Project Magellan X DEMO - BETA TEST

[ChrisD]

Hi all

I have just released a BETA Demo of Project Magellan for OS-X.

Game info...

http://www.plaidworld.com

Demo...

http://plaidworld.com/demos/Project_Magellan_X_DEMO.dmg

[ChrisD]

WOW know one said anything at all...

[AREM]

os X I love this game! best game in the world! maybe...

[AREM]

are you still working on mouse house? that looks really cool... :cool:

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

Very nice. It reminds me of Venture a little bit.

[Mazilurik]

Resolution changing needs work; it looks somewhat unpolished (try changing the bit depth after switching resolutions, and hide the startup window before doing either), and it screws up my windows. Other than that, it runs fine, and the game itself is good.

[NCarter]

Good game. Nice graphics, although it gets very busy with all the big explosions from asteroids and so on. I normally hate mouse control in a side scrolling shoot-em-up, but it worked very well here.

I didn't really understand the way power-ups worked, though. Does it give the power-up to the part of the ship which touches it first? Also, at one point I seemed to end up with no weapon at all on the bottom 'extra'!

I have only one major complaint: you don't capture the screen when you change resolution, so it messes up my windows. Check out this thread (http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5682) for some ways of avoiding this problem. It's a really big issue as far as I'm concerned and I won't play any game which makes this mistake more than a couple of times before I get annoyed with it.

BTW, I'm sure I've heard the music 'Seizure of Time' in another Mac shooter, but I can't remember the name of it. It's a nice tune, though, so I don't care! :p

[ChrisD]

Originally posted by Daniel_Lurie
Very nice. It reminds me of Venture a little bit.

What is venture?

[ChrisD]

Originally posted by AREM
are you still working on mouse house? that looks really cool... :cool:

Yes yes...

But that goes with BANG!

First I finish PM for X
then PM for Win32
Then BANG!

[ChrisD]

Originally posted by Mazilurik
Resolution changing needs work; it looks somewhat unpolished (try changing the bit depth after switching resolutions, and hide the startup window before doing either), and it screws up my windows. Other than that, it runs fine, and the game itself is good.

Working on it.

Next version has....

1. gamma fades... That are NOT covering everything :(

2. Im found out how to take over the screen so icons windows etc no longer move on you :)

[ChrisD]

Originally posted by NCarter
Good game. Nice graphics, although it gets very busy with all the big explosions from asteroids and so on. I normally hate mouse control in a side scrolling shoot-em-up, but it worked very well here.

I didn't really understand the way power-ups worked, though. Does it give the power-up to the part of the ship which touches it first? Also, at one point I seemed to end up with no weapon at all on the bottom 'extra'!

BTW, I'm sure I've heard the music 'Seizure of Time' in another Mac shooter, but I can't remember the name of it. It's a nice tune, though, so I don't care! :p

1. you can use keyboard control but for mouse users I think the mouse is the natural choice... Myself I used to play it with a game pad.

2. Power ups get added to your ship or pods
what ever touches it. Power ups go up to level 5...
but switching between one weapon and another you do not
lose your power up level.

3. I started a thread on screen capture Friday ;-)
Will be in the next release. I had missed that I even needed to do it.

4. Music.... NO you have not heard that any where else unless it was stolen. All the music was written for PM... since andrew is a long time friend of mine for say the last 10 years and live in town here ;-)

Im sure you saw PM...

5. Everyone needs to know that PM is a game that was made for a ran on FAST 040s and 6100/66 at 256 colors.
It is just that the art was all 16bit etc that it has aged so well and I can bring it to X and it still looks good.
Im doing a straight port.... no major features will be added.

[NCarter]

Originally posted by ChrisD
4. Music.... NO you have not heard that any where else unless it was stolen. All the music was written for PM... since andrew is a long time friend of mine for say the last 10 years and live in town here ;-)

Im sure you saw PM...

Oh, right. So PM has been around for a while... I hadn't noticed that. Actually, I wonder if I heard the music in a really early beta of PM several years ago. I half-remember it being in an unfinished game.

I could be hallucinating the whole thing, though. :)

[igame3d]

Coolness. Very! Going to play that with my daughter when she comes home from grandma's.

It crashed on quit though (Cmd-Q) and my desktop picture vanished.

here's the crash log..since noone hangs around the chat room anymore.
**********

Date/Time: 2003-12-06 20:26:10 -0500
OS Version: 10.2.8 (Build 6R73)

Command: Project Magellan X
PID: 14129

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x032c2008

Thread 0 Crashed:
#0 0x90074578 in memmove
#1 0x00030cbc in _ZN10gamewindow5aboutEv
#2 0x00037800 in _ZN10gamewindow7hiscoreEv
#3 0x00031374 in _ZN10gamewindow4playEv
#4 0x000309e0 in _ZN10gamewindow13customclickedE5PointP15OpaqueWind owPtr
#5 0x0003c1bc in _ZN6window7clickedE5PointP15OpaqueWindowPtr
#6 0x0002fc78 in _Z15handlemousedownv
#7 0x0002f91c in _Z12handleeventsv
#8 0x00003f7c in _Z7rungamev
#9 0x00003ef0 in main
#10 0x00003d34 in _start
#11 0x00003bb4 in __code_start__

Thread 1:
#0 0x90073ba8 in mach_msg_trap
#1 0x90005ed0 in mach_msg
#2 0xc0009528 in __ape_internal
#3 0xc0001368 in __ape_agent
#4 0x90020c28 in _pthread_body

Thread 2:
#0 0x90073ba8 in mach_msg_trap
#1 0x90005ed0 in mach_msg
#2 0x901489f0 in __CFRunLoopRun
#3 0x90180f58 in CFRunLoopRunSpecific
#4 0x94d9c1c0 in _ZN10HALRunLoop9OwnThreadEPv
#5 0x94d911b0 in _ZN9CAPThread5EntryEPS_
#6 0x90020c28 in _pthread_body

Thread 3:
#0 0x90042588 in semaphore_timedwait_signal_trap
#1 0x9003e7b4 in _pthread_cond_wait
#2 0x94d83ac4 in _ZN7CAGuard7WaitForEy
#3 0x94d832b0 in _ZN7CAGuard9WaitUntilEy
#4 0x94d822e0 in _ZN15XThreadedDevice8IOThreadEv
#5 0x94d95a24 in _ZN15XThreadedDevice13IOThreadEntryEPv
#6 0x94d911b0 in _ZN9CAPThread5EntryEPS_
#7 0x90020c28 in _pthread_body

PPC Thread State:
srr0: 0x90074578 srr1: 0x0200d030 vrsave: 0xff000000
xer: 0x00000000 lr: 0x00030cbc ctr: 0x00000002 mq: 0x00000000
r0: 0x00000002 r1: 0xbffff6b0 r2: 0x00000000 r3: 0xbffff708
r4: 0x032c1fd8 r5: 0x000000e8 r6: 0x00000010 r7: 0x00000020
r8: 0x00000030 r9: 0x00000020 r10: 0x00000060 r11: 0x00000080
r12: 0xbffff760 r13: 0x00030db8 r14: 0x02a33100 r15: 0x00000001
r16: 0x00046e10 r17: 0x00046e14 r18: 0x00046de0 r19: 0x00046de4
r20: 0x02b2b62c r21: 0x00000001 r22: 0x7d967337 r23: 0x00010000
r24: 0x02a33100 r25: 0x00046e1c r26: 0x00037374 r27: 0x000003ea
r28: 0x02b2b844 r29: 0x02a33100 r30: 0x7d962097 r31: 0x00046e90

[ChrisD]

Originally posted by igame3d
[B]Coolness. Very! Going to play that with my daughter when she comes home from grandma's.

It crashed on quit though (Cmd-Q) and my desktop picture vanished.

here's the crash log..since noone hangs around the chat room anymore.


Honestly I don't find running a IRC client as convenient as just running iChat which I have on all the time.
It is also more complicated then clicking on a web link...
And is the chat room even being well advertised?

THANKS for the crash log.
I have a good diea where to look.

I had a crash there once my self
But I thought I had fixed it all.

Hmmm I wonder if the change made it to the bundle I shipped...

[AnotherJake]

Most excellent game! I love unabashed arcade shooting and destruction with lots of effects.

My only gripe is that I don't like having to press the mouse button (or keyboard) to fire every time. 1) cramped muscles. Sore would be good, but cramped is bad after only one level. 2) not good to be smashing buttons on a personal computer. An arcade machine that was designed to take the abuse is fine, but a lot of people like myself don't really want to wear this expensive equipment out so quickly. An auto-fire for a one second burst at a time would be much better.

[ChrisD]

Originally posted by AnotherJake
Most excellent game! I love unabashed arcade shooting and destruction with lots of effects.


Thank YOU :)


My only gripe is that I don't like having to press the mouse button (or keyboard) to fire every time. 1) cramped muscles. Sore would be good, but cramped is bad after only one level. 2) not good to be smashing buttons on a personal computer. An arcade machine that was designed to take the abuse is fine, but a lot of people like myself don't really want to wear this expensive equipment out so quickly. An auto-fire for a one second burst at a time would be much better.

2. I don't care about :)
I have never worn a KB out this way...
Though Doug here at work says her had the same thought.

1. From a ergonomic stand point I totally agree.

So Im torn...
Here is why.
After studying the problem a lot I find that people get more out of the game with active hitting on the KB vs true auto fire.

Auto fires makes for a DRY boring feeling game.

People like to have a game that reacts if they pound harder.

A short burt auto fire might be the best solution...
bets of both worlds.
I have had three people ask for something like that so far...
So I will try it out and see what I can come up with.

Really the game needs a total design... but umm that is not going to happen :)

[AnotherJake]

2. I don't care about :)
I have never worn a KB out this way...

Me neither, except I have had to fix Mac keyboards with punctured rubber diaphrams. They DO break.

Auto fires makes for a DRY boring feeling game.
People like to have a game that reacts if they pound harder.

Totally agree. I'm an arcade junky myself and see the point.

[Edit] There *has* to be an existing solution/formula for this. Being as how this is a game dev community, maybe someone can chime in. Three shot bursts? Five shot bursts?

[ChrisD]

Originally posted by AnotherJake
Me neither, except I have had to fix Mac keyboards with punctured rubber diaphrams. They DO break.



Totally agree. I'm an arcade junky myself and see the point.

[Edit] There *has* to be an existing solution/formula for this. Being as how this is a game dev community, maybe someone can chime in. Three shot bursts? Five shot bursts?

No

But over time it has evolved in the arcade for less button hits.

Then there are really good games like R-Type Delta which I believe are still one hit one shot.

Note that a better design for these games is...
One hit and the player dies.
This makes all other balancing issues much easier to solve including how much shooting must go on.

[AnotherJake]

Good point. But your enemies require more than one shot and thus button bashing ensues. Tough call.