Ancient Arena Testing

[Ian Kerr]

Hi,
It's been a long time since I posted the last update to my game "Ancient Arena." For those of you who haven't seen it before, Ancient Arena is a 3D fighting game with dwarves, elves, knights, etc (the project was started before I saw any of the Lord of the Rings movies btw :) ). It's still very much a work in progress. This build should run on MacOS 10.1.5 or later. You can download it at:

http://www.mnsi.net/~rkerr/source/AncientArena_PB.app.sit

Instructions:
1) At any point after the loading process you should be able to exit the app by holding down cmd + q.

2) On screen instructions are presented to you when you go into "Practice" mode.

3) "Load Game" shows you a replay of your last fight.

I'm looking for comments and suggestions as well as crash reports. Enjoy!

-- Ian

[AnotherJake]

Won't launch for me. No error dialogs saying anything happened either, just nothing. 10.3.2, G4 Dual 867, dual monitors.

[OneSadCookie]

White textures for the castle on my 2x2 G5, 10.3.2. Are you remembering to set TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER appropriately?

Rearranges my windows. Count me out of further testing until that's fixed :mad:

[igame3d]

Well after getting right past those bugs mentioned without a hitch, I was hoping it was going to be smooth sailing..but no go.
Texture on the walkway is smearing.
The game "feels" slow..I'm getting around 26fps but it feels ...muddy not quick and crazy like it used to feel.
Uhm the guys fall off the tower, sometimes not where you expect (the ends) but in the middle. Then the main character falls for ever..I let him go to about -2000.0000 before exiting and retrying.

Is that a motion blur effect you got going? needs more transparency I think..or only
Ok hmm did I miss anything? Oh your skybox texture doesn't look as good as it used to..

Controls definately feel ...less responsive.

Oh no screen/window moving around here..did you fix that last night?

Dual 450 G4 1.6G of RAM w/ Nvidia MX 2

[Ian Kerr]

Hi guys, thanks for testing it out. I just uploaded a new build that will hopefully fix most of the problems you found.

http://www.mnsi.net/~rkerr/source/AncientArena_PB.app.sit

OSC - The new build uses CGL instead of AGL and I followed Apple's example code very closely, so hopefully this build will eliminate the window movement. I also changed my texture code. Maybe the castle texture won't be white this time.

Another Jake - Can you please check the console output after running it? Maybe there will be something in there that'll help me narrow down the problem.

Texture on the walkway is smearing.
The textures will also smear in this version. I need to put a bottom on my skybox.

The game "feels" slow..I'm getting around 26fps but it feels ...muddy not quick and crazy like it used to feel.
Should be a lot faster now :) You can use +, - to speed it up and slow it down. The physics break down if you go to either extreme though (too slow or too fast).

Uhm the guys fall off the tower, sometimes not where you expect (the ends) but in the middle.
This shouldn't be happening... Are you holding down the down arrow? Holding the down arrow causes you to roll threw a platform. This is intended.

Then the main character falls for ever..I let him go to about -2000.0000 before exiting and retrying.
This shouldn't happen in the new build.

Is that a motion blur effect you got going? needs more transparency I think..or only
Yes, it's mo-blur. The new version tones it down a bit.

Ok hmm did I miss anything? Oh your skybox texture doesn't look as good as it used to..
I threw the old one back in :)

Oh no screen/window moving around here..did you fix that last night?
It only seems to happen on certain systems. Hopefully the new build will eliminate it completely.

Thanks,
-- Ian

[AnotherJake]

Another Jake - Can you please check the console output after running it? Maybe there will be something in there that'll help me narrow down the problem.
Console shows zilch. It exits really fast. You can see the dock move just a little to put up the app icon and then it changes its mind right away. You might want to make a special build with printf statements along the way through initialization. I can send you the output and you'll know where it bailed at least. Without seeing the code I'm clueless, but I'd take a wild guess that CGL isn't liking the dual display setup.

[codemattic]

Runs pretty smoothly on my lowly g4/400 ATI128 tower with Panther. I would like to be able to choose between fullscreen and windowed (unless the mouse is going to control something also). I have no problem jumping up/down to/from the platforms. Obviously my opponent only stays on the bottom platform. I often get confused as to which guy I am - but I imagine that will end once you get more models in the game. It does *not* seem to mess up my desktop on quit - thanks for fixing that.

cheers,
Codemattic

[Ian Kerr]

AnotherJake - I threw in a bunch of printf()'s including one on the first line of my main function. If you could try it again, that would be great.

codemattic - As far as fullscreen vs. windowed mode goes: eventually I'm going to create an options screen where you can toggle that, as well as other things including the resolution. Maybe in the meantime I'll make some sort of text file where options can be edited. As for the confusion regarding which player you're controlling, I think I will vary their colours slightly.

This update includes:
-a new level
-updated AI (it jumps and can follow you across multiple platforms)
-improved collision detection (you shouldn't be able to fall through platforms anymore, unless you are holding the down key of coarse)
-the introduction of a magic meter (magic isn't fully implemented yet)
-minor gameplay tweaks that most people won't notice :)

http://www.mnsi.net/~rkerr/source/AncientArena_PB.app.sit