Pandora Pandora Panic

[PokeParadox]

Yes the progress and minigame is amazing, and the problems Dragons_Slayer find gives me stuff to fix with Penjin so I'm kept busy too :lol: .
Thanks for the video update!

 

[SiegfriedCroes]

Quick update of what I have done so far in terms of making the graphics look "16-bit"

The background will be changed (especially the grass) and it will be a bit more interesting (more details).

 

[Enverex]

I hope you're going to apply a HQX filter to that...

 

[SiegfriedCroes]

If Penjin can do that kind of filter then I could do it. At the other hand it would take away the whole retro SNES feel I want to have, and don't forget there will be a handdrawn version that will not be as pixelated as this.

 

[foxblock]

I hope you're going to apply a HQX filter to that...

I hope not... that would totally ruin the authenticity of the retro look, I also do not like it in a Neo-Geo emulator I have installed (although you can turn it off there).

 

[gruso]

I hope you're going to apply a HQX filter to that...

No.

 

[foxblock]

Well, hi again, I finally got the SVN stuff working so I want to comment on the recent changes:

First, I sure hope the game called "Fire" is alpha or for debugging / testing purposes, because it does not seem to work at all and crashes horribly often..
Second, I don't like the particle trails which were added to the recent version of PanJoust, these just don't seem right, out of context and misplaced in this game as they don't match the overall look of it (they are also very annoying and disturbing). So I would opt for removing them...
Third, .. eh...everything else is fine

And now for something completely different (well, not exactly): I have two ideas for two new unique games and also a question:

Would anyone be offended by a game which primary goal is to urinate (mostly) into a toilet?
No, seriously

 

[Pickle]

First, I sure hope the game called "Fire" is alpha or for debugging / testing purposes, because it does not seem to work at all and crashes horribly often..

Um yeah that would be my creation , there was a first iteration I sent to poke, that was pretty bad. The second version is sent was more stable, if you see actual fire graphics its the second. But it sounds like the first from the crashing description.

 

[foxblock]

First, I sure hope the game called "Fire" is alpha or for debugging / testing purposes, because it does not seem to work at all and crashes horribly often..

Um yeah that would be my creation , there was a first iteration I sent to poke, that was pretty bad. The second version is sent was more stable, if you see actual fire graphics its the second. But it sounds like the first from the crashing description.

Well, no fire graphics here, just coloured particles I got the latest version via SVN so I assume PokeParadox has not uploaded the latest version yet. I can clearly see where you are heading (also having read the post about the idea of this game from very back), but the version I have is just plain unplayable (no offense). Also the graphics were very basic (at least in my version), so if there is a need, I would be happy to create some (I want to get to do something different from coding the framework for the Wario game).
I already have an idea in mind: Making it look like it's a pencil-sketch drawn on paper and when the houses are burning it looks like burning / burnt paper.

I also had some other general PandoraPanic thoughts which I forgot earlier:
With the release of the pandora coming closer it might be time to finalize the game framework:
We (the minigame developers) should get the difficulty levels straight, so maybe limit the levels to a certain amount (3/5/10 ? ) and make every game nearly equally difficulty (or at least make the difficulty curve equal).
Also a scoring system would be nice, so one gets awarded different amount of points depending on how fast one finishes a level. This would put the scoreboard to a proper use, but also require some work on ALL minigames and therefore might be considered "secondary".

foxblock out

 

[PokeParadox]

I only have my eeePC currently(My laptop died), but yes we definitely need to bring things together ready for the first real release.

Pickle's fire game, yes the early version got added to SVN... The SVN just has to have code that compiles, not necessarily works! hee hee but the new version is a vast improvement, unfortunately that is sat on my dead laptop so I personally can't update it.

I think the points system is an over complication at this stage, we can certainly think about heading towards something more sophisticated after we get the first release but right now we just need to play tidy up.

I have no objections to a urination game, just as long as we don't have to see any dangly bits!

Difficulty curve is difficult to get right in this sort of game since what you may find difficult others find easy due to the variation of minigames, but yes weshould probably try and tweak things to be a bit more uniform.

Anyway I will try to force myself to get some coding done on this tiny screen...

 

[MarkoeZ]

Second, I don't like the particle trails which were added to the recent version of PanJoust, these just don't seem right, out of context and misplaced in this game as they don't match the overall look of it (they are also very annoying and disturbing). So I would opt for removing them...

Whooops! that is not meant to be in the game :rolleyes: , that was just a test. I was thinking about making it an easteregg (weird button combo or insanely high level or something) with some stupid sound effects. I'll remove/hide it once i get SVN working again (been trying that for weeks now)

Thanks for pointing it out

Edit: I got SVN working on my windows pc again. TortoiseSVN was really being a Bi+(# (well i probably had the wrong settings to be honest), but i checked out on my linux box and copied the files to my windows pc. Apparently it also copies the svn settings and things are working nicely again. Time for some work!!

Edit2: Particles removed and updated in SVN

 

[gruso]

Would anyone be offended by a game which primary goal is to urinate (mostly) into a toilet?
No, seriously

Not me. It can't be as bad as Don't Shit Your Pants.

 

[foxblock]

I only have my eeePC currently(My laptop died), but yes we definitely need to bring things together ready for the first real release.

Pickle's fire game, yes the early version got added to SVN... The SVN just has to have code that compiles, not necessarily works! hee hee but the new version is a vast improvement, unfortunately that is sat on my dead laptop so I personally can't update it.

I think the points system is an over complication at this stage, we can certainly think about heading towards something more sophisticated after we get the first release but right now we just need to play tidy up.

I have no objections to a urination game, just as long as we don't have to see any dangly bits!

Difficulty curve is difficult to get right in this sort of game since what you may find difficult others find easy due to the variation of minigames, but yes weshould probably try and tweak things to be a bit more uniform.

Anyway I will try to force myself to get some coding done on this tiny screen...

Aww sorry your laptop died, but that is no reason to become lazy now
Yeah a scoring system would be overkill for a first release but it is a thing to consider also for new games, so these can already include something like that only commented out or just develop new games with a scoring system in mind so it can be added easily afterwards...
By tweaking the difficulty curve I mostly meant to add one to games which have none yet (like BallDrop) and adjust them, because some go up to infinity, others to level 30, others to 20... you get the point. I also think there is no need for a difficulty curve divided in 100 parts, 10 levels should be more than enough, but that's something to discuss (and also a reason why I brought this topic up) - I am aware that some games will be easier for some people while others won't...

No worries, there won't be any dangly bits.

Not me. It can't be as bad as Don't Shit Your Pants.

Ha ha

 

[bzar]

Would anyone be offended by a game which primary goal is to urinate (mostly) into a toilet?
No, seriously

Not me. It can't be as bad as Don't Shit Your Pants.

Haha, I just became the Shit King.

 

[Vorporeal]

That's one of my favorite games on Kongregate, along with You Have to Burn the Rope.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

Hi there, I've checked out the SVN repo, read-only, I had to make a couple of small changes to get compiling (I'm not sure I set everything up quite right, I checked out one SVN repo but then had to extract a bunch of files to get the framework etc. and I'm not sure the versions I got quite matched or something). Anyway, with that fixed, I've been working on a little Pang mini game - could someone let me know if it will be okay for me to include this in Pandora Panic, and if so what is the process of me submitting this? Can I get full write SVN access, or alternatively can I just send someone the source files and assets and have them commit them to SVN?

Another thing; the frate rate on my PC seems pretty bad (running in the Debug configuration, as Release doesn't seem to want to run, and I'm not familiar enough with Code::Blocks to know what is actually going on) - most of the time I seem to get around 25-30 FPS, is this a concern? Does it run full speed on device in Release? My machihne is beefy enough, 2.X Ghz Core 2 Duo, 1 Gig Memory, Geforce 8800 GX.

Finally, I need to be able to draw regions of sprites (for the players spear, as it is a single tall graphic), is there any support for this? I couldn't see any, so wasn't sure if I'll need to derive my own sprite class with this functionality, or if someone could add it to the existing class, or if I would be able to add it? If I was to add it I'd need to know where to get the engine source from, as currently I just have that extracted from an archive, and have no way to 'commit' it back to SVN etc.

Thanks for your help,

Steve

 

[foxblock]

Hi there,

great to see another minigame in development.
Can you decribe more detailed what you minigame is about (and maybe some artworks), that would be great

To commit to the SVN PokeParadox has to add you, just write him a message, but I am sure he will read this soon and add you anyway. (You could of course send me the files, but added them yourself is probably easier)

Framerate should not be a problem, at least it is not for me, but I always run the W32 Release. I don't know why it won't compile for you, maybe you could post the errors so we can help you

To set up the project and code blocks, just follow this step-by-step guide and just edit the paths to your CodeBlocks install in the build options (for the desired build of course): http://projectinfini...esandorapanic

To draw a specific region of a sprite you probably have to look into SDL, but here is also a workaround (if the region always has the same size):
You can load an ImageSheet (using the Sprite or Image class). This loads an image and splits it into a number of cols and rows, then you can render a specific part of the image by calling the render function with a row and a column number as parameters (see the Image class for the exact format). This should probably do what you have in mind (though I don't really know what exactly you are up to - showing the image would help).
If you want to display an animation you should use the AnimatedSprite class. It works just like the one above, it just skips to the next frame automatically (you can also set the number of frames per second).

I hope this solves some of your problems, if there are some remaining, don't hesitate to reply or contact me via ICQ (see profile for details),

foxblock out

 

[Rockthesmurf]

Google for 'Pang' and you'll get a jist what the game is all about, I tried to make a couple of captures of progress so far, but the comabination of the game running slow (at the best of times) with it getting bogged down with screen capture, means the net result is everything is so jerky it is hard to see what's going on! But here the videos are so far:

Video 1

Video 2

For the spear/region drawing, essentially what I have is a spear graphic which is say, 20x480, when the player hits fire the spear starts moving up from where the player is standing until it hits the ceiling (it also moves downwards from the player, so it ends up making a solid column going the entire height of the screen), so essentially I just want to be able to drop the top X pixels of the spear above the player and the bottom X pixels of the spear below the player. If there is no functionality to do this I'm sure I could get it in, one way or another, but I was hoping to just go through the supplied API rather than rolling my own! I'll see if PokePandora joins the thread )

Steve

 

[foxblock]

Ok, the game really should not run that laggy, not even while capturing. I just tried to compile and run the Debug version on my system (I always use the Release version), but it also ran smooth so that cannot be the problem. You PC should also be handle it well.
What Windows version are you using (but I doubt that could be the source of the problem)?
Have you tried running the game not from CodeBlocks but from the explorer by executing the Penjin3D.exe?

I don't think there is a Penjin function or class which does what you want to do, sadly. You'll have to look into the SDL stuff then (please correct me if I am wrong).
There might be another workaround:
If you have a arrow which looks (simplified) like this:

You can split it into 3 graphics (shown by the vertical lines), move lower and upper graphic and stretch the middle graphic to fit the space between lower and upper graphic.
Though that will look blurry with more detailed graphics, so it probably is no option either...

foxblock out

 

[PokeParadox]

Greetings, I've been MIA since I've been setting up my new desktop pc(which I can't really afford.)
I'm still tweaking things here and there but I'm back online at least, with Linux.

Now onto PandoraPanic! It's important to note that the "framecounter" doesn't give you a framerate, due to an error setting it up it actually just tells you how many update cycles where the game has had to update nothing have occured. A higher number is still better of course and you can still guage performance with it, but it isn't FPS yet...

To draw your arrow just have an arrowhead and a tail section and tile the middle part. This is how I do the platforms in Plander. You keep stack the middle part as necesary and just add the end bits when you have the total length of the full arrow object.

Anyway this is just a flying visit...
OH yeah and to get added to the repo, basically I need to just have a google account address from you. And just an idea of what level of access you need/is appropriate for you.