uDG: Rescue

[NCarter]

Rescue 1.0.0d1 was released a few days ago, but I thought I'd keep it a secret from as many people as possible!

You can download it from my website. There's no game to speak of yet, but have a go at flying the spaceship and tell me what you think! I'm particularly interested in finding out which OS versions it will work on and what hardware it runs acceptably on.

I've put some screenshots and in-progress stuff up in my uDG blog. There's also a summary of my planned design in the Read Me file that comes with the game.

For people who don't read Read Me files, these are the controls:

Cursor keys or mouse - yaw and pitch (turning left, right, up and down)
Edit the preferences file if you prefer the pitch axis to be reversed.

W - forward thrust
S - reverse thrust
A - roll left
D - roll right

If you hold the Command key down along with the WASD keys, the spaceship will slew (fly sideways) in the direction you specify.

All the thrust keys have to be held down if you want to keep moving - let go and your ship will automatically apply retro thrust and stop.

To quit the game, press Escape or Command-Q.

One last thing: you may want to edit the preferences file to make sure it'll choose an optimal screen mode.

[EvolPenguin]

Fun, the flying is a little slow though, I don't seem to be going anywhere. I love the full 3d movement. I like the reverse axis more, because it is more realistic. It is no harder, and much more fun. Not much more to say....

Alex

[kelvin]

Purty.
It's like flying through an interstellar bag of rice. The asteroids could be a bit more textured, but I'm sure that's just because of the stage of development. The ship looks great.

[JustinFic]

I actually really like the graphics too. Both the ship designs are good (I saw the new one on your blog) and the newer one I think would be cooler (especially if you threw in those moving parts!)

It took me awhile to get used to the controls. I'm particularly bad when it comes to rotational inertia though I definitely liked the drag and how you come to a stop eventually.

Looking forward to the gameplay- the design sounds really cool. I want to slap alien ships around with the robot arm

I've lost my sound! this is kinda odd, but after quitting (cmd + q), my powerbook made some weird sounds coming from the upper left area and my actual sound died until it was done (took about 30 seconds after I quit the game for it to stop). Is ok now.

Also during the gameplay, my hard drive made a continuous very fast ticking noise. It wasn't a normal HD sound, and really had me kind of worried, so I didn't play very long.

Speed was good, other than it felt like I was flying really slow, but was kinda hard to tell as there wasn't much but distant stars to judge by.

running 1Ghz 12" powerbook
Mac OS X 10.3.5

[NCarter]

Thanks to everyone for those compliments and comments!

Originally Posted by EvolPenguins

Fun, the flying is a little slow though, I don't seem to be going anywhere.

Regarding the speed, it's not supposed to be very fast because your spaceship is a big industrial vehicle rather than a nippy little fighter! That said, I have increased the speed a bit in my working version.

I love the full 3d movement. I like the reverse axis more, because it is more realistic. It is no harder, and much more fun.

Funny thing, I started off with the pitch axis reversed (mainly because I'm used to flight sims), but I realised that a generation of Quake players would probably prefer it the other way round, so I added the option to flip it. I then realised that it's actually more consistent when it isn't flipped: left turns left, up turns up, etc. Hmm. Oh well, at least there's a choice.

Originally Posted by kelvin

It's like flying through an interstellar bag of rice.

Yeah, OSC said "why is it raining?" when he tried it in the IRC channel!

The asteroids could be a bit more textured, but I'm sure that's just because of the stage of development. The ship looks great.

Yup, textures will come soon, assuming I can figure out how to make FormZ generate useful UV coordinates.

Originally Posted by JustinFic

Looking forward to the gameplay- the design sounds really cool. I want to slap alien ships around with the robot arm

Heh, that sounds like a good idea until you realise that all the enemy ships are a hundred times bigger than yours! However, you may be able to sneak up and sabotage them if you can approach them on their blind side.

Originally Posted by madmacgames

I've lost my sound! this is kinda odd, but after quitting (cmd + q), my powerbook made some weird sounds coming from the upper left area and my actual sound died until it was done (took about 30 seconds after I quit the game for it to stop). Is ok now.

Ah... that doesn't sound good. If you're losing sound output, it's presumably something to do with SDL because I'm not using sound at all. I'll have to look into that.

Also during the gameplay, my hard drive made a continuous very fast ticking noise. It wasn't a normal HD sound, and really had me kind of worried, so I didn't play very long.

I've noticed that my desktop G5 tends to make more noise when I'm testing the game, and I think it's actually the graphics card fan rather than the hard drive.

If it is the hard drive, maybe it's because error messages are being spewed into the console. Would you mind running the game again to see if there's anything appearing in the console.log and system.log?

Is anyone else experiencing extra hardware noise while playing the game?

Speed was good, other than it felt like I was flying really slow, but was kinda hard to tell as there wasn't much but distant stars to judge by.

As I mentioned above, it isn't supposed to be super fast, but there are some visual cues to give you a clue about your speed. You can see the asteroids and dust particles, can't you? Or are they not appearing on your machine?

[igame3d]

Pretty neat!
Yes you are spewing lots to console, in two test under 10 minutes it wrote 10,482 lines to the console. crazy man crazy.

The "light speed streaks" would work if they were coming/going in the same direction as the ship, they don't seem to do that, cut them down to 10% of the number on screen would seem less like "rain" I think. Neat effect but not ready for prime time yet.

You should give the ship a bit of pitch and yaw whenit is making such changes in direction, full body roll would be neat . Right now the ship lacks character as it is always in the same ...orientation, if that is the right word.

Looks great, runs great on dual g4 450 with nvidia mx. Can't wait to see the rest of it.

And thank you for not having me crash into rocks, I hate that!

[NCarter]

Originally Posted by igame3d

Yes you are spewing lots to console, in two test under 10 minutes it wrote 10,482 lines to the console. crazy man crazy.

Yes, but what does it say?! It doesn't do that on my machine!

I think I may have a nasty problem here because since I've swapped in the new spaceship model on my version, I get a constant stream of GL_INVALID_VALUE errors emitted during CGLFlushDrawable(). Maybe Karl's OBJ loader really doesn't like my models.

The "light speed streaks" would work if they were coming/going in the same direction as the ship, they don't seem to do that, cut them down to 10% of the number on screen would seem less like "rain" I think. Neat effect but not ready for prime time yet.

They streak in the direction of the ship's motion rather than the camera's motion - I'm not sure if that's right or wrong. At any rate, it'll probably make more sense when it's viewed from within the cockpit.

You should give the ship a bit of pitch and yaw whenit is making such changes in direction, full body roll would be neat . Right now the ship lacks character as it is always in the same ...orientation, if that is the right word.

Yeah, the viewpoint is a little dull at the moment. Again, once I've added first person view you'll be able to switch to an external view and look at it from any angle (unless that undermines the gameplay - I'll have to try it).

And thank you for not having me crash into rocks, I hate that!

Sadly, in the finished version you'll be able to mash into rocks with great ease!

Thanks for the feedback!

[skyhawk]

it kept hiccupping on my G5, any ideas?

[JustinFic]

Originally Posted by NCarter

Heh, that sounds like a good idea until you realise that all the enemy ships are a hundred times bigger than yours! However, you may be able to sneak up and sabotage them if you can approach them on their blind side.

I'm sold.

Especially if I can pluck out some fuel rods or stuff an asteroid in their exhaust pipe

[NCarter]

Originally Posted by skyhawk

it kept hiccupping on my G5, any ideas?

Funny, it runs smoothly on my DP G5 2GHz with a Radeon 9600.

What kind of hiccups are you seeing - really big ones? Were you running programs in the background? Is anything appearing in the console.log or system.log? Also, what graphics card do you have?

Originally Posted by JustinFic

Especially if I can pluck out some fuel rods or stuff an asteroid in their exhaust pipe

I'll see what I can do....

[skyhawk]

Originally Posted by NCarter

Funny, it runs smoothly on my DP G5 2GHz with a Radeon 9200.

What kind of hiccups are you seeing - really big ones? Were you running programs in the background? Is anything appearing in the console.log or system.log? Also, what graphics card do you have?

well, was running at 100%,100% with a 2.5 load average
have a radeon 9600

once I turned off f@h, the game ran alright
I don't know... show me more

Originally Posted by NCarter

Ah... that doesn't sound good. If you're losing sound output, it's presumably something to do with SDL because I'm not using sound at all. I'll have to look into that.

I only got it the 1st time and not again. I just got similar yesterday with SimCity 4, and replugging and unplugging my headphones fixed it. Maybe something weird about the headphone jack not disconnecting properly.

I've noticed that my desktop G5 tends to make more noise when I'm testing the game, and I think it's actually the graphics card fan rather than the hard drive.

If it is the hard drive, maybe it's because error messages are being spewed into the console. Would you mind running the game again to see if there's anything appearing in the console.log and system.log?

Hmmm. well the graphics fan usually does come on when I play games, but this was definitely not the graphics fan. I don't see how it could have been a fan at all, unless there is something sticking in the fan that the blades hit each time they pass by. But I don't think that is the case, as it only happens with this game and a few others posted on this board for testing.

I checked the console and system logs and it doesn't write anything to either.

[NCarter]

Originally Posted by madmacgames

I only got it the 1st time and not again. I just got similar yesterday with SimCity 4, and replugging and unplugging my headphones fixed it. Maybe something weird about the headphone jack not disconnecting properly.

In that case, it's probably just a defective headphone socket. I have a similar problem with my stereo: when I plug in the headphones, I sometimes get muted or distorted sound; when I unplug them, sometimes the sound cuts out altogether. It can also stop working at random and stay off until I poke the socket with the plug. I think there's a little switch in the socket which is used to detect whether a plug is present, and it gets broken quite easily.

I checked the console and system logs and it doesn't write anything to either.

If you have time, would you mind running the game in window mode? Edit the preferences file and flip the appropriate setting before starting the game. If there's a problem, you'll probably see OpenGL error messages appear in the debugging window. Ignoring the stuff about loading models, could you give me a summary of what it says and tell me if it just gives one error message, or if it scrolls right off the top of the window? Thanks.

BTW, the debugging window doesn't support cut-and-paste or scrolling because I'm not handling its events properly (it's a SIOUX window which I'm only using because I can't get access to the system console due to a CodeWarrior bug). You might want to grab some note paper first!

[SOUR-Monkey]

It's quite fun I don't like the controls, I'd like the option to invert both axis of movement rather than just the one.

It looks nice though. I noticed a little jumpiness when I ran it at 1280x960 on my 700 Mhz eMac, but it was pretty good otherwise.