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[György Straub]

nice demo !
osx version works just fine !

thanks! glad it works!

ERROR: Failed to create surface due to an OpenGL error: 0
Assertion failed: pTex.GetRefCount() > 0, file D:\My Dropbox\development\XRhodes\slicer.cpp, line 234

abnormal program termination

Got the same error on my brother's XP Pro SP2 config (with an integrated Intel VGA)... still have no clue as to what's causing it. On my XP and Vista configurations, the game does work.




Anyhoo, I had no time for updates since last; the game however now has a bonus system and sound effects and is being prepared for the big multiplayer treatment.

[Hangedman]

TETROIDVANIA:

A 'Puzzle Quest' like game where, instead of making RPG characters fight by matching stuff, you make a small character explore an endless forking space castle dungeon and different combos make different events happen to them.

SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE THIS ARGGHRGRHGKGLLGLL


(btw your game looks fun. Cheers!)

[György Straub]

TETROIDVANIA:
A 'Puzzle Quest' like game where, instead of making RPG characters fight by matching stuff, you make a small character explore an endless forking space castle dungeon and different combos make different events happen to them.

I like that idea a lot! I've been toying around with some concepts recently, and I guess SGP could be a very different game if I gave it a lot more thought. I don't think there's a lot of (time)space for turning back at this point, however, I'm tempted to flesh out the tetroidvania thing after the compo ends.

On a completely different note, if anyone managed to run the demo on windows, please give me a holler! I'm getting a bit worried here.

[György Straub]

still alive. multiplayer ahoy! (gamepads are also supported now)

[Wyv]

I'm running into the same problem as KittenEater, got an XP machine with service pack 3 and have never before had any issues with applications making use of OpenGL. Have you had any luck with a solution yet?

Edit: The stderr.txt also has a line that says:
Assertion failed: _pCounter != 0, file D:\My Dropbox\development\XRhodes\refcounted.hpp, line 215

This one mystifies me, since I've got no such file or directory structure.

[György Straub]

I'm running into the same problem as KittenEater, got an XP machine with service pack 3 and have never before had any issues with applications making use of OpenGL. Have you had any luck with a solution yet?

Edit: The stderr.txt also has a line that says:
Assertion failed: _pCounter != 0, file D:\My Dropbox\development\XRhodes\refcounted.hpp, line 215

This one mystifies me, since I've got no such file or directory structure.

I haven't got a solution yet, however I think I've found out what the problem is. OpenGL is supposed to reject textures whose dimensions aren't power of two, or so I've learnt. However, for quite a while I've been using textures that don't conform this rule (with mipmaps), and they loaded in Vista, OS X and Boot Camp XP, just fine.

I've tried to update the VGA drivers on the other machines but that didn't work (most of the test configs had ATI cards btw, including the ones under the hood of the Vista and OS X test machines). I'll see if there's another way to squeeze some consistency out of the different OpenGL implementations.

(The path in your error message is on my machine btw, but that's not where the error is -- that's just where everything is falling down, trying to use a texture that could not be loaded.)

On the upside, the game is about 96% ready. Wish me luck solving the texture loading error.

[György Straub]

RIGHT! It seems that mipmap creation was to blame for the mysterious error (whose code btw was 1281 (GL_INVALID_VALUE) rather than 0 - the other error being in how I used ::glGetError()).

Both problems have been fixed (and more), and the newest version of the demo is up!

(You may want to get yourself a player 2 and a gamepad, yes?)

[Wyv]

Yep, now it works! I like the system, quite imaginative! Nice intro, too. Though I really wish the gameplay was a whole lot faster, maybe even twice as fast, to up the action a little. Right now it takes a long time until something actually happens, and the protagonist seems to move in slow motion (well fair enough, it's in space, but that shouldn't count as an excuse!). I also noticed the following things:

- The menu controls are rather sluggish, takes a while to navigate through
- The protagonist gets a seizure when he jumps on blocks that are still falling
- The intro can't be skipped (it's neat, but once is enough!)
- The sound effects are a bit too loud initially, compared to the music (am I biased? mwahaha!)

Mind upping the speed a little? I'd really like to see how it'll play then!

[György Straub]

Yep, now it works!

Excellent! It was a tough friggin' fight.=)

I like the system, quite imaginative! Nice intro, too. Though I really wish the gameplay was a whole lot faster, maybe even twice as fast, to up the action a little. Right now it takes a long time until something actually happens, and the protagonist seems to move in slow motion (well fair enough, it's in space, but that shouldn't count as an excuse!).

Thank you!=)

The slowmo is a bug of sorts. The game isn't supposed to be THAT slow. I'll fix it today.

I also noticed the following things:

- The menu controls are rather sluggish, takes a while to navigate through
- The protagonist gets a seizure when he jumps on blocks that are still falling
- The intro can't be skipped (it's neat, but once is enough!)
- The sound effects are a bit too loud initially, compared to the music (am I biased? mwahaha!)

Mind upping the speed a little? I'd really like to see how it'll play then!

- menu controls' sluggishness - is due to the general slowness, the fix is underway.
- seizure - it didn't seem to be happening on every machine; I'll look into fixing that too.
- intro can be skipped with ESC
- no, you're right.=) I'll tune the sfx volume down.

[György Straub]

bugfix-newrelease-bump.

[Wyv]

Nice! Now I'm getting quite the taste of what the game can be like, and I approve of what I'm seeing! :D Unfortunately, I'm still facing some rather bad issues, which may or may not be the fault of my dated computer (P4 2.53 GHz, 1 GB RAM). Either way, the first time I tried, the game was super fast at first, so that 4 blocks had already fallen within half a second, and then it fell back to its former slow-mo behaviour. The second time the speed was exactly right, fast enough to enjoy the gameplay, but laggy - the protagonist would keep warping ~50 pixels in the direction I was holding every second or so, which doesn't make the game unplayable (since beyond these lags it played perfectly), but the choppiness is still a major buzzkill.

The intro behaved in the same way as described above the first time - the text raced by, leaving hardly enough time to read it, and succumbed to slow motion again near the end (same for the menu), but on attempt #2 it felt exactly right.

The seizures are gone, though! :D

[György Straub]

Nice! Now I'm getting quite the taste of what the game can be like, and I approve of what I'm seeing! :D Unfortunately, I'm still facing some rather bad issues, which may or may not be the fault of my dated computer (P4 2.53 GHz, 1 GB RAM). Either way, the first time I tried, the game was super fast at first, so that 4 blocks had already fallen within half a second, and then it fell back to its former slow-mo behaviour. The second time the speed was exactly right, fast enough to enjoy the gameplay, but laggy - the protagonist would keep warping ~50 pixels in the direction I was holding every second or so, which doesn't make the game unplayable (since beyond these lags it played perfectly), but the choppiness is still a major buzzkill.

The intro behaved in the same way as described above the first time - the text raced by, leaving hardly enough time to read it, and succumbed to slow motion again near the end (same for the menu), but on attempt #2 it felt exactly right.

The seizures are gone, though! :D

I'm glad for the improvements.=)

The timing issue is perplexing - I've tried the game on my parents' and brother's computers, which are in the 800Mhz Celeron - 2.0GHz Pentium CPU and 512MB - 1GB RAM range, and v0.91a still ran perfectly (v0.90a ran hardly=D). It really should -- rendering might have been a bit slow what with the big textures and alpha blending, but the rest is peanuts (especially in the intro and the main menu).

Other things I can think of are the performance timer (which Pentium 4 might or might not have, but which is what the game is relying on) and caching (the slowest parts of the game is where it's loading music; however I've got some measures in place to prevent the action speeding up after being halted for loading - beyond that, there's not a lot I can do about it).

[György Straub]

bump. I've got a surprising amount of visible improvement. the game can be considered complete. I might just look into the internet highscore thingy.

[Crackerblocks]

I'm rather enjoying this. Just played for about an hour. The oh boy explosions puzzley hypnosis is there.

My only gripe is the tractor field feels really awkward. Always going 1 too far or 1 not far enough. Not really sure how to improve it though without potentially overpowering it.

And I'm not exactly sure the correct technique for getting rid of a big column on the edge.

I'm also seeing the alpha around the sprites at about 20%, rather than completely transparent.

 

[György Straub]

I'm rather enjoying this. Just played for about an hour. The oh boy explosions puzzley hypnosis is there.

Wow, thank you.=) This might have just made my day.

My only gripe is the tractor field feels really awkward. Always going 1 too far or 1 not far enough. Not really sure how to improve it though without potentially overpowering it.

Got an idea that doesn't feel catastrophically hard to implement, so I'm gonna try it. It goes like this: I'll make the amount of keypress needed for the tractor field to depend on the distance of the block that it's going to affect.

And I'm not exactly sure the correct technique for getting rid of a big column on the edge.

I don't think there is one (apart from filling up the next column and trying to chip the big one away with diagonal and horizontal matches). I had an idea in mind, but decided against it: when you're punching a single block that's on the edge, it'd cycle the vegs upwards. I'll see how that works.

I'm also seeing the alpha around the sprites at about 20%, rather than completely transparent.

That's intentional, just to give the player a hint with the bounding boxes. It was awkward when a falling vegetable hit you in the head where its sprite didn't have visible pixel data.

[György Straub]

v0.93a released. I've redone the tractor field (actually, at one point I was tempted to just throw it away -- the game was more challenging. not awfully, just the right amount), added a new bonus, and revamped the bonus system.

[György Straub]

v0.94a, v0.95a and v0.96a released in the meantime. didn't want to bump every time a new version was ready, but I will now; this is the last release before deadline with a nice bit of increase in performance and I got rid of some nanoscopic bugs.

[György Straub]

I've got back home, so I made an OS X build, it's downloadable from GameJolt.

[György Straub]

Post-compo version with wall jump and animation to indicate punched vegetables' movement.

[Oddball]

Liked: Best game name in the competition. I enjoyed the fresh take on an over explored genre.

Disliked: At the end of the day it is still just a colour matching game.

Conclusion: I applaud the exploration of the genre, but it just wasn't for me.