UR-AstroMiner Released
Community Forums/Showcase/UR-AstroMiner Released
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| http://www.gothagames.com GothaGames is pleased to announce the release of AstroMiner . . * More than 20+ creature types to discover and conquer * Boss creatures for each one of the specie types * 20+ powerup types to collect and deploy * 3 regions covering 30 levels; orbit, surface and interior * Bonus levels present in each region of the game * Stroy-mode describing what's happening within each region * Character advancement through achievement token collection * Five-tier character advancement system allows many combinations * Genuine platform game elements, ladders, lifts, springs, and more! * Hand-designed maps provide puzzles, obstacles and loads of action A product of Blitz3d! Visit our website for demo downloads, more screenshots, videos, Ugly Ralph lore, game information and more. This has been a long project, close to 8 months now, we hope you enjoy every minute of it, it's been a pure joy developing this game under Blitz3d. Bye! |
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| That looks really good. Downloading the demo now. Were any additional libraries used, or is it entirely done using Blitz3D? |
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| We did use some external libraries, Nuke Glory, spritecandy and particle candy. Nuke glory was required because of its ultimate dynamic collision updating. Doubt i could had pulled off the speed of AstroMiner if i used a in-house collision solution. The main goal behind astro miner was to keep it's performance scalable. I wanted the game to be able to run on older hardware ( with some options turned off ) but I didnt want to punish those of us with recent hardware. So you can actually jack up the eye candy as much as you want based on your hardware. |
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| Downloaded this to test it out on Windows Vista, scanned it with ClamWin before installing it, reported it has a Trojan in it. ????!! |
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| Great job, in-game gfx are fantastic. Looks and sounds like a lot of work has gone into it. |
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| Thanks for the comments. markcw, Moleboxed applications tend to report back negativity to the lesser Av's and scanners. The application is virus free :)> http://stschnell.de/cgi-bin/weblog_basic/index.php?p=3 |
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| The system requirements specify : Win 98/2000/XP/Vista(x86/x64) Graphics Adapter w/ DX7 support Sound Card 512mb System Ram CPU 1.0GHZ+ I have : Win XP Home. Geforce 5200 FX 128mb Graphics. Built-In Sound card 515mb Ram 3.0 GHZ CPU Intel Pentium-4. Now, I'm not here to disgrace your game, as it does look good, and you have put a lot of effort into it. But... On my PC, It seems to be running at a painfully-unplayable 1 FPS (approx). I was looking so forward to playing the demo, but could'nt. Is that the final release, or are you in the process of squishing any bugs in the game ?. I hope so, because I'm drooling at the thought of playing your excelent looking adventure. |
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| Turn off post processing effects with such an older card. Also reduce particle density etc... you'll see options in the utility that will help speed up your experience. |
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| Thanx, I will try that. |
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| I'm going to put a FAQ sheet together on the website to help with this and other occurrences. |
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| "Win XP Home. Geforce 5200 FX 128mb Graphics. Built-In Sound card 515mb Ram 3.0 GHZ CPU Intel Pentium-4." If that system can't play this game, the market potential is going to be limited greatly. |
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| This looks really neat but the downloads page is empty! (using Firefox) |
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| I'm going to have to play with the settings too, I'm playing it on the following: Pentium 4 - 2400 1.25 Gb RAM Gefore 6600GT 128MB AGP card and it crawls along after the first few screens, not tried turning off the effects yet, will try that. It may be worth including an automatic setting for the settings setup, you have a lot fo options there and someone not into the technical side of PC's wouldn't really know what to turn off. The speech bubbles are a nice touch though. |
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| I have minimised all graphics effects and the game is now playable. But DAMN !... That game is hard. |
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| WOW! you guys need to update some drivers or something. I'm running the game with default settings at 1280x1024 res on this system: WinXP Home 1.8 GHZ CPU Intel Celeron 512 MB Ram Integrated Gforce6 Way below whats been listed above, and I wouldn't say it's crawling...it's highly playable. The only thing changed was the MOTION BLUR, and that was due to the warning that popped up in settings when I saved them. It mentioned it would slow down on older cards so I turned it off. When I did reduce the settings, the game smoothed out even more. |
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| Okay, I've uploaded a new install. Ive implemented several tweaks, decreased the clip-range, reduced explosion effects up close to the camera ( fill rate ), restructured the main loop and put many of the core routines that weren't really needed per loop, into a timed function. Moved particle settings to a value of 3 for default, motion blur now defaults OFF and a warning pop added when saving config with bloom effects ON. Removed differed-mipmapping, now defaults to blitz3d's natural miping structure. |
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| "Integrated Gforce6" Not exactly a slug when it comes to GPU. ;) SwampDonkey, for these kinds of gpu intensive games, there is nothing wrong with a performance tuner either that runs at least once when the game first runs and then optionally whenever the user wants later. Run a benchmark test with all fx on and if the avg fps is below a certain threshold, you can auto adjust the settings. ;) Because you really want it to look great for higher powered specs, but you also want it to be playable for low end specs. So first impressions are imporant for these types of games. |
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| Did you remove the trojan virus from it yet? |
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| It would take ages to find out where molebox is creating a trojan signature from, it could be anywhere. Better to either put it on a FAQ page on the website or use an alternative to molebox. Maybe you should also switch off the framerate-heavy effects by default. Btw, is this your first game, Swampdonkey? How many people in the team? |
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| I have found a problem with the gamepad config tool. It detects the buttons, but not the directional pad. The game pad I use is a Logic-3 USB JP260. If I select "Use Joypad" in the confi tool and try to use it during the game, the screen tries to scroll, but does not go the full whack. Also... If I select config during the game, it freezes up when I resume the game. |
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| Hi Steve, Thanks for the report! Joystick problem fixed(I'm hoping). If you press escape after going to the keyconfig from within the game does it let ya back in? I'm on this one, just hard tracking it in the editor because i can't reproduce it.. yet. At any rate, thank you very for the report. |
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| Just tried the joypad again. Ralphie just wants to keep running left of his own accord. |
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| Yup, joysticks are such a pain to work with in code due to the variety of them on the market... Just ran across Pongo's gamepad mapper, looks like a marvelous piece of joystick code.. Think i'll try implementing. |
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| Okay implemented Pongo's joystick mapper into the config, works great here. Also fixed a weird problem causing hang-ups on the pause menu if bloom was turned off. Darkened the menu panels so they are more clear to see. Thanks for the reports Steve. |
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| i have found a bug in the menu (it quits with HUD_SetObjectBorder failing message). i played a level, returned to main menu and clicked new game- > bang! second bug/typo: continue is the word, not contiune. i keep on testing. |
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| Ahhh thanks t3k, im afraid that must be a copy you downloaded a day or two ago? If you don't mind, uninstall that and re-download please. That hud error was fixed earlier. * and the typo hehe * EDIT: Actually you are right, seems i uploaded a version that was not my most recent. I need a vacation. |
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| ok tell us when the new version is online, then we dl again... |
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| Okay uploaded the correct distribution package. Sorry for the confusion. I've done some extensive scans and research on an alternative method to Molebox but I really found no alternative. Terapacker and BliztPacker but they all seem to use temp directories for unpacking and are rather slow. Molebox is fine but it does alert about 5% of the AVs and Spyware scanners as being a trojan when it's not. Ive contacted the author of molebox about this and he replied there wasn't much that could be done. PackB3D seems dead and amt-lab gone. My question is what are you guys using for your own projects? I'd like to get rid of the molebox package I'm using now but i can't seem to pin-down any alternatives. Thanks. |
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| Well after further research I've learned that most all the recent Avs and SW scanners are Molebox friendly and actually recognize the application as being molebox'ed. I've decided to stay with my current setup. There's that small 5% of people using ancient or under supported Av's that don't realize molebox is harmless, I'm willing to take that hit. Even MS windows ONE-Care reports back properly, and that's something :)>  |
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| i am going to use Pack3DLib, which uses VFS for file access. i did just a quick test ages ago, dunno how compatible it is with vista. i'll see ;) |
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| got another bug: i have a huge resolution on my desktop (30" rulez) and your game offers me to select 2560*1600 as screenresolution. but due to dx7 restrictions, you can only go up to 2048x1536. if you try to set this big resolution, you end up with a "unable to create 3d scene". |
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| t3K, 30 inch monitor! your sick! ... I want one.... :)>> Wasn't aware of the dx7 resolution limits, I'll add a max res selection to the config utility. Thanks for the report!. |
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