1. Oidzone beta testing
Hello, I just finished running the beta version of Oidzone and was only
able to find one bug that hadn't been reported yet. Anyway , when the
ship was in the lower left corner while turning and firing it would
lockup the game for a few seconds.
Now with that out of the way it's time for some constructive criticism :
)
1) The text effect that is displayed in the upper right hand corner is a
severe performance hit if you could disable (or replace with a bitmap
image) during game play I think you will see an improvement in game
performance also this might lower the system requirements to play the
game giving you a large group of potential customers.
2) The control's suck! I would love to be able to use the arrow keys for
left, right , thrust, warp and the space key to fire. You may also
consider adding the ability to customize the controls to whatever the
user is comfortable with.
3) I would love to see a verity of weapons , power ups , free lives
etc...
Hope this helps?
P.S. I would love a copy of the game lessons.
Late
Warrior
Michael.Cripps at juno.com
2. Re: Oidzone beta testing
- Posted by Kirk Lang <kirklang at PRESYS.COM>
Jan 20, 1997
-
Last edited Jan 21, 1997
Michael Cripps wrote:
> Now with that out of the way it's time for some constructive criticism :
> )
>
> 1) The text effect that is displayed in the upper right hand corner is a
> severe performance hit if you could disable (or replace with a bitmap
> image) during game play I think you will see an improvement in game
> performance also this might lower the system requirements to play the
> game giving you a large group of potential customers.
Hi all:
I think that the bitmap cycles of the fire text should use color
cycling..could save a little space, too just using one bitmap rather
than several...
I think that in order to make this game of commercial quality, all of
the wave files should be put into one file that has a make-shift fat
table in the beginning for the program to find where specific files
start and stop.
Maybe someone could write a program to take all .wav files, compile them
into a file called 'sound.dat', create the fat, and please don't forget
to post code for retrieving that .wav information from the sound.dat in
this mail list! 
Maybe the same program for compiling .bmp images...???
Then it could look like those beefy games that only have a few files too
them....let's 'ahh ohh' the wannabees <grin>
Anyway, I'd write the program, but business is good and I can't hardly
find the time to read all these messages....arg..I have no life
Say, did whoever write oid-zone write a small sprite editing program?
This program might compile all of the small images into one file
itself....this 'game creation' utility and other small programs like
this could very well be a bigger hit than the games themselves...ooooh!
Now this takes dedication...
I don't have time to look at the code, but I was wondering in
Oid-zone....It doesn't seem like the whole screen is being redrawn each
frame, or if it is, the virtual screen should be CLEARED each frame and
each and every component redraw before being dumped to the screen...this
would help some drawing problems on the screen....
I wish I had time to do game programming like I used too...I loved the
graphics programming. I used to be into a little Super-Nintendo
programming (which is very similar to programm the ol' Apple II
assemblers..ICK!!), and think someone should build a small engine to
handle sprites and sounds very much like this...this would make game
programming pretty easy and very much graphics-bug-free...no messing
with timing, refresh, hoping this sprite draws correctly over that
sprite and so on after the engine is created...this would go along with
that nifty sprite editor things...
Well, well, I've got lots of practical ideas to make games programming
fast, efficient, and fun, but no time to do it..maybe someone else could
have fun with it?
Kirk Lang
3. Re: Oidzone beta testing
On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Kirk Lang wrote:
> Hi all:
>
> I think that the bitmap cycles of the fire text should use color
> cycling..could save a little space, too just using one bitmap rather
> than several...
Nope. You can't color cycle in Euphoria. Changinging individual colors
in the palette takes 5 times longer than drawing the bitmaps. Beats me
why, but its BUTT SLOW. Changing the WHOLE palette at once is way faster,
but the palette goes BLACK before it sets it, so the screen flashes when
you do it. Believe me, I tried all those things before resorting to using
the bitmaps. They don't slow performance down AT ALL, as they are
display_imaged in the screen, which is at least 10 times faster than any
of my sprite draws.
>
> I think that in order to make this game of commercial quality, all of
> the wave files should be put into one file that has a make-shift fat
> table in the beginning for the program to find where specific files
> start and stop.
That's just silly. Having wav files doesn't make anything commerical
quality or not.
>
> Maybe someone could write a program to take all .wav files, compile them
> into a file called 'sound.dat', create the fat, and please don't forget
> to post code for retrieving that .wav information from the sound.dat in
> this mail list!
silliness.
> Maybe the same program for compiling .bmp images...???
The only BMP's I have currently are the logo images, backgrounds and
loading images, and they are only temporary.
> Then it could look like those beefy games that only have a few files too
> them....let's 'ahh ohh' the wannabees <grin>
Sounds like you're a wannabee and just like to flap about stuff that
doesn't matter. =)
> Anyway, I'd write the program, but business is good and I can't hardly
> find the time to read all these messages....arg..I have no life
sounds like it. =)
> Say, did whoever write oid-zone write a small sprite editing program?
> This program might compile all of the small images into one file
> itself....this 'game creation' utility and other small programs like
> this could very well be a bigger hit than the games themselves...ooooh!
I'm not a "whoever" and of course I wrote a program to create all my data
files!
> Now this takes dedication...
>
> I don't have time to look at the code, but I was wondering in
> Oid-zone....It doesn't seem like the whole screen is being redrawn each
> frame, or if it is, the virtual screen should be CLEARED each frame and
> each and every component redraw before being dumped to the screen...this
> would help some drawing problems on the screen....
That's EXACTLY what I'm doing. I write all my sprites into the vscreen,
then draw what is changed. The bug is in my sprite wrapping routine which
sometimes doesn't write the correct portion of the wrapped sprite to the
update table. When the screen is updated, that portion isn't erased
correctly. It's a BETA .70, gimmie some slack! I wrote the whole sprite
engine in 3 days from scratch to get it working. The bug doesn't crash
the game, so its been a low priority on my fixit list up till now.
> I wish I had time to do game programming like I used too...I loved the
> graphics programming. I used to be into a little Super-Nintendo
> programming (which is very similar to programm the ol' Apple II
> assemblers..ICK!!), and think someone should build a small engine to
> handle sprites and sounds very much like this...this would make game
> programming pretty easy and very much graphics-bug-free...no messing
> with timing, refresh, hoping this sprite draws correctly over that
> sprite and so on after the engine is created...this would go along with
> that nifty sprite editor things...
yeah, right.
>
> Well, well, I've got lots of practical ideas to make games programming
> fast, efficient, and fun, but no time to do it..maybe someone else could
> have fun with it?
seems to me like you have lots of time to major in the minors.
Michael Packard
Lord Generic Productions
lgp at exo.com http://exo.com/~lgp
A Crash Course in Game Design and Production
http://exo.com/~lgp/euphoria
4. Re: Oidzone beta testing
On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Kirk Lang wrote:
> Michael Packard wrote:
> I am doing whatever everyone else is doing in this email list, asking
> questions, trying to learn others ideas, and am enjoying it very well.
> I used to program in C++ and assembler, but now run a business so I do
> not have time to program, however, I am NOT a wannabee.
Let's see, you've posted 5 messages complaining about how people should
program, saying really silly things about "commercialism" and boasting
that you can program all these great warez, but "don't have the time." So
far, you've posted, NOT A SINGLE LINE OF CODE, and have not as yet, said
anything sounding like you even remotely know what you are talking about.
You've really sounded like a r0dent. If you aren't, I'm sorry. Your
messages sounded like every wannabee I've ever talked to. They have all
these great ideas about how everyone should program, but you never see
them actually DO any of it.
> Now it seems like you either have an attitude problem or are very
> egotistical.
I try very hard not to be either. It's YOUR attitude toward us and me
that I find offensive. I have worked my butt off to change the way people
look at Euphoria, and produce something that is way beyond anything so far
done with the language. I've spent weeks writing Crash Course lessons to
raise the standard of programming and give people who want to learn game
programming a systematic way of approaching it. You come on and start
complaining and name dropping (I can program super nintendo games, but I
just don't have the time) and telling me I don't know what I'm doing, and
you say I have an ego problem?
I think you did a very good job writing your game, and yes
> it is very impressive, but I didn't appreciate your attitude, and quite
> frankly, the little free time I have I don't like spending it reading
> rude comments like yours. You just advertised this e-mail list
> beautifully, and I am removing my name from it.
>
> Kirk Lang
>
Michael Packard
Lord Generic Productions
lgp at exo.com http://exo.com/~lgp
A Crash Course in Game Design and Production
http://exo.com/~lgp/euphoria
5. Re: Oidzone beta testing
*** Reply to note of 01/21/97 13:37
i find it disturbing that someone has been run off this list by your comments.
you DID ask for people to make suggestions about your code. while the
suggestions that you got were not what you were looking for, they were not
unreasonable. for example, it is common practice to pack midi/wav files into a
single indexed file, if only to make it more difficult to hack into the game.
but instead, you responded to these suggestions by taking them AS IF THEY WERE
personal attacks against you and your skills, and responded with an uncalled
for vicious, PERSONAL attack against the poster.
in all the postings, i didn't once read something that i construed Kirk as
either "complaining" or "telling you what you don't know what you are doing".
just because you've "worked your butt off" on your code (which i'm sure is as
brilliant as you say it is) is no excuse for you to make personal attacks
against people on this list.
-- David Cuny
