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[trabitboy]

hi, just wanted to drop a word to say
the game works only one 1 computer out of 3 I tried it on ,
even the no sound version 
"system cannot execute the specified program"

so:
worked on my 2 year old laptop with windows mediacenter
doesn't work on my 1 year old xp desktop from work
doens't work on my 4 year old xp laptop ( quite decent )

it would be cool that such a great piece of work could be sampled by everyone 

If I can help for more testing, I'm ready.

[0rel]

hi trabitboy!
nice too hear you like the game.
it's still not really "great", i think,
but i would be really glad if i would get the tech
working properly with this project,
so, help's really welcome,
to pushing this to a final version,
eventually.

but maybe we're already a step further,
cause the that "system cannot execute the specified program" message
led me to an (already suspected) leak: the manifest.
it was simply missing, i guess...
but since i have really no idea about what manifests are for,
and how to handle them correctly,
i wasn't sure how to fix it properly, yet...

but here's a new zip, now with all the msvc9 redist
files packed up (and some minor other changes),
maybe it's that simple:
okkuplektor_beta2_msvc0.zip

what i also tried tonight, was a complete workaround, which will
probably solve things more easily. i've compiled game again with the MinGW instead,
and probably got an exe out, which isn't dependent on any special DLLs, nor on that manifest thing anymore either.
that would be almost ideal, but i can't say if that will really do it...
(the only problem that would still bugging me with MinGW, is that the programs normally run slower than the Microsoft compiler... so it would be great if both version would run in the end...):
okkuplektor_beta2_mingw0.zip
(to avoid loading times, you can copy the files in game/data/audio over from another version, nothing changed there...)

thanks again for the feedbacks!

[trabitboy]

hi!
the mingw version runs fine on the old laptop ,
but you should distribute openal32.dll with your game maybe
( I can't install it on my work pc, prevents it from running ).

interesting for the mingw workaround, I use codeblocks/mingw
and I didn't seem to run into all of this when I send a test build
to various friends.
a lot of entries seem to suffer from the vc++ "pickiness" ?

for gameplay:
u definitely nailed the descent feel, I was instantly at home and compelled to play 

EDIT:
sticking the openal32.dll in the same folder as your game.exe
made it run beautifully on my work desktop,
bringing it really close to a release you can just unzip and play 

[Will Vale]

The initial level reminds me of Zarch for some reason. I got confused and thought the X meant I wasn't supposed to destroy the castle, so I waited around for something to protect it from... Luckily I figured it out in the end.

The whole thing is deeply stylish, I'm glad I got to play it. I think it does suffer a bit from the ease with which you can avoid the baddies on some levels - it feels like you should be shooting but it's more efficient just to dodge them and head for the exit.

Have you tried rendering at 2x the resolution and downsampling? I have a soft spot for very low res polygonal visuals with antialiasing, and I think it'd look good on this game

[0rel]

okay. i've finally managed to compile all in "/MT mode" with MSVC, so that that new build should run independently of any special DLLs too, now (besides OpenAL...).

thanks for a lot for the detailed testing, trabitboy.
@OpenAL:
i've put the naked OpenAL DLLs into the zip too now. the SDK docs told that redist installer returns some handy installation status values, so that that special case, when the OS dir is write protected, can be handeled separately. so, play.bat will copy the DLLs just into the game folder in that case, and things should run fine then. cool you tested it on your work machine too. i wasn't sure if just sticking the DLL right into the game folder will do it... now, i do... the batch will still prefer the normal install method, if possible, cause i think it's trustier, and should detect all the present hardware that way. hm, still, i can't be that fond of that OpenAL way of handling audio, after all. too many weak points. next freeware thing i do will be probably FMOD powered, i've decided...

and yes,
VC++ was really annoying in this compo. so many entries suffered form esoteric DLL-hell and other similar problems, i thought too... MinGW is nice in that respect; as far as i know, it links the c runtime lib by default statically. so, the exe's more how i like them: independent. but probably the same thing can be also achieved with the ms compiler it seems...

hope it works now a bit better.
okkuplektor_beta3_msvc0.zip

but please don't hesitate to say if it breaks again, i hunt bugs with joy.

[0rel]

The initial level reminds me of Zarch for some reason. I got confused and thought the X meant I wasn't supposed to destroy the castle, so I waited around for something to protect it from... Luckily I figured it out in the end.

ye, when i would have had more time in the compo, i'd have made the first level more like a tutorial, i think...

I think it does suffer a bit from the ease with which you can avoid the baddies on some levels - it feels like you should be shooting but it's more efficient just to dodge them and head for the exit.

yes, that's the main problem in the game, for me too... the "mechanics" with the key+door could have prevented the player from skipping fights that easily, i thought afterwards (similar like in the more challenging boss fight), or other kinds of collectibles from the enemies. but i had no time to make that into the game during the compo. in the current state, defeating enemies has mostly no function, so it's just for "easy" fun. - maybe that design fault could be developed into something good, though... with "enemies" that just behave in certain way, they could be destroyed, but there would be no need to do that... all would be more optional, more open. you could get optional awards, like "killed all in minial time"-record, or an easy trackable "speed" record, like in many games. but maybe also more trick oriented things, with special weapons/tools -> score could work. more, playing for "beautiful moves", or "relaxing hovering". kind of a "space dance"... that's hard to track with score though (still no idea there...). and these things really went to far for the compo, but maybe i do some tests with that in new levels...

Have you tried rendering at 2x the resolution and downsampling? I have a soft spot for very low res polygonal visuals with antialiasing, and I think it'd look good on this game

i've tested it in the beginning with enabled FSAA. somehow i liked it, but overall it didn't really fit.
...while haveing the msvc project already open again, here an exe with enabled FSAA, if you want to check out how it would have looked like. (-> the "logical" resolution is 256x128 pixels, which gets scaled up in discrete steps, in fullscreen mode. now, the FSAA will be applied on the physical screen pixels, so that it surly looks different than downsampling it... but it gives that impression of "lowres smoothness"... - i still like the crisp, hyper alised pixel look more, it's probably more efficient on older machines too, and motion makes things look smoother too somehow... (and: i can't compete with nextgen look at all ))

[Will Vale]

here an exe with enabled FSAA

That's exactly what I was thinking of, thanks so much! I really like that version but I can see why you'd want to stick to crispness for the official release.

Regarding the tutorial, I think drawing the frame around targets in red would probably have been all the clue I needed on level 1. Your ideas about bonuses, scoring and style sound like they would work really well and add lots of reasons to go back and replay levels after the initial rush of just getting to the end.

You can also make a really good game out of finding ways to effectively cheat to get to the end quickly - see the driving/puzzle Gripshift for an example of this taken to the extreme.

Will

[trabitboy]

okay. i've finally managed to compile all in "/MT mode" with MSVC, so that that new build should run independently of any special DLLs too, now (besides OpenAL...).
 to say if it breaks again, i hunt bugs with joy.

Hi,
new build starts on work desktop,
but fails on older xp laptop 

other weird open al behaviour I didn't catch last time:
it starts on my work pc when I fetch the openal dll directly in the directory,
BUT it doesn't output any sound 

[0rel]

weird... - the same message ("system cannot execute the specified program") again, on your older xp laptop?

strange, cause there shouldn't be any different dependencies than in the MinGW build, which worked properly last time?

hmmm, really hard for me to say what it could be...

(any hints on some special MSVC_2008 quirks would be helpful, my limited knowledge about all the special switches and options really ends here...)

maybe the official MSVC 2008 redist helps?

but if that would work, i'll still keep using MinGW for released EXEs next, cause i really don't want to force anybody to install system software, just to play some small game...


and, it's also good to know that the sound finally still doesn't work with naked DLLs!
too bad, that you can't play it on the workplace
(but it's really something to consider, many people want to play small games from a restricted account...)

OpenAL simply failed!
at least for small downloadable games.
(i can't change things in this project, though...)

edit:
new zips.
okkuplektor_beta3_mingw0.zip
okkuplektor_beta3_msvc2.zip

[trabitboy]

weird... - the same message ("system cannot execute the specified program") again, on your older xp laptop?

no, crashes harder, window to send an error report to MS
will try your latest builds

OpenAL simply failed!
at least for small downloadable games.

I agree , scares me to use it too;
I try to produce things you can just unzip and dbl click .

[Greender]

The decompressing is at the start is kind of annoying, other than that great game, very smooth controls.

[moi]

Awesome game, you rank first on my list at the moment (tested 2/3 of the games so far).
Yeah the uncompressing is very annoying (I almost quit before it ended)  and pointless, next time just upload the uncompressed sound samples.

[Synnah]

I actually quite liked the audio rendering at the start, but that's probably because I'm a music nerd. It's not decompressing all of the audio files, it's taking sequencer information from text files, and using samples (Which it does seem to decompress from ogg to WAV format) to render the music files as WAVs. Which is awesome, and it prompted me to poke around in the audio folder. That said, it probably would have made a bit more sense to include the music files as OGGs (There are about 50MB of WAVs, which would equate to about 5MB of OGGs); unless, of course, there was a technical reason why you couldn't use OGGs in-game.

[moi]

I think he was just being fancy

[increpare]

great great great.  though, many of the missions i felt were for me a [frantic, though not particularly satisfying] dash for the cube.  i would welcome something more strategic + ... longerlly.

but yeah; the density of visual and gameplay styles feel like they could really comfortably be expanded to something much larger.