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[narasu]

My antivirus does no such thing as raping downloaded stand-alone EXEs.

And it still doesn't work. I get a white rectangle (square?) with a black border and the error message.


EDIT

It works now. Very nice!

[0rel]

yes, we've got.
kudos to Medieval for testing it several times!

(it was really an error... Medieval was right.. if you had tested it before, and have an old (or strange) video card, it was doomed crash all the time... why? : i stupidly pasted some untested code snippets from the webs into the game to enable vsync, so that the screen flickers less in fullscreen mode (i had hard problems with that first), but these snippets were buggy, and caused the crash. - it should work now, but don't hesitate to report other errors, really... i like to fix them, cause i'm trying to make a small, stable framework for basic OpenGL-/window handling at the moment. btw, for those with old video cards: just don't run it in fullscreen mode, it will flicker, cause the vsync code will just be ignored now, instead of crashing the program. still better that way )

[muku]

Hm. Don't you use SDL? It has a very simply flag which you can set to enable vsync. In my experience, SDL is a painless way to get a cross-platform OpenGL window going.

[0rel]

you're probably right.

...i began to put this window class together quite a while ago, and i'm just liking it too much to give it up, you know . it's small and simple... but i can agree with you, SDL is a very good toolkit and much more reliable than my class, i guess.

for 2D pixel things is SDL surly the better choice, but i restricted myself to use always only OpenGL for everything.. one API for graphics should be enough, i thought. it has hardware supported vector power, it's low level, cross platform, and for 2d pixel things one can still use textures and other techniques. i wouldn't necessarily need OpenGL here, i agree, SDL and it's native framebuffer/sprites would be better, but i wanted to reuse that class later on, that's why i still keep testing and improving it. - ok, but SDL has OpenGL support as well, so, hmm... - i wouldn't do it again, that's for sure... but it works now (even under linux), and i'm glad there aren't any additional DLLs around and any other confusing stuff i don't need... but i'm probably a bit too "dogmatic" here.

[0rel]

final version uploaded. download zip updated.

changes:
* enemy count decreased a little.
* 12 seconds longer in playtime.
* info screens cleaned up a bit (instructions/credits).
* offline mode added (it won't ask for net access anymore after one highscore update failed).

[muku]

Another, more lightweight option for cross-platform OpenGL is GLFW. But yeah, I can see how you want to stick to your own code, I know the "not invented here" syndrome all too well

On the other hand, SDL is nice because there's SDL_image and that's just so handy once you start loading sprites and whatever.

For the new version, the changes seem slight, but it's still a lot of fun. BTW, how did you implement the online highscore table? Do you have a server with a PHP script or something which handles that? It seems like such a great feature.

[0rel]

ye, and SDL_mixer is nice too for all the audio files, and it even enbles sample based streaming!, i meant... SDL is good, really, i would recommend it to everyone, for various reasons. when i do something bigger sometime, i probably come back to it... it has all what a game needs, and should work mostly the same way everywhere..

and thanks for the link to GLFW, i didn't know that one yet. looks slick, and very similar to what i wanted to do with my own class. it has system independet timers and multi threading support, and not too much other unneeded stuff... i'll keep an eye on it.

@online highscore:
it's pretty much the same code i've put together for the pg compo... but i'm not so experienced with web/internet things, so, there might be an easier and more secure way to do it. - it's done as perl cgi script, but php would be probably better and easier, i think. the script reads out the highscore table form a MySQL table, and prints it as plain text web page. that's it. the same script also accepts arguments to add new entries into the table... now, to access it from the game, i tried out two different methods: with the platform independent method, one could access the mysql table directly (libmysql). that would be neat, and works without additional script, but the login information would be stored inside the game then, which is not so nice... so, i just used WinINet API to read back the table as a normal web site via that perl script...
probably, i should put togheter a small tutorial someday, to save others all that trouble..    maybe i'm gonna do it right today.. (i could pm you the script/code, if you want it too for your game... no probs)

[Stargoat]

Pretty neat, feels like ES. Those high scores are huge... No way i could beat them.

Anyway, nice work on this.

[0rel]

Those high scores are huge... No way i could beat them.

hmm, yeah, i'm wondering too how they managed to get that high... no way for me too :D

 i don't know... but..
 are they cheating?

or does the game run much faster on other PCs? (in fact, it should not, because all movemnts are time based...)

so, may i ask the highscorers?: are there some special tricks you've found out? or sound glitches or some jerky movements, or some other irregularities, which slow down the progressbar?
or more simple: how did you manage to get that many points?

are you just that fast?


TimW made it to the top again :D
1760/3 ~ 587. maybe that's possible, but i still would never be able to get that many points...


it's no big deal, if someone found out a way to cheat, but please let me know sometime.
for me, i can only say, i want to learn some things about how to make fun games and about what others like and dislike while playing... what works and what doesn't. i thought, an online highscore could spice up something quite dull, but somebody may still dislike or even mistrust these net features, or feel spied out (but there's really no reason to feel so... the highscore just stores the player name, the time, the ip and the number of points, nothing more).

i see these compos more are "coopos" somehow,
learning together new things...

[narasu]

They might have used a memory editor.

[0rel]

(or a packet sniffer (meta game ))

[muku]

TimW made it to the top again :D
1760/3 ~ 587. maybe that's possible, but i still would never be able to get that many points...

Hm, unless I misunderstood your scoring algorithm, I think you double the score for every life that's left, right? So, with 3 lives left, you get a multiplier of 2^3 = 8. So, 1760 / 8 = 220 points, which sounds reasonable. I personally certainly didn't cheat, but I only have a meager 1288 points.

[Stargoat]

Ah. That would explain it.

[muku]

Damn, this thing is addictive, I keep going back to it. Also, I'm number 2 in the highscore list now!

[0rel]

:D :D :D

that's great muku!! 
just great.
i'm speechless!

hahaaa, i'm such a small idiot....

but,
but, i probably know why i felt that overwhelmed by these highscores...
after posting the beta version, which was much longer in playtime than the dev version which i used for test playing the game, i only played it till the final sum-up outro started and always pressed escape there, because i thought, i shouldn't show up in the highscore... hmm, uhm, yes, but i completely forget that the score gets doubled for every life.... :D  hehe

but now my time has come!
i'll show no mercy this time!!!

TimW, i'm coming! 

ouh, and...
the "meta game" still stands btw...