablaze with a particle-effect fire.

Anybody up to beta testing my game engine? Let me know and I'll upload the latest beta and post a link here. Thanks!

[bladder]

people are unpredictable. If you need something posted, then post a link and if someone that reads your thread has time to test stuff out, they'll do so.

[Dookie]

Cool, then I'll just post it here (1.36mb download size):

Atomic Pong Beta 4
EDIT: New beta (2.82mb download size):
Atomic Pong Beta 7
EDIT (again): Newer beta (3.66mb download size):
Atomic Pong Beta 9 (it's an installer, not a zip file. yay!)

Installation:
Extract the zip file somewhere on your harddrive, making sure to preserve folder structure (this is WinZip's default, so you probably won't have to do anything special to make it so). Doubleclick 'Atomic Pong Beta.exe' to play the game... You'll jump right into a windowed game (no menu system yet). If you want to play fullscreen, read the readme file or just play around with the 'settings.cfg' file (descriptions of video/audio/controller settings are commented there).

Description:
Breakout-style game with high-res block and bonus textures. Stereo sound, glassy-smooth ball movement, cool particle system, rotating blocks with accurate ball deflection, seven levels to play and 15 bonus items to find!

System Requirements:
PC with Windows 98/XP/2000 installed
DirectX 9.0c installed
Pentium 3 at 700mHz or better processor
256mb RAM
DirectX9 compatible video card
DirectX9 compatible audio system

Controls:
Mouse - Moves your paddle left and right
Left mouse button - Releases ball/Fires weapon
Middle mouse button - Exits the game immediately
ESC key - Exits the game immediately
P or Pause - Pauses the game
F - Toggles framerate and scorekeeping

Info:
This is a demo game made from a quad engine I'm currently working on. The engine is capable of other styles of games (sidescroller, top-down, puzzle games, etc) and is not limited to breakout clones. I just made a breakout-style game to test the engine (lots of math going on in the background, good test of engine's capability and speed), and I'd like to know if Atomic Pong runs bug-free on your system. I took a lot of care to make the game engine as stable and fast as possible, so it should run great on your computer. But if you do find any bugs, please post them here. If the game errors out on you, please post an exact description of what the error message says.

Thanks for the help, guys and gals!

[bladder]

niCe!

THe presentation is excellent. Everything ran perfectly fine on this system. No problem with animations, no jitter anywhere. Played through all levels and worked like a charm. Spund worked fine too.

Congrats man.

PS: Loved that radioactive ball

[edit]
forgot to say:

geforce4 ti 4200, p4 1.7, 256 ram. win xp pro.
[/edit]

[Dookie]

bladder said:

niCe!

THe presentation is excellent. Everything ran perfectly fine on this system. No problem with animations, no jitter anywhere. Played through all levels and worked like a charm. Spund worked fine too.

Congrats man.

PS: Loved that radioactive ball :)

[edit]
forgot to say:

geforce4 ti 4200, p4 1.7, 256 ram. win xp pro.
[/edit]

Awesome bladder, I'm glad you liked it! I had a weird problem with jittery ball movement when the game was played under these settings:
fullscreen ON
sync to refresh ON
use hardware vertex buffer ON
and that problem was exaggerated on nVidia vid cards... If you noticed that problem, then you can set 'use hardware vertex buffer' to OFF in the 'settings.cfg' file and you'll get MUCH smoother ball movement. But if you didn't see that problem, then COOLNESS!

Thanks for checking it out, and thanks for the feedback! I'll kick back and see what others have to say (hopefully I'll hear more 'it works fine' than 'i found a bug', of course :happy: )

Thanks again!

[Exide]

Ran very smoothly. Not sure if this is intended, but the game quits when MOUSE3 is pressed (my Ventrilo key, so it made it hard to use . Ran it 3 seperate times. One of the times it appeared 1 column of pixels was missing about 45% in from the left. Other then that, flawless. Nice work

- Windows XP Pro
- AthlonXP 1800+
- Radeon x800 Pro
- 512m PC2700

[Dookie]

Awesome, thanks for checking it out Exide! Crud, I thought I wouldn't have to add a little extra to the resolution scaling for the background quads (which is why you saw that one-pixel 'seam' in the game)... I'll fix that in Beta 6.

Here's Beta 5:

Atomic Pong Beta 5

Here's a couple of screenies of the new levels taken from the editor (editor not released yet):




In this beta, there's a ton of fine-tuning done to the game engine to further stabilize it; now you should be able to alt-tab out of the game and then go back to it without any game crashes. Cool for when you're playing a windowed game, you can 'pause' the game (which will free the mouse) and go about your other tasks, then click back on the game and go back to playing! You should also be able to ctrl-alt-del from a fullscreen game (which completely halts the game), and then go back into the game without any negative incidence.

Also, I added more abilities to the game engine and some new features to the 'Atomic Pong' game itself:
- New powerup added, Big Ball.
- Ability to crush the ball with moving blocks.
- Four new levels to play, that demo the new abilities
- Tweaks to the Fireball code (size of ball affects damage it does)
- Middle mouse button no longer exits the game (hit 'esc' to exit)
- Not having a compatible sound system in your PC will still allow you to play the game
- A bunch of internal tweaks and edits to the game engine code

I know the new feature list doesn't sound like much, but I've mostly been working on stability issues and some cool reflection code that lets the ball bounce off moving blocks better... It wouldn't make much difference to type here all of what I've done since Beta 4 (it's about two pages of notes), because it's mostly internal tweaks and such. Pretty cool stuff!

Well, back to work. Hope you enjoy the four new levels and new features, and let me know if you find any bugs. Thanks again, I really appreciate the input! :)

[Xorrin Aarikis]

Game locks up on startup ("Initializing Sound...") with no sound card installed on the system.
Perhaps an option to disable sound altogether in the settings.cfg?

Actually..."locks up" isn't accurate... You can still ESC out of it...it just stops at that screen and never enters the game.

[Dookie]

Xorrin Aarikis said:

Game locks up on startup ("Initializing Sound...") with no sound card installed on the system.
Perhaps an option to disable sound altogether in the settings.cfg?

Actually..."locks up" isn't accurate... You can still ESC out of it...it just stops at that screen and never enters the game.

Thanks for the description of the problem, Xorrin Aarikis! I know where that error is happening, but I haven't figured out why the game is just stopping there... I thought I coded it so that if the sound initialization failed, it would just bypass any calls going to any of the game's sound functions. When the game stops, do you hear any Windows error 'ding' sound? Or, if you play a 'windowed' game, do you see any Windows errors appear?

Anyways, I'll put in an option in the config file to disable sound if the player so chooses.

Thanks again for the bug report! :)

[Dookie]

Never mind Xorrin, I found the problem... Er, it had nothing to do with your computer or the fact that it didn't have a soundcard in it... Uh, it didn't have anything to do with the game actually crashing... Eh, heh, umm, it has to do with a programmer being an idiot (me). :blush:

During loading, to draw the 'load status' text I do a count to see how far the load status has moved along during the initialization sequence. When the load status count has reached 'finished loading' status, the game starts. Well, I didn't take into account that if the audio didn't initialize, then it wasn't going to load any of the game sounds (which is one of those 'load status' steps). Since the 'Loading Sounds...' step never happened, that count didn't get tabulated and thus the game was stuck waiting for an event that NEVER was going to happen! D'oh!

Yep, one of them solutions that is so obvious that I just completely overlooked it. :D

Anyhoo, I got it fixed and now the game works perfectly if the computer doesn't have an audio card installed. I'm still working on that beta though, so it's not posted yet... I'm putting the finishing touches on an awesome menu system that will let you tweak all the game's settings from within the game itself! When I get it done, I'll be sure to post it here first. :)

Thanks for catching that bug, Xorrin! I probably would have never found it if you hadn't pointed it out to me. You ROCK! :D

[Xorrin Aarikis]

Yes, I do rock, don't I? *cough*

No problem. Glad to be of help. Sorry I haven't responded in so long. Ship has been underway, work has been a boar, and my own project is keeping me from my normal recreational web surfing. lol

Anyway, looking forward to the next release. It'll be just the thing to pass time while at sea!

[Dookie]

Looking forward to the next release, huh? :wink: Alrighty, then here it is:

Atomic Pong Beta 7

Heh, went right past beta 5 and beta 6 and went straight to beta 7! Betas 5 and 6 weren't significant enough for a public release but beta 7 had the menu system added to it, so... This beta has the 'no sound locks up game' problem fixed, has 5 more levels added to it, has a bonus round at the end of every 5th level, and finally has a menu system! The menu system sorta 'rounds out' the game by adding a highscore system and creating a smoother transition between levels. You can change the resolution and choose 'windowed' and 'fullscreen' from within the game, and you can also change sound options, controller response and the game's difficulty level from within the menu system. A lot of tweaks were done to the collision code (mostly the 'bullet' collision code), and other game code issues were addressed. Bullets now can be bounced off angled and rotating blocks, which makes for new and interesting level designs (as you'll see in this new beta).

Methinks you're gonna like the Bonus Rounds... They begin deceptively simple and end up being absolutely Insane! As you progress in the Bonus Round, a score multiplier increments after every 10 blocks you destroy. I've played it and brought that multiplier as high as 48, so each block destroyed was worth 480 points instead of just 10! Strategically grab the bonuses that the blocks drop, and don't miss the 1-up bonuses! You just play the Bonus Round until you lose all your balls or get your paddle smashed... Don't worry though, because it just ends the bonus round and you don't lose a paddle.

Stability is still the main thing I'm trying to test, so if you run into any problems getting the game running or you have a problem with the game crashing, then please post a detail of how it happened here so I can fix it. :) I'm still having a problem getting the 'bounce' code to work well in the bonus rounds (sometimes a ball will plough through a block instead of bounce off it), so that's a 'known issue'. I think I have the menu system working the way I want, but let me know if you find any bugs or 'loopholes' in it.

Aside from that, let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy playing this latest beta! Thanks for helping me get this game running bug-free! :D

[Dookie]

Here we are, up to Beta 9...

Atomic Pong Beta 9

This game is getting REALLY close to 'final code' status (almost done). What's cool about this one is that it's packed in its own installer. Just doubleclick 'AtomicBallBeta_09.exe', follow the prompts, and you'll be playing in less than 30 seconds. Pretty slick!

There's just too many new things about this beta, so you'll have to read the 'readme' file to find out what all has changed. But the short and sweet version is this:
- Background changes with each level change
- Phantom Blocks (disappear and reappear)
- Blocks that take more than one hit to destroy now 'crack' when hit
- 20 levels included
- Bonus round at end of every 5th level (total of 25 levels to play)
- A few more bugs stomped
- Created an installer for the game, instead of just packing it in a .zip file

Hope you have fun, and be sure to post if you find any bugs please! :)

[bladder]

It's really shaped up nicely. The presentation is excellent. I personally think its the best breajout clone I've ever played. I did encounter a few oddities though. In the funnel (or tunnel) stage or something. The one with the dissapearing and reappearing blocks. I had a big ball and it was passing through the passage when the blockade appeared. The ball exploded and I lost a life. Whats up with that?

Also in the bullet bonanza stage: The ball eventually explodes... So I didnt pass that stage and I got tired of trying. I thought it was because you shoot at the ball. But even if I'm not shooting at the ball it eventually explodes.

[Dookie]

Thanks bladder, for the high compliments. I really appreciate it, and I'm glad you liked playing it! :)

Sorry about the ball in the funnel stage... If an invincible block reappears on top of your ball, it takes it out like it got smashed. Really stinks when the rotating bar bounces your ball back and forth where those two blocks are going to appear, and all you can do is wait until you see the explosion (and then curse for a little while afterwords). Trust me, it makes me curse too! But I've found that level is a lot easier to complete if you stay with a regular sized ball or grab a 'small ball' powerup.

In Bullet Bonanza, the bullets bounce off the angled blocks. What you want to do is bounce the bullets off the diagonal blocks and against the rotating cube so the bullets bounce into the two middle block compartments. You can get a ball into those two compartments, but it's VERY hard. But you need to be careful when you're firing your weapon, because if the center cube is angled in a fashion where the bullets bounce back and hit you, your own bullets will destroy your paddle. Make sure you dodge your own bullets! When you get hit by your own bullet, the balls get destroyed as your paddle explodes and that's probably what you saw.

So try Bullet Bonanza again, and DODGE all of your bullets! :ohmy: :D

Well, back to coding... Thanks for the input, bladder!