uDG: Dead Days

[skyhawk]

wow, I didn't find anyway to give feedback, so I figured I start a thread for the people.

download is at: http://www.igame3d.com/

a few notes. I found the lighting to be either seizure inducing (mission 2), or just downright too dark (mission 3). perhaps you should increase the ambient lighting a little. I mean, even on a really dark night, you can still see.
also, you can press escape and get out of mission 1 and 2, but not 3.
perhaps we can get more blood? and perhaps it could stain the ground. That would be sweet.
my guy has the funniest run! :lol:

also, is this supposed to look like this?

http://sky289hawk1.dyndns.org:8080/deadday.jpg


keep up the good work, you still have another day to get some last minute features in!

[JustinFic]

Robots + zombies = good. Can't go too wrong with that formula :)

I love how it encourages me to kill the women and children. Wrong on so many levels :lol:

But punching zombies is really frustrating- I can count on losing a third to half my health in the process. Perhaps a punch could also throw a zombie off for a bit? After I got humped by the first zombie in mission 1 I just sprinted around trying to find a gun and found mission 2.

Also, is it possible to make punching slightly faster and not require me to hold space through the whole thing? I thought I was slugging zombies by wailing on the space bar but the robot was sort of half-punching then giving up. I want to really belt something!

Is there any reason whatsoever to walk? You should have the robot always run.

[ERaZer]

Sometimes the zombies doesn't complete their death animations, so they hang around in the air!

And yeah, I agree on the punch issue, I tried to use it twice, but then I ran.

Otherwise, keep up the good work!

[phydeaux]

Is there some way to put in a map or radar? I couldn't figure out where to go.

[igame3d]

Well the game was made in the last six days in a half finished buggy editor, Tobi wanted to make a game on the only six days of vacation time he's had in over a year. So much for "vacation".
That is part of the reason why you experience so many weird things.

At every turn of "oh this will improve the game", there is a sidestep to fix the editor, fight the IDE, add some missing feature, or oops this that and the other thing don't work in the engine since the new model format was implemented, new culling code replaced old code, etc etc. You know how it goes. Add in a 6 hour transatlantic time differential between editor developer and engine developer things get really hairy, by the time he finds a bug in one of my new editor tricks, its 5AM here and I've been up 20 hours, vice versa with the engine. I made some helpful modifcations to the police station only to find out 5 hours later when tobi got online and tested the export that my new model to mesh function combined with new bone commands corrupted the map to hell. Joy!
Its either midnight in germany when I catch up with him, or 3 to 4Am in New Jersey. Thank god for crack or we would never get anything done (joking really, just say no to cocaine kiddies, its bad mmmkay?)


Last minute features and changes are probably not likely. (I've been nursing a monster head ache all day otherwise might be tempted to mess around with it)

yes the punch sucks big time, I added a two fisted punch but haven't even had a chance to look at the new animation format to figure how to change the current script. I actually was looking at it a day or two ago, but had like 2 hours of sleep and thats all I could do.....look at it, comprehension was out of the question. Tobi was racing to make level 3 so sidetracking him to edit in my karate wasn't an option.

You don't have to beat up your keyboard, just hold down space or mouse (when you get the gun).

Best advice, hold shift and space, walk backward, and turn, then you will get a good clobber on the zombies, moving forward seems to be certain death once they are chewing you. Tobi is sadistic, just imagine what goes on while he's working at the hospital.

Running is your best choice, fighting is more last resort until you get the gun.
You should walk in the police station though, running there is probably going to lead to certain death, by the time you see the undead, they have you! Running backwards when they attack is probably a good idea. That is the most claustrophobic level I've ever played.

Yes, silly animation especially for the run, Tobi is a coder, not an expert artist or animator (you can tell) :) You should see what the zombie attack looks like without the robot in the way...rather perverse. Probably would be in better shape if we didn't lose a nearly complete animation editor to a hard drive crash.

Yes the lighting needs work for sure. The blinky blinky Lights on part two is, I suspect, supposed to cause seizures, iGame3D is also a "cull the weak" engine.
Some of you may be surprised to find yourself sterile after playing.
Muahahaha. (not medically proven yet, so don't name the nine months surprise after us)

As for the screenshot, I'm not sure whats going on there. Thats the end of game energy vortex which is the source of the zombie menace. It looks like quicktime support is still broken, supposed to be a fire in there. I know tobi was trouble shooting animations before getting the final upload done and we were experiencing all kinds of problems, it would work then stop working, work for him, then not for me, and was a last minute thing in the rush to get it uploaded before he had to run off to another crazy shift at work.


Haven't heard from him in over 32 hours, and he probably has another work 12 straight days situation now that his vacation is over.

Ah the map request. That would make it too easy. those levels are actually very very small. (even if level one is pushing 9,861 polys, yeesh)

spoiler cheats
Level 1, go into the police station front door to get to the next level. To get to the police station, run forward, I think 3 intersections, swing a left, then a right after the park at town hall. I think thats the pattern.

Level 2, go upstairs, then left, then go down the first hall on the right, to the end, if you survive that long

Level 3...I don't know its so damn dark, I couldn't tell you, but you are looking for a big freaky looking energy wobble particle thing (it should be a fire, but apparently is broke) Enter the vortex thing-ma-bob to end the game.

[Tobi]

Hello people!

OK, I have made some last minute changes including some of the ones you suggested:

-The strange white squares at end of last level have been replaced with a blue-ish portal

-The level jumper in level 2 was fixed

-The lighting in levels 2 and 3 are brighter

-Bill improved the level mesh in level 1

-The enemies have a better death animation now preventing them from hanging in mid-air

-drawing order of particles (objects) has been improved

-the intro text when you start the game is also different now

-the download size was reduced by about 500 K. The link is still the same.

Thanks for the feedback!

-Tobi

[ERaZer]

I don't know if you've fixed this in the latest release, but there is no loading screen between levels or when you're respawning… Just a "Loading" tacked on the current screen or something. Sure, it may not be that important but when I first entered the police station I thought it had crashed.

[Tobi]

Yeah, a "Loading..." text would have been nice but the game is done, no more updates now. Oh, and here are some better screenshots. The one which shows the drawing bug at the beginning of this thread is no good advertising for the game :lol:

http://www.igame3d.com/DeadDaysimages/ddscreen1.jpg

http://www.igame3d.com/DeadDaysimages/ddscreen2.jpg

http://www.igame3d.com/DeadDaysimages/ddscreen3.jpg

-Tobi

[Tobi]

OK, since I tested Dead Days on older systems than Panther now I know that it doesnt work there. That's why the updated version I just uploaded displays an error dialog that it requires at least Mac OS X 10.3 to run when you attempt to run it on older systems. Earlier it just crashed. No need for you to download it again, there's no changes in gameplay etc.

[skyhawk]

ouch: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/25097

[Tobi]

Yeah, they hate the game. Never release unpolished games to versiontracker!! :mad:
Probably the description made them think it is something like Max Payne just 5.5 megs of size and free.
But still it gives you some more traffic for free.

[igame3d]

I wouldn't say "they hate it" since I know for a fact that "a nony mouse" is just one member of the idevgames community who admitted to me in last years chat room to using the login at versiontracker.

He's such a low life he logs in under other names just to trash our game, as can be detected by the 1 post count of the other logins.

Seriously who signs up and logs in to versiontracker just to say "support older versions of OS X" for a freeware game that has a one star rating by a ranting lunatic?

Only someone who has a specific interest in trashing our game.

UDG sure brings out the ugliness in people.

Oh and you can tell the lie in one of his posts easily, because it doesn't crash at startup on dual monitor systems. If it did, you sure can't write 500 pages
about a game you haven't played.

[arekkusu]

Watch out on dual monitor systems. Dual displays driven by the same video card might work fine, and dual displays driven by two separate cards could totally fail. That screwed up my rating in the Vectorized contest.

[igame3d]

Is there a solution to this problem. Without a dual monitor dual card system there is no way to test if this works or not.

How could this dual monitor dual card thing screw up your vectorized rating?
How many people have this set up?

[skyhawk]

I'd have it... if I had another AGP slot... and another graphics card.... and another monitor :ninja:

[arekkusu]

That's right, without a dual card system, you can't test it. You also can't test every possible card unless you actually have every possible card. Sucks, huh?

Here's a scenario that works on single-card-dual-monitor but breaks on dual-card-dual-monitor:
1) create GL context
2) create fullscreen GL context, shared with the first context

In this situation, you have no guarantee which card the two contexts are being generated on. They might be on different cards. You can't share contexts across cards. (http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1248.html)

Solution is to force both contexts to be created on the same card, i.e. with NSOpenGLPFAScreenMask. If you support windowed mode, you also have to handle the case of dragging the window onto a display driven by a different GPU (rebuilding any non-sharable data like textures/display lists.)

Shoot Things (Day 21) didn't do this right, and one of the Vectorized judges had a dual-card setup, so I got zero points. (Day 22) fixed it.

[Tobi]

Thanks for the information! Another problem is that the game is written in Carbon not Cocoa. Is there a way to get it to work on a two-display system with either one or two graphic cards using the AGL under Mac OS X? :???:

[Tobi]

Hey there!

I'd like to announce a new version (1.2) of Bill's and my uDG entry "Dead Days" with the following changes:

•Â*Mac OS X 10.2 compatibility
•Â*added "Loading" indicator
• added "To Be Continued" end of game indicator
• zombies now resurrect after 13 seconds
• punch now knocks back the undead
• training level, larger steps and more apparent gun positioning
• level 1 map changes to mesh and layout,added details and more zombies
•Â*level 2 map is larger, added details and end of level goal object
• level 2 fixed camera angle, added targeting
• level 3 map is larger, added end of level goal object

Also I change the way the GL context is set up. If anyone out there has two monitors connected to his machine please test if it works there now! Happy testing!

Download Dead Days v1.2 (http://www.igame3d.de/DeadDays/Dead_Days.sit)

[igame3d]

I've posted version 1.2.1
Pixel format changed in an attempt to fix an error that caused the application not to launch on some machines that use ATI video cards. No errors have been reported using Nvidia cards.

The latest succesful test was achieve on the following system: Mac G4, 1 GHZ (Sonnet upgrade card) 1 GB RAM ATI RADEON 9000 Mac edition 1 TFT monitor 1600*1200 pixel 32 bit color depth
I've also received news of success on the Radeon 9200 @ 1024 x 768.
unknown sytem though.

This version will output error messages to the system console:
Applications/Utilities/Console.app

Users who are still getting errors are advised to send these messages and their system specs (OS versions, processor, screen resolution, number of monitors, video card,etc) to the email address provided in the Dead Days read me file.

Lowering resolution (as is suggested in the requirements) before playing the previous versions has fixed startup problems for several users.
Please follow the instructions before filing reports.

[igame3d]

Yesterday a User tested succesfully on the following system
Mac G4, 1 GHZ (Sonnet upgrade card)
1 GB RAM
ATI RADEON 9000 Mac edition
1 TFT monitor
1600*1200 pixel
32 bit color depth

After i posted download updates all over the place, he downloaded and the file did
not work. The only difference to this download and the working one was the compression format .zip for the original and .sit for the one everyone else is downloading.

I'm going to change my links to the .zip version now but do not know if OS 10.2 users can open these files, or if it fixes any of the problems people have been having.
I know for sure you can't run the game by splitting an 16 MB video card between two monitors at high resolution and bit depth (8 MB used per monitor determined by the OS).

If you have downloaded the game in the past, and it didn't work,
Click here to try again (http://deaddays.kicks-ass.net/Dead_Days.zip)

Let us know what results you get.

[igame3d]

I received two confirmations from users who could not play the game that the switch to .zip format made the game playable.

[arekkusu]

Stuffit blows.

Zip is OK, but if you use 10.3's Finder to create the zip file it will unpack on 10.2 with an extraneous __MAC_OSX folder. If you use the command line zip to create the zip file, you'll loose resource forks + HFS metadata (which might not matter.)

.dmg will work on 10.2 and 10.3 and compresses pretty well. Plus you can set up the window layout and background image if you want to.

[skyhawk]

I've had no problems with stuffit in the 6 years I've been stuffing with it

[Tobi]

StuffIt below version 8.0.1 or something corrupt access rights and maybe more when encoding app packages causing them not to load at all. They bounce once or twice in the dock and vanish. I'm not sure if the app packages even work when you unstuff them with StuffIt Expander < 8.0.1 if it was stuffed correctly with DropStuff 8.0.1 or newer

[PowerMacX]

.dmg will work on 10.2 and 10.3 and compresses pretty well. Plus you can set up the window layout and background image if you want to.

The trick is not to save the dmg as "Compressed", but rather as "Read Only" and then make a zip/gz/sit/etc. This usually gives you better compression ratios.

[igame3d]

From the Runtime Revolution mailing list

just for your info, here my last mail form the RR improve list...
Maybe it will help you with future support questions...

I had the same problem with the latest alpha of RR 2.5.1 and it looks like
my version of stuffit is the culprit (?) Very strange, actually...

I found that a SIT archive may get corrupted during internet-download, as
experienced recently with Willian Griffin's "Dead Days" app and some other
apps from the net.

When compressed as OS X ZIP archive, no problems, with a SIT file i only get a
short zoom effect in the finder and that was it...

Hi Klaus,

FWIW, I was able to download, expand, and use the OS X version without
problems. So I think the problem must be either with the download process
for you, or something on your machine. What are you using to do the
expansion?

Brute force! ;-)

No, just kidding, i use Stuffit DeLuxe 8.02 german...
Just tried with Stuffit Expander, same problem...

I never had problems so far...

A short look inside the expanded bundle shows that "../MacOS/Revolution"
is just a document and no UNIX executable...?

!!!

So we know at least the symptoms :-)

Looks like this has happened (wild guess, but sounds reasonable :-):

Stuffit may have got this problem after upgrading to OS X 10.3.6 recently...
Now i just downloaded the standard edition of Stuffit Standard 9 and tried
the Stuffit Expander 9 with big success!

!!!

Then i tried again with my Stuffit DeLuxe 8.02 with the same success! :-)
"../MacOS/Revolution" appears now as an "UNIX executable"...

!!!
I think the Stuffit 9 also installed an up-to-date stuffit engine in the system so my
version will work now, too. New technology for free , love that ;-)

!!!
Thanks for pointing me into the right direction with you simple question... ;-)

[Duane]

http://www.igame3d.com/DeadDeadDead.mov