110 replies to this topic

[Imerion]

I wonder if XBOX360 Gamepads/Joysticks are somehowdifferent there, because Prometheon actualy support Joysticks...

Those should work! I have only tried with a few different gamepads and there is for the moment no option to change which buttons are used. So all gamepads and joysticks might not work. But 360-controllers have been confirmed to work fine.

I think its Bennu, as being interpreted, and the alpha effects. Could be inefficienties in programming (maybe they used 32 bit fb?) as well, but that's hard to judge. As I assume the engine is based on "Nether dimesisonal runner" and that game runs great on my wiz.

It's probably a bit of everything. There are loads of effects in certain scenes, everything from particles and explosions to dynamic shadows and colouring-effects. It uses 16 bit though, so 32 bit fb is not the problem.
I tried to write it as optimized as possible and had the goal of making it work without problems on my netbook, which it does. But I guess the netbook is a lot faster than the Pandora after all.
Btw, the engine has been upgraded quite a lot from Runner, but some stuff is the same.

[Magic Sam]

Hi everybody

@ foxblock: Is there an option in schizophrenia to start the game all over again, and not from the last checkpoint ?

I have quickly played each entry I have access to do so and there really is some quality homebrew in this compo!

+1

@ fusion_power: couldn't agree more with you about the games And don't worry about your Pandora, ED will fix it quickly, and your baby will be back in a week or so !

About Puzzle tube: I guess it uses software renderer...Maybe a port to OpenGL ES 2.0 would help with the slowdowns ?

@ Imerion: Does your game use SDL ? If it's yes, then you could use Notaz improved version which features hardware scaling support.

Bye and thanks for all these great games !

Magic Sam

Edited by Magic Sam, 14 July 2011 - 02:09 PM.

[fusion_power]

I don't know exactly how Archibald does it but I think it's a mix of using photos and editing + painting on top of them (He really is good at digital painting ) All images have indexed colors (done in photoshop) to make the file size smaller it doesn't really affect the speed of the game.

And the Graphics look way more colourful than you would guess by an indexed image, very impressive.

Hi everyone! Thanks for the feedback on Prometheon!

Sorry about the game running slow. Thing is, I don't have a Pandora so I got some help to make a Pandora version. I did optimize some stuff, such as switching from 30 fps to 24 fps on the Pandora and reducing the amount of particle effects, but perhaps it wasn't enough. There are two ways to make it run faster though: One is, as mentioned, overclocking. As default, it runs on standard speed, so perhaps a faster cpu clock would make it work better. The other is to not use the scale option. In the options menu you can choose to run the game in original 640x480 resolution or stretch it to the Pandora-native 800x480. But doing that really slows the speed down by a lot. So please try it again without that option if you used it.

I tested it onto the Pandora with 4:3 unstretched, I forgot to tell. So this can't be the speed issue. Does Prometheon uses any Hardware Acceleration the Pandora offers?
I noticed the game uses indexed graphics and they are small, so this can't be a Performance bottleneck. Very interesting by the way that you store an entire Level as an complete image (per layer), the levels are not "tiled" with defining the Level layout per level dat file or something like this. I've never seen this technique before but it seems to work great.

Those should work! I have only tried with a few different gamepads and there is for the moment no option to change which buttons are used. So all gamepads and joysticks might not work. But 360-controllers have been confirmed to work fine.

strange, it doesn't work with my Arcade Stick and the Stick works in MAME and other programs without problems. Prometheon only recognizes the buttons but not the 4-Way-Stick.

Edited by fusion_power, 14 July 2011 - 02:28 PM.

[BlackCurtain]

Thanks for the feedback on Rainy Day The intro will be shorter in the final game (as the 2 riotDigtal screens will be gone) + I'll make the screens skipable.

@BlackCurtain: I know it's short, I also never called it a game or a demo because I know it isn't one yet (I have always called it a preview). We're working on the final game now I don't know when it'll be released but I can already tell it will be free (and open source in the end)

How did you guys made these Graphics? Free hand or using real stuff and "pixelate" it? I already have trouble to make good looking Pixel bricks with Photoshop, I never could do these clean Graphics of Rainy Day, there seems to be every Pixel at the right spot and the colours match perfectly. ^^ I guess I had to render this stuff in 3D first, to get it somehow acceptable. Are these 256 Colour images for each graphic or 16bit or more? The game runs great onto the Pandora so I guess it would make not an difference if the game uses High Colour Graphics instead of 8-Bit Textures.
I still wonder if the colour depth of game graphics has an effect to the Speed onto the Pandora so I just ask.

I render my backgrounds in 3dsMAX and the rest of the sprites are made in Photoshop, pixel by pixel (time consuming but worth the result).

Edited by BlackCurtain, 14 July 2011 - 02:52 PM.

[Imerion]

I tested it onto the Pandora with 4:3 unstretched, I forgot to tell. So this can't be the speed issue. Does Prometheon uses any Hardware Acceleration the Pandora offers?
I noticed the game uses indexed graphics and they are small, so this can't be a Performance bottleneck. Very interesting by the way that you store an entire Level as an complete image (per layer), the levels are not "tiled" with defining the Level layout per level dat file or something like this. I've never seen this technique before but it seems to work great.

It doesn't use hardware acceleration at all. (I don't think Bennu has support for that.) It's probably just a combination of many effects and that I don't always use the most efficient ways to shuffle them around. Combined with the complete image levels you mention. (Fun that you noticed!) The reason for using that method is partially because its practical and partially because Marcus, who draws the levels, finds it much easier to work with than tiles. We can also have much more detail that way, so it works great.

strange, it doesn't work with my Arcade Stick and the Stick works in MAME and other programs without problems. Prometheon only recognizes the buttons but not the 4-Way-Stick.

Weird, but once the final version is done I will create a better way to support joysticks and try more models. That should probably solve it!

[fusion_power]

I tested it onto the Pandora with 4:3 unstretched, I forgot to tell. So this can't be the speed issue. Does Prometheon uses any Hardware Acceleration the Pandora offers?
I noticed the game uses indexed graphics and they are small, so this can't be a Performance bottleneck. Very interesting by the way that you store an entire Level as an complete image (per layer), the levels are not "tiled" with defining the Level layout per level dat file or something like this. I've never seen this technique before but it seems to work great.

It doesn't use hardware acceleration at all. (I don't think Bennu has support for that.) It's probably just a combination of many effects and that I don't always use the most efficient ways to shuffle them around. Combined with the complete image levels you mention. (Fun that you noticed!) The reason for using that method is partially because its practical and partially because Marcus, who draws the levels, finds it much easier to work with than tiles. We can also have much more detail that way, so it works great.

strange, it doesn't work with my Arcade Stick and the Stick works in MAME and other programs without problems. Prometheon only recognizes the buttons but not the 4-Way-Stick.

Weird, but once the final version is done I will create a better way to support joysticks and try more models. That should probably solve it!

I usualy look at the files of a game if possible to satisfy my "how the hell did they do this" urge.
You use Bennu, right? I want to tell, that my Arcade Stick works perfectly in another Bennu game: "King Of Fighters: Flames Of Courage", so it can't be an error in bennu at least. ^^

Edited by fusion_power, 14 July 2011 - 03:29 PM.

[PokeParadox]

At the end, Piratebaby, I seem to do something wrong here. I feed this something with cheese and after every cheese its hunger sinks by 4 or so. I hope you do not await me to feed him 25 times to make something happen?!? Graphics look good though. Fullscreen maybe?(...or did I miss the possibility to maximise it?)

Well you are just proving why playtesting feedback is so useful. If the hunger is not dropping quickenough I need to raise the nutrition of Cheese. I do not expect anything... only to provide a nice virtual pet game eventually...
if you look in the settings.ini file, you will see resolution and fullscreen settings. There is experimental scaling... which in the build for the compo breaks text display. Ihave since fixed this bug!

[Blue Protoman]

Do any of the GP2X or Wiz games run via Ginge? All I know is that AAAA doesn't.

[foxblock]

Shizophrenia also seems to have the power to get great. Not possible to judge it right now, since the older version seemed to be buggy and hanged for me, the latest one doesn't even start at all, pretending there is no such file "./shizophrenia".

Aaaah FFS -.- forgot to pack the binary as it seems... gah, I could kick my own head right now.

Updated version sent to Uni.

Edited by foxblock, 15 July 2011 - 09:23 AM.

[mcobit]

strange, it doesn't work with my Arcade Stick and the Stick works in MAME and other programs without problems. Prometheon only recognizes the buttons but not the 4-Way-Stick.

Weird, but once the final version is done I will create a better way to support joysticks and try more models. That should probably solve it!

Problem with joysticks might be, that you support only js0. js0 is some device, that isn't a joystick, but still gets mapped. the left nub is js1 and the second is js2. So a Gamepad would get js3 or higher, what the game doesn't seem to pick up anymore

[foxblock]

Hi everybody

@ foxblock: Is there an option in schizophrenia to start the game all over again, and not from the last checkpoint ?

No direct way currently, we ran out of time implementing a menu.
You can however delete the save.dat file from the schizophrenia/appdata folder to start from the very beginning. Collected puzzle pieces are not affected by that.

EDIT: PND updated, should finally work, without hangs.

Edited by foxblock, 15 July 2011 - 11:03 AM.

[Imerion]

You use Bennu, right? I want to tell, that my Arcade Stick works perfectly in another Bennu game: "King Of Fighters: Flames Of Courage", so it can't be an error in bennu at least. ^^

Good to know! Then it should be solveable.

Problem with joysticks might be, that you support only js0. js0 is some device, that isn't a joystick, but still gets mapped. the left nub is js1 and the second is js2. So a Gamepad would get js3 or higher, what the game doesn't seem to pick up anymore

This could be it. The game is designed to use the first device found. That is, the first device Bennu finds to be a joystick/gamepad, so if many similar deviced are connected only one will be used. But that doesn't explain why some of the buttons work, but not others.
I think the problem is that there are two functions, one called "getaxis" and one called "gethat". I use getaxis, which should be for analog controls. But some joysticks maybe use a normal D-pad which is not analog, and therefore needs the "gethat" function instead. In the final version, I'll add support for both. Might solve the problem.
(Not sure I managed to explain that well enough, if interested read more here : http://wiki.bennugd....itle=Joy_gethat)

[fusion_power]

This could be it. The game is designed to use the first device found. That is, the first device Bennu finds to be a joystick/gamepad, so if many similar deviced are connected only one will be used. But that doesn't explain why some of the buttons work, but not others.
I think the problem is that there are two functions, one called "getaxis" and one called "gethat". I use getaxis, which should be for analog controls. But some joysticks maybe use a normal D-pad which is not analog, and therefore needs the "gethat" function instead. In the final version, I'll add support for both. Might solve the problem.
(Not sure I managed to explain that well enough, if interested read more here : http://wiki.bennugd....itle=Joy_gethat)

Makes sense. My Arcade Stick is pure Digital (real Arcade Micro Switches ^^ ) so I guess it needs the digital program function instead of the analog function. Damn, I wish someone could also fix this in the PC Version of rRootage, the later Levels are unplayable onto the Pandora, sadly.

Edited by fusion_power, 15 July 2011 - 05:36 PM.

[Blue Protoman]

Can somebody PND GigaSunJet and Skylark? Foxblock had a good utility for that.

[BlackCurtain]

Can somebody PND GigaSunJet and Skylark? Foxblock had a good utility for that.

Sorry about that, I didn't have the time to make a PND nor do I know how to make one.