Release F-1 Spirit remake

[F_Slim]

I don't know the original game, just tried it for the first time now on the Pandora. Looks like this is one of the very few top-down racers I like! The car feels very nice, and driving is really fun! The game seems to be very hard to beat though.

Regarding the port: I also had to set the controls myself, default was Space for Acc. etc. ...

And suspend to RAM does not work. The screen goes black, but the game keeps running (sound, music, even reacts to inputs like ESC to bring up the menu ingame). Problem is that I could not wake it up again, i.e. the screen stayed black and the only way out was a hard-reset.

I don't expect this can be fixed, just thought I'll mention it as a warning

 

[Klumpen]

I hear sounds, but the screen is black.

Do I got this problem, because I installed SGX v4.06

for Sky Supreme, because it did crash with SGX v4.03 (which I installed because of Arx Fatalis) and 4.05?

Edit: Yep, runs fine with SGX 4.03.

 

[ptitSeb]

There is "F12" for emmergency exit.

Yes, loss of context (ex, Alt-TAB or Sleep) is difficult to handle

For SkySupreme, it should work with 4.03, strange it crash. I'm working (slowly) on another port of Allegro 5.1 anyway (you can grab a copy here: https://github.com/ptitSeb/allegro51-pandora ).

I do have 4.03 on my pandora all the time, so it's the prefered version for Gigahertz model (I didn't test on the 4.06)

 

[Klumpen]

I do have 4.03 on my pandora all the time, so it's the prefered version for Gigahertz model (I didn't test on the 4.06)

Same here and I was surprised, that Sky Supreme works with 4.06 but not with 4.03 which I usually use.

PS: Just tried the game and have to say thanks, because it's great.

 

[levi]

And suspend to RAM does not work. The screen goes black, but the game keeps running (sound, music, even reacts to inputs like ESC to bring up the menu ingame). Problem is that I could not wake it up again, i.e. the screen stayed black and the only way out was a hard-reset.

Do you mean suspend to RAM? If so, how did you configure that?

It sounds like an issue I'm having with the lid closed - the screen won't wake up again when you open the lid again, but the game carries on playing. Also, trying to bring up the brightness doesn't bring the screen back.


But I'm having the same problem in Mupen too, so it's not unique to this. I'm thinking it's maybe if it's showing the HW layer at the time it causes the problem, but trouble is I don't actually know what uses that and what doesn't.

 

[F_Slim]

Do you mean suspend to RAM? If so, how did you configure that?

Standard config (flick power-switch to right to toggle).

 

[levi]

Ah okay, I think that's officially low power mode, so the CPU keeps ticking just more slowly.


I had lockups in that one time when I had mismatched the kernel with the rest of the OS (I'd updated the OS, but forgotten to copy the new kernel over where my kernel was actually loaded from, so it was still loading the old kernel). I haven't had any issues since fixing that, although it's fair to say I don't use low power mode much since I broke my power switch.

 

[fusion_power]

Seems to be a nice game, I hope it runs decent on my old CC Pandora.

Looks like it's using the full screen resolution, could the game run faster if only using half the resolution but hardware scaler for fullscreen?

 

[ptitSeb]

It run descent on a CC (there is a default overclock to 800MHz in the PND).

The game is designed to run @640x480, reducing res to 400x240 (or 320x240) while render most text unreadable unless more altering inthe source code to enlarge the text menu items done.

Plus, the quarterscreen render imply some FrameBuffer creation, and heavy altering of all glViewport and glScissor in the code to adapt to the lower res. Quite some heavy work, and I don't feel it is needed now.

I don't really like LowRes, I have put that mode in muppen because it was there before so I didn't want to create some regression in functionnalities (but still, user of old muppen doesn't want to switch to new one), but I really feel the Pandora deserve HiRes game (and it can handle hires game anyway).

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi !

Thank you ptitSeb for another great port

Do you think turning off some eye candy (clouds for example, in F1SpiritGame.cpp) would improve the framerate on CC and Rebirth ?

Bye, Magic Sam

 

[ptitSeb]

Possibly. I have to test the effect of disabling clouds.

 

[Magic Sam]

You could also play with skid marks (#define TYRE_MARK_DURATION 512 in track.cpp) and smoke effect when you brake.

EDIT: in the readme file:

- the ZOOM effect (the default is SPEED STEPPED)
            - FIXED: the zoom is always 1x
            - SPEED LINEAR: the zoom decreases linearly as the speed of your
                            car increases
            - SPEED STEPPED: there are 3 different zooms,
                             at low speeds you will see the game at 1.2x,
                             at medium speeds you will see the game at 1x,
                             and at high speeds the zoom will be 0.8x.

The more the camera zooms out, the more there is stuff to display, the more the game slows down (logical). Could you try to set zoom to FIXED (1x) or even better (1.2x) ?

 

[ptitSeb]

I don't think skid marks can make a difference. I tried with skid mark deactivated and didn't find any significant speed up (on a Gigahertz). but I think the Zoom can be setup in the option menu (I haven't checked)?

I'll try a few thing you suggested...

Do you want the sources to play with it?

 

[Kumaki]

This looks like fun...must check it out.

Did you put C4A support on it?

 

[ptitSeb]

No, no C4A support (yet?). But there is some online scoring integrated (that I haven't tested).

 

[levi]

The way it zooms out at high speeds is essential for coping with corners and traffic at high speeds, so I wouldn't like to see that removed personally, and don't really think it ought to be configurable.

 

[Magic Sam]

@ ptitSeb: IIRC, I tried to set up the zoom in the option menu, but that option was not there.

Regarding the online high scores, I think it is somewhat broken:

From F-1 Spirit remake website:

This high scores are temporal, and may be reset at any time by the development team. For instance, the current version has a bug that prevents from properly computing the bestlap time. Thus, each time a new version is out, the highscores will be reset to zero.

Server.MapPath() error 'ASP 0173 : 80004005'

Invalid Path Character

/f1spirit/hiscores_ac6.asp, line 37

An invalid character was specified in the Path parameter for the MapPath method.

 

[ptitSeb]

Hum ok, So I guess I can try to redirect hiscores to C4A instead... I have to study all this, because there are many game available, but I don't want to create 2000 profile on C4A, only one.

Also, @magic_sam, what is your fps in the game? (press alt-F to have it display on lower left part of the screen).

 

[ingoreis]

This Game is so cool,much THX

And sooo smooth...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/RZiPLEVooYI?feature=oembed
Nor i must train more in this Game :rolleyes:

 

[ptitSeb]

Thanks Ingoreis

I have put the Video in the repo and in 1st post.