Jetscream beta released!
Community Forums/Showcase/Jetscream beta released!
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 After lots of self testing (and you know thats no test!) its finally here for blitz users to evaluate. Please let me know of any problems stating hardware, os and point in game that caused an error. Note there is a settings reset on start menu to reset any problems with hardware config. The game is quite processor and 3d card intensive (for people with crap machines like me Duron 800!), but goto graphics options on main menu to reduce detail/res etc. This is my first game in blitz and have learned a lot in the process. I would like to thank all the blitz users who answered my questions and geve their advice Hope you have some fun and like my game Dan (d-grafix) Beta version available at www.d-grafix.com/software.html |
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| Download link doesn't work. |
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| Link works fine here but 38.7mb is a bit big for a demo. |
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| hmm mabe i can reduce the file size, ill do that now. |
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| it still doesn't work Not Found You've got a wotsit the wrong way around.... The requested URL /downloads\setup.zip was not found on this server. Apache/2.0.46 (Red Hat) Server at www.d-grafix.com Port 80 |
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| Downloading anyway :o) It' not like i've got anything using my Internet time :o) |
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| the url is wrong replace it manualle, there is a \ in which has to be replaced with / |
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| Done :) Wait a few minutes as im reloading a smaller file |
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| all done should go now its now down to 24 meg |
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| I'm downloading it |
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| The game looks good, here are a couple of initial thoughts... 1) The loading times going into the actual game part is rather slow with no progress bar. I thought it had locked. Why not put some sort of indicator to show that something is happening? 2) When I quit the game it didn't actually quit it just stayed active on the task bar. 3) Are you sure the fade to black routine is fading to black completely, it appears that I can still see a faint trace of the image... 4) It might be a good idea to 'hide' your data (ie gfx files) by using a file packer like molebox or Terabits excellent free Pak util. 5) You could shave an awful lot off your game size by using the free UPX exe compressor and converting your bmp files to png. For example I converted the credits1.bmp to png and it went from 901kb to 86kb, quite a saving. What file format are you using for your sound effects / music? If its not .ogg why not? 6) What on earth is in that huge bins.ddp file? 7) It would be nicer if the boat had more momentum. They are in water afterall, at the moment they don't 'feel' right. These are just my opinions and are not meant to be critism but thoughts on how I would improve the game. Good luck and keep up the good work... |
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| Hi, I will include a loading bar in the final release as requested. also look into these png files. I kept the main game bitmaps unpacked for speed, the bins.ddp is a datapak. Dan |
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| Dan, sorry updated my post as the speed issue was related to me having all the sexy gfx effects on. Please see revised post above... What are your thoughts on the other points? |
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| [EDITED several times] Well, I tried it and I have a lot to comment on. I didn't run into any 'bugs' per say, but I definitely saw and experienced some things that I think could use some work. The so-called bugs: -First, the closest thing I experienced to a bug, was that the music kept playing after the game supposedly ended. Of course, it brought up your web site after the game ended, so maybe that was your intention to let the music play while the player browsed your web site?? -And the rankings screen had some serious slow down. Are you using 2D text over 3D? -I once got to an area of MeltWater where I flew over a hill and basically fell out of the world. -There are some graphical glitches in the rock formations in the latter parts of Sea Cave. -The player placing (Pos. 1/6) is still updated even after the finish line. It should show the placing that you earned, not the current placing. The goods and the bads: -Level designs that I saw so far were actually quite interesting and worked well for the game. The shortcuts fit in to the game well, and I liked that you could pretty much boat anywhere you wanted to (even if it was a bad idea). -The oasis level background needs something to spice it up. It was rather blocky. -I did find the end of the MeltWater level extremely frustrating (although cool looking). Trying to race through those floating bergs at high speed was damn near impossible. ESPECIALLY considering that the collision radius for the boats felt way too large and caused more bangups than should be happening (can't fit through tight areas). -I really liked the water reflections. I ended up playing the game with them on and turning off other features instead to get a decent framerate. -You have some cool boat designs. -The abilities of the boats were definitely noticeable while playing the game. -The boosts are very short lived. In my personal opinion, I think they should last at least twice as long. -The abilities of some of the boats don't match the boat types. For instance, a boat with a dish shaped bottom should slide better than one with a split hull. Also, I would expect a split hull boat to corner better. But worst of all, the hovercraft definitely should not be the fastest boat (are you serious?) -Most sounds in the game are OK. -The "Time Extension" phrase gets old really quick. -I really digged the music. -The Countdown (3,2,1,Go!) and Time Extension is hard to see on some levels. My specs: 2.53 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB DDR SDRAM, 533 MHz FSB Nvidia GeForce FX 5700LE OPTIMA AGP4X w/ 128MB DDR RAM using driver 6.14.10.5664 running on a dual-monitor setup (two monitors, one card) Windows XP Pro (Media Center Edition) Version 2002 w/ SP2 - DirectX 9.0b |
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| Ive sorted out the music still playing on quit bug, and will come out in next release. For now you can stop it by clicking back on the program in the taskbar and it will quit. i will definitely review the boats abilities, but dont forget its just a fantasy hovercraft (could have rocket engines for all we know :) and it has little or no friction on the water. Wolron, im interested in your slowdown by serious slowdown do you mean its un usable or just a bit slow ie 1/2 speed. in answer im using the text command on a texturebuffer. |
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| How about an uninstall option too? |
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| look under add-remove programs |
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| Hmm, not too user friendly. Why not add one in the Jetscream program group lilke most apps. |
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| Updated my post above several times... I kept the main game bitmaps unpacked for speed, I don't know what speed issues you are referring too. All images are uncompressed when loaded into memory, so there is no speed increase once they are loaded. You are just wasting HD space and internet bandwidth. |
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| 'I don't know what speed issues you are referring too.' (how do you do those nifty quotes??) i was refering to having them unpacked on the fly, i was not aware of png and am looking into it. 'waste of internet bandwidth', if i use a compressed image format will it make a difference to the filesize even though its zipped (i know f-all about compression) oh and the soundformat is mp3, never heard of ogg, what is it, is it better and can i convert? Thanks to everyone so far, remember this is an initial beta tester and the final version will be much revised due to this great input. As this is my first proj in blitz i have had to work twice as hard (experiments and research) so im really keen to make it into a playable fun game. Keep em commin' and ill keep fixin' |
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| 'waste of internet bandwidth', if i use a compressed image format will it make a difference to the filesize even though its zipped (i know f-all about compression) Not if you leave them as 24 bit color BMP's, but you can have 256 color PNG's ( which in many cases may be unrecognizable from their 24 bit color versions ) and those will be considerably smaller, even when packed. oh and the soundformat is mp3, never heard of ogg, what is it, is it better and can i convert? Ogg is better, if only because you have to pay a hefty license fee to use MP3 in a game. The quality is very similar and the filesize is *possibly* a little lower with Ogg. No bigger though. Yes, you can easily convert with DBPowerAmp. It even has shell integration so you can just right click on an MP3 and there's a "Convert to Ogg" option. I'll download to take a look a bit later. Probably leave it downloading when I go out this afternoon and let you know what I thought tonight. |
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| I liked it so far. Not to re-iterate the points given above, so the thing i noticed was the skybox. It seems to be positioned incorrectly, height wise. If you don't position a skybox correctly, you can see where the corners of it are. You should maybe think aobut changing the mask colours of some of the sprite, like the tree sprites. You can see the black showing though. If you change it to a greeny colour, this should be less noticable :o) |
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| downloading now... A suggestion for your website, don't use the full sized images as thumbnails, create smaller images for the thumbnails and then link to the larger ones, this will help with loading time for your site. |
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| New version with the following problems fixed: *Filesize reduced from 39MB to 21 by using PNG & OGG Thanx 2 boiled sweets *Added uninstall icon 2 menu *music now stops and game quits (needed an endgraphics statement!!) *Annoying sound effect changed for something a little less annoying *barriers put in place on levels so theres no flying out of the world *Now has a loading bar as suggested *Time and lapcounter sorted and stops when you complete the race *Collisions sphere reduction on boats so they can go thro narrower gaps new version available 1.70B http://www.d-grafix.com/software.html The beta version cheats are: (for testing only once you have completed all the levels ;) On the main menu screen type: mobius - ininite time to try and break out of the level nodoors - opens all tracks makemefast - infinite boost Keep it commin :o) |
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| What I think so far. @ : There is visible slowdown over the water, I guess your using delat time to keep the game speed up, which gives off a jumpy / poor frame rate feel although it does manage to keep the feel of speed. @ : The controls are good but could do with a bit more slide, just seemed like the hover craft wasent sliding around enough. @ : I would love the flashy mirror effect and a few other things and focus on making the level and level items look better, like better sand textures, better rocks, and better tree's, TBH the mirror on the watter just made it hard to see where I was going. All in all though I think you have a good project on your hands. Good luck with it. |
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| My biggest suggestion: DON'T OPEN AN F---ING WINDOW FOR THE INTERNET ON MY DESKTOP... OR IF YOUR GOING TO, USE A "NEW_WINDOW" FUNCTION! I had a few important windows open when I thought I would take a break and try out your game.. Needless to say, when I exited your game, you changed my IE window to something else (your website with purchasing information)..... Kinda pissed me off. |
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| mabe i could do it another way, anyone know an alternative than using execfile("www.etc... |
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| I must say that forcing me to your site was a little annoying too... I'll download the latest version and report back... Thanks for the changes... |
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| I must say that forcing me to your site was a little annoying too... tis done, you now get a choice on reg screen (version has been updated on site) things 2 do: *Have a look at the way changing the sliding/inertia physics and boost length will effect the AI *have a look at tidying up graphics as yavin suggested |
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| tis done, you now get a choice on reg screen (version has been updated on site) Thank you very much. I fully understand the point of forcing me to your website, however remember that with people like me (and most other advanced users), it merely shuns away from your product (because we don't like to be told what to do, or be forced where to go on our own pc). Again, thanks for the change. |
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| Whoops! Apologies to all users who have downloaded the supposed V1.70 or a version with no edge setection in the cave level, since the website update, its not! because im hosted on Linux, I recreated the file with .zip in capitals, and of course it thinks its a different file! I have since given myself a smack in the mouth and it has now been fixed & ready to go. |
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| D-Grafix, Love the demo. Highly polished graphics and user interface. Unfortunately the game runs <10 frames per second on my machine with all special effects OFF. My PC doesnt have the best of video cards, however, with a 2G CPU I would expect it run above 10fps. |
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| Well, I tried the ShareWare version, and I was graatly disappointed. For being a shareware version you didn't put much effort into polish. Also you didn't bother to fix a number of things I suggested in the past... -And the rankings screen had some serious slow down. Are you using 2D text over 3D? I see you didn't bother to change this... -The player placing (Pos. 1/6) is still updated even after the finish line. It should show the placing that you earned, not the current placing. I see you didn't fix this either... -The oasis level background needs something to spice it up. It was rather blocky. No noticeable change there... -I did find the end of the MeltWater level extremely frustrating (although cool looking). Trying to race through those floating bergs at high speed was damn near impossible. ESPECIALLY considering that the collision radius for the boats felt way too large and caused more bangups than should be happening (can't fit through tight areas). It feels like you actually worked on this, however, I can't help but complain how the collision response works in the game. If you are traveling fairly straight-forwards (in regards to the wall alongside of you) and you just barely touch the wall, the boat will slam way over and slow down considerably. This makes it unfair and just plain frustrating... -The boosts are very short lived. In my personal opinion, I think they should last at least twice as long. Your game, your choice, but the sure do feel short... -The abilities of some of the boats don't match the boat types. For instance, a boat with a dish shaped bottom should slide better than one with a split hull. Also, I would expect a split hull boat to corner better. But worst of all, the hovercraft definitely should not be the fastest boat (are you serious?) Looks like nothing changed here... Like I said in the beginning, I'm surprised and disappointed at what I saw... |
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