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[Ambrose]

Hey Great Game. I love it. but I am having problems creating a creature, I am trying to make that grey that you can pass over but it is not working.

[bigpants]

There is a chance that when you save your monster to a .gif, your paint program is changing the gray you used into a different gray. Try opening your exported .gif directly, and see if the gray color changed. A quick solution is to make the gray even darker. All dark colors are in the background (Brightness < 40%). A more complicated solution is to try to tell your paint program export NOT to adjust the gray when saving to a .gif. In Photoshop, you can double-click the exported colours and adjust them.

Thanks for making a monster!

Feel free to e-mail me directly if you have more questions:
[email protected]

[TideGear]

Is my monitor configured wrong that I can't really make out the difference between the pure white sigils and pale green bodies of the collosi?

For now, I edited the monster gifs to have slightly darker bodies and it works with the game...
http://boxstr.com/files/3725403_yxkav/hmcgd_monsters_-_darker_bodies_edit.zip
...I don't know if this breaks away from the official TRS-80 Model III palette, though.

[bigpants]

Based on the feedback, I will need to darken the bodies. Your samples are a good start, but I'm planning to go even darker. The problem is I need to darken all the colours so everything doesn't blend together.
i.e. The mountains are distinguishable from the monsters.

No worries about breaking the official TRS-80 Model III palette - that's already broken. The system was black & white. Adhering to that restriction would have resulted in a game no-one would want to play. Having said that, the player and monsters obey the pixel chunkiness and apsect ratio of the system, resulting in a TRS-80 spirit.

[Batmanifestdestiny]

I will be praying for the day that this game has sound.  In the meantime, I can mock-up some music for you!

[bigpants]

While your offer is truly appreciated, I already have sound and music for v2.0.
I should have it complete by February 2009.
What I really need now are more monsters (full credit given to the creators).
Do you dare switch to graphics?

[Batmanifestdestiny]

I could work on it, but I'd need a reference sheet as to what numbers where do what.


EDIT:Never mind, I found a full guide on youtube, I shall be working on monsters now.


EDIT REDUX:I made my first monster.  the graphics aren't all that good, but this was just to test out the monster making.

[bigpants]

Excellent!
Spidotron alien will be included in the next update.
I'm already afraid.

[increpare]

I only played this now.  It is very surprisingly effective!  (Especially catching on to the side of the second dude, trying to hit him without falling off).  Took me a while to get the hang of, and it's very very slow paced, so I don't know if I'll try it again until you get about to sexing it up a little bit more(got killed by the second boss   )...but...good

[Hideous]

This runs so utterly slow on my computer

[bigpants]

I shall work on "sexing it up".
The music, improved controls, and an integrated tutorial should help.
Having said that, I can't help the slowness
I'm at the mercy of standard Windows GDI + your graphics card.
The current code does NOT use hardware acceleration,
which is the problemo.

If it runs as fast as the YouTube videos
(

)
then you're playing at proper speed.

Otherwise, try the following:
1. Downgrade your desktop to 16-bit colour (from 32-bit).
2. If you have 2 monitors, disable the second one.
3. Try running the 1024x768 or 800x600 executable instead.

Thanks for trying the game!

[Hideous]

See, I have an okay dual core processor, so I would've thought it'd run fine, but oh well

[bigpants]

Try the erotic solutions listed in the previous post.
While they sound strange, they're just crazy enough to work.

I can verify that Giant Dancer only uses 1 core of your dual core. Trying to program multiple cores is like trying to dance with Genghis Khan and Jeffrey Dahlmer at the same time.

To make my life feasible, and ensure Giant Dancer got done, I stuck with the Windows Graphics Device Interface API (the GDI). Everything currently on your screen is drawn by that GDI. It abstracts your graphics card, and compensates with software rendering when necessary. It's not designed for speed since Windows apps don't like speed (hello Word, Outlook, Firefox, Calculator).

Most graphics cards improve the performance of GDI. Some don't. Yours doesn't. This is fine for Excel, but makes Giant Dancer run like a walk. The real solution is to use DirectX and OpenGL, which talk directly to your graphics card yielding a performance boost of ten million percent. But that means less portability. KHANNNNN!!!!

[Renton]

See, I have an okay dual core processor, so I would've thought it'd run fine, but oh well

I don't know about the current version, but I played this (1.0, I think) at a pretty normal speed on a Celeron 1.7 rig.

[Hideous]

Try the erotic solutions listed in the previous post.
While they sound strange, they're just crazy enough to work.

I can verify that Giant Dancer only uses 1 core of your dual core. Trying to program multiple cores is like trying to dance with Genghis Khan and Jeffrey Dahlmer at the same time.

To make my life feasible, and ensure Giant Dancer got done, I stuck with the Windows Graphics Device Interface API (the GDI). Everything currently on your screen is drawn by that GDI. It abstracts your graphics card, and compensates with software rendering when necessary. It's not designed for speed since Windows apps don't like speed (hello Word, Outlook, Firefox, Calculator).

Most graphics cards improve the performance of GDI. Some don't. Yours doesn't. This is fine for Excel, but makes Giant Dancer run like a walk. The real solution is to use DirectX and OpenGL, which talk directly to your graphics card yielding a performance boost of ten million percent. But that means less portability. KHANNNNN!!!!

But uh, why not use a portable library like Allegro, SDL or SFML? SFML even does it's 2D drawing with OpenGL for you, without any extra trouble.

[bigpants]

Renton >
Good to hear! It's not really the CPU that matters, it's all about your graphics card and how it handles Windows GDI calls.

Hideous > (love that name by the way)
If I had known a better library, I would have ...uh... used it. What do Allegro and SDL have in common? They use GDI underneath the hood. So do Flash and GameMaker. While they're all actively working on accelerating things, but progress is glacial. I try to avoid learning new libraries that have the same problems I face now. SFML sounds good (this is the first I've heard of it), but has some serious competition from Indielib, Unity, PTK, Playground SDK, and XNA (among others).

[Hideous]

SFML vs:

Unity: Can only develop on Mac.

XNA: Windows only.

IndieLib: Windows only.

Never heard of PTK or Playground.

And really, Allegro and SDL games are never this slow to me.

[Batmanifestdestiny]

It may be awhile before I post my next monster, as I'm not very creative......



P.S:I saw a video of the monster "Axoneko" and it's just an edited version of one of Pixel( yes the  maker)'s cat pictures.

[launcherspider]

why are all monsters distorted (vertikal)?
, and how can (will) it be fixed..
thx

[bigpants]

The monsters are all distorted (vertikal) since the game is a demake (a remake of a modern game for an older system). My target system was a TRS-80 Model III which had an embedded ~10 inch monitor featuring a 128 x 48 resolution (I'm not joking). To fill that 10 inches, the "pixels" were physically taller than what you're used to (1.5x the width). For better or for worse, that's duplicated in the demake. If you're a fan of Meteor Mission II or Outhouse, you'll love it. If it's any consolation, I did use more than one colour.