About the latest version of the game

action9000 · **Reply #80 on:** October 05, 2008, 01:17:53 AM

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You said the options screen lets you change resolution. Well, on my screen it only gave me one choice, 800X600. Does it give more for people with better/different computers?

Try clicking on where it says 800x600.

It will save your changes when you leave the options menu.

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I assume someone has already mentioned the ability to see under the level when Neil's on a slope?

Yep.

That's the camera bug I was talking about. I see it as low-medim priority because it doesn't break gameplay too badly to have it be top priority, as well as the fact that it's very complex coding..*groan*. I'll get it fixed soon enough.

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Is there anything else in the level I should look for? Water? A tan mountain I can actually climb? I followed this one path forever but eventually stoped because I was afraid I was going around in circles. Should I have kept going?

No water in that version but will be in the next!

As for what to look for, basically just wander around and see if you're having anything happen that would break gameplay (specifically, falling through things/walking through walls/etc).

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Here's why I think that happened. Your light source was on an even altitude with myself

It might have been. I don't think my code has the light source very high up above the map. I appreciate you looking so in-depth on the lighting.

Realistic lighting will be more of a focus for later but thank you very much for bringing this to mention. It will be addressed fairly soon. B)

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Or do like in most movies and episodes where it's usually forever noon, unless the script says it's near sunset or sunrise.

To simplify things for now, I'm just using the one mid-day sky. Pretty soon, I'll set up a timer, as well as create a bunch of other sky graphics for the game to cycle through over time.

aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato) · **Reply #81 on:** October 05, 2008, 02:54:09 AM

Glad the lighting analysis helped. I hope.

Someone please upload a screenshot of the new version so I can update the "Neil Cubestrong" thread in Caption This! Try and get a really majestic one, with lots of textures, and the brilliant blue sky. Thanks!

Mumbling · **Reply #82 on:** October 05, 2008, 03:06:11 AM

Lol i wish I could help ya out there lb&t but apperantly the game refuses to work on my little laptop. Too few memory, too bad. But at least me still got good computer around

Mumbling · **Reply #83 on:** October 05, 2008, 07:49:09 AM

Oo here ya go!

Vaan360 · **Reply #84 on:** October 05, 2008, 09:27:26 AM

The gane refuses to work, I put host game, put the name, it join, and then it gets out and says a problem was found, sorry.

Mumbling · **Reply #85 on:** October 05, 2008, 09:44:36 AM

What error message, what did it say?

Maybe your firewall blocks unknown programs like this one.

aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato) · **Reply #86 on:** October 05, 2008, 01:10:05 PM

Thanks for the pic, Mumbling. I've added it to the Caption This! thread.

You get the very first new dino emoticon:

Thanks again!

Vaan360 · **Reply #87 on:** October 05, 2008, 02:35:45 PM

It says:" LBT RPG stoped working", then microsoft tries to find a solution, but nothing as always.
About the firewall, no problems there, I unblock it at soon as I instaled it.
Maibe it's because I have Vista?

Kor · **Reply #88 on:** October 05, 2008, 05:40:52 PM

Sounds like you have made progress and have plans for more, good luck and congrads.

action9000 · **Reply #89 on:** October 07, 2008, 11:26:39 PM

Hey all!

I've been getting a few reports that the game is running very poorly on lower-end systems (mainly, those with little memory and processing power on their video cards, it seems).

This Update is for everyone who is having trouble getting the game to run well on their computer.

This update also makes load times shorter.

http://search3.idrive.com/driveway/jsp/dwa...p?id=m2y6j8h7p1

To install:
Simply extract this to whatever folder you have the game's EXE file in right now. Replace every file it asks you to.
Note: This will not function on its own. You need to have the previous version of the game on your computer. This just changes a few of those files. This is not the complete game.

The changes include:

1) Reducing the main menu background image to about 320kb from 1.7MB

2) Reducing the game textures from 1024x1024 to 256x256

3) Changing the sky images from .bmp to .jpg and recoding the game to allow this to work (this is why I've updated the EXE file).
(This cut the sky from using 7.03MB to using 184kb.

)

4) Disabled the realtime shadows on the player's cube. This should reduce the amount of processing the video card has to do.

I will include these changes in any future versions, though I may increase the background menu image's resolution a bit in later versions. The changes to the sky from .bmp to .jpg especially will save a lot of load times and video memory.

Unfortunately I can't test this myself because every computer in my house has at least 256MB of video memory.

Thanks everyone for your feedback.

I hope this helps those people who have been having issues. If not, I don't think I can cut much more. I tried setting up the map file to run faster but the problem is, my collision detection doesn't work very well at all with those changes (basically, you fell through things randomly

) so I wasn't able to keep them.

Basically all I can do from here is start reducing the view distance with fog or a similar effect, to cut down on the number of things the video card needs to draw.

Bottom line is that the big "explore the giant world" games will use quite a bit of memory for all the map and graphical data. There isn't much I can do about that for computers with very small amounts of video memory. Even loading the 'shape' of the map will take up quite a few MB, so a 16MB video card may have a hard time anyway.

Bonus:
This is also a sneak-peek at water! Fair warning though, swimming isn't working properly yet.

aaand for anyone who cares:
3040 lines of code!

:

Kor · **Reply #90 on:** October 08, 2008, 04:56:41 AM

Thanks, this will help many folks. I guess for those of us who are getting good frame rates, we do not need to install this?

Explorer · **Reply #91 on:** October 08, 2008, 08:26:00 AM

I tried the previous, its great, and it works smoothly. Keep up the good work!

Mumbling · **Reply #92 on:** October 08, 2008, 11:17:52 AM

I'll try this version on my laptop asap :^.^:

aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato) · **Reply #93 on:** October 08, 2008, 07:20:42 PM

This is strange...

The larger version worked perfectly, but the smaller version, which apparently has water in it, doesn't. It tells me "MultisyncDLL.dll" could not be found. I tried to install it twice.

Also, I found a potential error spot on the large version. I appeared to be in a "Corner" of the map, in that there were tan walls to my west and north. I turned around, and traveled along the edge of the tan lip that was above the grey level below it. At the very edge, it was very steep, so I decided to slide down. It was an enjoyably fast fall, and at the bottom, I saw a small V-shaped canal. Traveling down it, I only got a few feet before hitting a dead end, but once I reached the dead end, I couldn't get out. The place where it normally said the thing about gravity now said "Fall-Protection On" or something to that effect. I couldn't jump, couldn't turn around, couldn't move. I had to exit out of the game.

Recommended remedy: just block up the canal. It was only a few feet long anyway, and I think impossible to get to if one didn't come in from above.

Kor · **Reply #94 on:** October 08, 2008, 11:20:49 PM

now that you mention it I think I got stuck somewhere, don't recall where, the first time I tried this new version. I remember I went down somewhere and seemed unable to get out, so I just closed the program and restarted it.

Mumbling · **Reply #95 on:** October 09, 2008, 01:24:31 AM

The newer version is more of a patch, it only had got the smaller maps and stuff in it. you should unpack it in thesame map as lbt version 0.10 and replace the files which are asked

action9000 · **Reply #96 on:** October 09, 2008, 01:28:11 AM

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The larger version worked perfectly, but the smaller version, which apparently has water in it, doesn't. It tells me "MultisyncDLL.dll" could not be found. I tried to install it twice.

Looks like Mumbling beat me to it.

Like I said in my previous post, you HAVE to install this over top of the previous version. It's a patch, not a new release. You need to extract the files to the same place as the working game. It just replaces a few things.

This just saved me having to upload 10MB of stuff again when we only had 2MB or so of new content, especially for an incomplete release.

action9000 · **Reply #97 on:** October 11, 2008, 02:23:22 PM

Hey all,

Things are getting to the point with me that I really don't have time to do any programming at all in my current job situation. <_< I will be taking a break from this project until I find a new job.

Thank you for your understanding.

aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato) · **Reply #98 on:** October 11, 2008, 03:25:51 PM

I'm glad you posted the new version before this break.

No prob, action. We'll all keep ourselves occupied with the massive map you've already released!

Coyote_A · **Reply #99 on:** October 11, 2008, 06:15:13 PM

action9000, that's okay. Just don't forget about the project completely.