new 3d game: need testers

[mnajera]

The name of the game is vortex (http://banarnar.com/vortex), and the Mac OS X beta version is available here: vortex_beta.dmg (http://banarnar.com/vortex_beta.dmg)

You'll need a G4 to run it properly, even though it will run on lesser machines. I'm interested in hearing any comments about the game, and any useful bug reports will be much appreciated.

The contact information is inside the included readme file.

[Carlos Camacho]

Your game reminds me alot of the old Amiga/Atari ST title "Fire & Forget." There is also a Mac game called Vortex if I recall.

Anyhow, looks nice.

Cheers,

[skyhawk]

okay, how come I keep getting all the .dmg links as .dms? I just downloaded vortex_beta.dms any idea why?

m'k, things about the game:

antialiasing doesn't work (probably not your fault)

good framerate on dual G5 ;)

I would like to change the viewing distance. So I can see more of the course at one time.

[AREM]

nothing wrong here with a g4, exellent:) :) :) :)

[applekid]

That's a pretty cool game. See people, you can still keep simplicity and make a pretty addicting game.

Reminds me of Skyroads in DOS! :eek:

[AREM]

ME TO!!!!!!!:D :D

[arekkusu]

Works OK on 15" AlBook, Radeon 9600.

As expected, antialiasing does nothing. You need to draw textured quads instead of lines to get reliable AA on all hardware.

It'd also be nice if it took advantage of widescreen aspect ratios.

[AnotherJake]

No luck on my system. Dual G4 867, dual monitor, Radeon 7000 (secondary on PCI), and GeForce 4 mx (factory on AGP), Panther, 1 Gig RAM. Launches, fades to black, waits for a couple seconds with a little disk activity, then fades back out gracefully and terminates without causing any problems. No error dialogs to hint at any problems either. But no game.

Edit: Fades on both monitors but fades on secondary monitor last going in and fades on secondary first coming out. As noted in the readme, this might be an issue.

[AREM]

ahem, not that I like DOS:(

[mnajera]

Originally posted by arekkusu
As expected, antialiasing does nothing. You need to draw textured quads instead of lines to get reliable AA on all hardware.

When I was looking around for information about this, I saw your post on the opengl.org forums about the ATI Radeon 9600 not performing exactly to the opengl specification. This coincides perfectly with my program not working on the latest apple hardware.

I'm not sure where the problem is (the drivers or the chip itself, I don't know much about it), but the Radeon 9600 does not support 100% of the opengl spec.

Either way, if I ditch the GL_LINES in favor of textured quads I would eliminate roughly 4000 primitives per frame, guarantee compatibility on all systems, and probably make the game look a lot better. It would definitely run faster.

But... this is easier said than done. I'd have to ditch my font and go with textures (can get blurry), and my translucent windows wouldn't be as simple as one GL_QUAD and a line loop anymore.

I guess I might as well go ahead and redo the game with textures. It would work on more systems (and therefore sell more copies, hopefully).

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

Very retro. Other than the motion sickness it induced, I found it quite fun.

[KittyMac]

Originally posted by Camacho
There is also a Mac game called Vortex if I recall.

That's correct, I released "Vortex" in 1999 and "Vortex Next Generation" in 2001 (http://homepage.mac.com/felinegames/index.html). Hate to admit it but the "purple vortex" looks similar to the vortex in VortexNG ;)

For your own benefit I'd suggest coming up with a new name.

That being said, your game looks cool, and was indeed fun to play (worked well on dual 1 GHz G4 with Radeon 9000). I'd suggest adding a few twists such as gravity wells, and perhaps a way to "drop" from the floor to the ceiling.

And of course the traditional Mac specific stuff which every game needs to support like Cmd+Q from anywhere in the game to quit, etc...

Cheers,
Rocco

[mnajera]

Originally posted by KittyMac
For your own benefit I'd suggest coming up with a new name.


I'm not too attached to the name vortex... just to the hand-typed vertices that represent the 3D logo on the menu screen. I could just as easily rename the thing "Rotex" by changing one line of code... but then I'd have to leave off the V, which is my favorite letter. I was even going to use a render of the V as the icon. Oh well.

Point being; I never saw your vortex game until now. I think a spooky purple color scheme is par for course for any game dealing with the word "vortex".

I was thinking about that "floor to ceiling" option as well. There could be certain blocks where you could jump up to the top of the tube and play from up there. It would be a sort of bonus; it would be much harder to steer from up there, but if you fall, you could end up back down on the inside. The goal, of course, would be to finish the level on the top.

Right now, that is beyond my level of skill to implement. Despite my 5 years of college, I only have a rudimentary understanding of 3D math (vortex is just a simple 2d scroller in a 3d shell), and it's gonna take me a little bit of time to rewrite the engine. For now, I'm just going to make 30 or 40 levels and release the game as-is. Maybe there will be new Radeon drivers in the future that fix the antialiasing problem (my opengl code is fine, ATI's opengl support is what's broken), and all the new stuff will get done in the second version of the game.

[mnajera]

By the way...

I want to thank everyone for all their help; both on this forum and via email. Only last night I posted a quick beta version of my game, and a day later I've recieved a lot of feedback and bug reports.

I've only recently started visiting this website and reading the forums, and the experience has been 100% positive. There are a good mix of talented and helpful members here, and the "signal to noise" ratio of the posts is pretty high.

[karolos]

Hi!

Tested on my iMAc 1 Ghz with Mac Os 10.2.8. Works fine and fast.

May be I can suggest a turbo option to have faster speed, that could be interesting :-) And resolution screen also?

A window screen option could be nice as well.

[arekkusu]

Originally posted by mnajera
I'm not sure where the problem is (the drivers or the chip itself, I don't know much about it), but the Radeon 9600 does not support 100% of the opengl spec.
9600 AA point/line support is supposed to show up in a future driver update, according to ATI. AA polygon hardware support has been removed so no driver update is possible. The other problems (line stipple etc) ought to be fixable in a driver update as well but no word from Apple/ATI yet.

Either way, if I ditch the GL_LINES in favor of textured quads I would eliminate roughly 4000 primitives per frame...
But... this is easier said than done. I'd have to ditch my font and go with textures (can get blurry)

It depends how you implement it. For your background, you could draw textured quads where there is a one pixel white line border embedded in the texture. (I believe this is what you were thinking of?)

But another way to do it, which would work much better for your fonts, is to replace the GL_LINES primitive with a textured quad. In your case since you only draw 1 px wide lines this is quite easy (no joining/mitering/end caps/stipple to worry about) -- just make a 3x1 px alpha texture of BLACK, WHITE, BLACK and stretch it over a quad positioned where the line ought to be. The texture filtering hardware will emulate antialiasing for you.

See: http://www.sgi.com/grafica/texmap/

[KittyMac]

Just a few more general notes:

Originally posted by mnajera
I think a spooky purple color scheme is par for course for any game dealing with the word "vortex".

Read this review I got from MacGamer on Vortex NG, you might want to rethink using a purple background.

http://www.macgamer.com/reviews/vortexng/vortexng.html

Arguably it was just one reviewer's opinion, but he described the background as "about the color of coagulated blood swirled with Pepto-Bismol; a combination which is surprisingly unattractive."

You might also want to look at their response to my text, which in Vortex NG I use the same "draw lines to make text" approach you are doing now. After the numerous reports of "that font is ugly as sin" I've later moved to textured fonts.


Originally posted by mnajera
I was thinking about that "floor to ceiling" option as well. There could be certain blocks where you could jump up to the top of the tube and play from up there.

My thought was less grandious... what I meant was instead of pressing left in order to rotate me to the other "ceiling", have a "jump to ceiling" button which jumps the character and rotates the entire tube 180 degrees, essentially landing the player back on the bottom of the screen but on what was the "top" of the tube. You could combine this with live rotation, making for some pretty difficult jumps being possible.

Originally posted by mnajera
For now, I'm just going to make 30 or 40 levels and release the game as-is.

Trust me, I know how it feels to be in the last 5% of a project. However, I can't stress enough how important it is to polish the heck out of your game in that last 5%! Nothing is more important than the first impression you make to gamers, and since you plan on making money on this you might want to consider putting another 2-3 months of hard work into it to make it the best it can possibly be.

Good luck,
Rocco

[AREM]

More levels More levels:D

[AREM]

forget 30-40 levels, 100+:p

[AREM]

whats the lowest score you guys have gotten? mine is 39 on tracks 1-3 :D

[skyhawk]

FASTER speed? jesus! I can barely finish most of the laps in 100-400 seconds. (goal time of 44 on anything but the first level is unrealistic)

[codemattic]

runs without a hitch on my G4/400/Panther/Rage128.

Although I know you want to keep the atmosphere - please allow the option of playing in a window.

[mnajera]

Here is another build of the game. This time, it runs in windowed mode, so those of you with dual-monitor systems can try it out. There's also an additional level for people who want to try something a little harder. I've also changed the name, and made a few color adjustments, as I'm still playing around with the final look of the game:

rotex_beta.dmg (http://banarnar.com/rotex_beta.dmg)

Please understand that this is a direct port of a pc game, done entirely in C with SDL. The exact same code will compile and run on windows and linux, which is why there aren't any osx specific features.

I did stay up all night yesterday learning about the correct way to build a cocoa app with objective c. I'm going to try to build a wrapper for the game that will interpet cmd-Q and cmd-F messages for quitting the game and getting in and out of fullscreen mode.

Of course, it would be a lot easier if I could just use SDL to interpet those keys, as I don't want to write any system-specific code unless there's a steady paycheck involved. Changing the screen dimensions and fullscreen mode on the fly will probably be the biggest help right now. Does anybody know how this is done under SDL?

[AnotherJake]

Cool! Now I see what all the hubbub's about. Windowed mode works great! Nice game!

[arekkusu]

Window mode doesn't minimize to the dock properly. If you end up making a Cocoa wrapper this is very easy to fix, see my recent post (http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5750). I don't know how to deal with it through SDL.

[mnajera]

Originally posted by skyhawk
FASTER speed? jesus! I can barely finish most of the laps in 100-400 seconds. (goal time of 44 on anything but the first level is unrealistic)

That's interesting. Are you falling down a lot? Or is the game rendering so slowly that you can only finish above 100 seconds?

I calculate the goal time based on how long it takes to plow through the level at full speed (I design each level so this is possible), plus a little margin of error. If you go through level five (on the latest build) enough times, you can get in at negative six seconds.

But, I've been playing this game every day for months, so I'm hardly a fair judge of what's hard or easy.

[morgant]

400MHz PowerMac G4 (AGP) w/ATI Rage 128 Pro, 1.25GB RAM, and Mac OS X 10.3.1: works like a charm!

Definitely one of the cleanest looking games I've ever played on this system (the antialiasing works really well on the ATI Rage 128 Pro).

I like the name Vortex, unfortunately I'd have to agree that it's been done before. Definitely a wicked fun game though!

[AREM]

mnejara, the most I've ever gotten on anything is -5 sec. what do you mean -6 seconds :mad: :eek:

[AREM]

I finally got -4 on level 5! Suckers!!!:p

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by mnajera
That's interesting. Are you falling down a lot? Or is the game rendering so slowly that you can only finish above 100 seconds?

I calculate the goal time based on how long it takes to plow through the level at full speed (I design each level so this is possible), plus a little margin of error. If you go through level five (on the latest build) enough times, you can get in at negative six seconds.

But, I've been playing this game every day for months, so I'm hardly a fair judge of what's hard or easy.

I'm falling down a lot. It can't possibly render slowly on a Dual G5 silly ;) (see sidebar under my avatar (system I'm running))
I would say, make the goal time at least 60 seconds, so that normal people might have a chance of beating it after a few tries. Level 3 took me 400 seconds. Level 1 is the only one I can actually get near 44.

[Danlab]

really fun i dont like the 80's gfx type.. but really fun
but need more funky gfx and a rythm in the game

with caracter choice multiplayer, ect
this game its okey for a freeware

[mnajera]

Originally posted by Danlab
really fun i dont like the 80's gfx type.. but really fun
but need more funky gfx and a rythm in the game

with caracter choice multiplayer, ect
this game its okey for a freeware

Yeah, basing the game entirely on textures would make the game look better and run faster as well. The main thing holding me back is a decent 3D modeller. I want to be able to design objects and texture them, then load output everything in a OpenGL-compatible format. Right now I'm just using pencil and paper to draw out the vertices by hand, then I type in the glVertex3f's myself. Very tedious.

I was planning on having at least three different ships, so there could be different styles of play. The ValJean (the current ship) would be the average ship, the Javert the fastest, and the Marius (the most manuverable).

Then, three "secret" ships; the Cosette (which jumps heigher), the Thenardier (with a wider collision detection area that allows the player to "cheat" on certain levels), and, finally, the Gavroche, which combines the characteristics of all the other ships.

Likewise, a level named after each chapter of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

Then, an online high-score table...

... and the level editor (which is really easy to use) would be built-in to the game.

I'm debating on wether or not I should just release the game as-is, or take some more time to make all these changes.

[Baldock]

Very cool game. Runs smooth on my 700mhz iBook. My race times suck but that doesn't stop it from being very good. I just wish I had the patience to do something like that.

[igame3d]

That was cool!

Might need some particles.
Maybe some tokens to pick up here and there, as well as the occasional obstacle besides falling.

Maybe some speed ups or ramps would add a bit more fun to it.

But overall groovy game man.

[AREM]

do not release the game as-is! more levels!:D

[Jimmy Fred]

This game is really good. It would be a shame if you didn't make it great by continuing development. While playing it I couldn't help but remember Tunnels of Armageddon and wish that there were some kind of Arkanoidish critters and bonus things roaming around on the runs. Anyway, it's still one of the coolest demos I've downloaded in a while!-D

[Wheatie]

I, for one, actually like the retro look. The simple look goes well with the simple gameplay.

Wheatie

[Jimmy Fred]

After some extensive testing, yes that's what I'll call it :D, Rotex sits around 50% of the processor time and occasionally peaks around 80% on my iBook G4. Maybe I should check my head for even thinking this, but 15 bucks seems more on the money, assuming there will be a lot more levels. I really dig the retro look too. :D

[Fenris]

Very, very cool. This I like. I will nitpick a little on the interface, it needs a little polish to feel more game-like as opposed to a demo.

First of all, can I please have the levels progress automatically? Right now a finished level just drops me back to the start menu, and I have to select a new level by myself...

ï In the options screen, make the volume range from one to ten. 1-128 is too programmer-centric, most users will never need that kind of fidelity, and they'll go "128? What strange number is that?" and get confused.
ï Drop the debug info for the final build, no user should see debug stuff.
ï On the title screen, drop the version info, or make it smaller and at the bottom of the screen. Those are strange computer numbers that your users will get nosebleeds from.
ï Make the Esc key return from instructions, options and credits and stuff.
ï In the level complete screen, draw the text after you draw the shadow. Right now the ship shadows the text, which looks a little strange... Also, flush the number right so that time taken and time goal lines up under each others.
ï Also, right-flush the difference number, and make "Difference" say "Try to improve by 12 seconds" if they're too slow, and "You have 12 seconds to spare" if they make it in time
ï Draw a box around those stats to set them apart from the text
ï As someone else said, particles would be extremely cool. You could draw them in lines to keep with the 80's style.
ï When you're playing, how about a timer that shows current time and time goal? Stress them. :)
ï I really, really like the camera pullback when you fall off. Very nice touch.
ï In the credits screen, drop the GLUT/SDL creds. Those are strange computer words that confuse the player. And they're very game-y either. :)

How about making the seconds you have left in the end of a level carry over to the next one, and then kill the player if he doesn't finish within the time goal? That would surely stress them out, as well as keep them on their toes all the way through.

All in all, this could be _great_. Just keep on tinkering with the graphic appearance. If you decide to go with textures and 'real' models, try to keep drawing the outlines in wireframe, that looks very cool.

For inspiration, look to the game BattleGirl - they went with 80's vector graphics and pulled it off really good.

Keep it up!

[edit: $10 is a good price point imho. Stay there. If you design 50+ levels, you can up it to $15. Also, the Victor Hugo theme is extremely cool. If you want to keep with that theme for the levels, batch the levels in groups and name the groups after the chapters. You could even quote the book for the individual levels.]

[aarku]

Overall I like it a lot. I haven't found any bugs and it runs flawlessly for me. Here are some suggestions:

There are contrasting feelings in the game. You have soothing trance music with retro graphics with intruisive jumping-sound effect. I think the jumping sound effect stands out and doesn't fit in with the rest of the sounds. It could use some soft engine running sounds too.

I don't like how it fades out so quickly. I'm guessing one of the reasons to have the fog so close is so you don't know what is coming up next. There are a couple of things you could do:


Stretch the polygons in a way as you go faster to put in a fish-eye tunnel-vision type effect. I think there needs to be a greater variation of speed. For me the game is too easy as it is. You could even do color shifting ala doppler-effect. (Do this!!)
Make the fog off a lot further away, but speed up how fast you go.


Good luck!

-Jon

[PowerMacX]

I really like this game. :wow: I also like SkyRoads too!
Some ideas:

Show the current speed (0-100%)
Different levels with different gravity/speed
Textures!
Keep a consistent set of colors for different track surfaces: areas that make you go faster/slower/"ice"(doesn't let you turn) and so on
Borrowed from SkyRoads: fuel level (you'll have to pass over a special zone to recharge)
Borrowed from SkyRoads: Shield level: Some areas will "damage" your ship and when your shield lowers to zero you die
Borrowed from SkyRoads: Make music's speed depend on ship's speed
Make the ship not fall off the track exactly when you go over a hole -> inertia (like in Mario Bros.: if you run fast, you could go over small holes without falling)

[JW Sipkes]

It works fine. I have a dual G4 and have not noticed any problems with the game.
But it is very difficult. Level 01 is easy. The levels higher are very, very difficult.
Nice graphics.


JW

[Hog]

I finally got -4 on level 5! Suckers!!!:p

strange thing, on the first levels going through at full speed i seem to always get constant times like on level 1 -1 and lvl 2 +1 but on level 5 i also get -4. is the speed somehow affected by things like how often you jump or how straight you go, or the tiles you move on, or just your machine speed?

also the space ship is too dark and can barely be seen when jumping, this makes it hard to know where you are going to land when you play the level for the first time.

[diordna]

In the first beta, my lowest time on level 1 was 80, without falling off at all. In this new version, it's much slower. You REALLY need time-based movement. Or else make me a wireframe mode, which I honestly wouldn't mind.

[Marjock]

wow, when I read through all these reviews i was expecting a pretty cool game and it lived up to all expectations =)

I think the time is good, i got through level 1 in 40 seconds on my second try (I gave up halfway through on my first try 'cause I fell down a lot geting the hang of the game)

yeah, it's a cool game, I'm addicted =)

[EvolPenguin]

Well, in level 1, I held Up the entire time and never fell through and I couldn't reach the time. I think that's a bit unfair, you should make time based animation, because there is no way I can get the time in the levels, my computer isn't fast enough. I like the game though, very fun

Alex

[Fenris]

Since the developer hasn't been logged on since January, I'll try contacting him by e-mail to point out that he has a lot of great feedback on a great game. It would be sad to see it go to waste.

[EvolPenguin]

Hmm, yes, good idea.

Alex

[mnajera]

Oh, hello there! It's good to see all of the suggestions people have made.

The reason that I have not logged in since january is because I finally got a job as a game programmer. I'm working on a "redemption game" (an arcade game that gives out tickets and other prizes) that should be coming to a pizza place or grocery store near you, and a 3d racing game that nobody will see (they tell me) until sometime next spring.

There are several problems that I need to correct with vortex:

1. the graphics are GL_QUAD and GL_LINE based. if I'm going to keep the retro look I'm going to have to start doing it with textures. this will make the game compatible with more cards, and make it faster on most systems.

2. the vortex levels are simple integer arrays. this is bad. one of the first things that I learned on the job was that you *really* need to care if your system is big-endian or little-endian. put simply; vortex level files made on a mac will not be usable on a pc, and vice-versa. I need to pick a simple and compact level format for storing level data and texture data.

3. the vortex level editor blows. unless you are the programmer (me) you will not know how to make a vortex level. to change the name of the file you have to change the source code and compile it again! I've got to make it easy enough for anybody to make a new level, choose texture files and other properties for each of the "panels".

It's been more than a year since I first started working on this game. I've got to really get my act together and make a decent version of vortex done, because I know that a lot of people will enjoy playing it once all the "fun" elements are put in.

If I can make it easy (really easy) for users to make and share their own levels, then I think the game would be really popular. Especially if it only cost $10.

...

Also! One weekend I made an alternate version of vortex with a few more levels. I was also testing the software registration process. You can download it at cpgames.com.

Does the download work? Can anyone break the registration key? Let me know. If anybody needs a registration code I can post it here.