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lightbringer
2005.02.10, 06:42 PM
21 days ago I started coding a game based on a few ideas I had (much of the details were ironed out over the next few weeks). I had some original, thoughtful, and creative ideas that gave me a sense of a game I'd be willing to take on. As usual I was ambitious, and I realize now that the scope of my entry is more suited to a uDG entry than something that could be whipped up in just three weeks. Nevertheless I am proud of what I've done and interested in letting you guys see what I've got.

The game I have here is codenamed LVThree (don't ask about it's meaning, I just don't have the official name worked out yet and thus use my internal naming scheme). It is very rough, unpolished, and easily a couple weeks away from resembling the game I have in my mind. I am usually opposed to showing off items in development if I believe they will spoil the experience of the game come the 1.0 release, but I figured I didn't have much of a choice if I wanted to be a part of this contest :p. Originally I wasn't focused on doing a great game in 21 days, rather doing a great game and trying to get it done in 21 days. Compound that with the start of a hard and very tiring semester of school (School tires me when I arrive home, thus I stay up late, I wake up tired and arrive at school, then repeat) and it shouldn't be a great surprise that the weekends have been the only times where I've made significant progress on this game.

The engine and technologies showcased here I've been developing over the past year and a half. They are far from ideal, but I use and love them. (Maybe this violates a rule of the contest as I've say had a camera class I developed months ago that I could use that isn't available to the general public, if so, then too bad for me. Again, it's about the game quality, not necessarily getting it done for the contest.)

Here's a few things that you can expect to see in the 1.0 release that aren't in this:
- Smart bots and thus more aggressive gameplay
- Better texturing on some models and the skybox
- Cutscenes (so the race will actually have a starting and ending point! Currently there are a few things obviously wrong as you start thrown right into the action)
- Powerups actually working
- Music
- Physics
- Loads of bug fixing
- Loads of polishing
- Add loads of cheats

*phew*

Now to get to actually playing the game, here are the rules and controls:
- The goal of the game is to be the closest to the target damage when the race ends.
- The satellites (those white things) add damage to your car.
- The wrenches remove damage from your car.
- The powerup boxes currently do nothing (eventually you'll be able to use powerups to set other cars on fire and have other cool particle effects)
- WASD moves you around on the XZ plane.
- The mouse buttons dive you down or slow your descent.
- Q and E apply rotation to your car in either direction.
- Z makes your car transparent (although it screws the rendering up and actually hides things from you)
- X displays the scores of the other bots
- The red box on the bottom of the map is the finish line
- The blue box is where items are created, I might limit the players movement to it shortly.
- Fix scrollwheel bug so you can zoom in and out.
- This is not for general public consumption! There are too many things messed up for me to release this on MacUpdate.com or something, I will take no responsibility if this screws up your own system, PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK. (blah blah blah)
- Something with the sound effects screws them up later into the race

Other points of interest:
- ~ brings up the console, type "/show stats" to show the framerate and gamespeed. Appropriately "/hide stats" hides those.
- - and + change the gamespeed in 20% increments.
- i toggles wireframe mode
- the settings are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/LVThree/preferences.ini

Yes, there are bugs, yes, things are missing and absolutely suck, but I think regardless this community will like it. I hope this represents the drive and talent I possess given the circumstances I was under when I produced this.

enjoy
Download (3.9MB) (http://dereksucks.com/stuff/LVThree.sit)

EDIT: Recommended Specs: Panther, GeForce 3+/Radeon 8500+, 800Mhz G4+

AnotherJake
2005.02.10, 07:29 PM
Darn, it crashed both times I tried to launch it. It appears to capture the screen, turns black, and then crashes back out to the Finder right away. According to the crash log, it appears you turned off debug symbols. Here's thread 0 anyway, just in case it means anything to you:
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000000

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 <<00000000>> 0x00000000 0 + 0
1 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x0002eb88 0x1000 + 0x2db88
2 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x000466e8 0x1000 + 0x456e8
3 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x00046610 0x1000 + 0x45610
4 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x000272d8 0x1000 + 0x262d8
5 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x00030f98 0x1000 + 0x2ff98
6 com.apple.Foundation 0x909f7184 _nsnote_callback + 0xb0
7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x901aa5c0 __CFXNotificationPost + 0x1b4
8 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x901aefd0 _CFXNotificationPostNotification + 0x340
9 com.apple.Foundation 0x909f4fd0 -[NSNotificationCenter postNotificationName:object:userInfo:] + 0x74
10 com.apple.AppKit 0x92ee3e70 -[NSApplication _postDidFinishNotification] + 0x70
11 com.apple.AppKit 0x92ee3d5c -[NSApplication _sendFinishLaunchingNotification] + 0x5c
12 com.apple.AppKit 0x92ee3f8c -[NSApplication(NSAppleEventHandling) _handleCoreEvent:withReplyEvent:] + 0x78
13 com.apple.Foundation 0x90a4a544 -[NSAppleEventManager dispatchRawAppleEvent:withRawReply:handlerRefCon:] + 0x164
14 com.apple.Foundation 0x90a50c6c _NSAppleEventManagerGenericHandler + 0x78
15 com.apple.AE 0x91674a10 aeDispatchAppleEvent(AEDesc const*, AEDesc*, unsigned long, unsigned char*) + 0xd0
16 com.apple.AE 0x91677858 dispatchEventAndSendReply(AEDesc const*, AEDesc*) + 0x2c
17 com.apple.AE 0x91674c50 aeProcessAppleEvent + 0x11c
18 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x928c4338 AEProcessAppleEvent + 0x3c
19 com.apple.AppKit 0x92dd301c _DPSNextEvent + 0x358
20 com.apple.AppKit 0x92de98c8 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 0x74
21 com.apple.AppKit 0x92dfdc30 -[NSApplication run] + 0x21c
22 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x00030ef8 0x1000 + 0x2fef8
23 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x000312d0 0x1000 + 0x302d0
24 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x0000afd4 0x1000 + 0x9fd4
25 dyld 0x8fe1a558 _dyld_start + 0x64

lightbringer
2005.02.10, 07:38 PM
EDIT: it seems LVThree doesn't like GeForce 2MXs or below. So far does this agree with the results people are getting?

I'll have to see specifically what I'm doing that'd make the 2MXs upset..

MarkJ
2005.02.10, 08:04 PM
I just tried on my roommate's iMac since my PowerBook is busted. It crashed as well, at the same spot, but he's running Jaguar as well. You should probably just do an OS version check, and bring up a disclaimer dialog in Jag :/.... I really wanna play it too.

Malarkey
2005.02.10, 08:51 PM
I think Jaguar compatibility goes out the door when it's down to the wire on the contest deadline. :)

AnotherJake
2005.02.10, 09:10 PM
lightbringer: I wonder what happened with the chat? Anyway, you're still offline from my end and that file transfer refused to start if you didn't get my last message. I'll try to check back again in a little while. Also, apparently you have email turned off from other users in your user prefs here.

Anyway, my machine is a G4 Dual 867 with a GeForce4 MX using 10.3.7. I'm looking forward to checking out that console, so I hope you can get 'er fixed!

AnotherJake
2005.02.10, 10:41 PM
Okay, I have good news and bad news. First the bad. I tried it out on a G4 500 (actually a 300 MHz B&W G3 upgraded) using 10.3.2 with a Rage128 and same crash. Now the good. I switched the video card on that same machine to a Radeon 7000 and it works! Awesome!

I haven't spent much time in the game, but here are my initial impressions:

1) The graphics are great, looks pretty pro, even for an alpha.
2) The game concept is great.
3) I'd love to see the xy plane movement smoothed out right away.
4) I'd also like to see a scroll back buffer for the console, but I realize that's probably not much of a priority. ;)

Anyway, all your hard work looks to be paying off the way I see it. Congratulations!

AnotherJake
2005.02.10, 11:18 PM
I found another crash. I have no idea if it's related, although the last few function addresses are different (doesn't necessarily help without debug symbols, I know). Crash condition is that I 'esc' out of a game in progress to the main menu screen, and then click on 'new game' and it dumps out to the Finder every time with an 'unexpectedly quit' dialog. Here's the top o' the crash log.
Thread 0 Crashed:
0 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x00188078 0x1000 + 0x187078
1 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x00045da0 0x1000 + 0x44da0
2 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x0002728c 0x1000 + 0x2628c
3 com.apple.myCocoaApp 0x00030f98 0x1000 + 0x2ff98
4 com.apple.Foundation 0x909f794c _nsnote_callback + 0xb0
5 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x901aa6a0 __CFXNotificationPost + 0x1b4
6 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x901af0b0 _CFXNotificationPostNotification + 0x340
7 com.apple.Foundation 0x909f5798 -[NSNotificationCenter postNotificationName:object:userInfo:] + 0x74
8 com.apple.AppKit 0x92ee3210 -[NSApplication _postDidFinishNotification] + 0x70

lightbringer
2005.02.10, 11:54 PM
Sorry, I just got my internet connection back. Message me when you get a chance.

lightbringer
2005.02.12, 09:14 PM
Alright quick update mainly with bug fixes. Fixed the new game bug, removed the dumb bots for now, smoothed out the controls a little, game should now run on Rage 128 Pro/GeForce 2MX hardware (although, of course slow). The bug for those cards is a weird one as I have no explaination as to why glActiveTexture() would crash when setting it to unit zero, so for the mean time I've commented out those lines of code.

Also grab the source and feel free to play around.

AnotherJake
2005.02.13, 12:05 AM
The bug for those cards is a weird one as I have no explaination as to why glActiveTexture() would crash when setting it to unit zero
That does sound weird. Anyway, looks like you've nailed both of those bugs for my main hardware (GF4 MX), congrats.

lightbringer
2005.02.22, 03:28 PM
Wahoo!!! I got LAST!

What a monsterous letdown.

EDIT: Being no where near 1.0 obviously killed any chances I had, but the potential showed in that version was good, right?

phydeaux
2005.02.22, 09:40 PM
I think the main problem was that the gameplay for your game was really limited for this release. The technology looks pretty promising, but that's not what wins you contests, as we've seen in past events.

I may have played an earlier version, but I didn't really understand how you were supposed to succeed at the game- was it that you were supposed to control the damage you take by speeding up? If you couldn't control how much damage you take when hit, presumably the goal then would be to try and make something closest to the target damage with a linear combination of the wrench and satellite values, which is still not really that interesting.

So, in terms of gameplay, I do think you were beat fair and square, but I could just be missing some subtleties of the gameplay- maybe you could explain the appeal?