[4E4] #9 Toy Robo

Author

396

October 26, 2005 12:28 AM

Toy Robo is my entry for the 4E4 contest. [EDIT 10-30-05] I've uploaded my final version to gamedev.net and also made it public. Here's a link for anyone who wants to give it a spin: Install Toy Robo Thanks to everyone who tested it and gave me feedback. [/EDIT] I would like your help in doing a basic functionality test. In return, I offer the first [EDIT]52 billion[/EDIT] people that help me out a spot in the credits of my game :) Please: -Download and run the setup file. -Download and run the latest directx runtime install if you do not already have it. -Play the game. -Let me know any problems you run into, and the performance you are getting, along with system specs. Only the first level of the game is active, it should only take you at maximum 15 minutes to play through. If you don't want to play through it all thats okay, I am really just concerned with installing and running it. Screenshots:

Thank you to anyone that has time to test it out. If you tested the game and would like to be featured in the credits, please supply me with the name (maximum 24 characters) you wish to be known as. ~Ray EDIT: I'll have a new version up later tonight, and I'll reply to everyone else that has replied to this thread. But I just wanted to post the Debug build information real quick. To get the mose useful trace information, you most use the debug build. There is a shortcut for the debug build in the start menu folder. The debug build requires the debug runtime of directx - if you don't have it, and don't want to get it, I won't hold anything against you ;) I'm currently working on fixing some issues brought up in this thread, and making some other changes that I think everyone will enjoy. Thank you again to anyone who has tested or will test the game. EDIT 10-28-05: I have uploaded a new build and changed the original link to reflect the new version (v0.33) Fixes: Improved Anti Alias support checking. Improved Graphics Error Handling/Reporting. Detailed Trace Enabled to better track problems. Numerous bug fixes. Added d3dx9_25.dll to the install file. Changes: New Mission layout - multiple rounds per level. Tutorial Level Added. Various gameplay parameters tweaked/altered. Default camera height adjusted. --- The new levels are somewhat in a state of flux right now as I finish transitioning them all to the new mission scheme. I would appreciate general feedback though on their difficulty on playability, even in their early stage. I changed alot of things in this build to make the game more fun at an earlier state. The only thing I'm really afraid of is that I might have made it too difficult at the same time, but It's hard for me to tell, so thats why I could really use some tester feedback on the new levels. I have not made any substantial changes to the camera controls, and here is why: The player is not supposed to need to use them. I think many of you saw them displayed in the previous intro screen and assumed they were an integral part of gameplay, but they are not supposed to be. I have changed the default camera height to give the player a larger view of her surroundings, and removing the camera controls from the tutorial loading screen - In the hope that fresh players will pick up the game, start playing, and never feel the need to move the camera. If this doesn't sound like a good solution to any of you, let me know, and I will take them out all together and automate the placement and rotation of the camera on a level by level basis. Other then that, Thanks to everybody that has replied thus far and you should now see your user names in the credits of my game :) Let me know if you would like to change anything, or be removed. [Edited by - Nuget5555 on November 10, 2005 2:10:47 PM]

nts

968

October 26, 2005 12:58 AM

doesn't work, running latest DX but getting the following error

This application has failed to start because d3dx9_25.dll was not found.Re-installing the application may fix this problem.

Went to Microsoft's site to get DX again but it didn't install anything, just said ready to use.

EDIT: so about those credits :)

HTH

google

jakem3s90

437

October 26, 2005 04:59 AM

Nicely done! I only played the first couple of levels, but the game ran flawlessly at a steady 70-100 FPS. I didn't run into any problems playing it.

P3 1.1 Ghz
1.5 gigs ram
Radeon 9800 256 DDR

Afterwinds My 4E5 entry

auLucifer

115

October 26, 2005 05:33 AM

Was a pretty good game
The camera does seem a little ungainly but overall it was good. Locking onto an opponent would be awesome although shooting them isn't too hard.
I didn't play right through. Just the first few levels.

Anyways
With my
AMD 2800+ mobile
512mb ddr
64mb Radeon 9600m
I never dropped below 130 fps.

Gaenor

212

October 26, 2005 05:39 AM

Very nice work indeed!

I must tell you that i had a little trouble. I installed it fine, run it for the first time and it booted up nicely.
So i thought "hey, very nice gui, let´s see the options". Then i changed the resolution to 1024x768, set high color and antialias. The message saying i had to reboot popped up. And i did, but when i tried to run it again it didnt. The process just dies after 1 second.

So then I tried the debug version. Funnily enough, the debug version complained about the directx version (the d3dx9_25.dll error) while the release one had run fine.

Then I reinstalled it and everything was fine again, so i didn´t change the options and well, everything was fine from there.

Very nice work as I said! It took me a while to remember there's a jump button though. Then I noticed the double jump, very nice feature. As well as the "hit combo" counter. The time seemed a little short though. I completed the tutorial fine, lost a life in the next one and the cars... well, i could only kill 10 with one life (they move too much [crying] ). Also the transitions look really good [totally]. Loading times are also great.

It ran fine, at about 25-30 fps on a P4 2.6GHz crappy ATI mobility Radeon IGP 345m, 384 MB RAM. Oh one thing! the fps seemed to drop till 8 fps sometimes on the cars level. The rest of the time it was at 25 fps.

Thumbs Up! :D

nes8bit

275

October 26, 2005 06:12 AM

Disclaimer: This is my evaluation based on being extremely critical.

My first impression of the game goes something like this... Once I installed the game I saw the menu. I already had my first complaint and that was the lack of a game icon. While this may be a demo, the sight of seeing a debug executable and log file was pretty unappealing and if I were an average gamer I would already be confused.

Once I opened up the game I was immediately launched into the menu screen. Pleased by this I ran the game. The first thing I encountered was a very busy (cluttered) intro screen. I saw instructions on how to play, but since I was very uninterested I smashed the keyboard/mouse to get into the game. Luckily, there was no steep learning curve getting into the game at first. I quickly discovered what clicking the mouse did and how to move the robot around. Eventually I found out how to double jump and so on and so on.

For the first few minutes I thought it was kind of neat. However I expecting a little more. Soon after I got bored, but I did play til the next level expecting more to happen. Once I realized the second level was the same as the first I shut it down.

Issues you should look into:
The zombies are far too easy. They also popup out of nowhere and you don't know where the next one is. There's a lot of space in between killing the zombies so it becomes frustrating and boring at the same time. So after I killed a zombie I spent a bit trying to find the next one and once I got there I got bored killing the thing. If there were either more zombies or harder zombies then this might solve your problem.

As for sound, I wasn't very impressed. In fact the music was so awkward that I wanted to take my headphones off. There weren't enough sound effects for the robots movement. He should be making sounds for every movement he does because he's a robot. The only sounds I got were the grumble from the zombie, the laser thing and the double jump. Give or take a few sounds. Also, the directional audio was very misleading. One time a zombie was slightly on the right side of the screen and yet I heard the sound come ONly from the right speaker. This was rather distracting. The solution to that would be to center the audio UNLESS the zombie is off screen. Only then should you use it to identify where the zombie is coming from.

Some minor bugs:
* Tall pillars get clipped into the camera
* You can't get to the menu or options screen from in game
* The fire sound effect is way too loud and distracting - and it has crackling from a low sample rate in it

Outside of being extremely judgemental and critical your game is pretty good. Its pretty solid also. I actually tried to break your game and I could only find C class bugs. I bet I could crash your game if I spent enough energy, but thats besides the point. ;)

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Wan

1,366

October 26, 2005 06:48 AM

Same here, with the latest DirectX verion installed:

This application has failed to start because d3dx9_25.dll was not found.
Re-installing the application may fix this problem.

It's not a great video card I'm using here, but I can't imagine that is causing the problem.

For what it's worth, my laptop specs:

Intel Mobile 1.4 GHz
512 MB RAM
NVidia GeForce4 4200 Go
WinXP SP 1

The only "peculiar" thing about this system is the presence of a wide screen display.

---------------------------------------------

EDIT: Got the d3dx9_25.dll now!

I'm afraid I don't have the time right now to play several levels to fully appreciate the game play and graphics. So I'll just focus on the more techical details.
And if I sound to negative, forgive me, it's because I'm only listing the errors I got.
From the graphics I've seen it looks really cool. Navigating the menu and controlling the character works well.
Now for some problems I encountered.

I changed the settings to 800x600 windowed, anti-aliased. After that it failed to start.
I found the settings.txt, deleted it in the hope that would force the application to create a new file with the default settings, but then it just crashes.
So I tried just modifying the various (unknown) parameters in the file, but no luck. So I had to re-install it.
Log file:

Toy RoboAuthor: Raymond KallmeyerBuilt: Oct 24 2005 22:49:59Ran: Wed Oct 26 17:07:32 2005 17:07:32:0194: DXGraphics:: Setting Device Mode : 800x600 : 16 bpp : 2 samp : 0 hz : Windowed : SVP[E] 17:07:32:0204: DX_TEST (pD3D_->CreateDevice (adapter, devType, hWnd, flags, &d3dpp, &pD3DDevice_)) Failed!	hr: D3DERR_INVALIDCALL	desc: Invalid call	File: DXGraphics.cpp	Line: 234[E] 17:07:32:0204: Unexpected Error	File: WinMain.cpp	Line: 35 17:07:32:0214: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E025F8	 SIZE:  28 bytes 17:07:32:0214: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E02620	 SIZE:  24 bytes 17:07:32:0214: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E02640	 SIZE:  48 bytes 17:07:32:0224: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E02678	 SIZE: 316 bytes 17:07:32:0224: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E027C0	 SIZE:  32 bytes 17:07:32:0234: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E027E8	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0234: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E02818	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0234: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E02848	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0244: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E02878	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0244: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E028A8	 SIZE:  24 bytes 17:07:32:0254: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E028C8	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0254: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E028F8	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0264: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E02928	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0264: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E02958	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0274: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E02988	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0274: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 00E029B8	 SIZE:  40 bytes 17:07:32:0284: FILE: unknown_file             	LINE:   0		ADDRESS: 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CCMemory.cpp	Line: 221Total Errors: 0

After a fresh install I tried to only adjust the anti-aliasing (to "on"), restarted and it crashed again. So maybe I turned on a feature that is not available on my video card. If this is true, I should not be able to select it.

Third install, no changes in the settings (I'm scared now), it seems to run fine at a 170 frame rate (default 600x800 fullscreen display). :)
Alt-tabbing works fine.

The only gameplay releated issue: some monsters where moving in mid air (see image).

[Edited by - WanMaster on October 26, 2005 10:48:08 AM]

BeastX

234

October 26, 2005 09:27 AM

Google for "d3dx-25-dll". The dlls don't get packaged with installs properly.

GRAPHICS:
The game looks pretty good.

-I actually liked the old tiled look and block robot. Maybe consider the other robot as an option?

-Add a background image or skybox if there's time.

-Was this a 3DGS game or an original code base? It has a 3DGS look but that's not a bad thing.

CONTROL:
My only real issues were with the control scheme. It took a while to understand but then felt unnatural because of the ASDF control scheme at that camera angle for an action/platformer/dungeon-crawler.

If you have time to resubmit, and can't add joystick input, I'd make these changes:

LEFT-CLICK - Move the player in the direction of the cursor.
RIGHT-CLICK - Jump.
TWO OTHER CLOSE PROXIMITY KEYS: Fire/Melee

Otherwise, it was great. I was reminded of a simpler Maximo and Gauntlet.

Demonews

172

October 26, 2005 09:51 AM

Played it with everything on getting around 250 fps average. Dell XPS, dual core 3.2 Ghz, 1 gig of ram, Sound Blaster Audigy 2, GeForce 6800.

Graphics were good. Nothing really great, but at this level, pretty good. Music was fair, sounds were good. Really, for what I am used to seeing, your in good shape at this level.

Rant time: My number 1 complaint is camera views and controls. Typically, in a 3rd person game, you slide your mouse (sometimes right click, hold, and slide to change) to change camera angles. I could not get camera angles to move easily, got frustrated and lost interest in the first room. I had to exit, then restart to read the camera controls. Once I got there, and used the E key, it only seemed to do 360 degree turns, no camera angles for up and down. I think that you should have more control via the mouse for the character. In other words, moving, firing, camera views, all character controls, should be via the mouse. Keyboard is better suited for switching guns, etc. This is pretty typical and the one thing that will frustrate people playing the game for the first time. Since people are finicky, they might abandon before giving it a fair shot. A concern is that a judge wont get the camera controls and not be able to give your game a fair review. I got frustrated really quickly and I actually beta test commercial games regulalry.

Hope it helps.

DemoNews.Com

Wan

1,366

October 26, 2005 09:55 AM

Quote: Original post by BeastX
Google for "d3dx-25-dll". The dlls don't get packaged with installs properly.

Thanks. If anyone needs it too, it can be downloaded here.
Time to test that game. :)

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[4E4] #9 Toy Robo

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[4E4] #9 Toy Robo

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