The Gang of Five
The Land Before Time => Cancelled and old projects => LBT Projects => LBT Multiplayer RPG Project Discussion => Topic started by: action9000 on June 20, 2008, 08:07:23 PM
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Hey all,
I'm mainly setting up this topic for myself, so I can keep track of programming progress and overall game development. If anyone has anything to add here, feel free of course. :)
A few tips on how this is set up:
Link: A link to the latest version of the game.
New Stuff: What's been added since the previous version.
Known bugs: Stuff that I know is broken or not working "properly".
[FIXED!] is a tag I will edit in once I have fixed the bug. This fix will appear in the *next* version. The posted link will still have the bug
Coming soon: Likely to appear within the next version or two.
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Link:
search3.idrive.com/driveway/jsp/dway_download.jsp?id=j2m4v2p4w0
[LINK EXPIRED]
NEW STUFF IN THIS VERSION:
1) Multiplayer support up to 100 players in one game (lag will depend on location, the number of players in the game and internet connection quality). Players in the game can see each other move. Players can also chat in-game.
HOST GAME and JOIN GAME features are now functional. Read the instructions file for details on how to play multiplayer.
2) Sky background. It's still pretty rough, with the seams at the "corners" but it's a lot nicer than the green background.
3) Daytime-style lighting
4) Shadows have been disabled on the cube for now, until I can make everything nice and pretty.
Anyway, now for the important stuff:
I recommend we playtest this using Hamachi to run it over a LAN. I have not yet set up ports for internet play. We can *try* internet play but I cannot guarantee good results. It hasn't been tested at all.
Known Bugs:
1) The START button on the JOIN GAME screen does NOT actually join the game. The ENTER key does. The START button does something from an old version, where it starts the game in a weird single-player mode. Don't use it.
[EDIT] FIXED!
2) The cubes don't have the proper shadows on them. I disabled shadowing for now to speed up rendering on slower computers. I also want to play around a bit more with the graphic effects before I start turning on a bunch of stuff.
[EDIT] This will not be changed any time soon.
3) The OPTIONS screen still doesn't let you change anything.
[EDIT] FIXED!
4) If you type text longer than 200 characters before pressing ENTER, the results will be unpredictable. I want to put a limit on this soon so you physically can't type more than that, but I haven't done it yet.
5) Players are not yet notified when somebody joins or leaves the game.
6) If one player leaves the game, the host isn't properly notified yet. That cube may not disappear from the game. New players who join may be assigned to a weird ID number. This means that if you leave and join the game enough times, you will eventually overload the 100 player limit. I'm not freeing up ID numbers yet.
7)The text will flicker a bit, moreso on slower computers. I am looking into a fix for this. I think I know the cause, I just need to figure out some clever way around it.
[EDIT] FIXED!
8) Players are not yet able to input their usernames into the game. As a result, the chat just simply shows the text that was sent. It doesn't show who sent it. You may not want to use the game as an instant messenger just yet.
[EDIT] FIXED!
9) Backspacing in the chat system doesn't work very well.
[EDIT] FIXED! Backspacing now works as expected. :)
10) The angle the player is facing is not yet sent over the network, just their physical location.
COMING SOON:
1) Basically, fix everything that's broken. (In progress)
2) The beginnings of the development of 3d models of the Great Valley map.
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Currently working on:
scaling images no matter what the screen resolution is set to. I recently found out I have no "resize image" command in my game programming library so it's taking longer than expected to work it out. <_< :p
I apologize for the delay..this is proving to be a royal pain. <_<
The joys of having the lead programmer be an amateur, hey? :P:
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Okay well here's a little good news:
I found a solution for the image resizing situation, now I just have to code it!
We're well on our way again. :)
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Does the above link go to a newer version of the game, or can we only play the earlier version (awesome as it was...)?
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Does the above link go to a newer version of the game, or can we only play the earlier version (awesome as it was...)?
It goes to the earlier version.
I'll make a clear announcement when an update is posted.
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After messing around with the code for 2d graphics a bit more, I've determined that I'll need a little bit of time to get everything working really smoothly.
Please bear with me, I guarantee the results will be worth it. :)
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haha well I was slowed down by a pesky bug just now, where every time you changed the resolution the program crashed! <_< :angry:
Basically, I load images and convert them to sprites in my program. As a sprite, I can resize and scale the graphic, which is why I do this. If I just load the image, I can't do anything with it except draw it on the screen. I need to turn it into a sprite to be able to manipulate it, detect where it is, see if anything else is touching it, etc.
I found out after a lot of messing around that I have to delete the sprite and reassign the image to it every time I change the resolution. :p
I found out why after a good 2 hours of fighting with it, so I'm moving on again, now that it's stable. :lol: ;)
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Things are starting to nicely fall into place now. :)
By the way, we broke 2000 lines of code today, with 2144 lines in the current project. :D
Just a little more and I'll have something nice to post for everyone... :)
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A little teaser screenshot of the new chat system:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/chat-box-with-names.jpg)
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Smooth progress so far. But, you haven't fixed the bug with "/" key? :)
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still a bit left to do still, I'm afraid. These fixes are proving to be a bit of a pain every step of the way... <_<
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Seems interesting. With the latest version I was able to get it running on my 2nd pc. No idea why the previous version would not work. I think someone mentioned the odd thing of jumping off of the world and your falling upward.
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I think someone mentioned the odd thing of jumping off of the world and your falling upward.
That will never be fixed because in the actual game, there will be no way to fall off the world. The maps will be designed as such.
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How about flyers, could they fly off of the world?
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How about flyers, could they fly off of the world?
I was planning on simply putting up invisible walls at the edges of where I want flyers to be able to go. I will keep the boundaries very generous. I just don't want the player to be able to see or fly over the edge of the world. :p
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Some of the invisible walls can be concealed as mountains that are to high to fly over, or things like that.
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Smooth progress so far. But, you haven't fixed the bug with "/" key?
Fixed. :)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/newchat.jpg)
Working on wrapping the text within the chat window now. :)
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More screenies!
I've redone the Join Game system now, too. It's significantly more reliable and streamlined.
Still needs nicer graphics though! :lol:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/joingamev2.jpg)
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Hmm...
A field test of a prerelease of the new version with Littlefoot Fan revealed some more issues that must be resolved, including a rather brutal framerate bug which I assume to be related to my timer that regulates the rate of code execution...basically, after playing for awhile, you experience horrible slowdown/freezing for a up to 7-10 seconds every few minutes. I'm still looking to the exact cause.
In short, I have more work to do! :p
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Still Action, very good work.
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I would like to try it out. But when I am clicking at the link the page isn¥t shown :blink:
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But, you haven't fixed the bug with "/" key?
I will probably get the chat window to SHOW the / key again because eventually we'll want it there. For now I'll leave it out but I'll put it back in once the chat system fully supports using /a, /p, /w, etc. for addressing specific (groups of) players.
okay so I'm having a lot of fun trying to get text to wrap properly inside the chat box! :p Once I get this working, I'll start working on a 3d version of the training area map as well as putting out requests for more artwork. :)
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Good luck.
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Fixed a bug where the font was smaller in higher resolutions.
Still working on wrapping text within the chat box. Man, I don't know how I'm gonna do that...:p
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anyone you can ask or any open source game's code you can look over, or a programmer forum you can ask on?
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Well here's some bad news:
My main computer, where I have the latest version of our game, decided to totally fail on me. When I turn it on I get nothing but a black screen. I think the motherboard got fried somehow.
Anyway, long story short, I won't be able to work on anything until I get my main computer back, as all my software is on it.
Sorry for the further delay, this is pretty frustrating. I don't need a $200 or something bill right now.
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I hope things turn out ok for you, good luck.
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My main computer, where I have the latest version of our game, decided to totally fail on me. When I turn it on I get nothing but a black screen. I think the motherboard got fried somehow.
That is indeed pretty frustrating. :(
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Shoot! Is the latest version of the game saved anywhere else or is there the risk of any severe loss of data? :bang
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He saved it on many other places so that he wouldnt lose it.. I think he told me something like that.
He didnt sound like o noo the game is gone in his last post either so I dont think its lost, malte :)
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You're right, I do have copies of the code elsewhere, I just don't have the absolute latest version of the code anywhere else. There is a risk of losing a little bit but nothing serious. Maybe 30 lines or so.
I just don't have the software on any of my other computers and it's easier to keep track of everything to just work on a single system.
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I do hope things go well and nothing is lost, good luck. I guess there is no telling till you can get access to the files.
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Dum dee dum, okay Tim wants his computer back! :p
In theory I should be getting a call today about it but we'll see... :p
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Hope computer is ok :) if not you can be reaaally mad with it :D
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if not you can be reaaally mad with it
hehe, good news is that it cost less than I thought it would. bad news: I lost 4GB of RAM. Good news, I don't need it need it, so I'll live with 4GB instead of 8GB for now. :p
Yay okay I'm getting my compy back tomorrow. :p
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Cool that you can get it back.
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Thanks!
Yep, got it back with all my stuff intact. :)
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That is great to hear indeed. :yes
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Hey, just an announcement of what I'm doing over here:
I'm going to leave programming until I can get our first 3d map made, of the training area. Once I get the map completed, I'll look at how long it took to produce and may prefer to ask for assistance in making 3d maps in the future if it eats up excessive amounts of time (which I should be using to program! :p).
I'll have an update for everyone shortly. B)
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A very preliminary look at a training area map. I'm still cleaning it up but as you can see, something is starting to come to life. :)
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/act...ntitled-1-1.jpg (http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/?action=view¤t=Untitled-1-1.jpg)
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Ubersick! That is some seriously awesome landscape. I can't wait to get out there!
What's that word in the upper left hand corner, at the mountain top?
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that says "Frames Per Second"
and here's some more excitement: I've been playing with texturing and layering of textures now! I also cleaned up the map's geography quite a bit so it's smoother and more natural.
Check out this latest in-game screenshot! :D
(I'm putting this one right in the post because I think it's just that awesome. :p)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/TrainingAreaScreenshot1aftermultite.jpg)
Yes, the lighting is a bit dark. I apologize for that, I did a quick render of lighting, just so you could see it all. I'll go back and give it a more "happy daylight" look here.
The framerate is horrible because I haven't been tweaking for performance yet. I got the map a reasonable format, now I need to get lighting and dynamic detail levels functioning better so the framerate doesn't die. :p That, and clean up my mouse camera code, apparently. It slows the game down, BIG TIME for some reason...*groan*. :p
That bedrock texture is pretty huge, too: 1024x1024. I may end up using smaller ones later, for performance reasons. I love the look of the big textures though. :D
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Dude, the texture looks........awesome. Like a real valley. Rocks and grass and everything. Love it! This is great work!
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Nice picture. Looks like things are progressing well.
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and just for fun, here's a link to a picture showing an overhead view of the entire 3d map:
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/act...ing-Ground1.jpg (http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/?action=view¤t=Overhead-Training-Ground1.jpg)
and the 2d map that it's based on, many thanks to Malte! :)
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/act...ySection1-3.png (http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/GreatValleySection1-3.png)
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Looks good. Is the river part filled with water yet?
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Looks good. Is the river part filled with water yet?
Not yet, nope. That's next on my list as soon as I figure out:
1) How to improve framerate! Ugh...:p
2) How to control lighting better. The lighting on the map is horrible right now.
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there's probably sites online desinged to help you with that, by providing helpful suggestions. Maybe the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing)? the nice thing with them is that they respond really quickly to questions, sometimes in less than five minutes.
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Oooo, shiny! Thanks LB&T. B)
Woo, I win! Okay, I got the framerate from about 1 frame per second in the worst situations...up to about 58FPS. :D Looking better all the time! B)
As for how? A simple technical adjustment in the map settings in 3d World Studio. :p Man...simple changes can make huge effects sometimes! :lol:
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Awesomeness :D
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Great, Tim! :D
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My computer is a freakin dinosaur. I'm afraid it won't run the game. Hopefully by the time this thing is ready, I'll have a new computer. I might have to hold my nose and get Vista. :x
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Sounds like the game is coming along well.
As for holding your nose and getting Vista with a new pc, if you wait long enough you may wind up with whatever os comes after Vista.
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Hello:
That 3d view of that section made me drool. As for the texture, I know what are you referring, I have models of Battlestars in my copy of Star Trek Armada2, and the texture for those big battleships are 2048x2048 :blink: , incredible high in detail, but you can resize them without really loosing quality, by reducing a texture file to the half and then you sharpen the texture a bit. I often do that and the model still look very good, and that can really help to get rid of lags.
Keep it up, it looks awesome, I wish I have more knowledge about 3d modelling, I can do models but I am still learning.
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That, is totaly awesome! :blink:
I just can't wait to be in there. :D
What's the programm called you make for the landscapes?
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3d World Studio. :)
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You been using the program long?
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You been using the program long?
Nope, not really. Hmm, I guess I picked it up around january or so, when I thought about trying to make a 3d game. I'm not very experienced with 3d World Studio so I'll need everyone to bear with me. :p
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Maybe there is a forum where folks experienced in the program can help you and give you tips, unless you've already found one. I think you've done a great job so far.
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it¥s getting really cool, I can¥t wait to play it :D
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YES! Hahaha, Finally making some good progress! :D :wow
Okay, I have something for everyone who wants to try it:
A new version! :D
Don't worry, I made the wait worthwhile for everyone!
New stuff in this version:
Lots! :p
1) New Map, featuring the area of the Great Valley from the first LBT! The 2D map is thanks to Malte. I did the conversion from the 2D map to the 3D map used in the game.
2) FIXED Collision problems as far as I can tell. I'd like playtesters to confirm this but I think I have the coding now so that the player is completely unable to walk through a wall. :) I played around for a good 20 minutes without walking through one once.
3) Improved the lighting on the map, creating natural shadows and a real light source from up in the sky.
4) Improved Sky graphics! We now have a nice, pretty daytime sky with none of the ugly 'cube' effects from previous verions. :)
5) Improved overall framerate and game performance with improved collision code and better map design.
6) Put the START button on the HOST GAME screen in the proper place. :p
7) Improved jumping. The cube no longer "skips" or "teleports" upward immediately after pressing the spacebar, but jumps smoothly as expected. :)
8) Changed the game's font to one that isn't so ugly. :p
9) Fixed a bunch of bugs from the previous version, as can be seen in the previous version's post.
10) Options screen lets you change the resolution.
KNOWN ISSUES (basically just cosmetic stuff and online issues at this point. The single player engine basically works. :D ):
1) Camera collision still isn't very good. Left click isn't too bad. Right-click is pretty bad. :p
2) The chat text still doesn't stay properly in that chat box.
3) Online play has some framerate problems after about 10 minutes. I'm still looking into the cause of this. One of my friends here thinks it's a buffer overflow or something. I really have to do some research on this problem.
4) Littlefoot1616 was having trouble getting an earlier version (before the collision fixes and performance optimizations, etc.) of the program to load a map on his Vista machine.
5) If you change the resolution, the game crashes when you close it instead of closing properly.
6) Not enough features! :p
COMING SOON:
1) Hopefully fix the issues above. :p
2) Water in the river bed on the map.
3) The creation of actual tasks to do in the game. :D
4) Changing sky graphics over time, including day/evening/sunset/night/sunrise cycles. :)
Now...finally..after no more delays...
The Land Before Time 3D RPG, V0.10 (http://search3.idrive.com/driveway/jsp/dway_download.jsp?id=r6s6i1i4g4)
If anyone finds any bugs other than camera collision issues or those mentioned directly here, please let me know! Thanks very much! B)
Also, if anyone could please tell me about how many Frames Per Second you're getting when running the game, that would be awesome too! I'm curious how the game runs on other systems.
TECHNICAL STUFF:
You'll see some text in the top-left corner while you're playing the game.
"GRAVITY IS CURRENTLY APPLYING TO PLAYER" appears while the gravity function is working normally. Does not apply while a player is sliding down a hill, as a different set of functions handles that movement.
"FALL-THROUGH PROTECTION ON" appears when a function is in use that prevents the player from falling through a wall in situations where it could potentially happen otherwise. I wrote this one just today. :p
the number that appears there in that corner is the distance from half the height of the player above the player to the nearest object on the map below the player. It's just something I used for debugging purposes, don't worry about it. :p
The game broke 20MB in size today!
2526 lines of code. :P:
Dual-cores not taken proper advantage of, and probably never will because I'm not that good of a programmer. :p
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Awesome action! Things are starting to really look good! I can't wait until actual game content starts being worked on :D
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Before we start doing tasks, we'll need actual characters though.
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Before we start doing tasks, we'll need actual characters though.
We do need the characters to talk to, HOWEVER, we don't need the *graphics* until everything else is done. They're low priority. Littlefoot1616 is working on 3d models of characters as he finds time but we can progress with development without the 3d characters. :)
Now...for a sneak peek of what I'm working on now! Malte, I think you'll like this one:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/now-this-is-awesome.jpg)
Water Water everywhere! :D
Well...where we want it, at least. :p
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action9000, awesome work. :)
Now about the FPS. Because my computer gone dead four days ago, i'm currently using the weaker machine with the processor of 2,8 GHz and 2 Gb of RAM. The FPS rate with resolution 800x600 is 50+. If i'll change resolution to 1024x768 the FPS will fall a little - to 30-40 FPS.
I also was able to find a glitch, i guess. I don't know about others, but when i'm pressing the "Esc" button the game is getting freezed and the error message is being shown by windows. :huh:
BTW, how about to save the last used resolution in game? It is always set to 800x600 by default.
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i'm currently using the weaker machine with the processor of 2,8 GHz and 2 Gb of RAM. The FPS rate with resolution 800x600 is 50+. If i'll change resolution to 1024x768 the FPS will fall a little - to 30-40 FPS.
30-40 FPS on a 2.8GHz machine, huh? Hmm, Im' guessing that video card is not very powerful but at least it's very fast in 800x600 and playable in 1024x768! :) Very cool, thank you!
Ideally I'd like to give the game pretty low system requirements so it's nice and accessible, while having the highest detail levels very pretty for the more powerful systems. It seems like it's working quite well, though I'd like to see what some more users have to say about their performance. :)
Unfortunately I don't have any code in yet to turn the detail levels down or anything so everything is showing up in the maximum view distance and maximum detail settings for now. :p In other words, a computer with a slow video card will really suffer right now. Stick with the low resolutions for now until we can change some other options (lowering the view distance will help a lot. There are a lot of polygons on the screen right now!) , if it's too slow. :)
BTW, the way I've coded the game, nobody will ever see more than 60 Frames per second. :p
I also was able to find a glitch, i guess. I don't know about others, but when i'm pressing the "Esc" button the game is getting freezed and the error message is being shown by windows.
Are you in XP or Vista?
BTW, how about to save the last used resolution in game? It is always set to 800x600 by default.
Sure, saving settings will definitely come in the future. :) Only thing is, I need to save them to some file on your computer and I just haven't gotten around to coding making/opening/closing files yet. For sure, that's coming! That's annoying me too, as I like to run it in 1680x1050, which takes like 5 clicks every time. :p
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Are you in XP or Vista?
XP, second service pack. :)
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Framerate 58/59 in 1024x768 Found no bugs so far, will try again after school if not too busy with homework :D
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Framerate 58/59 in 1024x768 Found no bugs so far
Awesome, thank ya thank ya! :)
XP, second service pack.
If you change the resolution, you will get a Windows error when you close the game. I haven't fixed that yet. I will eventually, I just didn't think it was the most important thing to do right away so I haven't looked into it. :)
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If you change the resolution, you will get a Windows error when you close the game. I haven't fixed that yet. I will eventually, I just didn't think it was the most important thing to do right away so I haven't looked into it. :)
Oh, okay. :)
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I get around 55-57 frames per second on pc2.
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I get around 55-57 frames per second on pc2.
Very cool, thanks Kor. :) :yes
I should have time today to work on the game some more. Hopefully water wil be sorted out fairly soon. :)
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Strange...
It seems I can't download the file.
It gives me an "HTTP Status 500"- Error when I hit download.
Anyway, awesome work, action. :D
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Sounds like Driveway is down again. <_<
I've seen it do that before with other files I've uploaded. It should be up again in time. :)
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Just letting everyone know, water is making good progress. :)
It's not perfect yet but it's getting very! :yes
It's nothing too fancy yet but you can go underwater with some new lighting effects, you can swim on top of the water, etc. At this point, I'm looking to improve the controls and 'physics' of underwater movement.
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Is water hard to do and get to where you like it?
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Now...finally..after no more delays...
The Land Before Time 3D RPG, V0.10
Ha ha! It's finally the weekend, which means I HAVE TIME TO PLAY THE NEWEST VERSION! :birthday And that's exactly what I'm gonna do right now!
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Woah... the new version is breathtaking! You've done a great job on the landscape, Tim! All the colors really bring out the scene! The camera also has been fixed, and it's impossible to see the green behind the sky anymore.
I noticed the shadows too. ;) I thouhgt that was neat.
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?
I assume someone has already mentioned the ability to see under the level when Neil's on a slope? Other than that, everything seems great! 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?
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Found something else out, about the shadows. I'll try and explain this best as I can.
My goal was to find the highest point in the level, so from where I started (I'll call it Ground/Grey Level), I went up the nesrest slope, onto the green part (First Floor, Green). Traveling northeast from my current position, I eventually found myself at the foot of the hill of the next level up (Second Floor, also Green). Traveling up the small lip of this wall, I eventually reached what looked like the highest point in the game, a darkened plateau with the rest of the entire level around it, except for in front of me, where I could only see an unclimable tan wall. Once up there, while admiring the view, I saw a dark blemish on the tan wall in front of me. Moving closer to examine it, I soon realized it was my shadow, impossibly high up on the wall above me. To make sure, I moved all the way in and touched the tan wall. The shadow also zoomed in until we collided (picture the "Littlefoot sees his mom but its his shadow" scene in LBT 1, only my shadow remained the same size). Until we collided, my shadow as higher than I was, and didn;t change size or shade. It looked highly unrealistic.
Here's why I think that happened. Your light source was on an even altitude with myself, which also explained why the floor of the plateau was dark. Therefore, the light shone onto me from a parrallel course and projected my shadow onto the wall. To fix this, I'd recommend either moving the light source up higher, or the plateau down lower, or obstructing the player's ability to reach the plateau.
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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.
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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.
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. :)
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! :D
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). :)
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)
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. :)
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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!
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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 :)
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Oo here ya go!
(http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll44/gofmumbling/neilcubestrong.jpg)
(http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll44/gofmumbling/neilcubestrong2.jpg)
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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.
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What error message, what did it say? :)
Maybe your firewall blocks unknown programs like this one.
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Thanks for the pic, Mumbling. I've added it to the Caption This! thread.
You get the very first new dino emoticon: (http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e294/mr300/gangoffive/Dino_grins.gif) Thanks again!
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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?
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Sounds like you have made progress and have plans for more, good luck and congrads.
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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 (http://search3.idrive.com/driveway/jsp/dway_download.jsp?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. :p)
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 :p) 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. :p
aaand for anyone who cares:
3040 lines of code! :P: :lol
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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?
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I tried the previous, its great, and it works smoothly. Keep up the good work!
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I'll try this version on my laptop asap :^.^:
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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.
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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.
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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 ;)
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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. :p
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. :)
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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.
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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!
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action9000, that's okay. Just don't forget about the project completely. :)
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A break may help you from burning out on the project and it may give you time to get some great ideas and such also.
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Okay :^.^: we be patient. Good luck with your job ;)
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Thanks, everyone. :)
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Wow, a lot has been done since the last time ive played it. Great job so far Tim! As for the temporary (hopefully) break, i completely understand. At least it will let me fool around a bit with the game.
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yeah, I just found out that I'm working 53 hours this week (while also trying to find a better job! :p) so I apologize if I won't be around much. :lol: :p
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o.O
I hope you give yourself breaks during that time! :( Because my lord, you must be exhausted!
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I dont think that's too healthy Tim, take it easy :unsure:
I've tried playing the game on my laptop, no crash this time, but I dont think I'll be able to play it. Look at this.
(http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll44/gofmumbling/jpg.jpg)
Doesn't really work :x
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(Yay, finally I can respond without my internet crashing! :p)
I dont think that's too healthy Tim, take it easy
It's not too bad, I just try to remember that the money will be put to good use. :)
Don't worry, you know I'm lazy. :p I won't overwork myself. :) :DD
I've tried playing the game on my laptop, no crash this time, but I dont think I'll be able to play it. Look at this.
I'll work on a solution to this later. My theory is that reducing the maximum view distance will allow the game to run with less powerful video cards. Hopefully I can push the requirements low enough that we can get it running on systems like that laptop. No promises but I shall do my best! B)
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Every time I tried to play it, the screen turns blue except for the grass. Then the computer locks up and I have to reset it.
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Try not to overwork to often, that is never healthy.
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Every time I tried to play it, the screen turns blue except for the grass. Then the computer locks up and I have to reset it.
Have you tried downloading the low resolution package? Maybe it's too much for your computer. You can download it from a link on page 5.
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I think you have to overlay it. Look for Action9000's instructions somewhere above, as to what to do with the package. Good Luck.
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Good news everyone, I have an update ready! :)
LBT RPG v0.11 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=Y2ovYUlvQTZ5UkZjR0E9PQ)
This isn't a huge update but I'm sure somebody will get a kick out of this one. :p.
New Stuff/Changes:
1) Water on the map, including the following features:
- Transparent water.
- Game knows when you enter or leave the water and whether you fall/jump in/out or walk in/out.
- New lighting and physics while swimming. Please read the instruction file to understand how to control your character in water if you're confused.
2) Camera collision is being totally reworked and has been REMOVED from this version. The camera will be able to pass through all objects. I did this so swimming is playable in the meantime.
3) Changed most of the images to lower-resolution versions (same ones as in the previous patch). These images will be used from now on until the game is much further in development.
4) Disabled the realtime shadows on the cube again.
Known Bugs/Issues:
1) If you swim out of the water (by just swimming up instead of jumping out of the water), you will need to jump twice in order to get back into the water.
2) You cannot dive into the water unless you fall in to the water. You can jump in from the surface or from land but you can't just point the camera down and move forward to dive. I may or may not change this, depending on feedback.
3) Obviously, the camera won't collide with anything so you'll get some graphic issues revolving around this.
4) Multiplayer still a bit buggy from the last version. I haven't looked at chatting or multiplayer at all yet.
[EDIT]
5) If you hold W AND S at the same time while underwater, your character will slowly float straight up. :p Thanks, Mumbling, for finding this bug. :D
[EDIT: FIXED!]
------------
Most of my time in this release was working on the physics for underwater control. Please let me know how the controls feel. Any feedback would be awesome! :)
Thanks for your time, everyone! Enjoy! :D
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I'll try it tomorrow if I remember. I have to switch hard drives since this one doesn't have windows on it.
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The water works fine, but it can be hard to get on the solid ground after swimming. I think it would be fine to rise the water level a little.
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Yahoo!
This isn't my computer, so I can't download and play it now, but I so will once my old one's working again! (Which should be, like, Friday.)
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hmmmm, it seems that the flood in lbt 9 wasn't that big compared to now :lol
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/lbtswimglitch1.jpg)
heh heh i found a very interesting glitch where you can swim in the air!
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/lbtswimglitch2.jpg)
i also found out how to be under the water without have any underwater 'effects'.
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/lbtswimglitch3.jpg)
It took my a while but i found out how to preform both glitches. I'll post it tomorrow as im gonn be going to bed.
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It took my a while but i found out how to preform both glitches. I'll post it tomorrow as im gonn be going to bed.
Thanks for finding this one. I was hoping I had basically dealt with this problem but I am curious how you managed to do that. :) :bang
[EDIT] Okay I see how it works. If you half-enter the water, it triggers the 'being underwater' check but then if you leave again, it doesn't always disable the 'being underwater' event, resulting in the situation you encountered, Flathead. :p
I have a couple of ideas on how to fix this, I just hope at least one of them works. :lol
The water works fine, but it can be hard to get on the solid ground after swimming. I think it would be fine to rise the water level a little.
I agree, the shape of the map will be cleaned up as the game progresses in development. :)
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Not sure if it is possible, but there seems to be 2 states, walking on the ground and being underwater. It may be hard to code, but maybe there can be a third one, where one is in the water but not underwater. One's speed would be reduced by how much of the body is underwater. Like walking along the surf at the beach is faster then trying to walk when half of your body is underwater, or most of it, like in lbt 10 when Littlefoot falls in the water and walks with only his neck and body above the water as he heads to an area to walk out of the water.
I guess swimmers would have a faster move speed in water, better then those non swimmers who may know how to swim, and be better able to move under water?
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It may be hard to code, but maybe there can be a third one, where one is in the water but not underwater.
Right now we have 3 states:
not in water
Swimming on the surface
underwater
Great minds think alike, it seems, Kor! :) I'm currently working on a 'wading' state. It's pretty tricky to code but I think I have the logic basically figured out. I just need to get it working. ;)
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Good luck. It does sound difficult. The wading thing would likely have to check for the dino's size to see when they are underwater or swimming on the surface instead of wading, and figuring out how much they are slowed by sounds like it would not be easy.
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Okay I see how it works. If you half-enter the water, it triggers the 'being underwater' check but then if you leave again, it doesn't always disable the 'being underwater' event, resulting in the situation you encountered, Flathead.
Yep, you got it,i can actually pull it off pretty much every time, and for anyone else who wants to try it heres an easy explanation. first get into a position like this:
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/lbtglitchhow-to2.jpg)
[EDIT] to easily get into this position, first swim near the shore (about as close as in the pic), then jump twice to sink (if you slide down once under the water, find a a less steep slope). Once your half-submerged and your position is like my pic, strafe towards the shore.
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/lbtglitchhow-to3.jpg)
To be under the water without being in the "underwater" state is a bit more difficult. First get into a position like so:
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/lbtglitchhow-to5.jpg)
then jump and strafe towards the shore without leaving the water ( i believe), it may take a few tries to do it though. [EDIT] the slope has to be steep enough that you slide. From the postion in the pic above, jump and strafe towards the shore. Make sure that your jump makes your character surface as you hit the slope. Since the slope is to steep to walk one, your character will slide back into the water without being in the underwater state. Its easy to tell if you did it right as it doesn't have the blue blur effect when under the water:
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/lbtswimglitch3.jpg)
Once done though, theres really not much to fool around with so i would just stick with floating around with the other glitch.
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I was able to do that, but could not figure out how to recreate it. It seemed to me sometimes while underwater I'd have the blur effect and sometimes not. Regardless of how I got underwater.
I also seemed able to sometimes while underwater jump back to the surface and sometimes not.
Also sometimes I seemed able to jump on the top of water like it was ground, and sometimes sink like a stone. I tried to see if there was a certain condition to recreate it, but again it seemed to me to happen at random, or more likely I"m just not smart enough to figure out what the conditions are.
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Also sometimes I seemed able to jump on the top of water like it was ground, and sometimes sink like a stone. I tried to see if there was a certain condition to recreate it, but again it seemed to me to happen at random, or more likely I"m just not smart enough to figure out what the conditions are.
if you come to the surface from underwater, your able to "walk" on top of the waters surface. You have to jump twice to go back under. It seems to me that its an easy way to swim on the surface of the water without worrying about jumping out of the water and back in.
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(http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll44/gofmumbling/screenshot.jpg)
I tried it on my laptop again, good news. It didn't crash and I could actually walk. The framerate 1 wasn't too bad, I guess I could play with it if needed. I changed the resolution to the lowest level first though.
Somehow the walls don't look completely correct. Anyway. If you're ever going to set up minimum requirements. I'd say they must at least have 512mb RAM because my 256mb really is just a bit too laggy. :p
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The game itself eats up around 90MB of RAM while it's running, plus who-knows-how-much video card memory.
Eventually, once we get the view distance more reasonable (say, 10000 instead of 500000 :p), it may change a bit because all the view distance is horribly slow! :p I can totally believe it for now though, hopefully the system requirements will be reduced as this project gets developed. :)
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Malte, Jason and I have been talking a bit about how the character select screen will look someday so I figured hey, why not get started on it now? :D
Players choose the type of dino by clicking the buttons on the left side. From there, every species of dino of that type will start walking around the valley in the middle of the screen. :p Click on this one to choose your species.
Eventually, those button graphics will be replaced with our own drawings. Each button will have a picture of at least one of each available species of that type, ideally. So if it's the 'longneck' button, it would have a picture of an apatosaurus, brachiosaurus, diplodocus, etc. on the button.
The transparent box on the right side will soon show a description of the dino, as well as its stats and some abilities unique to that dino type. :)
Anywho, here's what we have so far. This is a screenshot directly from the game program, so everything you see there is implimented in the code now. :) :wow
Also, that background isn't an image. It's a realtime render of a 3d terrain, meaning we'll be able to pan around it, make it larger and have all sorts of opportunity for prettiness later on. :)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/select-character-screen-high-res-1.jpg)
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Woah, you've gotten far. I know, I've been really lagging on that testing biz, but school's back in, so free time has really dissapeared. I'll get back on it first chance I get (Which, with semester finals coming up, isn't the next few weeks)
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Sounds like you have done a lot of progress, discussions.
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Wow, the 3D terrain looks fantastic. o.O
Looks like there is more space for other dino species.
Are there any planned?
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There will be the six main species:
Longneck
Threehorn
Spike-/Clubtail
Swimmer
Flyer
Fastrunner
Each main species will have several sub-kinds which would have the same abilities but different looks. There has been talk (nothing absolutely settled there) about making at least three sub-kinds per species (e.g. Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodocus in case of the longneck). In case of some species there are more than three different interesting alternatives.
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And I have even more good news for everyone: I have a new release ready! :D
The Land Before Time Online, v0.12 (http://search3.idrive.com/driveway/jsp/dway_download.jsp?id=q6v4a9e8f1)
Changes from the previous version:
-Fixed the swimming bugs that were pointed out to me (thanks everyone!). If you continue to find swimming bugs, please let me know. I play tested these changes quite a bit and couldn't reproduce any of the previous bugs. A few minor cosmetic problems still exist (such as the cube jumping a tiny bit when you leave the water) but it should be fully playable now. Please let me know of anything that's still broken. :p
-New Character Select screen.
The way it works is very simple: Put your mouse over a portrait and it will light up. Click on the portrait to select that as your character. The character has absolutely no purpose in the game yet but this menu is fully functional, the character you pick does assign different values to the stat variables and this will lead the way to having a choice of characters in the near future. :)
You won't be able to start the game until you choose a character. You'll see what happens if you try. :p
-Arrow keys can now be used to control your character. :lol :p :wow Only thing is, swimming does almost require use of the mouse so using the arrow keys may be a bit awkward. I'm willing to look into a way to control the camera with the keyboard if anyone is interested. :)
-Removed the opportunity to change the resolution in the options menu. This is because DirectX doesn't actually allow the changing of resolution without reloading all of the media. I was experiencing serious stability problems when trying to do so after any 3d data was loaded so I just removed the feature. Soon, I will create a way to set the resolution before you start the game. :) It's set to 800x600 right now and there is no way to change it aside from editting the source code and remaking the .exe file. :p
Known issues:
-Multiplayer bugs from before still aren't fixed.
-The framerate may be a few FPS lower than the previous version. I hope to improve performance a lot with a significant update in the near future, however it will take quite a bit of work (redoing my sky code completely) so I've been putting it off. :p
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Groan, okay apparently it isn't completely fixed. :( I was able to reproduce the bug of swimming in the air after enough attempts at swimming up a slope. It rarely happens so it requires a pretty exact set of circumstances, which I'm still trying to figure out what those are. Grrrr. :p
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Sounds like something that is very frustrating to find. I'll try to remember to download it tomorrow, if it lets me download. Says I've used my download limit for today, but I never visit the place but to download your game.
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Okay I've done some more tweaking to the code and I *think* I've basically hammered the bugs out this time. I'm still doing more playtesting but if anyone wants to give this a go, feel free. :) Thanks to everyone for their time! :D
Land Before Time RPG, v0.121 (http://search3.idrive.com/driveway/jsp/dway_download.jsp?id=i1g5c7f2w1)
Sorry this is being such a pain, everyone. Here's the code just for checking/setting whether the player is wading, swimming on the surface or underwater, to see why it's being such a pain. :p
Yea, it's long. :p
I'm not usually a fan of releasing source code publically so this is gonna be all you get. :p
- Code: on
void checkIfUnderwater()
{
SC_UpdateObject(player);
//if the player is touching the surface of the water AND the ground at the same time...
if ((SC_ObjectCollision(player,mapWater)==1)&&(SC_ObjectCollision(player,map)==1))
{
if (wading==true)
{
dbText(0,250,dbStr(playerYWhileWading));
dbText(0,260,dbStr(oldPlayerY));
if (playerYWhileWading-oldPlayerY<-.001)
{
disableGoingUnderwater=true;
}
else if (playerYWhileWading-oldPlayerY>.001)
{
disableGoingUnderwater=false;
}
}
wading=true;
playerYWhileWading=oldPlayerY;
}
else if ((SC_ObjectCollision(player,mapWater)==0)||(SC_ObjectCollision(player,map)==0))
{
if (wading==true)
{
if (playerYWhileWading-oldPlayerY>.001)
{
wadedIntoWater=true;
}
}
wading=false;
dbText(400,350,"Not wading");
outOfWaterTimer++;
if (outOfWaterTimer>=2)
{
disableGoingUnderwater=false;
outOfWaterTimer=0;
}
}
if (wading==false)
{
//disableGoingUnderwater=false;
}
dbText(300,400,dbStr(wading));
dbText(300,410,dbStr(disableGoingUnderwater));
//If the player is jumping into/out of the water for the first frame of a new collision with the surface...
if ((SC_ObjectCollision(player,mapWater)==1)&& (collidedWithWaterSurfaceAlready==false) && ((yVelocity < -30) || (yVelocity > 0)))
{
//If you're jumping into the water..
//if the falling speed exceeds this value..
if (yVelocity < -30)
{
swimmingOnSurface=false;
fallingIntoWater=true;
collidedWithWaterSurfaceAlready=true;
dbText(400,400,"FALLING INTO WATER");
}
//If you're jumping out of the water
else if (yVelocity > 50)
{
underwater=false;
slowDownFallDueToWater=false;
swimmingOnSurface=false;
jumpingOutOfWater=true;
collidedWithWaterSurfaceAlready=true;
dbText(400,410,"JUMPING OUT OF WATER");
}
else if ((yVelocity <=50) && (yVelocity>=0))
{
underwater=false;
slowDownFallDueToWater=false;
swimmingOnSurface=true;
jumpingOutOfWater=false;
collidedWithWaterSurfaceAlready=true;
dbText(400,410,"SWIMMING OUT OF WATER");
}
} //END jumping into/out of water
//If the player is swimming onto the surface from underwater (as opposed to jumping out)...
else if ((SC_ObjectCollision(player,mapWater)==1) && (yVelocity > 0) && (yVelocity <= currentSwimmingForce))
{
underwater=false;
swimmingOnSurface=true;
}
else if (((SC_ObjectCollision(player,mapWater)==0) && (fallingIntoWater==true))||(SC_ObjectCollision(player,mapWater)==0) && (wadedIntoWater==true))
{
if (disableGoingUnderwater==false)
{
wadedIntoWater=false;
underwater=true;
dbText(300,240,"BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA");
fallingIntoWater=false;
}
}
//If the player is WALKING into the water for the first frame...
else if ((SC_ObjectCollision(player,mapWater)==1) && (yVelocity> -50) && (yVelocity <0)&& (collidedWithWaterSurfaceAlready==false))
{
//if ((yVelocity >= -100) && (yVelocity <=0))
//{
swimmingOnSurface=true;
underwater=false;
slowDownFallDueToWater=false;
dbText(0,250,"ENTERING WATER SLOWLY");
//}
}
//Lets you walk out of the water when swimming on surface
else if (((SC_ObjectCollision(player,map)==1)) && ((swimmingOnSurface==true)||(wading==true)))
{
if ((yVelocity >= -100) && (yVelocity <=0))
{
dbText(0,220,"LEAVING WATER");
swimmingOnSurface=false;
underwater=false;
slowDownFallDueToWater=false;
fallingIntoWater=false;
}
}
//If not touching the surface of the water
else if ((SC_ObjectCollision(player,mapWater)==0))
{
//reset this variable
collidedWithWaterSurfaceAlready=false;
}
if ((underwater==true)&& (goUnderwaterTimer>0))
{
goUnderwaterTimer--;
}
else if (underwater==false)
{
goUnderwaterTimer=90;
}
}
Thanks. I'll download it and tomorrow or sometime after when it's sorta half way warm here I'll swap out hdd's and try the game for a while. I'd rather not handle icy cold computer components today, especially when it's hard for me to keep my hands half way warm instead of cold. .
Everything seems good, except I've noticed if you are on the little island that is in the river and partially underwater or a little bit under water and jump sometimes you can land on top of water and stay there. It may take more then 1 time but eventually I was able to land on top of water and walk on water all over the river. it seems to only work at the island, maybe cause of the slope. When I tried it on any other shore or land that lead to the water, though I only tired it a few times, I wasn't able to get it to work. Not sure if it is a bug, or just swimming on the surface, but when I tried to enter the water anywhere the char would walk along the bottom even deep under water.
If I jump while on the water I'd always sink straight to the bottom. Unlike before in an earlier version.
Kor, I think that's just wading. When you're on the surface, the "1" lights up under On Surface, which means Tim put that in there on purpose. Maybe in the future the avatar will bob up and down or something, like it's in the water.
Just wondering, are we supposed to be able to get onto that steep rocky island thing? Beause the only way I could get up there was traveling NE counterclockwise and repeatedly jumping to my left.
If it were wading why could I only get and wade on the surface from the island in the river. Anywhere else, along the banks of the river, I could not jump and stay on the surface. Only on the island banks, and then you have to jump while at least slightly in the water, enough so you get above the water and eventually you'll land on the water and stay there, as long as you don't jump.
Okay I'm trying to fumble with these bugs but this is proving to be a royal pain. :p
I have another attempt here, I know this one still has a bug with the spacebar, that if you press it to swim straight up to the surface, you will sometimes jump out of the water, fall back in and bob straight back up to the surface again. :p
If you ignore that, I'm curious how this version runs for everyone. I've made quite a few changes, including:
1) Reduced view distance which will help improve peformance on machines with slow video cards. It won't do much now (you probably won't even notice a difference) but this will mean a difference between the game being playable and unplayable later in development.
2) Made the cube larger and with a higher movement speed.
3) Some tweaks to the water detection.
I know this isn't a complete fix to everything but I am curious if people find this works better for detecting underwater/not. :)
Anyone who wants to give it a shot, please do so. :)
http://search3.idrive.com/driveway/jsp/dwa...p?id=w4g0a7s1r6 (http://search3.idrive.com/driveway/jsp/dway_download.jsp?id=w4g0a7s1r6)
Sorry about this, everyone. Like I said: amateur programmer. :p :lol
Seriously, dude, how far do you think any of us would've gotten if we'd tried to do a project like this? You don't need to apologize, you're doing awesome.
Seriously, dude, how far do you think any of us would've gotten if we'd tried to do a project like this? You don't need to apologize, you're doing awesome.
Indeed.
I've been trying version 0.122 on the laptop. Selecting a character was hard as the mouse was hardly visable sometimes, but that's because its my slow laptop.
What I did notice is that there's a sheep in the game.....
(http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll44/gofmumbling/sheep-2.jpg)
Seriously, I didn't randomly enter that in paint or so. I just jumped out of the water and had a good laugh :p This happened any time i jumped out of the water at this low framerate.
Comments, Tim?
Believe it or not, that's not a bug (or eh..sheep :p) at all. :lol That was just an indicator I had the program write on the screen when passing through the water to make sure the code was flowing properly. :p I needed something long enough that I could see it when it flashed up quickly. :p
Ahh okay :D
Fun thing for slow computers :p
I think Mumbling has discovered the RPG's first ever Easter egg.
Okay, there seems to be a small problem here. I downloaded the latest version and after extracting the files, I double clicked the .exe file and I get 7 Runtime Errors. First, it failed to get device caps. Second, it failed to find valid stencil buffer. Third, it was Unable to create device. Fourth, it was Unable to setup 3D device. Finally, the last three repeat and then it just goes back to the desktop as if nothing was done in the first place.
Suggestions on how to fix this?
That's curious. Does that computer normally run directX 9 games properly?
What operating system are you running? If you know the make/model of your video card, that would be useful, too.
I have Windows XP lite SP3. (I can't thank LBTlover enough for giving me this.)
All I know about my graphics card is that it works with the PCI-Express x16 slot. However, it is a good one and harder to overheat than my old one.
Furthermore, I hardly put ANY games onto this computer, if at all. So I'm VERY unsure as to what games work on it.
Hmm... Maybe I should try it out on my Vista Laptop.
I have Windows XP lite SP3.
Wonder if it's something to do with Lite giving you problems. I've never heard of anyone having problems on XP if they just extract the .zip file and run the EXE.
Your video card should be fine; PCI-E x 16 will be modern enough for sure. :)
Tried my Vista Laptop. Game works on that one. :)
Oh, and I think I found the problem. When I downloaded it, it showed to be a .zip.tgz file. Could THAT have something to do with it?
.zip.tgz file.
Probably, actually. Sounds like something to do with your Windows defaulting to some open-archetecture file format for compression (Tar GZip, often used in Linux) or something, I don't really know what it's doing. Try downloading
WinRAR (http://www.rarlab.com) onto your XP Lite machine and extract it with that. See if it works any better. :)
WinRAR didn't solve the problem. Ended up with the same errors. Looks like I can only play it on my Vista Laptop. Oh well! :)
WinRAR didn't solve the problem. Ended up with the same errors.
veery odd. If you want to look more into it, try running a different, reasonably modern game on that XP Lite computer (one that requires directX 9, if you can) and see what happens. We can try to work out the problem from there. I really wonder what XP Lite does to gaming, if anything.
Otherwise if it's not a big deal, glad to hear it works on your Vista machine. I know someone who had problems getting it to work on his Vista computer, yet others who got it to work fine. :)
It works fine on my vista home basic.
It works fine on my vista home basic.
Awesome. :)
Hey, just letting everyone know what I'm up to now: :)
Due to discoveries on how to improve performance, I'm working on converting the training ground map into higher-quality, doubling its resolution from 128x128 to 256x256, allowing for more precise hill and slope shapes with less jagged edges. I'd like to push it to 512x512 if we can. I'm still experimenting but 512x512 maps would look fantastic! :D Even the 256 maps are looking a lot nicer than the old ones. I'm just realizing that it's not the video that's slowing down the program in most cases; it's the code itself. Therefore, we can push the video quality a bit more with no loss in speed. ;)
I'm also working on tweaking the shape of the training map so everything is accessible that's supposed to be accessible. It will also be more user-friendly to move in and out of the water on the next release.
Okay awesome :)
Sounds like it's progressing well. Good luck.
Well nobody is reporting any major bugs and I think I know of most of the problems at the moment so I'm saying...
Good enough for now! Time to move on! :p
We can come back to tweak everything perfectly later but it's functional now so I say we need to get some game features going! :D Next project: the integration of character stats and the beginnings of the in-game interface, NPCs and NPC interaction and tasks.
And all that without the 3d characters :p
And all that without the 3d characters
Did ya hear that, jason? :p Did ya? :D
:lol
Ahh, the power of cubes and random shapes!
And all that without the 3d characters
Did ya hear that, jason? :p Did ya? :D
:lol
Ahh, the power of cubes and random shapes!
I guess he's not the only one to blame :p I should really try it again some day or just at least try to find some tutorials :bang
The only real luck I've had with 3d modelling tutorials that don't suck is this one, that i know I've posted here before:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro)
If you're using Blender 3d, the best freeware modelling program I know, this is a pretty awesome tutorial.
I also know that getting into 3d modelling takes a long time! :p You're welcome to play with it all you want and, this goes for Jason too, of course I won't make anyone do any more than they want to do; this is a volunteer project, after all :D
But I'm sure both of you know that, so anyway.. :p
thanks to anyone who wants to give it a shot, best of luck, have fun and if you're don't ever want look at a 3d model again, it's all good! you don't have to. :p :lol
Hey all! I have an update ready for anyone who wants it! :D
[EDIT] just fixed a minor bug and attached the update here. Also moved the game to Yousendit.
LBT RPG v0.131 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=WnBRb242a0RvQnVGa1E9PQ)
New stuff in this version:
- Fixed some more bugs relating to the water. If you can still swim in the air or walk normally underwater, please let me know because I think I fixed that. :p
[edit] added one line of code that should make this pretty bullet-proof. If you can find a way to break the water now...well I'll be sad. :p
-Added a screen before the main menu loads. This screen will let the player choose the resolution and colour depth to run the game at.
I did this because it is a limitation of DirectX that one cannot change the resolution without reloading ALL of the 3d objects and textures again. I was running into serious complications and crashes relating to changing the resolution so I just said, "okay, if you can choose it before I load all that media and then I won't have to worry about that!" :p
-Increased the resolution of the in-game map from 128x128 to 256x256.
The result of this is that the maps can have a more 'flowing' shape: smoother hills, more little details, less-jagged terrain, etc.
This resolution change seems to have generated a bug with 'invisible' walls around the map. I have been able to control them much better since I first noticed the problem. I hope they won't be a big deal but I'll play around some more and hopefully find a workaround. They seem pretty minor but I can tell something isn't *quite* right in the odd place... :p
-Started on the development of character stats.
Each character choice does save different values to the game, which will soon be used to allow the player to have a different game experience based on the character they chose.
The characters do have "current" and "maximum" life/stamina values, as well as other basic stats described in the "character stats" topic.
-Started on the development of Life/Stamina meters on the interface. The meters at the top-left of the screen do respond to your character's life/stamina. The game has no code yet to cause you to lose life/stamina so you won't see it. I have, however, manually tested changing the player's current life in the code and the sizes of the bars change appropriately.
-Changed the maximum view distance that the player can see down to 8000 units. This will help keep performance up on lower-end video cards and low-RAM machines for now. Soon, I'll let the user set the view distance from the Options menu. :)
Coming soon!
-Option to change view distance
-Ability to see your stats in-game
-The ability to save options (resolution, colour depth and view distance, for now. More later) to a file on your computer and skip the "choose resolution" screen once you have one you like if you want.
A little later:
-an attempt to give the player an NPC to talk to :p
Known problems:
- If you jump out of the water while swimming, your speed in the air is faster than while in water so it's like a speed boost.
-Sliding down a hill into the water is kind of a pain to recover from once you're in the water. Try jumping and moving away from the hill.
-If you hold down both mouse buttons, the camera will stay where it is, no matter where you move. :p
Just a little tip:
You will need the mouse to control in water. Without it, it will be a lot harder to get precise control since the control system is based around using the mouse.
Technical stuff:
The game does eat up 150MB of memory at its peak now, so low-memory video cards may have a hard time with it. The bad news is, this is only going to get worse. This game will demand quite a bit of memory but I will try to keep the minimum requirements as low as possible.
And if anyone cares, the code is 4169 lines long now. :p
Good work Tim! :D Keep it up! :) :yes
This was the first version that I was able to play, so, I could only see your game work now, good work :D
I find it funny the fact of we moving cubes, lol if you press both left and right botun of the mouse, the camera stops where it is and the cube continues moving, lol I did same Rally xD.
Seriousely, nice work
Thanks, both of you. :) I'm enjoying this project more and more, the further we get with it. :D
I find it funny the fact of we moving cubes, lol if you press both left and right botun of the mouse, the camera stops where it is and the cube continues moving, lol I did same Rally xD.
Seriousely, nice work
Right you are! :p
I was going to put that in "Known problems" but I totally forgot (again!) :p Thanks for the reminder. :D
It's gonna be a great game, I'm sure :smile
hmm, it says "You have utilized the download limit for the day" when i try to download it, yet i haven't been on driveway for a long time now.
Also, i'm taking a 3D digital imagery coarse at the college im going to this semester, so might be able to help you with some 3D stuff. (that is if the coarse has enough interest at the college).
Hello:
I have the same problem, no idea how I can download it to test it. But I am very interested to see your 3d models, because I have some experience with it. I'd like to help you on this but right now I am too busy trying to finish some Battlestar Galactica models for a modification for the game Star Trek: Armada2, and with my own little mod too, but I still would like to know some minor things, like what are poly-count limits for the characters (to make myself an idea if they are high-ploy or not :D ).
Thank you for your time people, keep it up with this game! :DD
Also, i'm taking a 3D digital imagery coarse at the college im going to this semester, so might be able to help you with some 3D stuff.
That would be awesome, both of you! Littlefoot1616 is starting work on 3d models as well. I know they can be a boatload of work so the more people we can get on them, the better. :)
If anyone is interested in making maps, as opposed to objects and dinosaurs, please see Malte. I put him in charge of the landscaping department. :p :lol
(to make myself an idea if they are high-ploy or not ).
Ideally keeping it med-poly would probably be smart(say, 3000, maybe 4000 tops). The map is about 115k polys so a few more thousand won't be a big deal. :) If you want to make a higher-poly model as well (say, 6k to 8k), we can use the high-poly versions for "high detail" settings and the lower ones for "low detail" settings. :) the more variety, the more flexibility we can give to the system requirements. :) A medium-poly of around 3000 would probably be fine though. Naturally we don't want to go too high; we do have to render them at 60FPS. :lol
Most important thing to bear in mind is, I'm going for compatibility with lower-end machines. Unfortunately, due to being a large-world game, the memory requirements will be high, no way around that. For the 3d objects, keeping the polys on the low side would probably be smart but if you really feel ambitious, a high-quality model for use on high-end machines would be awesome, too! :D
hmm, it says "You have utilized the download limit for the day" when i try to download it, yet i haven't been on driveway for a long time now.
I just fixed a bug in the program and put it up on Yousendit. Check my big post above for the latest link/update. :D
question it is online or offline? i can't determine :DD
question it is online or offline? i can't determine
Both! :D
The game only has two options:
Host a game
Join a game.
If you host a game, you can play by yourself as much as you want until somebody else joins your game. Once they do, everyone in the game can work together.
Some parts of the game will be designed to be played by yourself. Other parts will be designed to have teams of players solve the problem.
ah ok tnx
If anyone is interested in making maps, as opposed to objects and dinosaurs, please see Malte.
i'll probably end up doing this, as i find level design to be more enjoyable.
I just fixed a bug in the program and put it up on Yousendit. Check my big post above for the latest link/update.
great! i'll try it now.
[EDIT] Ok so i just tried it out of a bit, and im loving the increase in speed. Also, i wasn't able to perform both underwater glitches, though im gonna keep trying at that :lol. Doing great Tim!
Good news, Flathead!
I've been working a bit more on the interface stuff today. Here's a fully functional "Character Stats" screen. It can be opened and closed by pressing C on the keyboard. The stats all come from the data stored in the program so this is the real deal. ;)
I'll throw some more text on there in the future, including HP and Stamina, as well as some detailed stats (such as the values of things that the stats effect).
Coming soon! :D
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/Basic-Stats-all-dino-types.jpg)
I've been working a bit more on the interface stuff today. Here's a fully functional "Character Stats" screen. It can be opened and closed by pressing C on the keyboard
Ya, the character stats screen better be mapped to the 'C' key :lol :smile (been playing waaay to much Diablo II lately). But seriously though, thats sweet. Oh btw, whats that grey bar thats in between what seems to be the health and stamina bar. My first thought was some sort of mana-based indicator (probably cause i've played a crap load of oblivion), But looking at the pic makes me think i might be just something to separate the to bars.
But looking at the pic makes me think i might be just something to separate the to bars.
lol yea, that's just part of the background graphic that the bars sit on. I noticed that too but was too lazy to replace the temporary graphics. :p
Sorry about that! :lol
Hello:
About the game been memory-hungry, lol, everybody says I need a new pc... the bad thing is that my family has too many priorities and me too.
I can handle models that high in polies, but I usualy go with lower because Star Trek: Armada2 is a fleet vs fleet combat game and there are always tons of ships flying aroung blowing up stuff, so I rely on textures to do a great deal of details. That can be an asset specially for any NPC characters that are usually just part of the backgrounds or if you want scenes with many grown-ups discussing things; but I think well-done textures can save all of us a considerably ammount of polies even for the main characters, even better if you can make them to have the less ammount of texture files possible (I think that could make any pc happier).
But it is not my decision, in fact I am too anxious to see more of what are you all up to :DD .
I don't know if it is a bug but if you press right or left botun, and you drag it up, it looks like the cube is flying. :p
Edit: LOL, I actualy found a water bug, if you drag it up(left or right clik) and if you try to enter the water like that, the cube does't enter, he just walks on top of it, only if you jump he enters, lol pretty funny though :lol :lol
Edit: LOL, I actualy found a water bug, if you drag it up(left or right clik) and if you try to enter the water like that, the cube does't enter, he just walks on top of it, only if you jump he enters, lol pretty funny though
Don't worry, that's normal. ;)
When you're on top of the water like that, the game understands it as "swimming on the surface of the water". Eventually I'll just move the cube down a little bit so it looks like it's actually swimming instead of 'skating'.
What your seeing is intentional and correct though. I know it looks like a bug but the code is doing what it's supposed to do. :)
hey action9000 how about the characters yeh the pictures are nice in the selection but how about the visualization of the characters
I think we will need people who can do 3d animation and create those characters first kanganix. Probably, that will come later in the game.
It does seem the character seems to be able to move much faster then before. Things seem much better.
w8 i know where you can make your own 3D animation heres the link
the compost in to 3
LINK: http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/blogwa...tion-Blogs.html (http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/blogwatch/65912/Best-3D-Animation-Blogs.html)
enjoy!!! :DD
After doing a bit of playing around, I have reached some conclusions for the game's current system requirements:
Processor: Pentium 4 or equivalent CPU.
RAM: The game eats up 150MB of RAM so being able to load all of Windows and the whole game (plus any Applications you have) would be ideal. Therefore I recommend a minimum of 512MB.
Video card: Unfortunately the graphics are not well-coded right now. I have gotten very poor, jerky performance on any system without dedicated video memory.
Playable results have come from, to me, on any computer with:
1) A video card that has dedicated RAM on it, as opposed to sharing system RAM.
2) A video card with at least 256MB of memory.
I don't know which one of these factors is more important since I haven't been able to test other combinations. I do know that a low-end video card with 256MB of dedicated memory works awesome and a video card with 128 MB of shared system memory is unplayable.
Those are interesting system requirements. I've noticed that my frames per second, if that is the correct phrase, is lower then before. I use to get about 59 and now I get around 53-55, not much lower. I guess it may be due to the resolution I choose, which is the one the default is at.
For most games, except for old ones, built in video usually isn't good enough it seems.
which is the one the default is at.
It used to default to 800x600 resolution and 32-bit colour.
hey action9000 you use Pentium 4 Processor and 256 MB
i use Pentium 3 (P3) 800 Mhz and a memory of 256 SD Ram with a video card
(Brand name : Nvidia Geforce 4 MX x8 AGP 128MB)
the graphics are outstanding you will see no lines just 3D pure
i will w8 on the Update on the game guys i hope it will be a success game of pure online and offline :DD
the graphics are outstanding you will see no lines just 3D pure
And does the game run smooth too?
If it feels smooth when you move around, that means we know something about the system requirements. :)
256 MB
sorry its 512MB not 256MB sorry :p
you will call too smooth in the game
you will call too smooth in the game
Good!
Okay, that basically settles that:
System requirements:
Processor: Pentium 3 or better.
RAM: 256MB (probably not an absolute minimum but a recommended minimum)
Video: Any video card with dedicated Video RAM (not shared RAM). Any video card that uses shared RAM will have trouble. Unfortunately, most laptop video cards (except modern, or gaming laptops) do share their memory with the system RAM and therefore will have trouble. :(
Thank you very much, Kanganix! :D :D
No problem :lol
Looks like fairly moderate system requirements. That is a plus.
Hello:
Indeed it is, because my pc has similar specs of Kanganix's pc :smile .
so i think its pretty safe to say at this point that the water glitches can't be done. I've spent probably about an hour total trying to do both glitches on varies slopes throughout the river, with no success.
so i think its pretty safe to say at this point that the water glitches can't be done. I've spent probably about an hour total trying to do both glitches on varies slopes throughout the river, with no success.
Woo! About time! :p
Thanks flathead, I sincerely appreciate it.
i wish i can help in the game but ha had a lot of work to do :lol
i wish i can help in the game but ha had a lot of work to do
Don't worry, theres still a really really long time, before this game is gonna be finished, so i'm sure you'll be able to help some time in the future.
Woo! About time! dino_tongue.gif
Thanks flathead, I sincerely appreciate it.
Heh, no problem. Though i gotta admit, i was kinda hoping i would be able to find a way to pull it off :lol.
Also, i just had my first class of the 3D digital imagery. I guess theres 25 people total in the class, so thats definately enough interest for the coarse to keep going, now i just gotta see if i can survive through the semester, as i have an overloaded coarse load at this moment. Anyways, so hopefully i'll be able to help with some modeling or whatever sometime in the future.
Don't worry, theres still a really really long time, before this game is gonna be finished, so i'm sure you'll be able to help some time in the future.
yeh i had a 3d modeling studion in my computer i download before the flash animation i will finish and call the project "project kanganix" soon :DD
Good luck to all those with various projects and classes.
Okay everyone, I'm just letting you know what I'm doing. :)
The only way I found that I could maybe fix the invisible wall problem is by breaking the map into smaller pieces. This is what I'm trying to do now: convert the one big map into (maybe 4, maybe 16) smaller maps and connect them seamlessly.
The reason for this, if anyone cares, is because the Collision engine I'm using has a limit to how many polygons can be on a single object when checking collision between two objects (usually the player and the map). With a single texture on the map, I don't go over this limit, but I do when I have more than one texture. The only fix is to make sure the polygon count of any one object is less than about 250k (250k works, 300k doesn't :p). The map with 3 textures is about 450k, which would explain the problem. :p
I'll need some time to do this, so bear with me. :p :lol I have to edit the map, connect the pieces seamlessly and recode a bunch of stuff. :p
Some more good news is, doing this will give us a lot more detail level control and will help improve performance, especially later on. :)
Sounds like a good idea and that you are on the right track of things. I'm sure you'll continue to do well.
The reason for this, if anyone cares, is because the Collision engine I'm using has a limit to how many polygons can be on a single object when checking collision between two objects (usually the player and the map). With a single texture on the map, I don't go over this limit, but I do when I have more than one texture. The only fix is to make sure the polygon count of any one object is less than about 250k (250k works, 300k doesn't :p). The map with 3 textures is about 450k, which would explain the problem. :p
:lol
Good luck Tim. Take all the time you need :)
I ran into a few problems:
1.) Can't see character choice.
2.) Stats screen does not show up.
I'm assuming the white cube is a place holder.
1.) Can't see character choice.
2.) Stats screen does not show up.
The stats screen by pressing C doesn't show up in the release I posted here. That was a screenshot of the latest version I have on my computer here. I'll release it when I get maps working better.
Thanks for your patience, everyone. :)
Turned out that I had to totally rework how we're going to load maps into the game, after a lot of research and messing around with code. :p
Anyway, I am making progress! My current work plays beautifully fast, rendering fewer than 1/3 of the polygons that it used to, while also destroying the "invisible wall" bug! :D
I'm just playing around with lighting right now. Here's a neat screenshot I came up with when stumbling across a sort of "evening-style" lighting. :)
Enjoy the teaser, new release coming soon, once I figure out how the lighting actually works and I tweak a few more things. :lol :lol
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/act...the-evening.jpg (http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/?action=view¤t=Great-Valley-in-the-evening.jpg)
Nice! :o
Can't wait for the latest version of it!
I was wondering will you be including various times of day during gameplay? Maybe this was asked, but, anyways, eheh.
I was wondering will you be including various times of day during gameplay? Maybe this was asked, but, anyways, eheh.
Absolutely! :D
We'll have a system that cycles through various sky graphics (maybe even animations if we can figure out how!), through a day/evening/sunset/night/sunrise sort of cycle, with the lighting keeping up with the current sky. :)
As for the timing of it, some will be event-based, location-based or real-life time-based. I don't plan on having the sky match the server's time because depending on when the player could get around to playing, they may only see a certain time of day. Therefore, I will have the time of day start random and cycle faster than realtime.
We're still working out where the sky graphics will come from. I have a great program for producing sky graphics. Mumbling is also very interested in designing some background graphics for us. Perhaps a combination of both could result in something very cool!
I was wondering will you be including various times of day during gameplay? Maybe this was asked, but, anyways, eheh.
Absolutely! :D
We'll have a system that cycles through various sky graphics (maybe even animations if we can figure out how!), through a day/evening/sunset/night/sunrise sort of cycle, with the lighting keeping up with the current sky. :)
As for the timing of it, some will be event-based, location-based or real-life time-based. I don't plan on having the sky match the server's time because depending on when the player could get around to playing, they may only see a certain time of day. Therefore, I will have the time of day start random and cycle faster than realtime.
We're still working out where the sky graphics will come from. I have a great program for producing sky graphics. Mumbling is also very interested in designing some background graphics for us. Perhaps a combination of both could result in something very cool!
Sounds like great plans! Good luck!
Wow, this looks amazing, how can I try this game out?
I suppose you gave me an excuse to release an update now. :p :p
The latest version can be downloaded here!
The Land Before Time RPG, v0.14!
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...UMGMzS3BFQlE9PQ (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=WnBRT0NUMGMzS3BFQlE9PQ)
[EDIT] See the next page of posts for version v0.151. This one is outdated now.
To install:
Just put all the files somewhere on your computer. Run LBT RPG to play!
Click "Host Game" to play the game. The controls are in the instructions file, included.
New Stuff in this version:
1) Completely redesigned map system, that actually works now!! :D. The result is a smaller file size per map, faster load times (though the character select map is still slow to load. I haven't replaced it yet), better framerates and a fix to the "invisible wall" bug that was a royal pain in the last version. :p :D
2) You can now press the C key to see your character's stats in a popup window. Press it again to close the window.
3) Increased the view distance back to 16000, basically the entire distance of the map.
4) Changed some map textures and lighting. I'll get it prettier later but it's good enough for now. :)
5) Added a "Polygons rendered" counter on the top left, so you can see how the program controls the amount of stuff it's drawing, as you're playing the game. It used to be stuck at around 460 000 until this new map system. You should see it around 150 000 to 200 000 now. Much faster, needless to say. ;)
6) New graphics, including a new Load screen and new Start and Back buttons, designed by Mumbling. :D
7) Better folder organization. :p
This is kind of a quick release, I meant to do some more before releasing this but meh, I'll have more stuff cleaned up and fixed for next time. :p
Because of this, some things still aren't very polished but...I'm sure you'll find a way to have some fun. :lol
Oooh, I'm so excited to try this out :D
wow, this is pretty impressive. I don't really know anything about game design but I'd love to help out any way I can on this project
wow, this is pretty impressive. I don't really know anything about game design but I'd love to help out any way I can on this project
Glad you like it so far! :D
Honestly, there isn't much that can really be done by anyone else right now. Most of the work, especially now, is just programming and 3d modelling. We already have 2/3 people working on 3d modelling. If you're interested, for sure we can definitely use another! :D
We also have Mumbling helping me with interface graphics, which is probably the next most useful thing to me right now. If you're interested in drawing some graphics for the game interface, let me know and I can get ya some details on what we could put in the game in the near future. Basically, every graphic that you see when you play the game that looks "ugly" can be replaced if you want to send me anything!
Other than that though:
I am the only programmer and I do intend to keep it that way, simply because I'm not a very good programmer and I don't expect anyone else to have to read my code, especially not the 4500 lines' worth I've written so far. :p
Until we get quite a bit later in development, most of the work is just programming. I'm more than happy to have you on board and feel totally free to post up any ideas or suggestions you may have for the gameplay! Have fun and go through the topics and posts about the project. I'm happy to answer any questions and take a listen to any ideas!
Thanks for all the support. This project is definitely very long-term and I look forawrd to see where we all go with it!
Don't know much about 3D modeling but I've just downloaded blender and going through some tutorials, I learn this computer stuff pretty fast :D
So give me some time to get on my feet and I'm sure I can help u there. Learning about blender has been pretty interesting so far so Im sure it won't take too long :rolleyes:
Awesome news, let me know whenever you want to take on modelling of some characters for the game! :D
Aaand guess what? Time for a new feature :D
Pressing M will now bring up a full-screen map of the area you're in, as well as show the location of your player in real-time. :)
Now I'm wondering how I could make a minimap. :p
Aaand a quick demonstration:
Game screen:
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/map1.jpg (http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/map1.jpg)
And the map view of that spot (when pressing the M key in-game):
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/map2.jpg (http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/map2.jpg)
Matches up pretty good, I'd say. ;)
I tested it quite a bit and the dot on the map lines up with the player beautifully. :)
Took me half an hour to figure out why it seemed so messed up, thinking I had to do some stupid ratio math and blah blah blah :p
Here I was, trying mirroring the map image, working out different ratios for widescreen and standard resolutions....
until I finally realized: I had to invert the y-axis :p
- Code: on
//Invert the Y axis...
playerPositionOnMapY=1-playerPositionOnMapY;
and life was good. :D
..Okay I'll stop with the tech-babble. :lol I'm just glad it works! :p
If you put in a night time, and also in dark places like caves, characters would need 2 color schemes, daytime, and night/dark places. As seen in some movies and lbt episodes. I can't do 3d modeling since I've no idea how. The most I can do I guess is screenshots (no idea how to get them to you) and that is about it.
You definitely bring up a good point.
The plan is to use lighting effects to change the colours of the characters in those environments. In the event that doesn't do the job, we'll look into alternate colour schemes.
6) New graphics, including a new Load screen and new Start and Back buttons, designed by Mumbling. :D
Ugh lol.. That loading screen was just boredom but if you like, sure :angel :lol
"Stop" :slap :lol:
And I'm gonna check this version out after school.
Heehee! :p :lol
Okay well, I got a bunch of new stuff working pretty fast so I might as well just toss it up here for everyone! :D
LBT RPG v0.151 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=U0d6V281YUlYSHgzZUE9PQ)
New Stuff:
1) Fullscreen map, showing your location in real-time. Access the map by pressing the M key.
2) Replaced the mouse cursor with a custom graphic. This will let us start to change the graphic when the mouse is over different objects, as you'll see in...
3) Added in a very simple "NPC"...a cone. :lol Soon, we'll be able to interact with it, but for now your cursor changes to an ! when it's over the NPC.
[EDIT] Updated to v0.151 to include the following updates, mostly cosmetic stuff. Thanks for pushing me to take care of these little things, Mumbling! :D The game feels more polished now. :)
4) Made the Start and Back buttons on the Character Select screen a consistant size, no matter the resolution
5) Coded in the use of the "mouse over the start and back button" images on the character select screen. The buttons now light up with the mouse over them.
6) Set a maximum distance that the player can be away from the NPC *(an interaction range, basically). If you're further than this distance, your cursor won't change into a !. If you're within and you put your cursor on the NPC cone, the cursor should become a yellow !. This technique will later be used to set a maximum distance you can be away from an NPC before you can talk/interact with them.
7) Added the controls to open/close the map into the instructions. :p
8) Fixed the bug where holding down both mouse buttons freezes the camera in place. For now, if you have both mouse buttons held down, the cursor doesn't move. I'm still debating what I want to happen when the player does this. :p
Ya might as well just ignore the previous release. This is exactly the same, but with the new stuff.
Have fun!
Oh, and yes I know you can walk through the NPC. :lol: :lol:
Is it just me, or the cube's movement speed already depends on what character type you chose? :)
Thanks for the update and I"ll try the game out later today.
Haha, wonderful! I'm having so much fun with this :) And I'm loving the NPC, too.
wow, a huge improvement since the last version i had. The textures seem to be improved, so the grass isn't perfectly green for the whole map. Love the map screen, though i would like to see which direction im pointing when i look at the map, as i had to keep opening my map to see if i was moving in the right direction. I noticed an issue with the NPC. If you go close enough to have the exclamation mark appear when you have the cursor over it, and hold the right mouse button, you can move where ever you want and still have the exclamation mark until you let go of the button. As you can see in this (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/untitled.jpg) picture, i've moved far away and the exclamation mark is still there.
Is it just me, or the cube's movement speed already depends on what character type you chose?
Nope, the speeds are actually all the same. ;)
We actually decided that the dinos would all have the same speed, though some may *eventually* lose more speed on hills / rugged terrain / etc. than others. None of that is coded in yet though.
Love the map screen, though i would like to see which direction im pointing when i look at the map, as i had to keep opening my map to see if i was moving in the right direction.
I totally agree, I'll see about figuring out how to do this.
I noticed an issue with the NPC. If you go close enough to have the exclamation mark appear when you have the cursor over it, and hold the right mouse button, you can move where ever you want and still have the exclamation mark until you let go of the button. As you can see in this picture, i've moved far away and the exclamation mark is still there.
Right you are.
That's mainly because I wasn't sure what the program should do when you click an NPC yet so I just left it do whatever it did. :p
Eventually, I assume a window with chat text will pop up, the cursor will change to something else and the ! mark will disappear when you right-click an NPC. Until we get all those features in though, I figured it wasn't worth touching that part of the code yet. :)
The npc is fun, we should name it :lol
couple glitches though, if ur interested. I was messing around with walking of the edge of the map (fun :lol: ) and found that if you walk off the map while under water than it keeps you under water, even if u start jumping back to the main map, letting u kinda fly around. Also my character keeps walking on top of the water for some reason.
I'm still working at learing the 3D stuff and its coming well, but I incrediably busy right now so it could be a while till im done.
Is it just me, or the cube's movement speed already depends on what character type you chose?
Nope, the speeds are actually all the same. ;)
Hm, okay, I guess it's just my imagination. :huh: Awesomely done anyway. :yes
Okay, here's the deal with that. :p
I was messing around with walking of the edge of the map (fun ) and found that if you walk off the map while under water than it keeps you under water, even if u start jumping back to the main map, letting u kinda fly around.
Yep, that sounds right. :p
The way the program works it, I check when the player passes through the surface of the water to toggle the "underwater" status on and off.
The fix to this problem you mention will come once the map is truly complete. It's true, my program doesn't like working properly if you leave the map, but here's my logic: In the real game when it's closer to complete, the player will never, ever, be leaving a map completely and the world will be designed to be fully explorable. For now, you can "leave the world" by just walking offf the map. Later on, there will be no way to "leave the world". The edge of the land will be at sea level and there will be ground below the ocean. There will be no logical "end of the world" in the game and things will work properly. :)
Also my character keeps walking on top of the water for some reason.
Ahh yes, okay. When this is happening, think of your character as swimming on the surface of the water, kind of like this:
http://www.ngsprints.co.uk/images/M/758946.jpg (http://www.ngsprints.co.uk/images/M/758946.jpg)
:p
I really should move the cube down a little bit when this happens so people understand what this is supposed to be. :p Sorry for the confusion!
The npc is fun, we should name it
Hmmm...we should! :D
With the short time I played it it does look like an improvement.
For some reason the link of the latest version of the game does not work for me and not for another fan who contacted me about it either. Is the download link still up to date Tim?
For some reason the link of the latest version of the game does not work for me and not for another fan who contacted me about it either. Is the download link still up to date Tim?
I had that problem before. I tried again later and it worked ok. Maybe once a certain amount is downloaded you have to wait for it to open again.
For some reason the link of the latest version of the game does not work for me and not for another fan who contacted me about it either. Is the download link still up to date Tim?
Works fine here
Maybe the server was out for a while.
Aye, I had tried repeatedly on different days, but must have been exceptionally unlucky. With the other fan's telling me about his having the same problem I thought something might be wrong with the link. I tried again now though and it is working just fine.
Good to know.
I wanna play the new version, but I'm not on my computer. :( I'll get to it once mine's working again.
A new cone character, huh? The cube is already Neil Cubestrong, we need to come up with a name for the new guy.
A new cone character, huh? The cube is already Neil Cubestrong, we need to come up with a name for the new guy.
Indeed. He's the second one around hmm.. Ah I'm bad with names.
What happened to your computer?
Let's call him Buzz Cubedrin :p
Funny name, indeed. :DD
Let's call him Buzz Cubedrin :p
He's a cone, so how about Buzz Conedrin, instead?
Sorry, my bad. Failed to check. Conedrin it is ;)
What happened to your computer?
Power pack up and died on me, and it's battery drained all night while I was asleep. Now I've got to wait for a new power pack from Dell.
I like Buzz Conedrin. That's got my vote.
Let's call him Buzz Cubedrin
I like Buzz Conedrin. That's got my vote.
Haha works for me. :p
Hey Tim. Maybe you could reupload the newest version of the game? The file in yousendit has been expired.
Hey Tim. Maybe you could reupload the newest version of the game? The file in yousendit has been expired.
Yep, sure thing. The link should work again now.
Sorry about this, driveway won't let me upload anything anymore so I'm using whatever I can to get files around these days. :p
I wonder if LBTL would let you use his server for that.
nice work action ^^ :lol:
Glad you're liking the progress for far!
Just letting everyone know what I've been working on:
I cleaned up a couple more little things with the graphics. I also got rotation working on the map, so you can see which way you're facing on the map now. :)
I'll be working on the Join game screen/functions now, to make sure multiplayer is working properly with the latest changes to the game. :)
I didn't know you could have multiple folks in 1 game. I thought you'd not implement that til later.
I didn't know you could have multiple folks in 1 game. I thought you'd not implement that til later.
Technically yes, it does work right now. :)
I don't think internet play works unless you're simulating a local area network (LAN) by using Hamachi or similar tool. I do have multiplayer working on my home network though! :D
I'm just testing it right now, as a matter of fact. :p Looking good! :D
Players are able to see each other move and can talk to each other in a simple text chat system.
This is when my networking theory training in college is paying off. :p :p
Mostly I just wanted to see if I could get it working and sure enough, it works beautifully. :)
I'll refine it more once the game itself is more developed but I'm sure we'll be just fine with the multiplayer stuff.
As you can imagine, coding multiplayer is very complex and will require a lot of dedication and testing, as well as a lot of care when writing the code to make sure I'm sending absolutely everything we need around the network, in the right order, to the right computers, without losing any data, without slowing down the game and without overloading any buffers (which seems to crash the game almost instantly :p). It's already pretty tricky and it's going to get a lot worse! :p
The only bugs right now that I've seen are
1) Multi-line chat sometimes inserts an extra character or two onto the end.
2) The network doesn't share the angles of the players yet, just their positions, meaning that if I turn my cube, you don't see me turning. You only see me moving if I move. This isn't so much a bug, as just a feature I haven't coded in yet.
3) When the client (the player joining the game, not the host) leaves the game, the client's game doesn't close properly. The game crashes to close for an unknown reason at this point. Not a big deal really, since the game was being closed anyway but it's just weird. :p
The host is not affected, the game continues normally and the host is able to leave the game properly whenever they want.
4) The Join Game screen isn't very pretty and the process of entering the computer you're connecting to and your name isn't very clear or brilliantly designed yet. :p
I'm just getting the game polished and cleaned up nicely before I start working on anything else new. The next release should hopefully feel really solid and high-quality throughout its presentation. :)
hey action i will say you are almost there just a couple steps :lol
Okay everyone, welcome to.....
The Land Before Time RPG, v0.161 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=U0d5QmtjR3NrWTkzZUE9PQ) :wow
Well well, what did we do this time? :p Lots, actually! Lots of little stuff to clean things up but all of it is worthwhile: :D
New Stuff:
1) Added an in-game menu. When you press ESC, instead of just closing the game right away, it opens a menu, giving you a number of choices. All the graphics related to this menu are from Mumbling, so big thanks to her! :D *hugs*
This menu's skin/style changes depending on where you are in the game. We're going to expand on this idea a lot but for now, you see a treestar when you're on land and some bubbles when you're underwater. :p
2) The ESC button also has other purposes now. Aside from just opening the menu, it also can be pressed to close any open screen, such as the character stats or the fullscreen map. I find the use of the ESC button feels very natural now. I hope you all feel the same but please let me know if you don't! :p
3) Added rotation to your character on the full screen map. The map now shows which direction you're facing at all times. I apologize that the arrow graphic sucks. :p If anyone wants to draw me a better one, I'm more than happy to use it!
4) Changed the setting up of your graphics/resolution when you first run the game. Instead of just throwing you a bunch of numbers, I set up two screens:
Basic Mode and Advanced Mode.
In Basic Mode, all you have to do is pick a quality setting of Low, Medium, High or Very High and you're good to go!
In Advanced Mode, you get access to a large list of resolutions. I improved the organization and the options available here to hopefully cater to everyone's needs.
As for what Basic Mode actually does...not very much. :p Here's how it actually works for anyone interested:
Low quality: 640x480, 16-bit colour.
Medium quality: 800x600, 32-bit colour.
High quality: 1024x768, 32-bit colour.
Very High quality: 1280x1024, 32-bit colour.
If you can't use any of those resolutions with your monitor nicely, I suggest going to Advanced Mode to choose the resolution you wish to use. ;)
It just occurred to me that in the future, the screen could ask the player if they're on a desktop or a laptop so the quality options give them resolutions that best suit whatever kind of computer they're on. For now though, this is what you get. :p
***If anyone wants/needs a resolution that isn't on that list in Advanced Mode, please let me know and I'll get it on there! :D
5) The graphic quality choice screen is now fullscreen. Mumbling commented that the window that comes up for you to choose your graphic settings wasn't centered very well on the screen and the math was annoying to get that working so...I took her advice and just made it full screen. :p
6) Fixed multiplayer. It now works properly again, better than ever.
7) The Exit button on the Graphic Settings screen actually works now. :p Pressing ESC closes the Graphic Settings screen as well.
8) Changed the instructions from a .txt file to a Word Document file, with text bolding and better organization.
9) Added text values of your current HP and Stamina to the bars at the top-left of the screen. Eventually there will be options on when you see these numbers but for now they're just always there. (lol @ Always There :D)
10) The code should run slightly faster now, reducing the system requirements a tiny bit. I removed two functions that I found out were causing more trouble than good, so I cleaned that up. :p
11) Cleaned up everything I (We, since Mumbling helped me find lots of stuff :p :D) could find. What you should see in this release is a very complete-feeling program with (hopefully) very few things that seem unpolished.
Known issues:
When you click the Options or Main Menu buttons on the in-game menu, the text appears behind the menu graphic. This wasn't the case before I made the graphic transparent so I don't quite know what happened. I didn't even notice that until after I uploaded it.
[EDIT] Fixed in v0.161.
Hope eveyone enjoys and not too many bugs come up in this one. If there's anything that you don't like, please feel free to let me know! :)
And for anyone who cares, we're up to 5220 lines of code now, breaking 5000 for the first time in a GoF release! :D :p
Think I found a serious bug, though I'm not sure if I should call it a bug. The two not working options in the in-game menus (main menu & options) can give some problems. If you click either of them, hold your mousebutton and move your mouse arround... There can happen 4 things: Nothing, the text will fade away, the game will be resumed and the in-game menu disappears or the game crashes. Not sure what it is but it's annoying :angel
I've only had the game crash of it once. So maybe that wasn't 'normal' :neutral
8) Changed the instructions from a .txt file to a Word Document file, with text bolding and better organization.
Some people(Like me) don't use office applications and even don't have them installed, so that isn't much of improvement. How am i supposed to read the readme file now? :)
BTW, i believe that there must be a "restart" menu function, that will allow players to pick a different character or even change the server without closing the programm.
That is pretty fast since the last version. Hope you are not overworking yourself. Thanks though. Remember to give yourself time to do other things, relax and have some fun. :yes :smile
BTW, i believe that there must be a "restart" menu function, that will allow players to pick a different character or even change the server without closing the programm.
If you click Main Menu in the in-game menu screen you will go back to the original menu where you can choose host game. It just isn't functioning yet.
Think I found a serious bug, though I'm not sure if I should call it a bug. The two not working options in the in-game menus (main menu & options) can give some problems. If you click either of them, hold your mousebutton and move your mouse arround... There can happen 4 things: Nothing, the text will fade away, the game will be resumed and the in-game menu disappears or the game crashes. Not sure what it is but it's annoying :angel
I've only had the game crash of it once. So maybe that wasn't 'normal' :neutral
Simple reason for that: :p
I was lazy when I coded the menu. :p
While the left mouse button is held down, the program still tracks your mouse movement. The menu code says "if the left mouse button is held down and your mouse is over the quit button, close the game". This is what's happening. :p
Some people(Like me) don't use office applications and even don't have them installed, so that isn't much of improvement. How am i supposed to read the readme file now?
Don't you have anything on your computer that can read .doc files? :(
Open Office (http://openoffice.org-2009.com/index.asp?aff=101&camp=gg_oo_ca&se=google) may be useful for you since there are so many .doc files around the world.
What I'll do though, is save it as an .rtf file, which can be opened in WordPad, for the next release. ::)
If you click Main Menu in the in-game menu screen you will go back to the original menu where you can choose host game. It just isn't functioning yet.
This is correct. I tried to get it working in this version but was running into so many problems that I just ignored it for now. Hopefully it will work soon. :)
Once again thanks to Mumbling, we're getting a few more little things cleaned up which apparently I totally missed in the last release.
I'm not sure when I'll release a new version but it will be when we get some nice new features working, probably talking to an NPC. :)
De nada ;)
:D
Just a quick demo of what we're working on now! :D
When you right-click an NPC, this chat window pops up. I'm still working the bugs out of when it appears/disappears but it's more-or less working. :p
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/NPC.jpg)
Okay, got it working beautifully! :DD
Just going to clean up some code before I release an update to the game. :)
Good luck.
Hey everyone!
Just thought I'd get everyone interested once again, with a new update. ;)
The Land Before Time online, v0.17 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=U0d4M25LU1BKV09Ga1E9PQ)
New Stuff:
1) Right-clicking on an NPC will let you interact with it. Try it on the cone!
2) New arrow graphic for the fullscreen map. Thank you, Mumbling! :p
3) A few little graphic fixes here and there, including buttons that moved slightly when you mouse over them in some resolutions, blah blah blah. Thanks for the help, Mumbling. :p
4) Changed the instruction file to a .rtf instead of a .doc. Any computer with Word Pad should be able to read it.
5) A treestar now appears on the in-game menu when you mouse over the various options. ...Treestar thanks to Mumbling. :p :lol
Known Issues:
When you have a window open that uses text other than the default style (changing the size, bolding, changing colours, etc.), the framerate will go down a little bit. I've seen it go down as much as 4-5FPS. This is most noticeable when you have the character stats and the NPC chat window open at the same time.
I figure the player won't need the really high framerates during these times so it shouldn't be a huge issue.
I don't believe I can fix this because the commands to change the font are just really slow commands. I have to run them every frame to display every bit of text in the proper font/style. I can't really do anything about that . :(
[EDIT] On my slower computers, my framerate drops in half when the NPC chat window is open.. :( Getting a good variety of font styles is proving to be very hard on computer power! :p
Enjoy!
Yay! I'll give it a run through :)
Lets see if I can still run this one on my 512mb computer.
Ran just like the previous version, framerate not going higher than 30 this time. The treestar looks alright now :)
Oh and, with the npc window open the framerate didn't really drop. (Actually, went up... Just checked that part. When I dont have the window open it will be like 7-13 FPS while with the window open it will vary around 30 FPS.... Which is half of 60 but not half my framerate.. Now why does that happen? :blink: )
(http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll44/gofmumbling/bugorknownproblem.jpg)
And was this the thing about text you were talking about? I didnt really get what you were saying *blames sleepyness* :angel
4) Changed the instruction file to a .rtf instead of a .doc. Any computer with Word Pad should be able to read it.
Sweet, thanks. :)
Sweet, thanks.
No worries, sorry about that! :p :)
Oh and, with the npc window open the framerate didn't really drop. (Actually, went up... Just checked that part. When I dont have the window open it will be like 7-13 FPS while with the window open it will vary around 30 FPS.... Which is half of 60 but not half my framerate.. Now why does that happen? )
Now I'll have to get back to you on that! I have no idea what's going on there. :p
Hey, I'm back! Glad to see my suggestion to name the cone was taken seriously :D
Welcome back :) oh yea, we like names with shapes in them :D
:D
Okay I'm working on some fairly advanced stuff right now, so I'm not sure how long this will take. :p
I'm trying to populate the map with 6 NPCs, set up a few very simple tasks and have the tasks/speech vary depending on which character you are when you talk to them.
Buzz Conedrin (He's gonna be Ruby's legal guardian for now..because I say so :p)
Grandpa Longneck (might put Grandma in too, depends how lazy I am :p)
Mr. Threehorn
Petrie's Mom
Ducky's Mom
Mr. Clubtail
Since we don't have any 3d models of them yet, I'll just be using simple models and colouring/sizing them differently. :p
I do have a very simple task system working with Buzz Conedrin at the moment: If you talk to him, you can complete your first task! :D
I don't have this feature in the version I've released here, since I just got it working. The next version I release here should have some pretty cool basic task stuff working! :)
[EDIT]
Here's a screenshot of the latest development: :D
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/teaser-of-multiple-NPCs.jpg)
6 NPCs, each one says something different. Talking to Buzz Conedrin completes that task.
I'm still working on getting unique dialog and tasks for each character but that's just grunt work at this point. The engine works beautifully. :)
Sounds like a lot of hard work you put in. I'm sure it'll go great.
It's getting more interesting with every next update.
By the way... This game is probably the best simulation of moving cube I've ever seen, so you can always release it as separate product if you wont finish GV RPG (I hope you will). :p
It's getting more interesting with every next update.
By the way... This game is probably the best simulation of moving cube I've ever seen, so you can always release it as separate product if you wont finish GV RPG (I hope you will). :p
:lol
Glad you're liking the cube simulation. :p
I admit, I'm getting a little lazy, looking at all the grunt work that I have to do. :p I'll try to get it done as soon as possible. :yes
Hey all! This is a really exciting release to me because we finally have the basics of what this game is going to be all about: Adventuring! :D
...I'll admit, the adventures aren't very exciting yet but the groundwork is really coming together and we can build up from here!
I present, without further delay, in all its glory, blah blah blah... :lol :angel
The Land Before Time RPG, v0.18 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=U0d6eEVZeDNTRTRLSkE9PQ)
NEW STUFF:
1) Finally, you can go on an adventure! Your dino type determines what adventure you're assigned to. Right now, the adventures are as simple as just talking to the correct NPC but it's fully functional and you'll be able to see roughly how it will work for more complex tasks later on.
2) Fixed the bug where the cube bounced down hills. You now "stick" to the hill unless it's too steep to walk on, in which case, you fall down it as expected.
3) Fixed the bug where the "!" mouse cursor didn't disappear properly when clicking a mouse button.
KNOWN ISSUES:
**NOTE** This seems to have introduced a camera bug where the camera will occasionally drift away from your cube when climbing slopes. Just jump (SPACEBAR) to fix the camera. :p I'll try to fix this bug soon, I apologize. :p
[EDIT] Should be fixed in v0.181. See my next post down. :)
Attempting to climb hills that are too steep is still pretty jerky. I'm still working on how I'm going to fix this.
The "Goodbye" button doesn't work yet. I totally forgot. :p
Just press ESC or walk away from the NPC to get the chat window to close.
I hope you all can enjoy adventuring as much as I do! :p
BTW: We're up to 6079 lines of code now. :p
New Neil Cubestrong picture is up in the "Caption This!" section. It's the one with Buzz Conedrin talking to Neil. Don't every one forget to caption away!
Also, great job Tim! I can't believe how far you're getting with this RP! I can't wait to play this new version!
This is amazing!!!
I just have to applaud all of your hard work, this is really coming together :)
A few things I noticed:
The camera moves through the ground a lot, especially when you run down hills.
Also, it might be good to put little icons on the map that represent the NPCs.
Again, this is awesome!!! :D
all tasks complete!
haha, this game is fun already
Haha, glad you're all having fun with it! :D
A few things I noticed:
The camera moves through the ground a lot, especially when you run down hills.
Also, it might be good to put little icons on the map that represent the NPCs.
Yep yep, I totally have disabled the camera's crashing into stuff because I didn't have it working the way I wanted. It will move through anything. The easiest way to keep your view nice is to use the mouse (hold the Right mouse button to lock the camera or the Left button to just look around).
Eventually I hope to have the camera be a bit more intelligent, sliding along the ground and whatnot but I'll get back to you on that. :p
Also, it might be good to put little icons on the map that represent the NPCs.
Sure, that's a good idea! I'll have that in a release in the near future. :)
Anyone who cares enough, I do have a little update here that I just finished:
LBT RPG, v0.181 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=U0d6eEVha0QzMWxMWEE9PQ)
with the following fixes:
1) I think I fixed the bug where the camera drifts randomly away from your cube. :p
2) Updated the version number in the instruction file.
Yep yep, I totally have disabled the camera's crashing into stuff because I didn't have it working the way I wanted. It will move through anything. The easiest way to keep your view nice is to use the mouse (hold the Right mouse button to lock the camera or the Left button to just look around).
Eventually I hope to have the camera be a bit more intelligent, sliding along the ground and whatnot but I'll get back to you on that. :p
Oh, awesome! I just didn't know if it had ever been discussed before, so I figured I'd bring it up :)
Your wish is granted, DarkWolf!
I just got NPCs appearing on the map nicely. :) The code I have will also work for NPCs that move around since the map graphics get their location from wherever the NPC is at that exact moment. Here's a screenshot of the map in my latest work:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/NPCs-on-the-map.jpg)
Now I just have a question:
How do we want to handle the locating of NPCs? Do we want the name of the NPC to show up on the screen if you mouse over it? How do we want to handle whether or not the player knows the name of the NPC? Do we want to show the names of NPCs at all on the map? I'm leaning towards "yes" but I'd like some opinions first before I start plugging that feature into the game. ;)
Any thoughts are welcome! :D
one has to consider making things easier on the player I would say.
Okay, here's something for everyone right before I go sleep. :p
This isn't much of an update but I found some important bugs to fix so I figured I might as well release this now.
Land Before Time RPG v0.185 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=U0d3Y05pVnMwVWxjR0E9PQ)
NEW STUFF:
1) NPCs now appear on the map.
2) Fixed a camera bug where clicking the mouse caused the camera to move a bit.
3) I don't know if this bug was present in the releases I posted here, but I fixed a water-related bug that I was getting on my system.
Thanks for the hard work. :yes
:idea Hey guys i just finish a beta loading screen for the TLBT RPG game do you want to see it
the loading screen 1
Link: http://fc84.deviantart.com/fs42/i/2009/057...by_Kanganix.jpg (http://fc84.deviantart.com/fs42/i/2009/057/4/e/The_TLBT_RPG_Project_Load_1_by_Kanganix.jpg)
the loading screen 2
Link: http://fc26.deviantart.com/fs43/i/2009/057...by_Kanganix.jpg (http://fc26.deviantart.com/fs43/i/2009/057/7/5/The_TLBT_RPG_Project_Load_2_by_Kanganix.jpg)
ah i hope you like it even our game maker action :DD
I think it looks neat. Did it take long to do those?
Those are cool, kanganix!
If you don't mind, could you post up the pictures after you saved them to png or jpg in photoshop? :)
:idea Hey guys i just finish a beta loading screen for the TLBT RPG game do you want to see it...
I like the second one better. :yes
Heres my finish product the loading screens
Link:Loading screen for the game.zip (http://www.4shared.com/file/89752375/55067741/Loading_screen_for_the_game.html)
i hope you enjoy
Awesome, thank ya! :)
Just wanted to let everyone know what's happening!
I already posted this part in the "What is this Game?" topic, but...
Okay, I made some changes to the networking code. :)
The following changes will appear in version 0.19:
Instead of everyone sending and receiving data about your location thousands of times per second, it now only sends data 12 times per second (once every 5 game frames). I have been watching the network activity on my home network and it's so low, it's showing no network usage at all. This should vastly improve reliability when playing over any distance.
There is a downside to this though:
Because we're not updating locations as often, movement for other players will appear jerkier.
The fix to this will be to write some "prediction" code. I could in theory estimate where the other players will be and just draw them in the new location, keeping the game looking smoother for the most part. This will take a long time to get working properly though and it's low priority since it's entirely for looks only.
Here's my plan:
That value of "5" (sending data every 5 frames) is very easily-changable.
In a version in the near future, I will let the host choose, in the options menu, the number of frames between network updates. This will allow players to reduce the value to zero or 1 for LAN games and to higher values for more stable performance over long distances. This will actually be simple to impliment, I could have it in for the next version. :)
Eventually we could even maybe use latency times to estimate an appropriate value so all this will be hands-off and reliable, no matter what, but I'll get back to you on that. :p
Just now, I also fixed a multiplayer bug where the player's cube didn't disappear when they left the game. It now disappears properly.
I'm just working on getting some multiplayer stuff cleaned up a bit. From there, I'm going to go work on the Flying ability. ;)
Awesome! Good to hear that you're finding solutions. Keep up the great work :D
Wait is everyone already playing betas of this game?
Wait is everyone already playing betas of this game?
Sure are, mate! ;)
To be fair though, they are extremely early betas and not too interesting. :p
The latest version can be found here
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...pVnMwVWxjR0E9PQ (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=U0d3Y05pVnMwVWxjR0E9PQ)
This is 0.185 so the network stuff isn't fixed yet. I'll have v0.19 up, hopefully in not too long.
you probably mean an online beta, you can do online games (me action and darkwolf did the first online game yesterday) but it dosen't work very well, and never with more than two players. Fixes to the problems we were experincing are explained in action's post earlier today.
If you guys are willing to test the latest updates with me, that would be awesome! It's looking good, minus some chat text bugs. I want to see if it works as well online as it does over my home LAN.
Well, I'm up for it. I' think I've got a few minutes to spare :smile
Okay cool! I'll post the link up here in a couple of minutes. :) Meet ya on hamachi?
Yeah, sure, sounds like a plan.
And the link:
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...1YUlGOFJFQlE9PQ (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=U0d4Z281YUlGOFJFQlE9PQ)
hey, can i join in?
MUCH better, worked great that time
Success! :D
We just finished our very first successful test run of multiplayer with the LBT RPG!! :D :D
Special thanks to DarkWolf91 and raga for testing this with me! :D
And of course, the screenshot to prove it: ;)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/SUCCESSpg.jpg)
As for the report:
The network was very reliable with no problems whatsoever. :)
The second line of chat still doesn't work properly.
The host can see all players. Those who joined can only see themselves and the host.
Request to put all human players on the fullscreen map.
Haha, I love how darkwolf is way of in the distance, but i'm hugging close by, afraid to travell on my own
edit: ur chat box dosen't get cutoff?
edit: ur chat box dosen't get cutoff?
I'm trying to figure out why the chatbox gets cutoff in 1024x768 resolution. In 1680x1050 (my resolution) it looks like my screenshot.
You're right though, I have to look into that, too.
Oh yeeeah, I remember that! I was over by Petrie's mom, doing my quest :p
And yeah, my chatbox gets slightly cut off on the left, too.
And yeah, my chatbox gets slightly cut off on the left, too.
Okay hmm...I honestly don't know why, because it should line up with the left side of your screen but I'll look into that!
That that to me too in some resolutions.
wow, everytime I open my mouth I seem to dump more onto ur work load. srry bout that
wow, everytime I open my mouth I seem to dump more onto ur work load. srry bout that
Hey, not a problem. ;) Every time I look at the code or the game, I find more work to do so hey, I'm used to it. :p
Hey, I've been messing around with a flying ability just now. I've got something working pretty good and hopefully I'll have a v0.19 available to everyone shortly. I would like to get some other new content in v0.19 before I release it so bear with me.
Here's a screenshot to take a look at the new Flight system. All the technical data on the left will also be possible to show or hide by pressing a key now.
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/I-a-flyer.jpg)
cool, is it flyer only already or can any kind of cube do it for now
Ooooh, that is so cool! I'm excited to try it out :D
cool, is it flyer only already or can any kind of cube do it for now
At this moment, any cube can do it but I'll have it changed very soon so that only the flyer can do it.
[EDIT] Fixed now so only the flyer can fly. :)
lots of progress makes for lots of optimism, keep it up
Just working on fixing a bug where if there are more than 2 players in a game, not everyone can see everyone else.
I dont really get all these new updates though. When I unzip the downloads, they're just images and files to me. Is there some really early version I need or something?
Is there some really early version I need or something?
Nope, there should be a file in the zip called LBT RPG, or, depending on your computer setup, LBT RPG.exe
Run that file to play the game.
Hey everyone, time for a new release! :D
LBT RPG v0.19 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=U0d6UWVrdkd0d0ZFQlE9PQ)
New stuff in this version:
1) Flyers are now able to fly using the F key and the Spacebar! See the instructions for details on how to fly. Note that you must pick a flyer in order to be able to fly. :p
Something I forgot to mention in the instructions: Fly mode is automatically turned off when you touch the ground or the water.
2) Multiplayer is now stable and functional! Recent bug fixes include:
- Reduced the amount of data sent over the network.
- All players are now able to see all other players in the game (fixed since our test, Darkwolf and raga).
- When a player leaves the game, their cube will disppear properly for all players and that player slot will be opened up for anyone else to fill it.
Tested on my home network with 6 connections and was perfectly stable and functional. Should in theory be stable up to hundreds of players
There are still some bugs with the text chatting (it's functional but a bit..quirky :p) but everything else should be working beautifully now.
3) You can show or hide a bunch of technical, nerdy text on the left side of the screen by pressing CTRL+B (it has to be the left CTRL key :p).
Since the next release will be v0.20, I will attempt to get a bunch of new stuff in it to make it a memorable release!
Aaaaah, I walked on top of the mountain! That was soooo cool! Oh, I had an idea. Stop me if you already thought of this, but I think it would be neat if you set up a system were you could toggle glide on and off. Like, you could maintain a roughly constant vertical position (with slight descent of course) while retaining freedom in horizontal movement. Just a thought! This is so awesome!
Looking great! Just a question though. How high will you actually be able to fly when the game is finished? Will there just be an invisible wall or will it be based on your Stamina? Cause i'm pretty sure you don't want this happening in the game :lol
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/untitled-1.jpg)
I guess i should take the multilayer out for a spin as well. I need to get Hamachi again. Could someone PM the network that we're using please?
How high will you actually be able to fly when the game is finished?
Honestly..I'm not sure! I suspect the world will have massive elevation changes so it would have to be high enough so that you could fly significantly over the highest point in the game. We may even decide that flyers can't even fly to the highest peaks in the game because of danger (air, cold weather, etc) so I'm going to leave it limitless for now.
You definitely have a good point though, that does look a tiny bit odd, doesn't it? :p
It won't look so bad when there's a vast landscape below you, rather than a single map, but still..you do have a point. :p
I think it would be neat if you set up a system were you could toggle glide on and off. Like, you could maintain a roughly constant vertical position (with slight descent of course) while retaining freedom in horizontal movement. Just a thought!
That sounds cool! I'll pass that idea onto a few other people and we'll see how it goes! I know Malte has some pretty wicked ideas for the flight system! :)
Hi,
will there be a german version of the RPG ? :!
I've noticed that there are some places in the Valley, where flyer can fall through ground. Those places are: narrow canyons in south and north side of the map.
Hi Marcel, nice to see you here again :)
No German version of the game is planned at the moment. One thing that is important to keep in mind is that it is an online RPG so chatting with your fellow players will make up for most of the language used in the game (the talk with non-player characters will be little by comparison).
While German language countries might muster enough players for a game in many cases it will be with groups including speakers of many different native tongues that most games will be played. In that case English is the language to go for as it is the language known by most people around the world.
But don't let this scare you Marcel, it is easier than you think and this is a statement coming from someone whose transfer to the next school grade was imperiled by his poor English at one point.
You could do something like they had in might and magic 6-8. In those games if you had a flight spell that was on, or in 8 it could be riding on a dragon team member, they used page up to move up and page down to go down and you would stay at the same height till either you pressed up or down, or in the case of the flight spell that it ended.
I've noticed that there are some places in the Valley, where flyer can fall through ground. Those places are: narrow canyons in south and north side of the map.
Whoa, okay. I will definitely look into that. Thank you!
Okay, I'm pretty sure I found the cause of that bug, Myrkin, and it should be fixed for the next release. :)
Hi Malte,
Wenn ich fragen zum Spiel habe kann ich dich ja fragen oder Patrick was ich nicht f¸r mich ¸bers‰tzten kann :DD . Habe da noch ne Frage ? wann kommt die neue Version raus? Freue mich schon, wenn man sieht, wie man mit der Figur ruml‰uft. Ach wie das mit den Misionen l‰uft, bin ich auch schon gespannt. Ich hoffe, das wir uns mal wieder treffen bei MSN. Alles gute Marcel (Guido) :lol . Kannst mir deie Antwort auch per E-mail schicken. Ich wei?, das man hier nicht deutsch schreiben darf. Patrick wollte mir ja eine Kleine Beschreibung schicken, so da ich ein wenig mit schreiben kann in Englisch
That's good to hear, action. :)
At the moment updates to the game occur quite regularly Marcel. You should check out the Gang of Five every few days or so. I am deliberately writing this here and in English as I do hope to give you a little push to give English a try and become more active in the GOF. You are really missing out on so much that I know you would enjoy. ‹berwinde den inneren Schweinehund and you will find that it is more than worth the effort ;)
hey, just got to try the flight stuff now and its awsome. Its a little hard to get used to at first but I like it, at least its better than that glitch I used to use to fly :p
(http://inlinethumb21.webshots.com/41940/2296384360104791707S600x600Q85.jpg)
note the speed :smile
Edit: just realized its too small to read, says -9247.62207031
Not sure how you got the flying to work. What was it like?
Hey, I think I fixed the bug where the player could fall through the water without triggering the "underwater" event. I slow the player down 1 frame before you hit the water so you can't pass through the surface without touching the surface.
I think what was happening is that you travelled so far in one frame that you actually went from above the water to below the water without actually touching the surface.
Anyway, just one more little thing I want to get cleaned up - I seem to have introduced the bouncing cube bug again, where if you move down a hill, you don't 'stick' to the ground but you 'bounce' along it instead, like there isn't enough gravity or something. :p
Don't know what you mean by the gravity bug, but it's not important that I do.
Okay, I just worked out solutions to the following bugs that were in the previous version. I have not been able to reproduce these bugs in any of my testing.
1) You can no longer fall through the surface of the water without triggering the "underwater now" event.
2)You can no longer fall through the map by forcing yourself to climb a wall that's too steep repeatedly (the new velocity cap in these circumstances prevents you from getting enough speed to jump through the wall).
3) Your cube will no longer have a seizure and bounce quickly up and down if you land in shallow water at a medium velocity (about -300 to -600, in my tests).
4) Your cube now has a ton of gravity (100 instead of the usual 8.3) applied to it, so long as it is on the ground. This makes sure the program always knows when you're on the ground and keeps things working properly, consistantly. This also prevents the cube from "bouncing" if it's moving along uneven terrain.
Unfortunately, I don't have internet right now. I'm posting this by 'borrowing' a neighbour's wireless, on my laptop. :p The problem is, I can't get wireless on my main computer and I have no nice way to transfer my work online at the moment. I'll post up the update as soon as I get my internet back, which should be tomorrow afternoon, in theory. :p
Nah, thats not the bug I was talking about. I'm talking about how if you walk of the edge of the map while underwater, you can go above the riverbed but still be in the underwater mode. This allows u to fly (or I guess swim would be the right word) above the valley. Its slow and annoying to use though.
Haha, yeah, and visibility is awful :p
Nah, thats not the bug I was talking about. I'm talking about how if you walk of the edge of the map while underwater, you can go above the riverbed but still be in the underwater mode. This allows u to fly (or I guess swim would be the right word) above the valley. Its slow and annoying to use though.
Oh, that. :p
I've had quite a few people mention that to me now but I'll say it again: That is not a bug! :p That is because the world is incomplete. Once the game is finished, you won't be able to walk off the map like that and such a thing will never happen. :p
Anyway, just one more little thing I want to get cleaned up - I seem to have introduced the bouncing cube bug again, where if you move down a hill, you don't 'stick' to the ground but you 'bounce' along it instead, like there isn't enough gravity or something.
I think that might be what causes the swimming in the air glitch now because if you land into water at high speeds that is JUST deep enough to be submerged, you bounce back out of the water immediately while still having the underwater state applied.
Also, i should probably explain the method i found on how to get underwater without the underwater state being applied (doesn't involve high speeds). First you have to be underwater. Slowly strafe towards the shore, and as soon as the top of the cube is above the water, quickly strafe back towards the river. It takes quite a few tries for it to actually work. Your cube should look like this when its "not submerged":
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/untitled-2.jpg)
and if it works:
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/untitled2.jpg)
notice how the blue blur effect isn't there.
I know its not a bug, I just call it a glitch for a lack of a better term
I know its not a bug, I just call it a glitch for a lack of a better term
Fair enough. :p I just won't be dealing with this glitch because it will fix itself once we finish the maps. :)
Oh, flathead? Okay cool, I understand what you're saying. :) In theory, my latest changes should have that issue resolved. I fixed the bouncing cube problem with a new solution, which should be much more reliable than the old solution, which, as we saw, was causing problems.
I've been trying to do it for awhile now and I've been unable to.
Thanks for the efforts!
I also just spent a few hours trying to figure out how to improve the camera. I was able to get 2 changes done:
1) The bug where the camera gets stuck randomly in the ground is fixed.
2) there is now a larger range of vertical motion. You are now able to look basically straight down and straight up. There is still a minor issue with this: The more you zoom out, the less you can look UP. I'll try to resolve this but I hope it's relatively minor and we can ignore it for now. :p
Okay, I got my internet back today, which is making things much nicer. :p
Running into some more minor problems with the camera, which I'd like to fix before I post anything up. I'd also like to get some other nice, polished featured into v0.20 before it's released.
Here's what you're able to do with the new camera system though: :D
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/overhead-cam.jpg)
"Hey, I can see where I'm landing now!"
"Hey, I can see where I'm landing now!"
haha, no more misjudging the landing when coming up to a mountain and falling short.
Is that flying you folks are talking about, or something else?
Yup, they are talking about flying :)
I've not been smart enough to get the flying thing to work.
Shall I explain? If you have chosen a flyer as your character, you can press 'f' on your keyboard, you will jump up. Then you can press space to 'flap your wings'. So if you press space repeatingly you will go up in the air. That's how flying works :)
For you, but not for me. Likely I'm just to stupid to get it to work.
For you, but not for me. Likely I'm just to stupid to get it to work.
Why don't you just try it out? :)
I did, never got it to work.
I will see if I can explain it, Kor.
Step 1: Make sure your cube is on the ground.
Step 2: Press F on the keyboard.
F Will make your cube jump.
Step 3:
While the cube is in the air, so before it hits the ground, press and hold the Spacebar.
This will lift you off the ground. Release the spacebar to stop 'flapping' your wings whenever you want. You can start flapping again.
If you touch the ground, you have to press F again to start flying again.
Does that make sense? :)
f doesn't do anything for me if I do a flyer character. No jumping or anything.
Have you downloaded the latest version then? Maybe you're trying it in an older version.
yep yep, ya do need the newest version (v.19) . :)
Here's the link to it again:
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...lcTJrUmxFQlE9PQ (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=UmNKckhlcTJrUmxFQlE9PQ)
Hey all!
I'm feeling like a mad scientist today. :p
I'm in the process of converting our good friend Neil Cubestrong into actual dino models at the moment. ;)
After a bit of trouble getting the models to load, I took a screenshot of the first successful attempt at loading a spiketail in place of our faithful cube. I figured it was groundbreaking (and amusing :p) enough to post here.
Behold...the world's smallest spiketail! :D :lol :lol
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/worlds-smallest-spiketail.jpg)
If you can't see it...yes, there is a Spike model there, I'm working on getting it bigger now, of course. :p
This spiketail is so small, that even a Chomper could eat him whole. :p
This spiketail is so small, that even a Chomper could eat him whole. :p
It looks more like a spiketail cookie, like those animal crackers that were around when I was a kid. No idea if anyone here has seen those.
Lol. Nice job. Reminds me of jelly blobs of doom :D
(http://www.pinkpt.com/neodex/images/f/f8/Play359.gif)
Aww look at that little spiketail. It wouldn't last a second in the real world but isn't it awesome?
Maybe Dr. Shrinker shrank down Spike.
You folks likely have no idea who Dr. Shrinker is. Only someone my age would. I found an intro that gives those interested the basic info. It was part of a show back in the 70's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAxPNais54Y (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAxPNais54Y)
tiny little bugger ain't he?
:lol
Well I'm having nothing but trouble trying to switch out the cube for the actual models! :p
I might need more time than expected to get this working. Please bear with me! :p
No hurry. Better to take extra time and be careful then to rush.
now if only we applied that to movie release games
no rush dude, we're not putting any deadlines on your work
Take your time :)
And great praise to Razzie :)
Thanks a lot for all the work with the models for the game :yes
Well I'm still having model problems but I PM'd Razzie and we're working on yet another theory to fix it. :p
In the meantime though, I completely rewrote the camera code. The result is that you can now look straight up and down. The camera also now uses less CPU power, less memory, has much more reliable control and this change fixes a very annoying "flickering" bug that I was getting in the extreme ranges in the previous attempt to increase the range that the camera could travel.
Basically, it's just better, more efficient code in general. :p
(It's easier to read, too, so I'm happy. :D)
I hate camera code and I'm very glad to see this so functional now. :lol That means I can ignore it for awhile until we want to get smart collision/sliding working. :p
I'm working on a functional options menu now, which will let you store data to your computer so you can reload the game with the options you set before.
With any luck, version 0.20 should give you the ability to change your controls (for those of you who kept picking on me about this! :p :lol ) and save the changes permanently for every time you load the game.
Okay, I just completed most of the options menu!
You are now able to save your options to a file on your computer. This file is automatically loaded when you run the program so it will remember your settings every time you play. :) There are quite a few nice features (enable/disable the startup graphic quality screen, mouse sensitivity, view distance, etc.) here that you'll get to see when version v0.20 is released!
I juist got saving to a file working properly so now I can work on the next feature: Letting you configure your controls and save your changes! :D
[EDIT]
Yay! :D I got the program to load the controls from another file. Pretty soon I'll have the control configuration options coded in so you'll be able to change and save your controls. ;)
Hey!
Just wanted to say, things are coming together nicely and I should have an update ready in hopefully a couple of days. :D
Thanks for the update, but don't work to hard and remember to give yourself time to rest.
Hey all! After a lot of new stuff and a lot of time, it's finally ready...
LBT RPG V0.20 (http://www.adrive.com/public/3df78541dbe204f8eb499245f158a79395db271ac9ee4047cc5678469018765b.html)
New Stuff:
1) The beginnings of 3d models of dinosaurs for the game. Everything is in place, I'm just waiting on a few more Models from Razzie. Everything will be in place perfectly in v0.21 but for now we're all ready for it and we already have a Mr. Threehorn NPC who actually looks like Mr. Threehorn! :D
2) There is a fully-functional options menu. You will see a variety of options to customize whatever you don't like. This took me bloody forever to code! :p
3) You are now able to save and load your options! The data is stored in files in the Config folder.
4) The "Main Menu" and "Options" buttons on the in-game menu work now.
5) Added in some animations to the loading screens.
6) Totally recoded the camera. It will now orbit a complete 180 degrees around you, allowing you to look straight up and down.
7) Beginning to work on the ability to configure your controls. It loads them from a file right now but you don't have the ability to change them yet unless you edit the control.ini file manually. It's not very user-friendly though. :p
8) Added a "Sprint" ability, which functions for any dino except the Flyer. Pressing Left Shift triggers a 5-second sprint.
Coming soon:
The rest of the models, configuring controls and more abilities!
Have fun everyone! :D I hope you enjoy where our game is going so far! :)
Awesome! Will check it as soon as I come home! :D
Hey that's pretty good! Love the sprint ability(ya know how lazy I am :p) Options got saved correctly so that shouldn't be a problem :)
Hi,
A heve Probleme of the geme. The game doesen¥t Helb. Ich habe es runtergeladen, und es Startet zwar, beim Ladebildschirm st¸rtzt er ab so misst. Kˆnnt ihr mir helfen ? :cry2
Hi,
A heve Probleme of the geme. The game doesen¥t Helb. Ich habe es runtergeladen, und es Startet zwar, beim Ladebildschirm st¸rtzt er ab so misst. Kˆnnt ihr mir helfen ? :cry2
I sent you in email in english and german, hope that helps you out :)
Oh wow, great additions! I'm really loving the models, Mr. Threehorn looks fantastic :p
Yes, this is a really good update. I only hope we wont be waiting long for the next. :p
Oh, wow, this is really coming along nicely. I love the new mr. threehorn
Okay, okay, I promise the real version 0.20 won't feature electric guitars. :p
Mumbling and I couldn't resist though. :D She drew up the "Metal Edition" main menu screen, which gave me the amusing idea of having our program run a Guitar Hero clone with an LBT song that I made the notes for. :lol
Anywho, all of the updates I mentioned before are in place in the code and the *real* v0.20 will be posted up as soon as I get the control configuration working. I just received the new models from Razzie today so we're good to go on that. :)
*whistles* I'm just waiting for someone's revenge :angel
I did try downloading this "version" just to see what it was like, but the game won't load up. A couple weird things happened:
1. It constantly told me I already had a file by the name I chose, no matter what name I chose.
2. Once I did download it, nothing was in it.
Was that part of the prank?
Not really.. no
I wonder why I had those two issues then.
That's honestly weird. It's my first time using ADrive so I hope I did it properly. Seems like a few others got it to work, myself included.
The prank was just the game running Guitar Hero (well, Frets on Fire) instead of LBT. :lol
It's probably just a fluke or something that it didn't work for me. :p Oh well.
I guest you try to put a patch or update pack on the game :DD
Hi, der ab Date war gemein, ist der 1 April gewesen (Craesy) . Ich freue mich schon auf das neue Abdate :lol
im looking forward to the new version too, guido :)
I downloaded it just a short time ago out of curiosity and I could not get into the game. The most I'd get is to where I'd have to click on host or join game, then a loading screen and that is about it.
Odd.. really..
It seemed to work on some computers and not on others, which is strange.
No big deal. I promise the real version will work as well as any of the previous ones did. :) :p
I would just like to say that we are getting very, very close to the v0.20 release! I'm just polishing up some stuff. I could get it out probably tomorrow if we didn't care about getting online play working. Introducing the 3d models into the game broke multiplayer so I'll have to fix that up a bit.
I'm already thinking of some nice options for v0.21 but I'll leave them out for now. :p
Ah, what the heck? I'll get multiplayer working again in v0.21. :p I'll have v0.20 up very soon once I know everything else is working as I'm wanting it to! :D
It's all but ready, I'm just making sure everything is absolutely awesome! :p
Just one last comment:
The code is over 10000 lines long, as of today. :p :D :lol
(That's 239 pages in a Word document. :p)
Believe it or not, this project hasn't died yet. :p
After, what looks like about a month..hey, that's not too bad! :D
I present, with great thanks to Razzie for the 3D models...
The Land Before Time RPG v0.20 (http://www.2shared.com/file/5432725/48fb6045/LBT_RPG_v020.html)!
New stuff in v0.20: Be warned; there's a lot! :p
GAMEPLAY UPDATES:
1) The following playable characters now have 3D models instead of cubes:
Longneck
Threehorn
Swimmer
Spiketail
The Flyer and the Fastrunner models are still works in progress.
2) The Mr. Threehorn NPC is now a 3D model of Mr. Threehorn instead of a cube. More NPC models coming soon, too! :D
3) The camera will now do a full half-circle around your character, rather than just moving up and down a little bit. This will let you get a view of the world directly above and below your character (useful for flying especially)!
4) There is now a maximum speed on how fast you can fly upwards. There is also a maximum speed at which you can fall, preventing you from gaining an absolutely insane amount of speed from flying up or falling.
5) A new "Sprint" ability! Every character except the flyer is able to sprint for 5 seconds by pressing the Left Shift key. The flyer will gain an air speed boost ability, which is different from the land sprinting ability, later on.
Note that sprinting does not work while in water. I was thinking of having the swim speed boost be a separate ability from the land sprinting later on, which is why I did this.
6) New NPC Chat windows. Each character will have a unique chat window when talking to an NPC, courtesy of Mumbling. :) The dino type you are playing as appears as a face in the cloud on the chat window. The "Goodbye" button is temporary.
7) Improved the "checking if on/in water" code even more, for more accurate detection with the 3D models.
8) The "Options" and "Main menu" buttons on the in-game menu work properly now.
9) When swimming on the surface of the water, your character now "floats", with half of them under the water, rather than "Skating" on the surface. It just looks a bit more natural.
10) Fixed the bug where if you held down the mouse button while using the in-game menu, you could make the buttons do stuff. You now have to specifically *click* on the button to make it function.
--------------------------------
OPTION MENU UPDATES:
Please check out the options menu! I spent a TON of time programming all that new stuff! :p
11) The options menu actually does something now! Keep reading for the actual changes.
12) Video options menu - Lets you turn that "graphic quality" screen that comes up before the game starts on or off, as well as letting you change the maximum distance that you can see in-game, using a fully-functional slider.
13) Sound Options menu is in place but has no functionality yet, since the game has no sound yet. :p
14) Controls Options menu - Lets you change the sensitivity of the mouse for controlling the camera, as well as the turning speed when using the keyboard (using sliders again). There is also another option leading from here:
15) Configure controls menu! YES, finally, you are able to change your in-game controls (except abilities, but I figured that would be handled slightly differently so I wasn't sure what to do abilities just yet).
16) Game Options menu - These options let you change some general game appearance and functionality settings, such as network speed and the presence of text on your health/stamina meters.
17) Fully-functional BACK, SAVE and DEFAULT buttons on the options! Your options and controls are saved to files in the Config folder where the game is installed. If you go back without saving, you get a warning message. The menu should feel very natural and should explain everything effectively. If it doesn't, I'll do my best to make it more user-friendly. If I have to explain how it works here, I failed at making the options menu. :p You are able to change your options, save your changes and/or go back to the default settings at any point while playing or from the game's main menu. Your most recently-saved settings and controls will apply instantly to the game you're playing (as soon as you press the SAVE button). They will also load automatically from the files in the Config folder when you run the game at another time.
----------------------
MULTIPLAYER UPDATES:
18) Fixed the chat bug where the text on the second line of the most recently-sent message had an X on the end.
19) Fixed the chat bug where the text on the second line of the most recently-sent message got mushed together with previous text on this line. The second line now behaves properly except for the fact that it will wrap text in the middle of a word. I will try to fix this later.
NOTE: Multiplayer will NOT work in this release! I need to fix some things because of the network speed options and the 3D models changing from player to player.
---------------------
OTHER UPDATES:
20) Text on the first loading screen explains what it's actually doing so you can see the game isn't frozen. :p
Anyone who's still interested in this project, if you don't mind letting me know what you think so far and we can continue development from here!
Have fun! :D
Woa lots of updates. Will download when I'm on a proper computer to download. :)
I've played it for a little while now, and i have to say that im really impressed. The models are looking good so far, though im not going to lie, i find Littlefoots face kinda creppy. Love the option to finally configure the controls, but i find now that im used to the default controls now anyways :lol . Also, who in the right mind would want the mouse turning speeds at 100%!?
Anyways, now to some issues that i found. I don't know if you are aware of this, but if you hold the shift button, you can sprint "forever". Another thing is that when you first talk to your NPC to finish the adventure, the "GoodBye" button does not appear. Its only when you first talk to them though. After the adventure is complete, the button appears. I'm not sure if thats consistently happening though. Lastly, though i hate to bring this up again, but theres still a problem with the water. I can still get my character to "walk under the water". In fact, it seems easier now with the models. All you have to do is keep strafing towards the river slowly, if you start to "swim", strafe towards the shore and try again. I found it easiest with Swimmer, and hardest with the Spiketail.
Also, who in the right mind would want the mouse turning speeds at 100%!?
I know some shooter players love their mouse at wicked-high speeds. I set the maximum slightly higher than I figure any crazy shooter player would want, so there would be a full range of speed for everyone.
Anyways, now to some issues that i found. I don't know if you are aware of this, but if you hold the shift button, you can sprint "forever".
Known bug. :) Forgot to fix. :p
Another thing is that when you first talk to your NPC to finish the adventure, the "GoodBye" button does not appear. Its only when you first talk to them though. After the adventure is complete, the button appears.
Another known bug. I probably just typoed a variable....yes I did. :p
Lastly, though i hate to bring this up again, but theres still a problem with the water. I can still get my character to "walk under the water". In fact, it seems easier now with the models. All you have to do is keep strafing towards the river slowly, if you start to "swim", strafe towards the shore and try again. I found it easiest with Swimmer, and hardest with the Spiketail.
Ah geez..okay I'll look into this. Thank you.
I'm curious if the gravity value is the source of the problem.
Do you mind trying this EXE and seeing if you can still get the water bug? I haven't been able to reproduce it at all, even with the old v0.20.
V0.201 (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=UmNJYUo2V3J0Ni9IRGc9PQ)
Ugh, nevermind, I got it to work. <_<
Okay, I'll look into it some more. Sorry about that!
Okay, okay, I think I see what's happening. I have a variable that's unstable; it's toggling TRUE and FALSE, which is supposed to be constantly TRUE, for checking whether the player moving into the water or out of the water.
I'm hoping that if we can keep this value constant, it will fix it. I'll play around with it some more.
Okay, I'll look into it some more. Sorry about that!
haha, no problem. Thats what testing is for. If you ever need to check to see if the glitch can be done, just ask. I seem to have a knack for it :lol .
Hi,
Ich freue mich schon auf den neuen new Up date. Mit MR. Treehorn is good works. Funny Aril Cressy Up Date :lol war miss April scherz Crassy :smile
Good update. I am only curious when flyer will be able to fly forward faster than he walks forward? Doing "super-jumps" is nice, but you cant really call it a flying. ;)
Hey All!
Okay, this *appears* to fix the water bugs but I would like to pass the official Flathead inspection, if you don't mind, flathead. :p
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...2YWI1aVozZUE9PQ (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&batch_id=UmNKK2V2YWI1aVozZUE9PQ)
Put this EXE wherever you installed v0.20 and it should work properly.
And of course, anyone is welcome to try this! :D
I am only curious when flyer will be able to fly forward faster than he walks forward?
Technically you do fly faster than you walk, just not much faster.
(walking is 2.5 speed, flying is 3 speed).
Eventually, the stats of the flyer will affects its maximum speed. Since we're only level 1 at this point, flight won't be much faster than normal travel. Higher-level flyers will be able to fly faster.
Amazing! I've only played a small amount so I didn't really get to test much but I did notice something:
(http://inlinethumb58.webshots.com/42937/2988890100104791707S600x600Q85.jpg)
The big green rectangle, in case you missed it. This has nothing to do with me being out of the map, I just took the picture there cause you can see the rectangle better from that location, it has to do with maximum viewing distance. I set it to maximum, than this rectangle started appearing in the sky. Other than that I haven't found any problems.
I just had to try this before I ran off to class, while running the risk of lateness :lol
Haven't been able to use it extensively, but I did notice something odd:
Mr. Clubtail seems to have disappeared while I was playing as a spiketail. His dot was still on the map, but I ran over it and around it several times and saw nothing. All of the other NPCs were accounted for. Just kinda odd. Haven't tried it again, so I don't know if it was a one time thing.
Also, the individual speech windows look great! Really awesome idea.
While wandering around the map I spotted this:
(http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1382/lbt.jpg)
I suppose it is a secret place, where all 3D-models are kept until the moment they are needed? :D
Anyways, now to some issues that i found. I don't know if you are aware of this, but if you hold the shift button, you can sprint "forever".
Known bug. :) Forgot to fix. :p
Actually I'm just thinking..is this a bad thing? If you're running for your life, you don't wanna have to be watching your sprint timer as well to make sure you turn it back on at just the right moment. Being able to just hold it down might be a good thing, actually....We'll see how it goes! :p
I suppose it is a secret place, where all 3D-models are kept until they will be needed?
That, uhh...would be me forgetting the program automatically puts a new loaded model at the coordinate 0,0,0. :p I need to figure out a way to hide the loaded models, but at the same time, allow them to be assigned to new players in multiplayer. Still a work in progress. :p
Mr. Clubtail seems to have disappeared while I was playing as a spiketail. His dot was still on the map, but I ran over it and around it several times and saw nothing. All of the other NPCs were accounted for. Just kinda odd.
Ah bugger, he's still doing that? :p I was hoping I had that fixed but yea, it does happen on some occasions. Grr, okay, I'll look into this. :p
I just took the picture there cause you can see the rectangle better from that location, it has to do with maximum viewing distance. I set it to maximum, than this rectangle started appearing in the sky.
Ah okay, I think I know why this happens. I'll play around with that. :)
In game called Gothic 2 they hid the models in some cave. You could do the same (only you would have to block the entrance to that cave).
In game called Gothic 2 they hid the models in some cave. You could do the same (only you would have to block the entrance to that cave).
That's kind of cool. :p
For now, since we don't have caves, I guess I could hide them 10000 leagues under the sea. :lol
In game called Gothic 2 they hid the models in some cave. You could do the same (only you would have to block the entrance to that cave).
That sounds really weird to me. I'm sure there is a way to stop the models from being placed on the map. For whatever reason they had all the models in that cave, I'm sure it wasn't because they were forced to put those models somewhere. Could have just been a funny easter egg that was there just in case somebody managed to find a way to see into the cave.
In game called Gothic 2 they hid the models in some cave. You could do the same (only you would have to block the entrance to that cave).
You too are playing the Gothic series Myrkin? I've been singing the praise of these games to Tim ever since he started with this game project :p
It was kind of distressing to find the corpses of all those water wizzards in that cave one was never meant to explore :p
]You too are playing the Gothic series Myrkin?
Yes, I do. Maybe I will return to the colony some day. Once again. ;)
Aye, in some respects the first of the Games surpassed the others (e.g. they took much more care about water effect there). Did you play Gothic 3 too?
Yeah. I think the same as you about the first Gothic. Amost nothing in the sequels can compare to its atmospherics. (I hope I used the right term) :)
Okay, as far as I know, these issues have all been fixed in the code I have sitting at home here:
1) The water bug (I hope! :p)
2) Mr Clubtail disappearing (I hope! :p)
3) The green rectangle (I'm pretty positive this one is fixed. :p)
4) The "Secret" hiding place of all the models is gone (actually it's moved to millions of units below the water and millions of units away from the map. :p)
I'll also talk to Razzie about working out an edit for the Littlefoot model. :)
What about falling through the ground in tight canyons?
What about falling through the ground in tight canyons?
.
Aye, right you are!
That is fixed, too....unless you found a way to do it in v0.20. :p
I did everything I could think of to fix that and as far as I know, I fixed it for v0.20.
Okay, this *appears* to fix the water bugs but I would like to pass the official Flathead inspection, if you don't mind, flathead. dino_tongue.gif
Haha, sweet...im an inspector...Anyways, i've spent about a half hour trying to get the bug to work. I spent most of the time with the swimmer as i found it easiest before (i did try all dino types as well). I can happily say that i wasn't able to do the bug once :DD . Heres to hoping that the problem is finally fixed.
Anyways, now to some issues that i found. I don't know if you are aware of this, but if you hold the shift button, you can sprint "forever".
Known bug. smile.gif Forgot to fix. dino_tongue.gif
Actually I'm just thinking..is this a bad thing? If you're running for your life, you don't wanna have to be watching your sprint timer as well to make sure you turn it back on at just the right moment. Being able to just hold it down might be a good thing, actually....We'll see how it goes! dino_tongue.gif
yea, i would prefer that i think. How should it work though? Should your stamina decrease exponentially to prevent people from running for long periods at a time? Also, i don't know if this was mentioned, but should the fast runner have an increased sprinting speed (or duration)?
What about falling through the ground in tight canyons?
.
Aye, right you are!
That is fixed, too....unless you found a way to do it in v0.20. :p
I did everything I could think of to fix that and as far as I know, I fixed it for v0.20.
Yes. I found the way. That was exactly the reason why I asked you about it in last post. :p
Hi Aktion 9000 , good works of the Game ^^. Intressante Screenshots good ^^. Tis Game wird, Good fore all LBT Fans :lol
Hi Help :! a haf the Game Downgelodet. Startet nicht ?. Oder ist nicht vertig das Spiel (Game) ? Help Plys :rolleyes
Hi Help :! a haf the Game Downgelodet. Startet nicht ?. Oder ist nicht vertig das Spiel (Game) ? Help Plys :rolleyes
You have to download the game from page 20. The other two versions (0.201 and 0.202) do not work on their own. ;)
Yes. I found the way. That was exactly the reason why I asked you about it in last post.
How did you manage to fall through the ground? What character did you use? Would you mind explaining a bit how you found this bug? :)
I used a flyer, as he is the only character that can get to this places. When I was in those tight canyons (on south or north), I just strafed in the more curved locations and that's it. After a few seconds (maximum) of that moving you can get through the ground.
Ahh okay, I see. Thank you. :)
You're welcome. ;)
~Great work Tim!
I can see that the game had many breaktroughs, great job.
Sorry to bother you about this:
(http://i390.photobucket.com/albums/oo344/Vaan360/Semttulo2-1.jpg)
As normal, when you are near a NPC, and you put the arrow on it, the exclamation dot will appear, but if you press M to put the map, the exclamation dot will continue there even with the map.
I've played games where this is normal, and others where it ins't, for me, I dont really mind if its there or not, I was just wondering.
Lol this was something I did for fun
(http://i390.photobucket.com/albums/oo344/Vaan360/Semttulo-4.jpg)
Im at the edge of the world! xD
And btw, there in that distant place, far far far away, you can enter trough the left mountain and go under the map.
But great work on the game Tim, its getting really good.
Wow I love that later picture, as if Cera sees a ghost ship haha :D
That's no bug Vaan, that's Tim's Headquarters! :lol
I say, this new version is amazing! Brutal good work, to all of you! :yes
I sure missed a lot. Could someone reupload version 0.20? The original link has expired! :(
a suggestion try to upload your files w/o expired im summing a 4sheard or megaupload to upload you files no expired period :DD
Reposting the link in just a moment. :)
http://www.2shared.com/file/5432725/48fb60...T_RPG_v020.html (http://www.2shared.com/file/5432725/48fb6045/LBT_RPG_v020.html)
Thanks, action9000.
I'll look deeply into this version of the game a bit later. I'm short on time right now. Nice models, BTW. :)
Thank you action :DD
for some reason when i press host game the program crashes
it might have a problem in your download of the game or on your computer software or hardware i think :DD
for some reason when i press host game the program crashes
Do you know what kind of computer you're running?
(Speed of processer, amount of RAM, type of video card, etc.)
Also, what firewall are you using?
here are my computer specs as they are shown on my computer
windows Vista Home Basics SP1
Dell Insperon 530S
32 bit OS
100gb ram
as for graphics card and firewall i will have to look into it a little closer as i have no idea
100 GB of RAM?!?!?!? :blink: :blink: :blink:
I'm not sure thats even physically possible, you mean 100 GB of harddrive space right?
I wonder if they meant 1.00 GB RAM, which is another way of saying 1 GB RAM. There's no such thing as 100 GB of RAM for a computer, far as I know. The highest I've seen mentioned for a computer is 8 GB of RAM.
Samething here all I've seen was 8 and below.
Dell Insperon 530S
Oooh. One of my favorite computer models. If anyone wants to buy a new computer with insane expandability, the Dell Inspiron 530 and 530s (the 530s is smaller) is the way too go. Baseline comes with 1gb of DDR2 533mhz ram, an Intel Celeron processor, and a 250gb SATA2 hard disk. You can expand it to 8gb of DDR2 1066mhz ram, an Intel Core2Quad 2.8ghz processor, and up to a 2tb SATA2 hard disk. Getting it up to 8gb takes a little bit of tweaking in the BIOS (it's only approved to run 4gb, but you can get 8gb into it), but after that it runs like a charm. I have several Dell Inspiron 530's with 500gb SATA2 hard disks, Intel Dual Core 2.19ghz processors, and 3gb DDR2 800mhz ram. They're great.
Just thought I'd throw that in there. I'm not really a participant in this game. I just like checking out all the topics and thought I'd say something about this particular computer model.
be sure your WIN vista has a update version or your video card driver is update i try to run in TLBT RPG in 32MB Video card in my old P3 computer w/ 800Mhz processing power and it works :DD
DarkHououmon was correct on that one, I ment 1.00 GB RAM
and i guess after looking at my settings i dont have my firewall turned on
Hey, just for troubleshooting purposes...
Try running this version. This is somewhere between v0.19 and v0.20.
Let me know if it works any better, 812558. :)
http://www.2shared.com/file/5569943/29e194...19whatever.html (http://www.2shared.com/file/5569943/29e19428/LBT_RPG_v019whatever.html)
thanks, works perfectly now
Hey all!
Just wanted to announce that I'll be working on the game some more starting pretty soon. I just took a bit of a detour to work on another project for the last while.
Updates should be coming along hopefully fairly soon. ;)
Sweat. :)
Nice work ^^
Goodwork. Don't work to hard or to long. Or you may burn out or get to stressed out.
The link's down.
Sorry about that!
Here's a new link to v0.20! :)
http://www.2shared.com/file/5935051/24d10f...T_RPG_v020.html (http://www.2shared.com/file/5935051/24d10f79/LBT_RPG_v020.html)
Hi Frends ^^ long is her. Giv the new upde son tis LBT Game ? wat gibt es nws ¸ber LBT ? sorry ne so good Englisch a Germen :lol all gru? an all LBT Fans :DD
No updates now.
I only work on the game when I feel in the mood for it and I have had a lot of things on my mind lately. Sorry!
Being gone for four months, I haven't seen this RPG since Neil Cubestrong was still roaming an empty valley, so now I'm amazed at the progress that's been made! I played as Cera, Ducky, and Petrie, two of which looked great, and Mr. Threehorn looks amazing too.
One problem I was having is mainly that I couldn't get the NPCs to talk to me.I played as Cera mainly to ensure I was talking to the right person, but I still couldn't get a pep out of Mr. Threehorn. Is that supposed to happen?
I'm not sure. I just tried playing the game as a threehorn and couldn't get a peep out of him. Think I may try another type and see.
One problem I was having is mainly that I couldn't get the NPCs to talk to me.I played as Cera mainly to ensure I was talking to the right person, but I still couldn't get a pep out of Mr. Threehorn. Is that supposed to happen?
were you using right-click to talk to the NPCs? I just tried it out now and it worked for me.
I wasn't. I'll try it now. Thanks for the tip!
EDIT: Agreed, when right-clicking I got to the dialogue boxes perfectly. I ran into two problems though...
1) Occasionally, the "Goodbye" button is missing from the chat box, meaning I have no way to stop talking to the NPC except pressing the Escape button. Since there is the Escape button, this problem is avoidable.
2) This one was a little weirder. :blink: I'll explain everything I did, 'cause I don't why this happened.
The first time I ever logged on as Ducky, I tried to talk to who I now know to be Mr. Clubtail. After failing, I quit.
This time, to be safe, I logged in as Cera and headed straight for Mr. Threehorn. I didn't even notice whether Mr. Clubtail was in his spot or not. I chatted, it wokred fine, I went back to the main menu.
I logged back in as Ducky. I decided to talk to every NPC to see who everyone was. In order, I met Buzz Conedrin, Mama Flyer, Mama Swimmer, Grandpa Longneck, and skipped Mr. Threehorn. But I was sure there was one more. Hadn't there been a cube straight ahead of the hill where you begin the game?
I checked the map, and found it indeed said there was somebody there. I moved until I overlapped with the green dot on the map. Mr. Clubtail had disappeared!
I logged out and then logged in as Spike. Mr. Clubtail was back. I never knew why he was missing that one time.
I gave it a whirl and it seems to work fine.
Erm, don't take this as an insult but, Mr. Threehorn looks rather...stoned. I expected him to have a stern expression.
Maybe he's been eating some leaves that help you to feel different and more relaxed.
Mr. Clubtail had disappeared!
This bug has actually been fixed and the changes will be in v0.21. Great to have you back, LB&T! :D Lots of new stuff coming for .21 including our first sounds! :p
Or Threehorn grumbling or cussing in nonsense words?
Ahhh, a new update head somewhere in the future? Can't wait.
Well I tried downloading the demo but when I clicked on the link I was told it was deleted, wonder how this happened :oops
Well I tried downloading the demo but when I clicked on the link I was told it was deleted, wonder how this happened :oops
I'm working on arrangements to host the game on landbeforetimelover's server permanently but I haven't got the okay yet that it's fine with him to grab that much of (potentially many GB) his storage space and bandwidth. :p
Anyway, here is a temporary link to v0.20 (before the mentioned bugfixes). v0.21 will have all of the fixes that I mentioned after v0.20 was originally posted, as well as a bunch of new stuff! :)
http://www.2shared.com/file/7050002/c8a1ef...T_RPG_v020.html (http://www.2shared.com/file/7050002/c8a1eff5/LBT_RPG_v020.html)
Dude, this is really awesome! I love this game!
yeah I do to to bad I can never try it since this other site enjoys sending me to random sites whenever I try to download the game :lol
The download link is really tiny. It's near the bottom right corner of the rounded blue box in small text.
no worries I finally downloaded the game and got it working and its pretty awesome I can't wait until you put in the character animations and NPC skins and I think you need to work a bit on the faces especilly Littlefoot's(longneck) he looks shocked with those big eyes :lol I like that you can go into the background but it might be better to have a barrier keeping you from doing so. anyhow I really liked it.
I like that you can go into the background but it might be better to have a barrier keeping you from doing so.
There is actually a reason there is no barrier. This is because this map is going to connect to other maps seamlessly in the near future and I don't want to put up barriers for a demo version just to have to take them down again.
Eventually there will be no need for invisible walls or anything like that because the maps will be designed to be wide-open. If an area looks like it can be accessed, there is probably some way to. As for the map going into the open ocean, players will be able to travel into the ocean *but* because of limitations on stamina and breathing, the player will never be able to travel far enough to get to any boundaries or barriers. That will let us keep the size of the world beyond the borders of the game under control without needing to use invisible walls. If a player is crazy enough to swim out into the open ocean, I won't stop them but they will probably die. :p
oh that will be cool but you should work on LF's face mainly the eyes they make him look like he has a cartoon expression.
Dude, he is a cartoon!
I'm frankly surprised they look as good as they do. Did you make them, action, or was it some of those people I vaguely recall who claimed they'd do it?
yeah but it dosen't look like him :lol
Well yeah, not yet. It takes time to render things well.
Has anybody started doing animations for existing models yet? :)
Razzie made the models, and if I'm not mistaken there are a couple of people who would like to animate, but they didn't start on it yet because there's a huge thing to it.
Littlefoot only doesn't look like littlefoot because his mouth is wideopen and his eyes are a bit too big, I guess both can be fixed :)
I noticed.any how while I was playing(don't know if this was a glitch) I went to the ocean and I saw the Spiketail model in there I was playing as the longneck/littlefoot I don't know if it was another player or a glitch.
Hey, just letting everyone know what I'm working on!
I have decided that the text in the game was..really really small so I've been working on resizing all the parts of the game to work with larger text, as can be seen in this screenshot:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/LBT-Game-large-text-and-NPCs-from-t.jpg)
I have also recoded how NPCs know what to say to the player. All of the words that NPCs say are now stored in text files and are easily editable by anyone (at least during the development process). The code is now also set up to allow installing of multiple languages and translation of the existing text is extremely simple. :)
Here is the format of the text file of what Mr. Clubtail says to a Swimmer (the text file being used in the above picture), for example:
- Code: on
npcName
Mr. Clubtail
npcType
Clubtail
Start{
Hey, my treestar just
blew away and I have
a tummy ache!
=====
Leave me be!
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
=====
End}
All you need to do is edit the text between the Start{ and End} lines and make sure you have exactly 12 lines between those tags and you can translate the text (as well as the names of the characters and their species) to any language you want!
The text files are at the location
\Text\Whatever Language\Whatever Dinosaur Type You Are\
and the code is all set up to automatically load the correct language and dinosaur text, based on the choice. All we need now are other language text files; we're all set now to make them. :)
I just changed a bunch of code that displays your character's stats. Here's a really obvious comparison:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/new-code-for-char-stats-display.jpg)
The top two stats use the new code, which automatically centers and spaces out the text properly. The bottom two stats use the old code, which didn't work nicely in all resolutions. I also centered the text at the top of the window that shows your level and dino type.
I also organized this stats window. The top two stats are your "primary stats" and the bottom two are your "secondary stats" (though this screenshot is a bad example of that, with 2 toughnesses :p). The stats that are primary and secondary are different depending on your dino and it always puts the right ones in the right places now.
As for the difference between primary and secondary stats? When you level up, you will be given more points to put in primary stats than in secondary stats. That's the simple explanation.
And here's the final working version of the character stats screen until we add more features to it:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/complete-fix-of-char-stats-screen.jpg)
Everything looks to line up nicely, I'm thinking! :D
Hey again!
I"m just doing a bit of work on the chat window now and I've made a few changes/fixes.
1) The box now turns darker while you're typing so you can tell that it's active.
2) The text all stays inside the window properly...except the text that you're currently typing. It still has some issues. :p
3) The text now goes all the way to the end of the text box on all resolutions without going too far.
And of course, the screenshot example:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/almost-completely-fixed-chat-window.jpg) :D
Looks like you are making some progress in the game.
I fixed the camera water/colour/fog bug you talked about to me, Mumbling. I'll let you try this sometime and you can let me know if this is what you think it should do :D
Now while the camera is above water, the fog effect is off. While the camera is underwater, the fog effect is on. Your player's location has no effect on this fog.
I also changed the scale of the Mouse Speed sliders in the options menu. It's a bit slower now. :p
The new chat boxes look great! Can't wait for the next version!
Wow! It's coming along great.
wow, lots of updates, glad to see that the text box is all fixed up, the last time we were using it was...not very fun lol.
Awesome Tim! Did the camera thing work as you planned to?
Yep, I found the problem with the code I wrote while you were here. I just kinda failed but the logic was correct! :)
nice to know you're resizing the text it was alot harder for me to read before , and great job on the stats screen and chat window :)
Hey all!
Multiplayer is starting to come together but it still needs quite a bit of work. As you can see now though, the server is able to see other players in-game as the models they joined the game with! :D
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/rawr-I-can-see-you-heehee.jpg)
Okay, it almost works..!
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/multiplayer-almost-works.jpg)
Just a few more things to get fixed. :p I must say, I think this screenshot looks pretty dang awesome :lol :D
BTW: The framerate is really low because I'm actually running 3 copies of the game at the same time on one computer to test multiplayer. :p
Okay, we found countless bugs when testing multiplayer in more detail. This will be awhile before it's ready, I'm thinking. Grrr...
hey I found out what's ahead of the ocean its a bottomless pit I guess you could call it an easter egg because you don't die if you fall(who would even be trying to go there besides me who was expirmenting) or a death trap because I died of boredom :lol the weird thing is I expected my game to crash or the framerate to go down and it didn't thank god.
Eventually it will do something very odd once you fall beyond the lowest point that my program can calculate (values in computers do have minimums and maximums and you'd hit the minimum eventually). I don't know what would happen if you fell that far but I assure you that in the actual game, such a thing will never happen. :p
I know but it was hilariously amusing :lol :p
W00t!
Okay, For the first time ever, 4 players (using actual models) are able to see each other perfectly and the code works exactly the same for any number of players past that, limited only by the speed of the network connection. I still have a bunch of random bugs to kick out before the v.21 release but here's living proof of functional 4-player multiplayer :D
From the Swimmer's perspective:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/Ducky.jpg)
Spiketail's:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/Spike.jpg)
Longneck's:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/Littlefoot.jpg)
and Threehorn's:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/Cera.jpg)
One step closer! :D
Hello:
It is awesome that you have proper models for almost all of the Gang now. Can I ask what program did you use to make the models for them?
Keep it up!
Razzie, one of our members here, is kind enough to make the models for us. He works in a variety of programs but does much of the actual modelling in Poser, I believe.
Hello:
That is cool indeed. I use Milkshape3d to make my 3d models and I want to learn some of 3ds max.
I don't know how the characters have been made, if they move, I was thinking that they may need a kind of skeleton, and I have seen those in programs like Blender, that is why I asked. Cool models though, I hope they are low-poly enough to make life waiser for all pcs :DD .
They are pretty low-poly. They don't have bones and animations yet but it's part of our plan to give the models bones and animation someday!
Hello:
Well, I know Blender can make bones for models, that is a free program so that could get to be an asset for the game :yes . I wish I could offer something for the game.
I think Razzie has a plan for what he wants to use to make bones/animations. :)
More updates! Anyone who has helped me test multiplayer before remembers how weird the chat window worked. Names were cut off, the second line was a mess, blah blah blah...
well no more! It's nice and pretty now, though I think it might be a little squished together. I may make the chat window a little larger to deal with the larger text, but as you can see, every player's text shows up properly now. :)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/Chat-Bugs-Fixed.jpg)
Oh...I also want to improve the "letter wrapping" code and turn it into word wrapping eventually so words don't cut off halfway but I'll leave it for now.
Looks like it's coming along great. =]
Wow, very nice game you guys have made. I must say, action9000, you are a very skilled programmer.
Awesome job on fixing the models in multiplayer :) Text is kinda squished together indeed but I'm sure you'll find something for that :)
nice job,Action9000
Mumbling and I just tested multiplayer with the latest fixes and it's looking like it's good to go! It's working beautifully except for a couple of complaints about the backspace key not being very friendly, but I'll work on that at some point.
Anyway, multiplayer is fully functional and life is good. I'm just going to make a few more changes and add a new feature and then I'll post up v0.21 :)
the backspace key not being very friendly? what the heck happened there? :lol
Go go go. I wanna do multiplayer!
the backspace key not being very friendly? what the heck happened there?
Unfortunately, creating our own chat system means that I need to code a word processor from scratch, basically. The program doesn't automatically know that I want the Backspace key to work like it does for text in Windows; I need to create that functionality from scratch.
It sort of works but if you hold the Backspace key, instead of erasing text quickly, it completely kills the ability of the backspace key to do anything until you send that message. The only way to remove a character you've typed is to tap the backspace key once for each character you want to remove...and even then it's a bit finicky. :p
Go go go. I wanna do multiplayer!
I'm happy to invite you to try multiplayer as soon as I post up the next version. I just added some music and a sound effect to the game so I want to make a Sound Options menu before I release the latest update, so you can adjust volumes, turn sound/music on/off and things like that. :)
nice to know that sound will finally be in the game I hope alot of the music will be from the 1st film and the early sequels. :smile
Some slightly more detailed plans about background music are discussed here :)
http://z7.invisionfree.com/thegangoffive/i...?showtopic=5062 (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=4842)
I will be composing the soundtrack to the game myself. As for now...I am using temporary music and sound effects for testing purposes. Version v0.21 will include this temporary music. The final music will be based on the atmosphere from the early LBT films as I love the soundtracks in them as well.
I'm not allowed to just grab the music exactly, nor do I think it would work well in a game setting (long periods of time spend in a similar location in a game world compared to short clips and ever-changing themes that exist in the soundtracks). I will adapt that style to suit a game like this one.
I just finished the sound options menu and all my sound testing is complete. Things are working beautifully. I could post up v0.21 at any time now, I'm just debating what else I want to include in this release. :)
Cool! Can't wait!
Ah, know what? I'm thinking it's time to release the next version! :D
I apologize for the loong wait time for this version. I don't have a really good excuse except for being stressed about life but I'm feeling a lot better now and felt like programming again!
First things first, the latest version can be downloaded here!
The Land Before Time Online RPG v0.21 (http://www.lbtserver.2myip.net/Members/Action9000/LBTRPG/LBTv021.zip) :D
To install: Extract all these files into a folder and run LBT RPG to play!
New stuff in this version:
1) Multiplayer works again! (I'm trying to avoid ranting about how much of a pain this was to get working... :p) Longnecks, threehorns, swimmers and spiketails will work online with up to 100 players in one game (in theory). Flyers and Fastrunners don't yet have 3d models and will not work properly online right now. I will fix that as soon as I receive these models from Razzie!
2) Fixed the disappearing Mr. Clubtail bug
3) Fixed the Goodbye button missing from chatboxes.
4) Improved the fog effects when you're underwater. The effect now comes on when the *camera* is underwater, rather than your character. The effect is also a bit more subtle and (in the opinion of Mumbling and I) prettier.
5) Fixed a bug in the chat window where the 2nd line of text got copied to every message after one was written.
6) Fixed a bug in the chat window where clients (connected players) were missing the first 4 characters of every message they sent or received. I had to cheat a bit to fix this bug. :p It just wouldn't be squished!
7) Added 1 sound effect to the Resolution Choice menu (before the game starts). There is now a *click* sound when you click on anything on those screens.
8) Added 2 music tracks to the game: One for the main menu and one for in-game.
9) Added functionality to the "Sound Options" menu, including music and sound volumes, as well as the ability to mute or unmute all audio in the game.
10) Increased the size of the game's text.
11) Moved the NPC chat text into txt files. This allows us to easily add new languages to the game.
12) Fixed the bug where you could see the ! cursor on the fullscreen map if there was an NPC behind your cursor.
13) Cleaned up the code that displays the character stats.
14) Improved the chat window so text goes right to the edge of it before wrapping to the next line.
15) Reduced the maximum speed of the Mouse Sensitivty sliders in the options.
16) Fixed the green sky bug that occurred when changing your view distance.
Have fun, everyone! Comments are much appreciated! :D
Hmm, I want to test the multiplayer, but I need to type the IP address of someone hosting a game? A list of hosted games (or indication if none are being played) would be desirable.
EDIT: Upon testing the game, playing as a Spike, when jumping while underwater and reaching the top he did not fall back down, kinda just kept going half above water until I jumped again. Could be him swimming (ignore me if it's just the absence of animation throwing me off). The ability to play the game in a window would be a good addition (if an option like that doesn't exist, maybe I'm just not seeing it).
A list of hosted games (or indication if none are being played) would be desirable.
That's actually virtually impossible using the multiplayer engine that I am. The code demands entry of an IP address. The *only* way I could do something like this would be to create a 'favorites' list of everyone we know who could potentially be hosting a game and automatically attempt to connect to all of them, report back which ones connected and which ones failed, make a list and let you choose one.
While this is technically plausible, it would take 1 to 5 seconds for each connection and we would need to assemble a list of computers that could possibly be hosting a game.
In other words, we'd still be entering IP addresses, we'd just automatically be typing in the addresses one at a time from a prewritten list and recording which ones succeeded and which ones failed. This is very time-consuming for the player because if there are even 50 people on your favorites list, that's suddenly 3-5 minutes of your time to search for all the existing servers...plus the time and effort to create a list of all your 'favorite' servers.
What I do want to do is let players create a 'favorites' list so you can just click the name of your friend or something and connect that way, rather than having to type in their IP every time. I can't just create a "lobby" of all the active servers in the world though, unfortunately.
A list of hosted games (or indication if none are being played) would be desirable.
That's actually virtually impossible using the multiplayer engine that I am. The code demands entry of an IP address. The *only* way I could do something like this would be to create a 'favorites' list of everyone we know who could potentially be hosting a game and automatically attempt to connect to all of them, report back which ones connected and which ones failed, make a list and let you choose one.
While this is technically plausible, it would take 1 to 5 seconds for each connection and we would need to assemble a list of computers that could possibly be hosting a game.
In other words, we'd still be entering IP addresses, we'd just automatically be typing in the addresses one at a time from a prewritten list and recording which ones succeeded and which ones failed. This is very time-consuming for the player because if there are even 50 people on your favorites list, that's suddenly 3-5 minutes of your time to search for all the existing servers...plus the time and effort to create a list of all your 'favorite' servers.
What I do want to do is let players create a 'favorites' list so you can just click the name of your friend or something and connect that way, rather than having to type in their IP every time. I can't just create a "lobby" of all the active servers in the world though, unfortunately.
Ahh, I understand. A favorites list sounds good...unless someone can constantly keep a game going (obviously never shutting down their computer) and everyone could be together all the time if they so desired. :)
I would love to run a server all the time. Ideally, a game like this would work better that way. I just don't want to use that much electricity and bandwidth (not to mention, my spare computer is noisy! :p) to set up a spare computer to do that and I couldn't ask anyone else to do it either.
It's true though, that would be the perfect solution, then we could let everyone join the same game with a single click.
I would love to run a server all the time. Ideally, a game like this would work better that way. I just don't want to use that much electricity and bandwidth (not to mention, my spare computer is noisy! :p) to set up a spare computer to do that and I couldn't ask anyone else to do it either.
It's true though, that would be the perfect solution, then we could let everyone join the same game with a single click.
Haha..yeah..same reasons I didn't volunteer.
Did some multiplayer with Alex. My Spike was glitched on Alex's screen so he only saw Spike facing one direction. Like even if Spike was looking Ducky in the face, Ducky was seeing his tail no matter what direction Spike was facing.
EDIT: But other than that everything was fine, connection and everything worked perfect. Kudos to you for being awesome.
be him swimming (ignore me if it's just the absence of animation throwing me off). The ability to play the game in a window would be a good addition (if an option like that doesn't exist, maybe I'm just not seeing it).
You're right. That is how I'm simulating swimming on the surface for now, until we get an animation.
As for being able to play in a window:
That feature doesn't exist in the game yet, but certainly, I could put that in an update in the near future. Shouldn't be too difficult. ;)
Spike was glitched on Alex's screen so he only saw Spike facing one direction. Like even if Spike was looking Ducky in the face, Ducky was seeing his tail no matter what direction Spike was facing.
Right, that's what I forgot to put into the game before uploading it! :bang
The direction you're facing is *not* being sent over the network at all right now. It's not so much a glitch as just a feature that isn't implimented yet. I'm sending your location over the network but not the angle you're facing. I'll try to remember to fix that for the next version, too. :p
By the way, what language is the game programmed in? Something with a "C" in it, I presume?
Aye, it's written in C++.
wow, lots of updates, its looking awesome. The only thing i noticed is that the in-game music would keep playing even though i've went back to the main menu. Other than that, everything is great.
It might just be me, but when I tried out Littlefoot and decided to switch to Ducky, when I pressed to go the Main Menu where I could select a new character, upon selecting Ducky and waiting for the game to restart, it froze. Seems I have to actually exit out of the game altogether before I could start up a new game.
I check the offical site Mumbling mentioned and I noticed V 0.21 is up for download there before I decide to download it I want to ask if it has everything you told us about in the last few days.
Check page 26, Belmont. :)
Yup. Everything Action told you is in that update.
I just found out, everytime I start a game I can't help but leave it at the the menu to listen to the nice music playing there, the in-game music is great too and that's another update to keep me waiting for the final version :smile
The music in the game so far is just temporary but it's a rough idea of the sort of music I'll be composing for the game later on. I'm glad you like my choices of music so far! :)
The only thing i noticed is that the in-game music would keep playing even though i've went back to the main menu.
Fixed. :p
I just forgot to stop the music when you go back to the main menu. Thanks for finding that! :D
so in the next update(if there is one) the in game music won't keep playing if you go to menu speaking of which in the options menu you should have a feature that allows you to set whatever track as etheir the menu music or in-game music :idea (I would enjoy listening to the menu track while running through the valley(or that part of it)).
should have a feature that allows you to set whatever track as etheir the menu music or in-game music
I'm not going to add that feature because eventually, every region of the game will have its own assigned music. This means that I'd just have to take this feature out again once the game is closer to being completed.
If you really want to listen to the main menu music while running around the valley, open the
Audio/Music/Main Title.mp3 file in whatever media player you use and turn the in-game sound off while leaving your music player running in the background. ;)
Part of the menu's current music vaguely reminded me of the Jurrasic Park music at parts. I love it.
yeah I love the dramatic buildup at the beginning it just gets you ready.
It looks like I've given myself a pretty good challenge here: :p
To write a title music theme that people like more than the temporary music. :lol
I like it, but I'm never around when others are playing, so I can't test he multiplayer. Does anyone have a time in the future they plan on being logged in to the RPG, and an IP address for me to type in?
I like it, but I'm never around when others are playing, so I can't test he multiplayer. Does anyone have a time in the future they plan on being logged in to the RPG, and an IP address for me to type in?
Sure. We'd just have to plan forward on gof :)
i know we had a network on Hamachi that was used for testing the multiplayer out. It makes it way easier for getting IP addresses and such. Anyways, I'm up for testing some multiplayer. Maybe we can see how many people we can get into one game.
i know we had a network on Hamachi that was used for testing the multiplayer out. It makes it way easier for getting IP addresses and such. Anyways, I'm up for testing some multiplayer. Maybe we can see how many people we can get into one game.
Sure we could... Maybe create a new topic for it and do so in the weekend(when more members have time) We'd have to make a universal time that works for both europeans and americans... Meaning somewhere in the morning for the americans and the evening for us, europeans. Do you want to create a topic to keep everything nice and organised?(otherwise I'll do so :p )
Edit: Since I think you went off to bed I'll make one ;)
Hi , war long nicht mer hier ^^. Action 9000 good works fore The RPG Game . Sorry nicht so good englisch ^^. Wen gibt es mal wieder ein Miusik Projekt zum Singen. H‰tte mal wieder lust drauf. Achso hoffe wier sehen uns mal Malte ist schon lange her . Wo wir geschrieben haben habe dich nicht vergessen ^^ . Schreibe dir demn‰chst mal ne E mail kannst du mir auch schreiben wenn du zeit hast. Gibt bestimmt einieges zu Erz‰hlen untereinander gru? Marcel. Und nart¸rlich auch All LBT Fans :lol
I think I could test multiplayer minus the fact I don't know any IP adresses.
It may be easier for some to test the multiplayer if they are a type of team and 1 uses their isp address if such a thing is needed. & they'd need a way to tell the others when the game is up and running, or do a standard time frame when it is.
exactly what I had in mind.
I'm just putting it out there, as it's just an idea that came to me. There are several sites that let you download and use 3d models royalty free (as long as they arn't used commercially). Models like trees and grass could be used to make a great valley. Or they could be used temporarily until we can get some original material for the game. Or if ya'll want the game to be 100% original, that's cool. I'm just putting it out there. (And, if anyone wants to have a look at these sites, please use your discretion, as there is some [artistic] nudity on some sites.)
I actually am looking at a nice, cheap application to make our in-game trees. It's a little bit of money but the results will be outstanding, I'm thinking! :o :D
http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/?f=tree_party (http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/?f=tree_party)
As for rocks, flowers, etc.
http://www.aliencodec.com/product_plantlife.php (http://www.aliencodec.com/product_plantlife.php)
This is what we'll probably do. It seems like an easier solution than trying to get some poor soul to model all this stuff for us.
Yeah, both of those look absolutly awesome. Would make the game look great. Little expesnive though.
Looks like it could be a neat addition.
that will make an outstanding addition :D
Hey everyone!
I've been trying to design a layout for all the interface stuff that will exist in the game so I know what the heck I'm doing next. :p
You might wanna check this out: I drew up an image in photoshop of what our interface layout could look like. Our final images for all these windows and things are not yet drawn up so these are just placeholders, but I thought I'd share this design with everyone to get some feedback! :D
Yes, this is photoshopped; the game doesn't have all this stuff in it quite yet. I wanted to get an idea of what I'm doing before I actually go and program it.
I won't put the image right here in the post because it is 1680x1050 resolution and you will need to view it at basically full size in order to be able to read everything. You can view the image here:
http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af74/lb...-GUI-Layout.jpg (http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af74/lbtrpg/Proposed-GUI-Layout.jpg)
What do you think, does this look reasonable? :)
Haha, a Great Valley minimap.
I love it. Great job, you covered everything, I think. ;)
It looks like a good one so far.
Agreed. You know how to make all those things?
Agreed. You know how to make all those things?
After looking at some of the other stuff he did, I'm convinced Tim can walk on water and heal the sick and cure the blind.
looking great, but are you still going to keep the portrait and health/ level of target? (like in WoW)?
It looks great
looking great, but are you still going to keep the portrait and health/ level of target? (like in WoW)?
Remember that fighting is meant to be kept at a very limited level in this game so level of target display may not be a permanent necessity in the game. As for portraits I am not really sure. Would they serve a purpose in the game?
looking great, but are you still going to keep the portrait and health/ level of target? (like in WoW)?
Remember that fighting is meant to be kept at a very limited level in this game so level of target display may not be a permanent necessity in the game. As for portraits I am not really sure. Would they serve a purpose in the game?
Not really since we won't be wearing helmets or anything so you can clearly see what dinosaur type it is(unless you gotta figure that out by doing an adventure of course).
I guess the only time we'd need HP above one's head is when they're really in battle. As malte mentioned, fights won't be too common.
I like the GUI layout. I'd recommend to add a clock that will show the real life time in case someone will get too obsessed with the game. :)
When you left-click an NPC creature, a display will pop up in the top-center of the screen like WoW. I don't know exactly what it will look like yet but I'd like to have the following information on it:
It's name and species (if known. Will show up as unknown if your character doesn't know).
It's relative level to you (based on probably a colour code or brief text describing how you feel about this creature's strength, as opposed to it's "level" per se).
It's relationship to you: Friendly/Foe (or unknown): how friendly or aggressive it is (or whether that's unknown). We might do this in a colour code.
It's relative health and stamina (not actual numbers but information such as injured, heavily injured, healthy, etc.)
That's a great idea, Coyote_A! We could put a clock around the minimap or something like that :)
Okay, since we've been developing so slowly, I'm changing my development plan a little:
Instead of trying to perfect multiplayer, which is causing nothing but problems so far and slowing me down, I am going to jump away from all the multiplayer work for now and power through getting some single player game content into the RPG.
I'll get the interface as finished as possible until we get the final graphics and I'll work on expanding the game itself with new adventures, abilities, NPCs and all the stuff the game will need to be played single-player.
Cool. It's always good to differentiate yourself rather than tear your hair out over some specific thing that isn't working.
Sounds like a good idea to me, focusing on one thing at a time rather then several at once. Good luck.
sounds good. :)
Sure! Go for it! :) I'll be there to help you on the interface thingy.
Just don't forget about original MMORPG project completely. ;)
Oh no, I won't forget about it. ;)
As a matter of fact, Mumbling and I agreed that it might be worth a shot to try running my laptop as a 24/7 server for the game. :p
Because it is my laptop, I will be hauling it with me sometimes for whatever, but I could leave it running most of the time (I do anyway).
One thing though, I will have to recode the entire *server* part of the game because right now, running the game on any computer uses up 100% of one of the computer's CPUs (so 100% on a single core machine, 50% on a dual core, 25% on a quad core, etc.) and I can't leave my laptop like that all the time (gets hot, noisy and eats up power). I'll just need to recode the server stuff and put it into a tiny little program that runs on a very little amount of CPU power with no graphics.
In theory though..this just might work..!
The difficult part will be figuring out what to do when I do need to shut down the server for awhile: what will happen to the state of the game world, connected players, etc.
For anyone who cares, the specs of that laptop are
AMD Turion x2 (1.66GHz)
2GB DDR2 RAM
120GB hard drive
GeForce6150 Go (so I won't want the server program to have graphics because this video card is slooow :p)
Wired internet (100Mb/s on LAN, 15-20Mbps peak Internet speed, 7.5Mbps typical) so the connection should be stable :)
If I run just a few lines of code necessary to run a sever and send/receive data, the program should be fast, simple, not eat up any RAM to speak of and use almost no CPU power. ;)
I don't know much on how this all works but I think that it might be necessary to use your computer as a sever Tim. If there isn't one central computer then wouldn't the data that keeps track of experience, levels and everything else for an account have to be stored on a persons individual computer? Not only would this cause problems for anyone who tries to play their account on another computer but then couldn't someone get into the file storing the data and alter it? Bumping themselves up 20 levels in a stat for example. But I don't know how that information is stored so I don't know if thats an actual problem.
That sounds awesome. Glad we might actually be able to have a 24/7 server. Best way to go. ;)
Not only would this cause problems for anyone who tries to play their account on another computer but then couldn't someone get into the file storing the data and alter it? Bumping themselves up 20 levels in a stat for example.
I've thought about that; I do actually have a way to protect save game files from player edits (turning them into files that look like nothing more than random blocks of nothingness, kind of like trying to open an EXE file with notepad) so that won't be a problem.
Either way, while it would be possible to store everything on an individual player's computer, I agree that a server would definitely be nicer for a game like this. I'll do everything I can to make it possible.
Just take it 1 day at a time and 1 thing at a time. Don't try to do to much at once.
heh,impressive :)
After a little bit of trying to figure out how the bloody thing works, I have our first screenshot of our new tree software!
I was playing with the shading of the trees a bit, trying to give them a little brighter, slightly more cartoony look. Eventually I think the land ought to be a little bit more cartoony as well but I have to figure out just how to do that.
Anywho, this is a very simple example of what a tree looks like in-game, all coded in. It does also sway and drift in the wind too, which is very cool! :yes
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/Tree-Party-1.jpg)
Looks like a good looking tree, and you do have to start somewhere. Was it hard to put in that 1 tree & get it to the look you liked?
It was hard to figure out how to actually get everything working but now that I see how it works, adding more trees won't be very difficult. :)
I am having quite a few problems with collision though: Seems my code that detects when the player runs into something isn't working on this tree...I'm fighting with this at the moment and I sincerely hope there's a workaround. <_< :p
So you can't drag and drop trees like I saw in the making of Oblivion video somewhere?
I guess with no collision the characters can walk through trees like they are phantom girl or Shadowcat?
So you can't drag and drop trees like I saw in the making of Oblivion video somewhere?
That would be pretty awesome. :D
Naw, I gotta do it the old fashioned way: Put the tree into the game using nothing but text, such as this chunk of my code:
- Code: on
int GVTree1;
GVTree1 = tpLoadtree("BasicTree3.tree");
tpPositionTree(GVTree1,8300,280,8800);
//This is the stuff that's broken: Collision
SC_SetupObject(GVTree1,TREE,0); //Crashes here
SC_SetObjectCollisionOn(GVTree1);
//Update trees for calculating clipping
tpUpdate(mainCam);
I guess with no collision the characters can walk through trees like they are phantom girl or Shadowcat?
Haha, exactly. :p
Why not phasing? :p Based on having seen certain things in the lbt animation, ducky can stretch, Cera has short range teleport and sonic powers. petrie can be crushed and not get any bones broken or any bruises. some sharpteeth can fall vast distances and only get knocked out, Ali has some sort of fast travel power that she can take others with her, even in cera's case not knowing it, ect. so phasing is just 1 more power. :p :lol
It does also sway and drift in the wind too, which is very cool! :yes
I would really like to see it myself! :lol:
Hey all!
I was just working on some interface coding before I head off to work for the night.
I created placeholder images for Character Stats (the old one we've had forever), inventory and Adventure windows and set up some code so the windows automatically organize themselves to be out of the way on the screen.
The first window you open will appear on the far left of the screen. When you open a second one, it will either pop up just to the right of the first one or it will push the old one to the right and open the new one on the far left, depending on which windows you are opening. When you open up the 3rd one, all of them go to their default positions, as seen in this screenshot:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/interface-1.jpg)
And here's what happens when I open up any two windows (Inventory and Adventures, for example):
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/intercace-2.jpg)
They just pop up on the left side, out of the way.
And just "Adventures":
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/interface-adventures.jpg)
It comes up on the far left.
I also moved the NPC chat window to the far right, also out of the way, as you can see in the screenshot. This isn't photoshopped this time. :p
It isn't quite perfect yet (I guess the Adventures window ought to maybe squish over a little more to the left in the second scenario) but it's nice and functional until we know the exact sizes of the final images we'll be using for these windows.
What is the little longneck icon at the bottom?
What is the little longneck icon at the bottom?
It's a running hotkey. I think we want to make one for all abilities(fly, run, crush a stone etc.)
What is the little longneck icon at the bottom?
Darn! I was going to ask that! :p
Anyway this is really looking great, with the windows, trees, and the ability icon (a great idea by the way) its looking much more like an actual finished game.
Aye, there is going to be a bar full of hotkeys running along the bottom of the screen. That single icon you see there is the very beginning of this feature.
I am making a little bit of progress with detecting collision with a tree. It's still very buggy and incomplete but I do have the code able to detect when a player is approximate touching a tree. It still needs a lot of work but it's starting to work, anyway. It's proving to be pretty complex to set up these trees to work with a collision engine. I'm starting to get it working (it didn't used to be able to detect it at all, at least now it knows when the player is close-ish to the tree. :p)
Screenshot examples
No collision:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/no-tree-collision.jpg)
Touching the tree:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/collision-detected.jpg)
*beats on a drum*
*bum, bum, bum dum, dum dum dum*
george, george, george of the jungggle..
lookin' goooood, can't wait for a tree filled GV.
At least that's something! Better than BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! when touching the water surface :D :p
Maybe if you can apply it to npc's you can have them say something like Threehorn say, "Hey, stop shoving." Sort of thing.
Sweet. It looks really great so far. :D
Oh, and if you have the final image sizes of the windows, maybe I can make the design of them if you like? ;)
Sweet. It looks really great so far. :D
Oh, and if you have the final image sizes of the windows, maybe I can make the design of them if you like? ;)
Some of your artwork in the game, that would be cool. :yes
The main menu is from Sky already :)
I am working on the adventure screen already but I have no idea what Tim is planning on so we'll see :)
Maybe the 2 or 3 of you can work together on that. Together you may come up with ideas each of you would not alone.
Fair enough, my creativity is not what it has been of lately. Think it's time to go to school again :p
Looks great, all! Good job, Tim!
wow it looks outstanding :) good job ;)
ah sorry im still doing a lot of work this days :) so the game is nice (keep up the good work) and i have a question
do every body come up to the loading screen?
^^ tnx
yeah, I was wondering about the loading screens as well.
The loading screen is just a joke right now. Will be something professional and pretty later.
Pretty trees. Nice work. :)
Hey, a gameplay concept I thought of, maybe for the next beta:
Controlling a group of Tinysauruses, · la Pikmin, to essentially control like 10 characters at once.
Think about it.
It's going to be MMORPG, not strategy game. :)
Hey, a gameplay concept I thought of, maybe for the next beta:
Controlling a group of Tinysauruses, · la Pikmin, to essentially control like 10 characters at once.
Think about it.
Yea it's not gonna be overlord or something :lol
Littlefoot: "Go kill them, my minions!" :nyah
Well, I was thinking maybe a secret area which allows you to get like 1 Tinysaurus a week (perhaps costing some items) and lets you set hotkeys to attack, stay, follow, etcetera. I don't think it would just let you control an army for nothing.
There are not to be any armies in this game. We are talking of land before time dinosaurs, not humans. The game is not meant to be focused primarily on violence. There are plenty of those games already.
actually I was tthinking about maybe including the Tinysaur cave along with the Tinysaurus but wait XI-XIII all sucked so leave out all elements from those films .Well maybe you could put Guido in the game as an NPC but thats just about it.
Aye, the tinysaurus' cave is one out of many which I would want on the game map, but so far there doesn't seem to be a way to create caves or even overhanging ledges of any sort with the map making program used for the game.
well you'll find a way eventully ,if you don't then darn. :p :)
Out of curiosity, what is the map making program? I think the idea of letting the community make maps would be awesome.
Just making the land and such should be ok enough. Some experimentation may be done to see if one can make a sort of cave or something using unique walls & floor or something.
& armies do not fit in the lbt world. That is why there are so many armies shown in every lbt movie and tv episode.
The dino armies would be better suited for a RTS or a TBS game, with maybe adding in dino skins to a mod. Though there is an RTS game that flipped that did have dinos in it. I forget the game name but maybe some here have heard of it and own it and do recall the name. I remember there were mixed reviews of it.
Out of curiosity, what is the map making program? I think the idea of letting the community make maps would be awesome.
I'm using a delicate combination of programs to generate maps exactly how we need them for the game. This, combined with the fact that every map will go through rigorous quality control from Malte (our map designer) and myself (painstaking conversion from 2d to 3d using a series of programs), will make it very complex to train and coordinate multiple people for this job.
That being said, later on if we want to add others to the map development team, we certainly could once we get better at the process of making maps efficiently and are more able to train new team members. For now though, it's just too difficult and too under experimentation to bring others into the process.
As for adding others (apart from Malte) to draw 2d maps, I will need to talk to Malte about that. Malte seemed to be quite confident and comfortable with reproducing the Great Valley as seen in the films, which is our first goal. For simplicity's sake, we may not want to add other 2d map makers until we are completed the Great Valley portion of the game.
can any one put a mini map next to the life bar TNX ^^
It is hard to make a mini map. We will have one. I need to find out how to make one.
well good luck.
Okay, well I almost have collision with trees working properly..that is, it works, there is just one little problem: :p
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/sideways-collision-box.jpg)
You see where the tree is. Now, look at that white mess of stuff beside it. That is the collision box that the program uses to detect collision (I can make it invisible later, this is just for testing and debugging). Problem....this collision box is rotated 90 degrees away from the tree itself and I have no idea why or how to fix it! :p
I made a post on this forum
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_...156923&b=22&p=0 (http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=156923&b=22&p=0)
to hopefully get a little advice, but for now I'll keep messing around, trying to figure out why the heck this is happening. If we can stand the collision box up properly, we'll be good to go! :D
Could you just move the tree 90 degrees to fix it? (this coming from someone with no programming skills whatsoever)
My attempts to do that didn't fix anything, sadly. The 90 degree offset remained, no matter which way I rotated the tree.
well your best option is to take the collsion away comepletly,hey its better then having that mess around it.
Without collision, players will be able to walk right through trees. This will both make the game feel pretty weird, as well as limit the functionality of trees in the game. I would really like to have it possible to let players touch trees, use them as tactical cover, allow flyers to crash-land (or land properly) in them, etc.
yeah,but some of the best MMOs don't have collisions with their trees you could just walk right through them.
Yeah well, "all the best MMOs" are all carbon copies of Everquest. Which means they're boring.
Adding collision will increase gameplay quality. It'll add more functionality to the game, more interactivity. Make it more interesting overall. Small things like that all come together in the end to make up what's fun about a game.
And if I'm not mistaken, the game won't be about killing sharpteeth over and over and over and over and over and over and over, then get a quest to kill sharpteeth over and over and over and over, and if I'm not mistaken again, that's all you do in "the best MMOs", so comparing the game to "the best" isn't a good way to decide what should be in the game, and what shouldn't. And, if I'm not mistaken for a third time, the game will rely heavily on the enviroment to do puzzles, challenges, things of that nature (lol, you get it? trees? nature?), like the gang does in the movies and TV episodes.
The point of making the LBT game isn't to be another one of the "best MMOs".
Right you are, Alex. We're trying to reinvent the MMO genre with this game, taking it in a direction away from the stereotypical boringness that MMOs have always been (and remained, for strange reasons :p).
It seems like the technical problems never end for this project but I'm sure we'll work out a way around everything eventually.
Oh..and rest assured, the goal of the LBT game isn't to be the "Worst MMO" either. :p :lol
Well I think it is going to be the best. It has the potential. It's just that, as of now, the "best" (most popular) MMO's are like..click something..watch your guy kill it..click on something else..and on and on and on.
Not only best in terms of gameplay and such, but community, also. Instead of 13 year olds calling each other "idiot fags" every few minutes, if it has a community like the GOF does, it'll actually be pleasent to play with other people.
I completely agree. As long as we don't get physically stopped by technical stuff, our game looks like the most entertaining online game I've ever seen, in theory.
to tell you the truth its gonna be the best that is if you and mumbling get passed the collison bug.
I'm not a programmer, so I cannot help Tim with the bug. Maybe if I sit next to him and look at the code for a long time I can come up with something genius again like I did with the underwater one.. But I doubt it :p
The Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_reference_desk) may help. It's a place where you can ask questions about programming, computers, and tech stuff in general. Some very smart people are regulars on that desk, and they can probably help find your problem, if you ask.
Wow, that was really posted 3 days ago? Where'd the time go? :p
Anyway, thanks for the link, LB&T. :) I did some searches on it and there isn't anything that relates to the code packages I'm using for our game's development, sadly.
It's Wikipedia, so you post your own question. Go to the top, hit "Ask a new question by clicking here", and type in a heading that sums up the question, and fill in the big box with everything you want to tell them. Within the day (sometimes in minutes) responses will start coming in, to help you.
Hey all!
Mumbling sent me a little Adventures window graphic so I thought I'd try and make it start doing something. :p
It's not very interesting yet but we have some big plans!
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/adventures-window.jpg)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/adventures-window-2.jpg)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/adventures-window-3.jpg)
As you can see, the text appears properly in the window, no matter where it appears on the screen.
Also, I replaced the Health/Stamina meter with some nice graphics, also from Mumbling. Thanks! :D
Lol, a log, I like it.
It looks pretty good and doesn't block the central vision.
looks good.
Glad you're liking it so far!
I've been doing some more interface stuff today, such as:
1) The addition of the abilities bar across the bottom. The ability button that's there on the left is not yet functional but it will be soon.
2) The addition of the ring of buttons on the bottom right. These buttons can be toggled visible or invisible by pressing the large center button. The small buttons open up various windows/functions of the game, such as inventory, stats, ability information, etc. They're just an alternative to using hotkeys to open these windows for those who prefer. The large, inner button works perfectly fine right now but the outer ring of buttons do not do anything yet. Also, the graphics are placeholders for now.
Again..thanks to Mumbling for the grey button of awesomeness. :p :angel
I will also create some options later on for how visible the interface elements will be (transparency level, on/off, etc.) for players who prefer more interface stuff on the screen for easy access, or for players who prefer to have less clutter.
Anyway, screenshot time!
With the full ring of buttons showing:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/interface-3.jpg)
And with the ring of buttons turned off:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/interface-2.jpg)
Getting that button to work without breaking any of the camera control was a royal pain, but it finally works so I'm excited and felt like posting up some screenshots. :p :lol
Also, the new transparent area in the bottom left will hold an Experience point progress meter, showing your % completion to the next level.
WOW! It's starting to look better and better every day.
Hehe that's awesome tim! I really like what you get done in those 2 days that you're off! :D
Amazing what I can do when I'm not sleeping all day! :p :lol
Thanks everyone, it's going awesome! :D
It looks pretty good.
Hmmm... Perhaps we can add a branch to this log later, that will have "leafs" on it showing what buffs/debuffs affect character's stats. :)
wow its really improving, now I really can't wait for V 0.22.
Just a quick post to let you know I've fixed the tree bug and now I'm just making collision work properly. It's just a matter of time now. :)
Awesome. I hope new demo will be released soon. :)
Hey, there we go! Tree collision officially WORKS! :D
I just want to get a few more things working before I release a new version: Mainly, the new buttons, as well as a functional experience point progress meter.
I also want to tweak some things with the loading of files, to hopefully save some memory. Once I'm done all that, I'll post up v0.22!
Awesommmme, can't believe you got it to work :o
Neither can I. :p
so how did you get it to work out for you?
Haha, it was actually the stupidest thing. Mumbling put it best by saying it was "like taking out the battery and putting it back in". :p
When I set up collision on the tree, the collision box was rotated 90 degrees, like you saw in the picture. Weirdly enough though, if I remove the tree from memory and reload it in this order
1) Load tree
2) set up collision for tree
3) remove tree from memory
4) load the same tree
Collision works just fine and the box rotates the right way! Ugh, software sometimes... :bang :bang :lol
Wow, it progressed a lot during this three months, its getting better and better.
Just a quick question, about the sound, the use of the LBT songs from the movies and stuff, will it be added later on?
Just thought I would ask this.
It's just that I had this idea yesterday when I was hearing "Beyond the mysterious Beyond", that we could sing the songs, us, and then put it there, just for a test or something :p
unfortunitely none of the music from the films will be in the game, Action9000 said he would compose the music and to tell you the truth, he did a great job doing it.
Wow, it progressed a lot during this three months, its getting better and better.
Just a quick question, about the sound, the use of the LBT songs from the movies and stuff, will it be added later on?
Just thought I would ask this.
It's just that I had this idea yesterday when I was hearing "Beyond the mysterious Beyond", that we could sing the songs, us, and then put it there, just for a test or something :p
As Belmont said, there won't be any music from the land before time in the game. Simply because it's copyrighted. Tim will compose the music for the game later, which will have the same feel to it. I'm sure that'll be awesome :)
Action9000 said he would compose the music and to tell you the truth, he did a great job doing it.
Belmont, the music that is in the game now is not from Action9000. It is from two different music people and is just temporary to see if everything works :)
Aww, a shame, but it makes sense, forgot that its copyrighted.
Anyway, I can see the game is going on pretty well, and, if possible, I would like to help anyway I can.
Mumbling is right, I'll be composing original music for the game.
Anyway, just letting everyone know that an update will be coming soon! I'm going to bed now but I have almost everything done that I wanted to and all the big problems are solved. ;)
All I have left that I want to do for this release is to have a functional Experience point system (a basic one at this point, obviously, but I'd like to start getting its functionality coded in).
I have just completed the introduction of an Experience Point system. Talking to your proper NPC now awards you with enough points to gain a level, as well as a little more, so you can see the behaviour of the EXP meter in the bottom left.
I want to do some more tweaks before I release v0.22, such as making the gray buttons functional, moving the NPC chat window up a bit, making it possible to show/hide the EXP meter..things like that. I'd say it's going really well though!
Check this out: The Experience/levelling system, functioning properly.
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/levelling.jpg)
Wow! It's getting really great, exp bar, lving up, I can surely say great job, but I rather say aewsomeness :yes , great job, can't wait for version 0.22.
WOOOOOOOOOW!!!, its looking good ,now I really can't wait for version 0.22 :wow :)
Thanks a lot, glad to hear everyone's excited! :D
v0.22 coming soon, I promise! :lol
I think I'm just going to to have to echo previous sentiments and say WOW!
It's looking fantastic!
Ooooh, I'm so excited to try it out!
I might not be able to until my new computer arrives... :bang
But still! Super excited :D
Kewl! :D
Okay, everything works now that I mentioned in my previous post, except for the show/hiding of the EXP meter. I'm just working on that now and I'll post up v0.22 when it's done! :D
in other words it might be up tomorrow.
Or right now, before I go for my pre-work nap. :p
Version v0.22 is ready! :D
Here's the link to download:
The Land Before Time RPG v0.22 (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ER7K33XU)
Anywho, new stuff! :D
This update is mainly for interface stuff and optimization. More development on the interface and levelling/adventuring coming soon!
1) Purchased a piece of software called "Tree Party" (thanks to your donations!!) which will be used to create trees for the game. We have successfully put our first real tree into the game in this release. It has a few bugs, including:
- If you rotate your character into the tree, you will get stuck so you'll have to jump around and rotate out of the tree before you can keep moving.
- Collision detection is only working for trees at the same height as you. This means that if you select a flyer and try to land on a branch, you will fall right through it because we're not dealing with collisions with trees directly above or below you yet.
- If you click "Main Menu" from in-game and start a new game without closing the program, the tree will not appear again. The tree only appears the first time you start a new game until you close and re-open the program.
2) Introduction of an Experience Point system. Completing your adventure earns you enough experience points to gain a level, as can be seen in the Experience meter on the bottom-left, as well as in the character stats screen. You also have the ability to change the size of the experience bar with the arrow icon.
3) Created buttons at the bottom right of the screen which can be used to open and close various interface items. Click the buttons to see what they do! The ones on the right side of the ring are for later on. Press the large center button to open or close this ring of buttons.
4) Created placeholder Inventory and Adventures graphics. These can be opened either by using the gray buttons at the bottom right of the screen or by pressing the hotkeys "I" and "V", respectively. "C" for character stats still exists.
5) Repositioned a bunch of interface stuff.
6) Made it more obvious that you can enter your name on the Character Select screen.
7) Did a bunch of memory management stuff. The game now loads only what it needs and unloads any graphics it's not currently using. As a result, we're using about 50MB less of RAM while in-game.
8) Added an abilities toolbar across the bottom of the screen which will be used in releases in the near future.
9) Changed the movement physics (recoded everything related to movement). You will now keep whatever speed in the air that you had when you left the ground. You also are no longer able to control yourself in the air and are not able to hold the Spacebar to keep hopping. You must release it and press it again in order to jump. This is a little buggy on slopes while sprinting; I apologize and I am working on it. ;)
10) Fixed some bugs in the code relating to changing the adventures available as you level up.
11) Fixed some bugs in the code that detects whether you're above or below water (Again!) :p
12) Improved the code for the "Main Menu" feature on the in-game menu. This should be more stable now, minus the disappearing tree.
13) Added more detail to the loading screens.
14) Changed the graphic for the HP and Stamina meters (thanks Mumbling!) :D
15) Created "slots" where the interface windows (stats, inventory, etc.) appear and intelligently move to fill these slots based on what is open. I will refine this and make more efficient use of screen space in the future but the logic is coming.
Didn't work for me. Something about not being able to load a certain mesh.
I couldn't download it(megaupload has never worked for me) so I guess its better if you put the link on the offical site. :(
The download worked for me and the game loaded up just fine.
I couldn't download it(megaupload has never worked for me) so I guess its better if you put the link on the offical site. :(
We will upload it later to Austin's Server, when tim has got time for that.
Oh how annoying the use of that sprint function is right now, but you know my rants on it :lol Love that you got collision working, without too much lag too! Great job! :D
Didn't work for me. Something about not being able to load a certain mesh.
Are you sure you unpacked the whole zip file into one folder? It might not be able to find the mesh folder or something since it's not on the place where it should be?
Works fine for me as well. :yes
Aaaah, I had to sneak it onto this computer, I couldn't resist :D
I couldn't play for very long, but, again, WOW! It's looking so super fantastic, I'm so excited!
Just some things I noticed about the tree collision:
Sometimes regular collision will cause you to lose the ability to back up, and require you to rotate and go forward to get out of it, though this isn't particularly common.
More often it is triggered if you enter collision, stand still, and then jump.
Also jumping into the tree at a run causes the same thing, but also sticks the head of your model into the tree :smile
Though perhaps that's part of the 'collision detection only works at your height' thing?
(Note that I only tested this on the Longneck.)
These are all probably known already, but I figured I'd mention them just in case!
Again, great work Tim! This is looking really, really super good! I love it!
:celebrate
I just downloaded and played 0.22 and I have three words that....was...AWESOME!! :) although there were a few things happening with the tree:
1. when you go underwater half of the leaves on the tree mysteriously disappear.
2. when you go back to main menu and start another game when you get in to the game you find that the tree is gone....darn lumberjacks :lol
2. when you go back to main menu and start another game when you get in to the game you find that the tree is gone....darn lumberjacks
Haha, that's a known bug. I'll see if I can deal with the lumberjack problem in the near future. :p
1. when you go underwater half of the leaves on the tree mysteriously disappear.
Wow, you're right! Okay that's officially weird and I have no idea why that's happening. I'll see what I can do about it.
I'm working on v.23 now and I just put in a neat little feature that pops up a "Level up!" text when you gain a level. It fades out over a few seconds. :p
v0.23 will probably have all sorts of neat new things such as better Sprint controls and possibly an energy meter related to it, an Air meter while you're underwater (which will also make it easier to distinguish when your character is underwater and when it's swimming on the surface), among all sorts of other goodies. :yes
The tree even moves!(or at least it looks like to me :p ).
I loved it.
While I was doing some ramdom here and there with the Flyer, I noticed something, if you fly until a certain height, the tree as that aspect as we see it, but if we fly to a higer zone, the tree changes form, maibe its done on purpuse, I dunno :oops , anyway, here are the pics:
(http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/7553/semttulo12.jpg)
(http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/7670/semttulo11123u.jpg)
Almost sure this is normal, but I just wanted to be sure.
I also took some other ramdom pictures:
(http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/4579/123pz.jpg)
(http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/1928/112jb.jpg)
All that flying sure tired me, so I rested for a little...
(http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/3888/1321.jpg)
On the top of a mountain :lol
Great progesses, its going on really well, amazingness(yes I say this a lot)job :lol :yes
Yeah I noticed the tree changing form too when I was messing around with the flyer :lol
That could be because the leaves fade away from a certain distance(when you have a lot of trees which are always visible it would probably take too much ram.. I think)
I don't know for sure though!
And yes, the trees move, that's one of the things that program does, create wind :)
Yep, Mumbling is right. A tree actually has 3 shapes: a "closeup" high-detailed shape, a medium-distance, medium-detail view (as you've seen when moving further away) and a very low-detailed view designed for very large distances.
We are able to customize at which distances it switches views and that will appear in the game's options eventually. ;)
I've been wondering,when are you guys going to introduce the character creation or expand the map,just curious?
Character creation won't come until much later. Our first priority with 3D stuff is to make one of every creature in the game that we'll need. From there, we can produce modifications and whatnot but for now, we'd rather get one of everything before making 2 or 3 of one thing but getting stuck because we don't have something else at all.
The reason for the delay is that we only have one person on the team, Razzie, who is creating our 3d models. Simple customization could be put in right now, by letting the player change their character's colours but that's as far as we could go at this point.
As for expanding the game's map, we have a process that involves creating 2d versions of the maps first, which I can then convert to 3d via software. We want to create a more detailed version of the existing map before creating other areas. I cant say when we'll have the more detailed version ready but it will be significantly larger. This is because the area you see in the game now is supposed to be a recreation of the area of the Great Valley you see at the end of LBT 1 (overlooking the large cliff). Obviously, while we captured the shape of the river and whatnot, the scale is very small and there is very little detail so far. Our first step is to improve our map so that it is an accurate recreation of that area we see in the film.
well I would join the design team but as I said before it would be easier said than done coming from someone who has almost no expirance with anything like 3D modelling or what not.
I just got an air/breath meter working. When you run out of breath now, your HP starts to drop quickly. When your HP reaches zero, everything on the screen fades to a dark colour except your character, accompanied by a message "You have drowned...". The game then reloads back to the main menu.
Depending on your character choice, you can spend more or less time underwater before you start losing HP.
Almost out of air...!
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/low-air.jpg)
Gradual fade to dark as your character dies from lack of air (depressing, isn't it? :p)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/drowned.jpg)
Depressing, yea, but looks wonderful!
Very Depressing, :yes but a nice touch that the look changes.
that's some game over screen,its depressing.
Yeah, it really is. I'll figure out more what to do when you die once we have saving/loading of games working, as well as other ways to die. :p
There, all set with an Energy meter!
I have changed the Sprinting function so you now only Sprint while holding the sprint key (Left Shift, right now).
The code seems to work pretty well, only draining your energy while you're actively using it. This means that while you're in the air and holding the Sprint key, you don't waste energy. You also don't use energy if you hold the Sprint key without moving.
There are a lot of factors that determine how fast your energy refills after you release the Sprint key:
1) Your dino type. Each dino has a different maximum Energy and a different rate at which it refills.
2) The conditions you're currently in. If you're in the air, you regenerate energy slower than if you're on the ground (preventing abuse of jump-sprinting to move further without resting. We may also make jumping cost energy later on). If you're not moving, you regenerate energy (slightly) faster than if you're moving. If you're underwater, you regenerate energy slower (slightly slower as a swimmer, Muuuch slower as a flyer, and quite a bit slower for everyone else).
We will put in more advanced features for this later on, such as the ability to upgrade refill times in certain situations, among other cool stuff. :D
Like the Air meter, the Energy meter is only on the screen if it's not full. If you have full energy, the meter disappears from the screen.
Anyway, screenshot time! :D
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/Energy-meter.jpg)
Oh, and I just thought this was amusing. :p Our game is officially..as they would say... "1337". :p
Except we're even better: we're 13337. :D :lol
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/act...me-is-13337.jpg (http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/our-game-is-13337.jpg)
....Sorry. :oops :angel
You just couldn't resist could you Tim? :p :lol
Anyway I've missed quite a lot and I'm downloading v.22 now and see what mayhem I can cause. So, off to break the game!
Awesome job tim! :D
Aye, it certainly is :yes
I did not understand the 1337 bit, is that any phrase I don't know?
"Leet" is a term short for "elite," it's a stereotypical example of internet-speak, like "lol" or "rofl". Another popular thing to poke fun at is the tendency of people who try to look "cool" or "leet" over the interent to substitute numbers for letters, ie 1=i or l, 0=o, 5=s, etc. Therefore, leet=1337.
Another interesting fact, 1337 was the year the Hundred Years war started. This is why I can always remember that fact.
this looks really good!!!
its been awhile since this thread has been updated *sigh*
Hey!
The reason for the delay is that I've been struggling a lot with one problem; namely, the best way to actually make the 3d world files.
I'm experimenting with all sorts of options and even picked up a new terrain editing program a few days ago. I don't know how much progress I'm making but I know we'll have to resolve this before any significant updates. Here is one screenshot of the latest terrain (I post the screenshot after this post in a minute, I'm just rendering something right now). I'm trying to figure out some way, any way, to make it prettier without eating up a stupid amount of video card power and system RAM.
The old terrain system, used in the the latest releases until now, can't be used long-term for a few reasons:
1) Due to the nature of how it loads terrain files, it will be impossible to create vertical or beyond-vertical slopes, such as overhangs and cliffs.
2) Again due to how it handles files, it is impossible to *unload* a terrain without closing the whole program. This means that if you wander around the world enough, you will eventually crash your computer due to running out of RAM.
I have been able to resolve both of those problems with my new system, now I just need to figure out how to make it pretty without making the game eat up a stupid amount of computer power.
Here we go: One great valley with not much in it screenshot. :p
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/new-terrain-2-1.jpg)
Wow, great job!
Sounds more realistic now :yes
Keep up the good work.
looks good :)
Looking better all the time! :)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/screeny.jpg)
I don't know when I'll have an update ready. I'm also wondering if this river is way too wide and deep to be the main Great valley river?
The scale of the game world is proving to be really tricky to get right.
Looks good so far. As for if the river of the Great Valley is to large, deep, ect. It gives you an excellent reason to re watch some LBT.
now that looks nice, I can't tell if you got the river right ot wrong because of the camera angle but hopfully you'll get it.
It does have a bit more of a realistic feel to it
How well can folks without a bleeding edge pc play the game currently though? Since not many have one of those.
Tim said it's not actually that memory consuming. My computer should perfectly be able to handle it, I think :) I got a bad video card and only 512mb of RAM.
I'm also wondering if this river is way too wide and deep to be the main Great valley river?
The scale of the game world is proving to be really tricky to get right.
I was wondering when I saw the image. Is it the existing map in a larger scale? If you need another map just let me know. I just need to know what kind of map it is that you are looking for Tim.
I'd love to talk to you about the design for a new map whenever we both have time, Malte! :)
As for the scale, I don't need a new map for the scale; I can set up the scale in my terrain program to anything I want so I can just play with it (so yep, it's the existing map on a larger scale). I do think that we need to talk about assigning some actual distances to pixels and 3d units, as you mentioned before, since it's nothing but guesstimating right now to avoid making the river (and the valley in general) too big or too small.
I have tried adjusting the terrain a bit by making the river a bit narrower and shallower. Here's a new screenshot:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/screeny-2-thinner-river.jpg)
it just keeps getting better and better.
Lookin' good!
Hey all!
Just letting you know that I have a bunch of coding to do before the next version is released, but I basically have a plan. I just need to find the time to do it. :p
Looking foward to it! And I'm happy I didn't miss any updates in my absence.
I just got something working that really improves how well the game runs. Basically, I am now splitting the terrain into a bunch of tiny pieces and only drawing the pieces that are visible.
In technical terms, this cuts the number of polygons rendered from 250,000 from the previous version to an average of a much more desirable 50,000 to 75,000 now.
In short, the more polygons (3d elements that make up the map's shape) are being drawn, the more work your video card has to do and the worse the performance will be. The "view Distance" setting in the game's options will also affect this now, by not drawing any pieces of the terrain beyond this view distance.
One the game is more complete and the landscapes are vast, lower-end computers will be able to cut down the view distance to hugely speed things up and higher-end computers can leave the view distance up while still getting good performance (by cutting out excess polygons behind and beside you).
Another big benefit is that I'm able to cut down on the computing (CPU) power necessary to calculate collisions between your player and the ground, because the "ground" object is smaller and less complex: I only need to check the piece of the terrain that the player is dealing with, rather than the entire map.
I know this is a lot of technical blahblahblah, but this is an important step for making our game playable in the future, once we have big, giant landscapes. So far, so good! ;)
66948 polygons in this scene and I'd say it looks pretty good. I'll work on getting it even better but this is definitely workable!
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/low-poly-1.jpg)
There is still the problem that the game eats up a lot of RAM. I can't seem to get it below 250MB of RAM at the moment, unless I completely kill the texture resolution. I will set up a Quality option for textures, using the following system:
Low quality: 256x256 textures
Medium Quality: 512x512 textures
High Quality: 1024x1024 textures (as seen in the screenshot. May remove this option as it seems to be a bit slow).
512x512 looks almost as good as 1024x1024 and eats up half the RAM so I might remove the 1024x1024 option completely, since 1024 is so bloody slow. Either way, I will include the low-quality option for lower-memory computers.
512x512 is using 250MB of RAM total.
1024x1024 is using 500MB of RAM total.
I am about to experiment to see what 256x256 uses.
Test complete.
256x256 textures load much faster (about 1/3 the time as 512 and about 1/10 the time as 1024) and use 180MB of RAM in total.
Here's what it looks like:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/low-res.jpg)
Not quite as clean but I wouldn't say it's a lot worse, considering how much better the performance is.
Just for fun, here's a theoretical screenshot of what 2048x2048 textures would look like. Sadly they're just too bulky and slow to be functional, because it would be pretty as heck. :p
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/2048-theoretical.jpg)
My goal is to get graphic quality similar to this without having to kill performance to do so.
That's a shame because even in low quality(which I always play on although I have a Vista laptop(HP)) the game still looks like a masterpiece in the making.
Much appreciated. :)
And just for the sake of comparison, here's a similar scene in the "normal quality", 512x512 resolution:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/512-resolution.jpg)
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/512-2.jpg)
Very nice. One of the most important aspects of making a game is trying to make it look as best you can while eating up as little CPU as possible. Looks like you're really working hard in that department.
Ooooh, fantastic! I love seeing the progress on this. Sorry I don't have anything more useful to say right now... But keep up the great work, anyways :D
I hope to meet you on MSN soon Tim. There is something to be discussed on the mapwork. Something surprised me there and I am not yet a 100% sure if the cause of that surprise is a good or a bad thing. It looks like a much smaller scale in the mapmaker than I had expected will do to turn the 2D maps very roughly to the scale which I had in mind (any ways to make the scale precise as in the 1 pixel = x meter scales of the 2D maps?).
any ways to make the scale precise as in the 1 pixel = x meter scales of the 2D maps?
We are saying that the the distance of one "Littlefoot" is 1.75 Meters, which is approximately 66.04 units in 3d space.
I also know that 1/8th of the terrain in one direction is 6240 3d units, therefore the terrain in its entirety at the moment is:
49920 x 49920 3d units
Converting this to "littlefeet",
49920 / 66.04 =
755.90551181102362204724409448819 Littlefeet =
755.90551181102362204724409448819 * 1.75M =
1322.8346456692913385826771653543 M square =
1.3228 KM square.
We also know that this map is at a resolution of 256x256 vertices.
IN my current map, that means
1322.83464.... / 256 =
5.1673228346456692913385826771654 M
5.167 M per vertex / pixel on a 2d map in the current resolution of 256x256.
As for other scenarios:
in 512x512, it would be
2.58366M per pixel
in 1024, it would be
1.2918M per pixel
^That's a pretty big pixel. Reminds me of the pixels of Pluto:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/Pluto.jpg)
(EDIT:Waiting for pic resizer to email me a new link. Pic will be smaller soon.)
^That's a pretty big pixel. Reminds me of the pixels of Pluto
There are two scales for the 2d maps. 1 pixel = 10 meter is only to get an overview and a basic structure for the maps of a higher scale. 1 pixel = 2 meters will be for most of the map making one pixel there would be a bit larger than a Littlefoot sized dinosaur which (given the dimensions of the valley) will suffice for most purposes. For all those purposes where the preceeding scale does not surfice there will be the scale of 1pixel = 40 centimeters. That scale however will only be needed for such parts of the Valley where there are passages too narrow for all but the little characters (flyers and swimmers).
Hey all!
I currently have an extremely crude save/load game feature working, though it's not practical yet. It's purely a tech demo at this point, proving that I can store and recall the data between the game and the save file.
I'm working on improving the character creation process at this point, including the ability to load your games from the game menu, more advanced character creation, and other cool stuff!
I'm almost ready with the save/load game system in the game.
Here's a screenshot to show how it works so far:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/2-saved-games-test.jpg)
The counter on the top-right shows how many saved games there are in total. The two portraits on the left represent each saved game. One was saved as a longneck character and the other was saved with a threehorn character. This screen draws the correct portrait(s) based on the contents of the save file.
I haven't yet put this into the program yet but clicking on the portrait will display the stats of that saved game in the big box on the right. You can then click a Play button (which doesn't appear yet either :p) to continue from that file.
All the data from the save file loads properly, I just need to make it possible to continue that game now. It almost works!
Oh..and yes, the "hatch a new dinosaur" graphic is temporary, I know it's ugly. :p
it looks great, although the great wall still looks like it had been nuked.
I think it looks great, but is there some way to put a name with the portraits? That way if some one has two longnecks, they can tell which is which
Okay, guess what...
IT WORKS! :D :celebrate
I'm able to save games automatically when you quit the game, as well as after a short period of time (protection in the event of a crash or force-quit).
Loading games works beautifully, restoring everything nicely. :D
I'm just cleaning up a few visual things now before I release the next version, but I'm calling this one "done" for now.
Coming soon:
A more sophisticated client/server network
Okay, I'm going to call v0.23 finished at this point! :)
Anyone is welcome to try out the latest version, v0.23, by downloading it here:
[EDIT] Please see the next post for the new link!
[/EDIT]
As for the new stuff, here's the list!
1) Completely changed the landscape/terrain engine for the game. The landscape, which used to be from one file, is now broken up into an 8x8 grid for a total of 64 mini-files. The result is that we have a ton more control over things like detail levels and only drawing what we see. This improves control over performance and load times, big time. We also changed the textures for the landscape.
NOTE: Only the "very low" detail option is available at this point. I'm willing to manually post up the other detail levels if people are interested but I haven't programmed in a way to change it in-game yet - you have to edit the code manually to change it. I chose "very low" for the release to reduce RAM requirements and load times.
2) Shadows are now functional on both the terrain and the characters. The position of the shadows do update in realtime based on where the "sun" is in the sky.
NOTE:
The lighting on the dinosaurs is backwards: what's light should be dark and vice versa. I know what has to happen to fix it but the procedure is causing big problem at the moment. I will talk to Razzie, our modeller, about this.
ANOTHER NOTE: The sun does not move in this game. I tested it by moving it manually but there is no day/night system in the game yet.
3) Introduced a functional save/load system. You can choose a game to load from the character select screen. Just click a portrait of the dino on the screen and click the arrow in the bottom right to start!
If there are no saved games, hatch a new dino, type in a name and click in the bottom right of the screen to start! :D
The game automatically saves your stats and location every few seconds, as well as an autosave when you quit the game. The in-game saving every few seconds seems to be slightly buggy, not always saving. It works most of the time but as far as I can tell the save when you Quit the game does work properly....as long as you Quit the game and don't just click "Main Menu".
There is also an issue if you make more than about 10 save files..they go off the screen on the character select screen. I haven't put in a "scrollbar" system yet to handle that situation.
4) Fixed some bugs where the game could crash if you went back and forth in the menus enough times.
I know, there are some issues with this release. Mainly, I wanted to demonstrate the save/load feature, as well as the new landscape. Don't mind the things like the floating tree. I know it's there. I'll deal with it when the landscape's shape is more finalized. :p
Enjoy! :D
Hi, I just found a problem in the zip file that makes it unplayable. I'm just uploading another one now, bear with me...5 minutes! :D
I'll also put the arrow on the character creation screen. :p Sorry about that!
[EDIT]
Here's the latest version, complete with the arrow fix and the "object doesn't exist" fix.
http://www.lbtserver.2myip.net/Members/Act...lbtrpgv023a.zip (http://www.lbtserver.2myip.net/Members/Action9000/LBTRPG/lbtrpgv023a.zip)
If you go off the edge of the game where the water just ends out of no where, you begin losing oxygen. But then if you get back on land it still registers you're underwater and you die! :lol: I was like "Oh no!" It took me so friggin long to get over there and then I died.
Haha I know. :p
If you leave the "World", the game doesn't behave properly. This goes back to something I've mentioned a few times in this topic:
Eventually, there won't be an "end of the world" so it's not an issue.
I should mention, too:
The only way to delete a saved game is to open the "Save" folder where you copied the game to and delete the .lbt file with the name of the character you want to delete.
Love the .lbt files :p :D
Updated the website :) Thanks for the update Tim, will play asap! :D
I was working on the next chapter for my fanfic but its break time now, I'm off to see if I can break your new features!
You probably can; they're not very hacker-proof yet if you want to really try breaking it, especially my save/load game feature. :p
Glad you like the .lbt files, Iris. :p :lol:
You will have to add better landscapes. :smile
On the to-do list. All this stuff takes a ton of time! :p
well here's what I thought about V0.23
now one thing I really had a problem with was the readme because it was the readme for V0.22 instead of V0.23,what gives.
so first I must say I really like the character selection screen, it blew me away but who the heck knows how long that was gonna last because when I got into the game, I wasn't that impressed,personally as cool as the new map editing software is I prefer the other one better,it had more detail and stuff and the tree was up in the sky so that glitch remains,the adventures log is blank and there's no way to save at anytime(at least not what I've seen),I liked the breath meter alot and the characters themselves looked a bit better then before, but really I feel you should've polished V0.23 a bit more before releasing it,but it was still great,as the LBT Online game is a work in progress.
I noticed the tree too, its a bit odd. Oh and was there supposed to be a previous save already there?
OOC: 750th post!
@ Belmont
The map editing software is pretty hard to handle. I got to take a look at it myself and there's just no nice way yet to make it perfectly beautiful. With the previous map editing program we'd get problems later on, it namely could not make canyons and caves and the like.
The tree in the sky was mentioned by Action. He'll work on that.
as for the old map: it was prettier but we pushed it as far as it could go: it was never going to be any more detailed than that. That was the limitation.
The new one requires more advanced skills to use effectively but it will give us what we *need* to finish the game. I'm still learning how to use it and I know it looks like crap right now. that's why this release took so long to come: I spent the last 2 months researching how I could make it look prettier and I was unsuccessful.
as for the readme file...okay I was lazy, I know that. I didn't think the game had enough new content to bother rewriting. I'll do it for v0.24 when things will be completely different.
The previous save.. I forgot about it but it also helps to demo how the feature works so whatever. :p
Okay, wow. I only just recently took a look at this, and I have to admit I'm impressed with how dedicated you are, as well as how much work you have put into this project.
Now, I'm not that much of a LBT fan to be into an Online RPG, but I realize that this is an excellent community tool...
And on that note, I would like to offer you my support, if so desired. My skills are modeling, animation, mapping, and texture making. So um... yeah. This probably isn't the right place to ask, but uh... yeah. :p
Just so you know, I have a lot of other things I do in real life, but the main reason I want to offer my support is to improve my own skills.
On the to-do list. All this stuff takes a ton of time! :p
Youy can get some inspiration looking at the sights in Canada.
On the to-do list. All this stuff takes a ton of time! :p
Youy can get some inspiration looking at the sights in Canada.
I don't think he lacks the inspiration, but the lack of skill with the program he uses (just new).
I got some new stuff for the game which I'll hand over to tim soon.
Alright then. Is this editor made by all of you or was it provided? Actually I know of a few ways we can do this faster but I'm pretty sure it will be costly not because of the software but the rights to use it in the construction of the game.
Tim bought the software a while back.
Is it some software like some game engines that are not to much to buy and they let you give the game away or sell it if you want?
Alright then. Is this editor made by all of you or was it provided? Actually I know of a few ways we can do this faster but I'm pretty sure it will be costly not because of the software but the rights to use it in the construction of the game.
I looked into buying a game engine a few times. While it would speed things up, the cost would be a minimum of $150 and up to $1500 for the engine I would prefer to use that doesn't have stupidly high system requirements. As a result, I'm just sticking with making my own.
What's hurting me is my lack of knowledge..not with my terrain editor but with programming pixel shaders manually. The only way to blend multiple textures on a 3d object (such as a terrain) is to program a shader to handle the textures. This is why our terrain is not very pretty right now: I pre-blended the textures because I can't figure out how to write a shader to blend them in realtime. The result is the need of multiple large single textures that lose detail quickly when stretched over the terrain, which is exactly what's happening.
Game engines tend to either have really high system requirements, be very expensive, lack the features we need to make them worthwhile, or all of the above.
If money was no object, this would be the ideal engine for our game: low system requirements, beautiful graphic potential, but a $1500 price tag
http://unity3d.com/unity/ (http://unity3d.com/unity/)
A bit brutal considering my financial state and the complete lack of commercial potential for this game without a massive remake to remove all LBT references.
The free version lacks some critical tools, such as water effects and shadows.
Mumbling was kind enough to patch a bunch of images for me, as well as write up a v0.23 of the Readme file! :D
I just need to make a few more changes and I will release a more polished version of v0.23. I apologize for the last version. I didn't even think about a lot of those things that were wrong with it, I was just happy my terrain appeared as expected and my savegames worked. :p
that's okay the last version is great,it just had a few flaws,that's all.
It looks like an ok release. I didn't play long so didn't notice if it has any flaws or not.
You can look around for programmers that are interested.I know a few that may be looking for a game maker to help but they might not be interested in LBT.
It might have been asked before (if so, my apologies), but what language is this written in, and what engine does it run on?
It's on the FAQ on the website:
Q. What engine do you use?
A. None, we build our own engine completely from scratch using the DarkGDK C++ code library. Everything is written one line at a time though.
I wish all of you the best I maybe able to get someone but he is in the middle of a marriage so yeah.
I guess DarkGDK could sort of count as an engine, but it's so barebones, I really don't think it counts. :p It's just a little package of code that lacks a ton of features so a lot has to be done manually anyway. :p
Anyway, I'm using it because it keeps system requirements down, it's still DirectX9 and it's free. :p It has some pretty big problems and limitations, we just don't have the budget for a decent game engine.
Though I must admit, I'd rather make a game than a game engine..so having a decent one would be pretty sweet! :lol
Anyway, I'm not interested in getting another programmer. I do have a forum I turn to when something comes up that isn't explained in any documentation that I have, but other than that, I'm enjoying working on the code and struggling my way through it; it's interesting. :p
No new programmers please. :)
Alrighty, here's the brand new shiny release of v.23...cleverly known as v0.23b :p
It just cleans up some things, as well as trying some experimental stuff regarding savegames.
http://www.lbtserver.2myip.net/Members/Act.../lbtrpgv23b.zip (http://www.lbtserver.2myip.net/Members/Action9000/LBTRPG/lbtrpgv23b.zip)
Here is the full list of changes:
1) Makes the red boxes around the character portraits on the Character Select screen invisible.
2) Removed the tree since it was just floating in the air
3) Included the .23 readme file. Thanks Mumbling for writing this! :D
4) Changed a lot of the images used in the game. Updated images thanks to Mumbling!
5) Always....hmm, nevermind. :p
6) Sound is turned on by default now.
7) The "Join Game" button on the main menu is completely disabled now, since that feature doesn't exist at the moment. It will be back, full force and then some, next version though :D
8) Fixed the bug where both the NPC interaction cursor and the Normal cursor are visible if you press ESC while your mouse is over an NPC in range to interact with.
9) Fixed the "floating" treestar appearing at the top of the Game Options menu.
And this next one, I really need your feedback on!
10) Put a small pause as the game is closing down, to give the program plenty of time to properly write the savegame file. I'm hoping this will prevent a bug where games don't always save. Please let me know if your characters are not being saved, as this is a very serious issue, naturally. :p I'll look into ways around it as needed.
Also, I removed the savegame that came with the last release. You won't have any savegames included this time.
Can't see how putting the pause in could hurt. I actually had to do something similar in the BYOND game I'm working on. I found out the hard way though, when all of the players' save files that contained all the equipment they stashed in their houses was corrupted. Let's just say I had some explaining to do...
OMG...okay everyone, I am going to make you take a look at this.
Because it's freaking awesome.
After doing enough begging on my game development forum, I finally received some help with regards to blending multiple textures on a terrain. I've had help before but I've never had any success, with nothing but blah nothingness showing up.
But things have changed....AND IT FREAKING WORKS!
Check this screenshot out, everyone, and prepare to officially drool! This is basically the finalized graphic quality of the game's landscape, after months of research and beating my head on my keyboard! FINALLY! We have the quality I've been striving to achieve for the entire duration of this project and I wanted to share it with everyone! :D
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/MULTITEXTURES-WORK.jpg)
Yes: This is an actual screenshot! Yes - it ACTUALLY WORKS! :D :D :celebrate
As of v.24, this will be the graphic quality of the LBT RPG, with the possibility of higher and lower-resolution textures in the future, to improve performance or graphic quality on different computers. We are currently using 512x512 textures, at a scale of 256x256 tiles on this terrain.
.....IT WORKS! :D :D :lol: :DD :DD
woaaaah that looks nice, by the way when are you going to add the Great Wall.
Malte is working on the detailed design of the Great Valley. I will be adjusting this 3d landscape as Malte completes various sections and gives me his detailed maps.
the screenshot looks like another fine day in the valley.
Wow! That looks wonderful!
I wish you good luck in it. If you are looking for anyone I can give a try.
Sorry I've been gone, I got a new computer for college and didn't want to clog up my new fast computer with large files :) not to mention I don't feel comfortable playing a Land Before Time game when my roommates could come in at any minute.
I'm home for the next few weeks, so I have time to download the newest version and participate in any upcoming multiplayer tests. Are any scheduled?
(BTW that final screenshot is frickin sweet. I never thought the game would look that good)
No, there won't be any multiplayer tests scheduled for the next few weeks because, well..actually I'm leaving the country for Christmas. :p :D
Also, I am converting the game to a completely new multiplayer system which involves a permanent server. This will take a lot of recoding but it will be more powerful and stable than ever when it's complete!
Lol. Coming along pretty good.
Edit: Downloaded, played. Pretty nice. I miss the tree. You're definitely gettin' better at the whole coding thing. Still lacking in 3D modeling, but that's some hard stuff.
I made quite a few improvements to the game's physics engine today. I was able to improve the feel of falling down steep slopes, as well as the control in and around water. Overall, the movement in the game feels more polished and I'm happy with the progress. :D
I also improved the "load game"screen by displaying the character name next to the portrait.
sounds good.
We just wanted to let everyone know that we've started making some great updates to the LBT game. Some of our latest improvements are hugely improved terrain graphics and a camera that will collide with the ground as expected. Beyond that, we're having great success with improving lighting, saving and loading games and other fundamental updates that make the game feel more complete. We're just waiting on our map designer to finish the Great Valley. Once that's complete, we will be able to quickly develop a lot of game content. Until then, we will be improving the game engine and working on setting up the server/client functions. Great stuff coming soon everyone, stay tuned!
That sounds great! A good new years start. :lol:
Sorry for being so inactive to this project. If you need anything from me, just tell me and I start working as soon and as fast as I can. ^_^
Hey all!
I just need to finish a little bit of coding and I'm ready for the next release! If I get time, I'll have it finished by the end of the day today. Depends what I get dragged out to do today, but we're very close! :D
that sonds great,can't wait till then.
Lol, uninvolved Ptyra is uninvolved XD !
I think this is an awesome idea. It would be a nice break from the Activity Center that came out after 3. Yaay, cheesy graphics...but cool coloring book.
I wonder if any of the producers would come across it?
Well it appears you got busy Tim, then again you're a few hours behind me. I'm glad I'm going to get a chance to see another version before returning to college, then again I'm still here another two weeks.
I haven't tried the previous versions yet. >_<
I think I'll just wait until the newest version is out. :)
Hey everyone!
It's officially time for v0.24! This is an extremely exciting version for me because we've managed to solve a lot of old problems, including low graphic quality and the camera being able to move through the ground. :D
v0.24 can be downloaded here:
http://lbtserver.2myip.net/Members/Action9.../lbtrpgv024.zip (http://lbtserver.2myip.net/Members/Action9000/LBTRPG/lbtrpgv024.zip)
New Stuff:
1)Completely new terrain graphics, MASSIVELY improved over any previous versions! We have moved from using single textures stretched over the entire map to mapping high-resolution textures to the 3d terrains. The result is..well, try it and see for yourself! :D I was so happy to finally get this working!
Known issue: The edges where the textures blend together aren't quite blending properly yet. You'll find these parts can be transparent. I know what I can do about this, but I'm waiting for Malte's new maps before I re-render my maps from my terrain editor.
2) Improved camera code, including intelligent sliding along the around and collision with the ground. The changes will also let you look up in the air, even on flat land, without your camera passing through the ground. Try walking and turning the camera while around a hill and you'll see how this works! :D
Here's another fun one...
3) Introduced a day/night cycle! You will be able to see the sun traveling around the terrain at a fast rate. Observe how your dinosaur and the world around you have their shading adjusted in realtime based on the position of the light. :D
Known Issue: The sky does not darken or brighten. We're still deciding exactly how we'll handle this transition. I also don't have "night" textures or other sky textures so we can't do much with it yet. I'll make some later on. ;)
4) Added collision detection to NPCs (both the shapes and Mr. Threehorn). You can now hit them without passing through them.
5) Greatly reduced the load time of the sky texture files (which were the longest part of the load times). You should see extremely fast load times now, especially on higher-end systems.
6) Added a functional "Delete" button on the "load character" screen. Graphics thanks to Mumbling. :p
7) Added "Next Page" and "Previous Page" buttons to the "load character" screen. It will show up to 10 saves per page. These Page buttons have information text that appears when you move your mouse over them.
8) Made it possible to level up again.
9) Reversed the shadows effects on the dinosaur models. They used to be dark where the light hit them and light where there was no light. :p They're correct now.
10) The Fastrunner is disabled for now. We have no model for it and we're still working out exactly how we want add that type into the game, since oviraptors technically shouldn't be living in the valley. It's still under debate how we want to handle this.
11) Disabled Sprinting while strafing/sidestepping. This is because we just didn't believe this to be physically possible or realistic.
12) Added the character's name and level next to the portrait on the "Load Game" screen.
It's officially time for v0.24!
Awesome :D
Completely new terrain graphics, MASSIVELY improved over any previous versions!
Now I want more trees and foliage :angel
Made it possible to level up again.
Even over level 8000 if you're smart enough *knows the secret* :!
Graphics thanks to Mumbling. :p
You're welcome :lol
Awesome biggrin.gif
I know! :D
Now I want more trees and foliage dino_angel.gif
Go yell at Malte. :p
Even over level 8000 if you're smart enough *knows the secret* dino_exclamation.gif
Shh..! :p
You're welcome dino_laugh.gif
*hugs* :D
:P:
Anyway, seriously! Great job on releasing it so fast Tim! And awesome job on finally fixing that camera code.
I'd love to work together with you in real sometime soon again. Even though you might think I was bored to death 2/3rd of the time, I really enjoyed seeing the improvements and giving my personal opinion and input on how things went.
Thanks for all your support with everything, this version had a lot of painful coding to get working. You're awesome :D
That would be a lot of fun to work with you again, Iris! :D I'm glad you had as much fun with it as I did. :yes
These versions are just getting bigger and bigger. How large do you think they're gonna get? If it goes past I'd say 100mb, I don't think a lot of people would be able to download and use it. Have you thought about using a package installer in the final version? It would definitely bring the file size down at least for downloading.
BTW, sweet graphic textures. It's getting much better. :smile
EDIT:
Oh, and I'm not concerned about downloading because of my server. I'm thinking in general. 100mb or more is a pretty big download for some people.
*is playing* I appear to be a Cubeosaurus! And how do I make my "Cubeosaurus" fly?
:lol :lol
The Cubeosaurus can fly by pressing F while you're on the ground! Pressing F launches you into the air.
While you're in the air, press and hold the spacebar. Release the spacebar to stop "flapping your wings".
If you hit the ground, you have to press F again to restart the process.
Have fun :D
How large do you think they're gonna get?
By the time we get more maps and textures in the game, we'll easily hit 1+GBs. I agree that we'll need a way to better compress the data into an installer in the future. Do you know of a free installer we could use to do this?
IN the future too, we'll be using a server to handle small-scale updates so updates don't require a redownload of the entire game but will only replace the updated files and add new files.
Do you know of a free installer we could use to do this?
I used to have a REALLY good one, but I can't remember the name. It had a purple icon though. If you come across an installer in your searches with a purple icon, scrutinize it carefully.
If you want to use an sfx archive, that would be your best option for now. You can make one in the advanced menu of WinRar. The only thing you can't specify is your own custom icon, but I know a little hacker-created program that can easily change the icon of any app or package with the click of a button (yeah, it's GUI). Contact me via PM or whatever and I can send you a link to that program if you want. The sfx might actually turn out to be a viable option. You can tell it to extract the contents to the program files folder on the hard drive and put a shortcut on the desktop. Of course, you need an icon before you can do that though. :p
This one: Install Creator (http://download.cnet.com/Install-Creator/3000-2383_4-10218346.html)? Not quite sure... but it has a purple icon. :p
That's a huge improvement! Really great! :o
I figured, when you go to the water, the "Air" window shows up. But when I go a few steps back until the window disappeares and go forward again, the window isn't showing anymore. =/
That issue didn't happen for me. The air bar appeared every time I was in the water.
I did encounter a problem myself though, but I don't know if it's a real glitch or if it was because I was playing as the flyer, which is still a square now. I was able to pass through one of the NPCs (the large one near Mr. Threehorn) and was stuck inside the NPC, unable to move, for a while until I strafed to one side and was able to get out.
This one: Install Creator (http://download.cnet.com/Install-Creator/3000-2383_4-10218346.html)? Not quite sure... but it has a purple icon. :p
That's a huge improvement! Really great! :o
I figured, when you go to the water, the "Air" window shows up. But when I go a few steps back until the window disappeares and go forward again, the window isn't showing anymore. =/
That has happened to me before as well... I think it's a combination of the angle you held your camera and you enter the water, not sure though.
I did encounter a problem myself though, but I don't know if it's a real glitch or if it was because I was playing as the flyer, which is still a square now. I was able to pass through one of the NPCs (the large one near Mr. Threehorn) and was stuck inside the NPC, unable to move, for a while until I strafed to one side and was able to get out.
If you were flying through the NPC it's quite possible that was the issue (because you might fly from some weird angle :P: )
You can always get stuck in mr. threehorn if you really want to, and tim knows that is possible but he can't fix it any better than it is right now.
I wasn't actually flying when I got stuck in the NPC. I was walking. :p
Ah, bugger, wrong guess then :p
It might be because the flyer model isn't there yet that the cube doesn't work too well.
I don't know... I guess only action can tell.
Boy what a difference the textures make now :wow And I thank you for fixing the camera collision. It was driving me nuts :p :lol:
I gotta say though, my favorite part about this update is the day/night cycle. The transition from day to night just looks so awesome, it really brings the game world to life. What I really can't wait for is background ambience, like a breeze and birds and stuff. Maybe that's something you could consider in the next update *hint* *hint* :p
Yes! I have broken the game!
(http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww338/raga91/Untitled-2.png)
Even over level 8000 if you're smart enough *knows the secret*
Why thank you for the complement :D Your secret circle now has three
haha, Part of the next version will be trying to secure the savegame files to make them harder to break. :p
I'm also playing with the idea of storing saved games on the server. I dare you to hack the files then, muahaha! :lol
and birds
they'll have to be prehistoric "birds" since this is a long, long time ago. :p
Darn it! You gave away the secret!
I'm also playing with the idea of storing saved games on the server. I dare you to hack the files then, muahaha!
Hmmm... <_< a worthy challenge
You're right about that :p Wasn't even really thinking in those terms when I wrote that. Well even if not birds, you could have insects or whatever. I just always really loved games that payed attention to great detail with the background ambiance. It makes such a big difference.
For anyone who may have noticed the camera collision is...less than perfect, I have some good news:
I just finished completely rewriting the camera code (again!) and I can honestly say that it is behaving very nicely this time. :) I really hope this works as well for everyone as it seems to on my end. I'm seeing the camera control I've been hoping for for ages, finally working!
Good job there Tim!
Nice work. :)
I figured, when you go to the water, the "Air" window shows up. But when I go a few steps back until the window disappeares and go forward again, the window isn't showing anymore. =/
I was able to reproduce this easily.
It seems that ever since I formatted my computer, a lot of my code is behaving differently, even with no changes. It looks like I have to rewrite my underwater detection code...again! :p
The changes should appear in v.25. Thanks for pointing this out.
It seems that ever since I formatted my computer, a lot of my code is behaving differently, even with no changes.
That doesn't even make any sense though :huh: Do you know why exactly that happened, cause I've never heard of that before.
It seems that ever since I formatted my computer, a lot of my code is behaving differently, even with no changes.
That doesn't even make any sense though :huh: Do you know why exactly that happened, cause I've never heard of that before.
Nope, it's exactly like that. He rendered the code on my computer which worked fine, when he rendered it at home it had lots of issues.
Maybe he's got a different version of the program he's writing the code in, but I don't know what's going on either.
Wooooo! :D
Okay, I just rewrote my underwater code completely, using completely different programming techniques.
The result is MUCH cleaner code that is far less buggy and troublesome, while also using less memory (less data needs to be stored to keep track of things now)! :D It works beautifully and seems to be unbreakable as far as I can tell! It's simple, organized and covers all the bases of:
Not in water
Wading
Swimming on the surface
Underwater
as well as data that tracks which combination of transitions you're making, so I can keep track of whether you're going from wading to on land, swimming on the surface to underwater, swimming on the surface to wading, or any possible combinations, all instantly, so my program knows exactly what's going on, I have code to handle every combination specifically, and as far as I can tell, there's no way it can be confused now. :p
The new and improved code also measures the depth of the water at your position, which could be fun in the future of game development. ;)
I used to rely on measuring how fast you were passing through the surface and blahblahblah, but it was just a pain and problematic (not to mention the code was half-impossible to read). This new system I devised makes me extremely happy!
Okay, with all the problems resolved that existed in v0.24, it's officially time to work on the server! :D
Does that mean multiplayer tests?!?!!?
Soon! It will take me a little bit to write the server program and remove all the server code from the existing game, as well as make sure everything is willing to talk to each other properly, but with the release of v0.25, a live server will better-working multiplayer than ever before will be up and running!
Step 1 complete!
My basic server program is informed whenever anyone starts up a v0.25 client and whenever anyone closes their client. I also set up a console window which I'll be able to use for admin stuff, data tracking, interacting with the game, etc.
My plan is to have the server program run a 2d console which lets me read and write text to the game engine. This will let me manipulate the game world, rescue players from bugs, start weather events manually, etc. I will also have a 3d graphical view which will let me see the same chat window as all of the players, as well as the ability to fly around the entire game world as an invisible camera.
The 3d "flying around the world" option can be turned on and off as needed so I don't waste electricity with video cards when the server is just doing it's normal server thing and I'm off somewhere else. :p I want the barebones server application to use as little CPU, RAM and electricity as possible when running unattended.
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/serverapp1-1.png)
A simple step 2:
The server now knows the location of everyone connected and I am displaying one of the sets of coordinates on the screen in this screenshot.
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/serverapp2.png)
And a minor improvement: Grouping each set of coodinates together by player (first at the top, next one to join is below), as well as showing the number of total connected players on the screen.
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/serverapp3.png)
I will change the formatting and blahblahblah as I work on it but I'm just proving to myself that it's behaving properly. :p
There is no real limit to the number of players, beyond my bandwidth. I set the limit at 100 but I can change it as needed.
As you may know, I won't be allowing others to download the server program. I will just be running it on one of my computers here at home.
[EDIT]
Just got a one-way chat system coded in. Clients can send messages to the server. I will get this more complete when I have time but I have to go to work now *grumble grumble* :p
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/serverapp4.png)
Nice job so far there tim! Glad you worked on the water too! :D
Awesome! I can't wait for some exciting games of bumping boxes into each other!
Hehe, I do believe I made a small error in my networking code...just thought I'd share this one because it looked odd. :p
Both of the Duckys are the same player; the model gets cloned. :p
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/clonebug.jpg)
Don't worry, I just fixed that. :p :lol
Attack of the clones!!!!
I'm gonna put that one in bloopers :p
Wait, there was a model of Ducky already?
Anyway, it looks good... when I ignore the clone one. :p
just a few more years to finish the game project ^^
The expression on Cera's model fits the situation perfectly! She's like "...what the f***? :blink:" :lol :lol
It's like that Cat-Dog Nickelodean character, LBT style :o.
I sincerely apologize for the delay on this. I thought I would have some personal problems resolved by now but it seems I may not for many months.
See the game's website
2nd link in my signature or Here (http://lbtrpg.webs.com)
for details.
Once again, my apologies. Life is just going to be so stupid for awhile, I don't forsee any real chance to work on this..
~Tim
That is ok. One does have to deal with real life first.
i can't wait for v0.25!!!
Oh man Tim, i had no idea that was going on. Good luck man, don't worry about the game for now.
i can't wait for v0.25!!!
Sorry, but i'll fear you have to wait a little longer.
Read before you write, smarty. > http://lbtrpg.webs.com/ (http://lbtrpg.webs.com/)
i said that i can't wait for v0.25 cuz it hasn't been released or discussed
The reason it has not been discussed or released is because Action9000 is going through some personal problems right now. There won't be any updates for quite a while.
I'm sure all of us here wish him good luck and hope things resolve themselves and improve for him. :yes
The reason it has not been discussed or released is because Action9000 is going through some personal problems right now. There won't be any updates for quite a while.
i know what's been going on, i check the game site for updates each day
hi I wanted to download the new version 0:24. But it did not work. I was not forwarded. Could you re-release it again. net would be about you. Gru? Guido :lol
I am not sure what you are talking about... It works perfectly fine:
http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Action9000/.../lbtrpgv024.zip (http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Action9000/LBTRPG/lbtrpgv024.zip)
There, that's the link
i think it needs more music ^^ :DD
Hi, have a question. What is the program that Action9000 used for the RPG. Guido greeting ^ ^
He does not use some kind of program, he writes the code completely from scratch using the DarkGDK C++ code library. (in Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition)
Other programs that are used:
Poser for the models
Photoshop for the graphics
Well hey, I have some seriously good news! :D
After taking some time to get back into a normal life, I've managed to get the server functional for the next version!
I'm just tweaking some things and adding in some new features before the release of v0.25, but the server program is working beautifully!!
Once I get a few more features into the server program, it will be officially time to start up the server computer for the LBT RPG and welcome the game to the world of a 24/7 community! :D
V0.25 will be the first version to feature automatic connection to the LBT game server, where all players will be in a single world together. This is a hugely exciting breakthrough for our game and am looking forward to testing it with the GoF community with the release of v0.25, very shortly! :D
Details of playing offline/online / how this actually works will be described with the release of v0.25.
Wow! That is great news! :lol:
It's also great to hear from you again. :)
Thanks, Sky. It's honestly great to be back! :)
We're just working on some cool stuff right now, such as switching out the static 2d title screen for an animated 3d one. Here's a screenshot demonstration. Now, imagine the elegant word "Online" fading in over time and the camera rotating peacefully, showing off the valley. ;)
...okay I'll stop being so dramatic. Still, I think it's cool! :p
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/title-screen-1.jpg)
Tim... As happy as I am with you fixing the server, that options button sure looks horrible :P:
No worries, fix coming right away :D
Edit: and fix for white corners around the pick your choice box is already done :)
Just finished doing some useful checks.
As soon as you start up the game now, you can see whether or not the server is online and whether you have the latest version installed or not. If it all checks out properly, you can connect and join the game world!
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/title-screen-and-version-comparison.jpg)
hi, that sounds really good, you can play online. Then we can make together Quest. also the other characters seem like Petrano or the mission to Eierdiebe.Als example, that one must obtain the egg again. Weird, the new version here as reingesetzt Downlod?. beautiful I think I can write through the Google translated some with you with you. Have learned in school no english ^ ^ greetings Guido :DD
Okay, awesome!! :D
Iris and I had a successful test of multiplayer yesterday, running through the sever just as we will be in v0.25 and beyond. The multiplayer worked flawlessly, with no internet/network problems at all, and connecting/disconnecting with the server was as smooth as we wanted! :)
This is looking fantastic and v0.25 is almost ready, after just a few tweaks and simple bug fixes! :D
The new title screen looks great, can't wait for V0.25 :)
yay! i feel so happy that you guys are back in business!
Sounds like good news all around. Going to take a break after this version?
Sounds like good news all around. Going to take a break after this version?
Not likely! We're having too much fun with this. :p :D
I just fixed a major bug that caused the game to crash if the server was offline. :p The crash has been replaced by a simple message on the title screen:
(http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/server-offline-bug-fix.jpg)
You are still able to play Offline properly if the server is unavailable. the Online feature functions properly as long as a connection to the server can be made.
Also, the "Options" and the box on the left have had their graphics replaced, now. :) Thanks Iris! :D
looking forward to v0.25
Testing of the prerelease of v0.25 is now ready! It can be downloaded here or in the new topic related to this test!
http://www.mediafire.com/file/lw4zononmng/lbtrpg0249.zip (http://www.mediafire.com/file/lw4zononmng/lbtrpg0249.zip)
Hey everyone, Please download this patch before trying it! You will get a version mismatch error if you don't. I need you to run this version to prevent crashing my server! Thanks! :D
http://www.mediafire.com/?yzjkjjyztym (http://www.mediafire.com/?yzjkjjyztym)
Hi, have me Rutergeladen the new RPG and the patch. With the online play does not exist. I have inveigled the patch in the new version or what do you have to do it? Greetings Guido :wow
Ths is just a thought, but when adjusting the quality perhaps only the in game objects should be affected. The menus would be more readable and better looking, and aren't really relevant when the game starts anyway, right?
Ths is just a thought, but when adjusting the quality perhaps only the in game objects should be affected. The menus would be more readable and better looking, and aren't really relevant when the game starts anyway, right?
There is actually a reason I'm not doing that; I'll see if I can explain it: :)
(skip to the dotted line at the bottom if you want a summary)
1) In order to change the graphic quality (the screen resolution, in pixels, specifically), I have to unload and reload all 2d and 3d images/models/objects. This is a physical limitation of DirectX / Direct3D and there's nothing I can do about it. Changing the resolution unloads all media from memory automatically.
This means that every time we change the resolution, we have to be veeery careful about what we have loaded and not, because we can easily break things by loading something more than once or trying to use something that isn't loaded. This is why I chose not to allow players to change the resolution once the game is loaded up, and why the choice is made before you do anything else.
Also, different monitors "like" different resolutions. It's impossible to pick a single resolution that will look perfect to all computers.
Impossible to get the perfect resolution + changing resolution after the game starts is problematic = the resolution on the title screen has to be variable and therefore the quality will be directly related to the resolution.
2) In order to keep the quality the exact same on the main menu, no matter the quality setting, we would have to create 2d images at each resolution that the game will support. For now, that's about 12 resolutions. Later on, there will be even more. Picture this:
If you start up the game in 1680x1050 resolution, but the title screen images take up, say 10% of the screen in each direction. That means the image is 168 x 105 pixels.
However, if we choose, say, 1024x768 resolution, to maintain the same-looking quality, the image needs to be 102x76 pixels.
This would mean we would need to make individual 2d images for each possible resolution, without even knowing what all the possible resolutions are (that depends on your monitor and your video card). The labour and hard drive space required, not to mention the amount of code I would need to switch out all the graphics depending on which of a billion different resolution choices was used, it's just not viable.
Right now what we're doing is just loading a single image and scaling it based on the resolution. I don't assume the player has any particular resolution, I just stretch the image to always take up x% of the screen width and y% of the screen height, so it looks the same no matter the resolution. The only difference is, at low resolutions, x and y are the same numbers but the number of pixels of the images is smaller.
10% of 1680 = 168 pixels
10% of 1024 = 102 pixels, hence the lower quality. The only fix would be to make individual graphics for each resolution, so we don't ever have to stretch images, but this is not practical because the number of images would get out of control.
As for the text quality, Again, the font size is based on the resolution.
In 800x600, I have to use, say 10 point font, which has very little detail.
To achieve the same physical size of text in 1680x1050 resolution, we can go up to closer to 18 point font, which is much more detailed, hence it looks sharper when shown on the screen. If we use 18-point font for the better detail in 800x600, the text is too big and won't fit in the space we need it. Again, there is no fix for that. :(
-----------------------------------------
If you dont' want to read all this, start reading here :p
What resolution (quality) do we choose for the title screen? Every computer, monitor and video card has its own "ideal" resolution. Also, now since that title screen is 3d, running it in a higher resolution than your computer can nicely handle will cause the game to lag BIG TIME on the title screen, which would just be a pain.
Basically, what quality do we choose for the title screen, if not the same one we use for the rest of the game? That's the logic I used.
i downloaded the game and the patch....it just gives me this message
Land before time online v0.249 server test.exe has stopped working
a problem caused the program to stop working correctly. windows will notify you if a solution is available.
it says the same thing when you try to start the other exe (LBT rpg v0.2492)
is the reason why it's not working because i have windows 7???
^
No, I don't think so, because I'm running Windows XP (SP2), and I have the same problem.
hmmmm...guess i'll have to set up my old desktop again..grrrrr....
I'm honestly not sure why your games have been crashing on you. This has never been a problem before in previous releases. I have one theory, but it seems very odd.
Anyway, your Operating System should not matter. I'm programming the game on a Windows 7 computer (64-bit) these days and it runs just fine on that, as well as my older XP laptop.
What is the last thing you're seeing on your screens before the game crashes? Does it start up at all? Do you get a some message about checking server connection?
as soon as i open it says blah blah blah is not responding then that closes then it shows the error message
Mine says the same thing, XP style:
"This program has encountered an error and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. (bla bla bla bla bla...)"
That happened as soon as I tried running it.
With which program do you people unzip the files? It may be because it did not unpack all the files correctly.
Hi I've read through your releases. What can you get it to work since the RPG? akion 9000 or can not do everything in one folder so that one online play and play alone in a folder. Then, facing south, perhaps no problem. W‰hre goes well when greeting Guido :smile
With which program do you people unzip the files? It may be because it did not unpack all the files correctly.
I used 7zip (it supports ZIP files). Perhaps I should try using WinRAR and see if that helps.
EDIT: Nope, still not working. :neutral
Odd, it works for me in Winrar.
When you are done unpacking, do you have these files?
(http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll44/gofmumbling/d-1.png)
Wait a minute... I'm supposed to have v0.24? I thought it was v0.2492? :o
EDIT: Nevermind, I tried downloading v0.24 - neither version works (for me, at least).
Err lol, that's a mistake on my end. Yes you should have the 0.2492 version.
Did version 0.23 work for you? Can you mention the specs of your computer?
Here a link to version 0.23 in case you have not tried that one before... http://www.mediafire.com/?ytkjzto5ndz (http://www.mediafire.com/?ytkjzto5ndz)
says v0.23 is corrupt and v0.24 won't run at all anymore...stupid win 7 updates... <_<
Yeah, v0.23 is corrupt. Can't extract.
Here's my specs btw:
ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset
Intel Pentium 4 505 @ 3.20GHz
ATI Radeon X300, 256MB VRAM
2GB DDR1-400 RAM
250GB 7200rpm HDD
Windows XP Professional SP2
(yeah, go ahead and laugh at my crap old PC :p)
I already have all the latest drivers installed. I used to be able to run the game no probs, but it seems it's this version I have issues with.
that's not crappy, it's better than my desktop by miles...
Okay well your computer is about 4 times better than mine, and you got about the same video card so it should in fact work... Version 0.23 corrupt? That's odd.
Metadude, it's not because of windows 7. Tim programs in windows 7 (and tests in windows 7) and I can play it fine on my brother's laptop with windows 7 as well.
Okay, I just tested v 0.23 and it said the zip file was corrupt indeed. (Sorry, should have checked that out first)... And it seems Austin's server is not working so I cant provide you with the 'correct' version (which should be on there)...
Ok, I got version 0.23 here which is not corrupt.
http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Action9000/.../lbtrpgv23b.zip (http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Action9000/LBTRPG/lbtrpgv23b.zip)
downloading now
Okay, this is just weird. I totally remember having this version before. It usually works, but now it crashes just the same. :blink:
I'd say it's related to your computer then, but honestly I don't understand why 2 of you have that issue. If it were just one person it'd make more sense.
Just a theory, but it could have something to do with my DirectX... the more recent versions seem to require XP Service Pack 3, which means it's probably time for me to upgrade... maybe. Not really sure. :o
EDIT: Woops. scratch that. It supports SP2 as well, lol. Gonna update and see what happens.
You may want to do that anyway :) I know people said it caused some trouble in the beginning, but switching from SP 2 to SP 3 should work normally.
But hmm.. Direct X 9 should do and that one is normally with SP 2 as well.
Edit: Seems like you edited your post when I posted.. but yes :p
still doesn't work...even on my desktop? wth???
You mean you still cant extract the files or it just wont play?
it won't play? my desktop is xp. the game used to work on it? wtf?
Unfortunately I have no idea what's going on. Neither Iris or I can come up with any logical reason why you two would both be having so many problems with the last couple of versions, while they have worked for you two in the past.
Do any other games on your computers have any issues, or are there any other odd behaviours on your computers at all? There isn't any reason why our game in particular should have problems, assuming your drivers and directX are up to date, you meet the system requirements, and your Windows installation is not corrupt or something.
You're welcome to wait and see how v0.25 works on your computers, but it will include the same .dll files as the previous versions so I don't see why it would work any differently.
Would you be interested in me posting a much older version, say 0.19 or something like that, to test? Just to see what happens? In theory though, it should work exactly the same as v0.23.
Hey i have a question about the final version of the game: Will we be able to choose the color skin and eyes of ours character or we will all be clones with just different names ?
Yep yep! :D There will be a large number of colour choices for each character, as well as the ability to choose your species.
For example, you may choose a longneck, then choose one of a few different longneck species. Each species will have the same stats/abilities in-game, but will look different. :D
Do any other games on your computers have any issues, or are there any other odd behaviours on your computers at all? There isn't any reason why our game in particular should have problems, assuming your drivers and directX are up to date, you meet the system requirements, and your Windows installation is not corrupt or something.
No, there is exactly ZERO issues when I'm running other games (even CPU-intensive ones like Crysis), no "odd behaviours" whatsoever. My DirectX and ALL my drivers are up-to-date, and I think my crap system can handle the game well enough. And I don't think my Windows installation is corrupt either, otherwise I would've faced more issues than just with this game. :p
Would you be interested in me posting a much older version, say 0.19 or something like that, to test? Just to see what happens? In theory though, it should work exactly the same as v0.23.
Sure. There's no harm in trying. :)
Okay. Try this version 0.19:
http://www.mediafire.com/?zmnigbnyff1 (http://www.mediafire.com/?zmnigbnyff1)
Just tried running that version... it worked. And just to be sure, I tried running v0.2492 again after that, but still nothing.
Yep yep! :D There will be a large number of colour choices for each character
so did any of the skins that i submitted make it into the new release?
Not yet metadude, we haven't looked into the programming of that part yet. I'm glad that the version worked for you Excalibur. We're thinking there may be a problem with the maps.
Version 0.22 is the last version in which we used the old map system, care for trying that one? http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Mumbling/v0.22.zip (http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Mumbling/v0.22.zip)
Just tried it. Didn't work, unfortunately. :unsure:
Ok, then it has nothing to do with the new map system.
Sorry, I really don't know what could be causing it. If you want you can try version 0.20 and 0.21 and tell us if they work, but I honestly don't think we can help much.
v 0.20 http://www.mediafire.com/?5ejjmezinnn (http://www.mediafire.com/?5ejjmezinnn)
v 0.21 http://www.mediafire.com/?mtlzi0iqvzw (http://www.mediafire.com/?mtlzi0iqvzw)
v0.21 doesn't seem to work, but v0.20 does... So I guess anything from v0.21 and up won't work me. =\
none of the versions work for me so far....i'll check to see if i need to update my laptop
The main changes for version 0.21 were sound and music. Have you recently updated your sound card driver or perhaps you need to update it?
Metadude, I honestly don't know what the problem on your end is. I can only say that you should wait for version 0.25 and see if it works or not.
I'm already using the latest driver version for my sound card. The last time they released an updated driver for my sound card was in 2008, and since then they haven't had anymore updated drivers up till now. (I have a Realtek AC'97 sound card, if you're wondering)
I tried reinstalling the driver, but that still doesn't fix the crash.
We went over all the code that runs before you will see aaaanything on the screen (before the resolution screen anyway): aka. everything that could potentially be crashing.
May I just confirm, Excalibur:
The game crashes before you see *anything* on the screen. You don't even see the "choose resolution" screen, correct?
There is nothing before that screen that is different when you compare version 0.20 and 0.21 (except for loading sound/music).
So ya..the only difference is the sound/music stuff. Other than that..I really don't know, man.
(http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s262/bbfanboy/lbtrpgerror.png)
Yeah I don't see anything, except for the game's window showing a pitch black screen and that error message. :p It didn't even try to go fullscreen either.
Geez..ya, I honestly have no idea.
(http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s262/bbfanboy/lbtrpgerror.png)
exactly what i get...win 7 style...
Hey all!
I'm hoping that this version works for you guys!
In any case, I present to all of you... Version 0.25
You can download it here (http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Action9000/LBT%20RPG%20V0.25.zip) or here (http://www.mediafire.com/?qzzgcdyjkmn).
The server is running, so come and join us! :D
New stuff:
1 Online Server! It should be running 24/7 from now on!
2 More trees! While collision does not work yet, they sure look pretty!
3 We save your adventures now! Even with just one adventure in the game, we thought it would be nice if this worked.
4 A New Loading Screen!
5 A Forum (http://z7.invisionfree.com/lbt) - Feel free to visit!
The trees look great, and I had no problem startin' up and whatnot.
Oh the game should run properly, you just cannot see anyone else yet :p
Server works now! Make sure to download the game again from the corrected links:
http://www.mediafire.com/?qzzgcdyjkmn (http://www.mediafire.com/?qzzgcdyjkmn)
http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Action9000/...RPG%20V0.25.zip (http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Action9000/LBT%20RPG%20V0.25.zip)
v0.25 doesn't work either :(
Sorry Metadude, there's not much we can do for you since we don't know what the issue is :(
i know, i'll try and see if it works at work
Metadude...install all possible updates (other than language packs). I've using Windows 7 here and it works like a charm. The only thing I can think of is that it's an issue with Windows itself which can probably be fixed with a Windows update. If not, try running it in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2.
i've updated my win 7 to the absolute maximum and i've tried win xp sp 2
EDIT: V0.25 works on desktop yay!!!
Glad to know that metadude! :)
love the trees and new day/night system.
Glad to know that you like it :) If you download the patch http://www.mediafire.com/?9ztmw886civaqra (http://www.mediafire.com/?9ztmw886civaqra) you can also see plants and some other fancy features :D
Good news, I just installed Windows 7 Ultimate (setup in dual-boot, so I can switch back to XP anytime :p), and the game works perfectly fine. :DD
Except for one thing: the 1280x960 resolution setting (which is the native resolution of my monitor). It crashes when I use that. :o
Have you tried other resolutions? The resolution should not matter at all, but I will look into it. I tried the resolution here on my computer, which is also a widescreen, and it runs just fine.
Glad that it works for you too now!
Yeah, I tried the other resolutions. Anything higher 1280x960 crashes the game.
I encountered a bit of a graphical glitch. When I approached the bank of the river the grey area expanded into the grass, and the further down I moved my camera the further the grey area spread. It faded to green once I moved farther away, albeit the equilvalent of perhaps 700 ft.
Here's a picture.
http://i31.tinypic.com/2z40h7a.png (http://i31.tinypic.com/2z40h7a.png)
Yeah, I tried the other resolutions. Anything higher 1280x960 crashes the game.
That sounds like possibly either a limitation of your video card or monitor (the latter being much more likely). Lower resolutions than that work too, correct?
I encountered a bit of a graphical glitch. When I approached the bank of the river the grey area expanded into the grass, and the further down I moved my camera the further the grey area spread. It faded to green once I moved farther away, albeit the equilvalent of perhaps 700 ft.
Aye, that is a known graphical bug related to our map files. We are working on a solution to this and I have a theory on how to fix it. We are waiting until we get some more maps completed to work on it since it is a bit of a project.
A miracle just happened to me. I've just removed my Windows 7 bootloader (because I want to reinstall it clean), then all of a sudden, the RPG works on Windows XP. Lol. :lol
And now I have absolutely no problems running it on the higher resolutions. :DD
Oh wow, okay! Well that's good! Whatever the problem was, glad it's all fixed :)
I have fun with the latest version.
(http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/6462/ceraeating.png) (http://img44.imageshack.us/i/ceraeating.png/)
Cera: Finaly ! FOOD !!! After all these month !
NOM NOM NOM
Hahaha Vek, okay that's awesome :p :D
We'll put that piccy on our game's website if you don't mind! :)
Times have ne question? Action 9000 announced a date that can be online games. Today is the date. I have the online play and there was elected mudus This is not the version. Since I need is version 0.2501 please help thank you in advance ever :cry
There is no special day to play online, you can play online every day.
Download version 0.2501 from our website. http://lbtrpg.webs.com/ (http://lbtrpg.webs.com/)
Hi I just Downloaded the new version. If I play Onleine button, press here is the Unable to connect. See Status messages. And Is The menu Server Status: Server version Ofline Unknown. Please help gru? Guido :cry :confused habe es mit den Google ‹bers‰tzer geschreiben kein leider kein Englisch w¸rde es gerne lernen :lol
Ok! It should work now. Sorry for that :)
Hi I have the version Rutergeladen you have me as a link Entrepreneurs Gemurmel ^ ^. If I play Onleine button, press here is the Unable to connect. See Status messages. And Is The menu Server Status: Server version Ofline Unknown. Please help gru? Guido What can I do about it so that it works. What did you make it funtioniert? Greetings Guido would like to play online. Murmur, can you einwenig German? Unfortunately I can not speak English do not have it at school had pity. Then I could write with sea here. Write now Google with ‹bers‰tzer. Is it sensible fully what it ¸bers‰tzt ^ ^ greeting Gido :cry :lol
Yes I do understand german.... Otherwise I wouldn't be able to understand what you wrote there :p
The server had crashed because it was on a wireless connection, I fixed it by plugging in a wire.
It works for me now, it should work for anyone, including you ;)
Viel Gluck mit Online spielen.. :p
Hi Gemurmel ^^, ich schreibe jetzt ruhig deutsch. Wie meinst du das der server ist kaput. Meinst du das das nicht in Weifei geht. Oder muss ich mit einem Internet kabel versuchen ja ? kenne mich nicht so gut damit aus ^^. Spiele momentan Runes of Magic. Aber als LBT Fan wie ich muss nat¸rlich auch das RPG von LBT haben ^^. Haste ICQ oder MSN ? kannste mir ja bitte per E-mail schicken. Bist sicher auch ein LBT Fan kenne nicht viele die das auch mˆgen ^^. Gru? Guido :lol
Great to see that the game is still making considerable progress. Now that theres a dedicated server makes it even better! How many people can the server hold? It doesn't crash with 4 people in it i assume :lol .
Can hold up to 100 people, but we never had more than 5 at the same time :p
The 100 player limit is only in the code; the server itself can probably handle more if the code is adjusted to accommodate.
Can hold up to 100 people, but we never had more than 5 at the same time
The 100 player limit is only in the code; the server itself can probably handle more if the code is adjusted to accommodate.
Nice! Are there going to be any tests to see how it runs with lots of people, or was that already done with the 5 people that you mentioned?
Now, I don't know if anyone else noticed, but if you jump while sprinting you won't lose energy. Infact, you can actually be recovering energy by jumping repeatedley. I think it would be cool if you lost even more energy when sprint jumping. Actually, typing this out makes me feel like i might of said this before, but i can't remember. :p
Hmmm, i don't think i was around when the texture was replaced with the newest one, but i like it. The bright and colorful style seems more appropriate for LBT.
The test with 5 people was the one we did, yep. It's hard to get all people in the game at the same time, though.. Always something interfering :p (should have been 8 people).
Jumping + not losing energy will be removed later, but is nice now especially for testing purposes :p
We like the new textures too :) We want to have everything bright and green like in the LBT series. :D
I don't why, but I can't download it, and even time I go all the way through with the download it says:
While internet files can be useful. This file contains data that may harm computer, so it wasn't allowed.
Or something like that. Why is it only available through downlad? Can't there be a version on the site that you can play without having to downland, cause apparently, my computer won't allow it all. No matter what site I download it from. :cry :neutral
I'm not sure if that can work. In order to do that, I think Action9000 would need to set up some kind of server that will run it automatically, unless I'm mistaken. Either way I think it's harder to get a game running without downloading than it is to run a game through a downloadable.
Also the files in the download are not at all harmful to the computer. Something seems fishy with that message you got. It should be allowed, unless there's something else preventing it, like a parental block. Although if the message you just posted is exactly how it appeared, I can't help but think virus because of the mistakes in grammar (and no I don't mean a virus in the file; I mean a virus already on the computer).
unless there's something else preventing it, like a parental block.
I mean a virus already on the computer
No there isn't a parentel block, why would there be one anyway, I'm fifteen, and all were talking about LBT?
No, there isn't a virus in my computer. It scans automatically if I don't do it myself when I'm supposed to and it tells me.
It is still possible. One scanner is not going to catch everything. Sorry but I still can't help but think virus because of the incorrect grammar of the message you posted. It is common for certain types of malware (particularly rogue antiviruses) to display messages with mistakes in grammar.
Tried on another site, got this:
(http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/225/4/a/screen_by_ScratteLover2.png)
There must be something it, I tried this one (http://lbtserver.co.cc/Members/Action9000/.../lbtrpgv024.zip)
It looks like you can still download the file. Go ahead; it's a safe file. You can also report it as safe. Personally I don't use Internet Explorer. I use Opera and Firefox, usually Firefox for downloading.
And it looks like I was wrong about the bad grammar, seeing how the message actually looks. Looks like it's just IE's filter.
It looks like you can still download the file. Go ahead; it's a safe file. You can also report it as safe. Personally I don't use Internet Explorer. I use Opera and Firefox, usually Firefox for downloading.
And it looks like I was wrong about the bad grammar, seeing how the message actually looks. Looks like it's just IE's filter.
Samething came up again, even after I reported it as safe. I'm not going to risk it. I had a friend download a similar file, his whole system crashed, everything in his computer was deleted, pics, music, favorites, log ins, etc.
Well I am telling you now the file is perfectly safe. Other people have downloaded it with no trouble. There's no way the file is infected. It's perfectly safe I'm telling you. Your friend likely downloaded a file that really was infected, however the file you tried to download is not. I have downloaded it myself and it was never reported as infected, and no it is not possible for the same file to somehow get infected once it's online; someone would need to take the file, somehow infect it, and reupload it and even then they cannot use the same link; a new link would be needed.
EDIT: I just downloaded the file again, extracted the files, put them into a folder, and scanned it with first Malwarebytes and then Vipre. Both of them did not report any infection. I doubt Superantispyware will think there's anything infected either, and Comodo Firewall did not report any malicious activity being caused by these files.
Jumping + not losing energy will be removed later, but is nice now especially for testing purposes
That makes sense, seeing how im using it all the time.
Did the save feature get removed? Im just wondering because none of the characters ive made have been saving.
And Tim, you must have been tired of all the people saying theres glitches when you go out of bounds becuase that water goes on forever!
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/mrmeat770/BigWater.jpg)
I guess that gives us a better reason to sing Big Water :lol
The save feature has not been removed, it should save your characters every time you go back to the main menu or close the game. Maybe not the main menu, but closing the game should work for saving your characters 100%, as well as completing an adventure.
Go to the folder where you have put all the game files and make sure there is a 'Save' folder there. Create a new one and name it that way in case it is not.
That's not really a glitch, we just don't have any more maps :D
And if you did not know... This is Iris reporting from Tim's house, so tim is sitting right next to me :)
@Scrattelover:
No we cannot make the game run online, it is an EXE file therefore not compatible with browsers, and we're not going to learn java or flash.
Turn off your firewall and try downloading again. Otherwise contact Landbeforetimelover since the file is located on his server.
The save feature has not been removed, it should save your characters every time you go back to the main menu or close the game. Maybe not the main menu, but closing the game should work for saving your characters 100%, as well as completing an adventure.
Yea its working now.
That's not really a glitch, we just don't have any more maps
Yea i know, i just remember that people would keep going out of bounds, but now the water seems to go on forever. I was determined to find the edge of the water but i finally gave up after going for i don't know how long (you can see how far the land was in that pic). I was just screwing around.
I did notice though that sprint jumping while along side a steep slope causes your character to jump really high sometimes.
Hi wan Comming the new Version ? Versuche ein wenig Englisch zu schreiben ‹bung macht den meister :lol
Not anytime soon. We're working on something else right now.
Hey all!
I just wanted to let everyone know that the game project is not dead. I found a need to recode a ton of stuff to resolve some fundamental bugs in our system, as well as making it easier to expand in the future.
I should have some time to get this worked on in the near future and I will keep everyone posted!
Just to let you know the major things being worked on at this point:
Implementation of the nVidia PhysX physics engine, which has been tested and working nicely for natural objects (rocks, etc.) :D
Hugely-improved collision detection, including the ability to land in trees as a flyer, etc. (the fundamental reason why all this recoding is necessary - to fix collision on the y-axis)
More stable online play.
Implementation of the nVidia PhysX physics engine, which has been tested and working nicely for natural objects (rocks, etc.) :D
:DD :DD :DD :DD :DD !!!
Proof of concept of the new collision system that is a work in progress:
Spike in a tree! :D :p
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/act...e-in-a-Tree.jpg (http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h141/action9000/Spike-in-a-Tree.jpg)
:lol
Wow, that sounds awesome! can't wait to do some serious testing once this has all been implemented :DD.
Great job action! I wish I knew how to code as well as you do!
How the heck did he get up there?! :lol:
This project is canceled until further notice. The development team has been disbanded.
That's really sad news... :( It looked pretty well. :cry
Sorry to hear that :( I was kinda interested in this game when I heard about it a couple months ago.
Puddingchor it's silly.
I thought that this will be something that 2d games can do yourself. But 3D is not everyday life. :cry :cry :cry
Puddingchor it's silly.
I thought that this will be something that 2d games can do yourself. But 3D is not everyday life. :cry :cry :cry
Its true, it was quite an undertaking. I think it would have been possible, given a team of a few dedicated people, but it's more than I can do by myself.
I'm likely going to spend more time on my 'classic' hobby of music, or perhaps much smaller programming projects.
Ah, sorry to hear that... I had no idea it would actually come to this, but I understand how difficult it must be having the whole workload on your shoulders. I'm currently pursuing a degree in game design so maybe some time down the road I could help you pick it back up? Just a thought.
I'd be more than willing to post up the source code I have. It's about 17,000 lines long, however it is using a specific game-programming C++ library (DarkGDK), which will very likely be different from what you've been using.
That being said, if you're learning C++, all the knowledge will still apply. The only difference will be, basically, the names of the functions. All DarkGDK does is simplify the use of DirectX a bit, but it's still DirectX programming. If you ever get into coding with DirectX directly, you'll officially be more advanced than me: I never saw a need to do that to myself. :p
Damn. I told myself I wouldn't get involved in this but....man that really sucks. I'm almost tempted to take up this little project, but just like when this project was started I just don't have the time. And although I'm fairly proficient at C++ I really don't like programming. I'm really sad to see the project come to an end and I apologize that I'm unable to render my assistance in this matter. :(
That sucks, looked like it would've been a fun game! I wish I knew more about game programming then I would take it up myself.
That's ok, things happen, and it is really a huge undertaking if one thinks about it.
Just be sure to archive it well in case either you decide you have the time and means to go back to it or someone else wants to take it over and the code could give them a starting point.