Release Riot Ttcc Pandora Entries

[Magic Sam]

Hi,

You can find all the games released for that compo here

Have fun and discuss about them !

Bye, Magic Sam

 

[Magic Sam]

First quick impressions:

- Prometheon seems fun
- Rainy Day :wub:
- Panta vs Dragon is fun too
- Schizophrenia doesn't work It works fine now !
- Puzzletube seems interesting, I need more time to understand how it really works though...
- I also need more time for Pirate Baby, but seems good so far
- Shootet is great, but suffers from the "Super Geometry Dust" bug : it makes the WiFi crash
- GigaSunjet doesn't work: can't load shared library libsprig.so. I have tried to EXPORT_LD_LIBRARY=/media/Pandora/GigaSunJet_pandora, where the shared library is, without luck.

Bye and many thanks to everybody involved in this competition

Magic Sam

 

[foxblock]

Schizophrenia should be updated now, just re-download from the old location.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[PokeParadox]

I have quickly played each entry I have access to do so and there really is some quality homebrew in this compo!

 

[BAFelton]

How do you run GigaSun Jet on Pandora plz ?

 

[PokeParadox]

I believe that entry needs fixing. There is no script provided to load the shared library sprig.so

 

[fusion_power]

Rainy Day has really nice graphics, I love this Style, want to see an entire Game of this.
The Demo is actualy only a VERY short teaser but the graphics Artist knows what he's doing, very impressive. But the splash screens should vanish faster, intro is longer than the Demo. XD

Prometheon remembers me straight onto "Strider", which isn't a bad thing. ^^ Also nice graphics and effects (moving player shadows under lights! ) The Game plays a little bit slow onto the Pandora but I only tested it at standard clocking. Rest seems to be fine but the minigames for hacking should be shorter, takes ages which kills fun. And Prometheon has to much text for my taste, I usualy don't want to read novels in a Jump 'n run, especialy not in a foreign language.

Most fun I had yet was with Puzzle tube, still needs some attention and polishing here and there and I'm pretty bad at playing but it is a nice Puzzle Game and gets the 3D Bonus.

Before I can test more games, my Pandora has to go retour, Purple Tint Of Death came to visit me... <_<

 

[Blackcurtain]

Rainy Day has really nice graphics, I love this Style, want to see an entire Game of this.
The Demo is actualy only a VERY short teaser but the graphics Artist knows what he's doing, very impressive. But the splash screens should vanish faster, intro is longer than the Demo. XD

Yeah the graphics were really impressive, but the shortness of the demo dragged it down, which unfortunately to me didn't qualify it as a game. But still really great.

 

[SiegfriedCroes]

Thanks for the feedback on Rainy Day The intro will be shorter in the final game (as the 2 riotDigtal screens will be gone) + I'll make the screens skipable.

@BlackCurtain: I know it's short, I also never called it a game or a demo because I know it isn't one yet (I have always called it a preview). We're working on the final game now I don't know when it'll be released but I can already tell it will be free (and open source in the end)

 

[Schnatterplatsch]

Tried all of the games I could run. Still to early to decide, so just some first impressions here. Overall there is much potential in a lot of games, even though it seems to me that there's a certain tendency to "demos/unfinished" among the entries.

I was kinda shocked about Prometheon. Even with these walls of texts it was playing nicly on the PC and seemed like very professional done. But then on the pandora, even at 8000Mhz, it ran way to slow. It's one thing to impress PC gamers with great shadows and lightning, but isn't this a handheldcompo after all? I haven't tried it on the WiZ, I hope it runs better there...

Rainy Day looks f a n t a s t i c. I hope the gameplay unveils the same amount of awesomeness. I won't consider it for voting, but there is definitly a lot of potential here!

Shootet is the game that seems to be the most "finished" of those I tried so far. Great looking and with a good balanced offer of difficulties. Could maybe need a few more tracks(...and I would play them louder as well.)

- Shootet is great, but suffers from the "Super Geometry Dust" bug : it makes the WiFi crash

Haven't experienced that... I am on HF5, pretty near the router. Maybe you went out of range?

Shizophrenia also seems to have the power to get great. Not possible to judge it right now, since the older version seemed to be buggy and hanged for me, the latest one doesn't even start at all, pretending there is no such file "./shizophrenia".

Puzzletube is nicely done! Slows down at explosions, especially if chaines occur. I am not the biggest fan of that kind of game, since the mentioned chains are really just luck and it turns out to be the same all the time. Relaxing and fresh anyway.

At the end, Piratebaby, I seem to do something wrong here. I feed this something with cheese and after every cheese its hunger sinks by 4 or so. I hope you do not await me to feed him 25 times to make something happen?!? Graphics look good though. Fullscreen maybe?(...or did I miss the possibility to maximise it?)


Skylark should definitly do something about it's size. Zipped it's around 20MB, but unpacked nearly 200. Maybe use compressed images? I am not so sure whether I should rate this game here even though it's well donw... it's a commercial's demo still, and I have the feeling that the game that wins here should be free...

Have to take a look at GigaSun and "panta vs dragon" then. Last one doesn't only consist of 2 repeating scenes, does it?

 

[Blackcurtain]

Skylark should definitly do something about it's size. Zipped it's around 20MB, but unpacked nearly 200. Maybe use compressed images? I am not so sure whether I should rate this game here even though it's well donw...

There are unused graphics in the demo that I forgot to remove, thus increasing the file size. The size will be fixed.

it's a commercial's demo still, and I have the feeling that the game that wins here should be free...

We've worked equally hard as the rest of the competitiors on our entry, so why shouldn't it be allowed to win?

 

[fusion_power]

Thanks for the feedback on Rainy Day The intro will be shorter in the final game (as the 2 riotDigtal screens will be gone) + I'll make the screens skipable.

@Blackcurtain: I know it's short, I also never called it a game or a demo because I know it isn't one yet (I have always called it a preview). We're working on the final game now I don't know when it'll be released but I can already tell it will be free (and open source in the end)

How did you guys made these Graphics? Free hand or using real stuff and "pixelate" it? I already have trouble to make good looking Pixel bricks with Photoshop, I never could do these clean Graphics of Rainy Day, there seems to be every Pixel at the right spot and the colours match perfectly. ^^ I guess I had to render this stuff in 3D first, to get it somehow acceptable. Are these 256 Colour images for each graphic or 16bit or more? The game runs great onto the Pandora so I guess it would make not an difference if the game uses High Colour Graphics instead of 8-Bit Textures.
I still wonder if the colour depth of game graphics has an effect to the Speed onto the Pandora so I just ask.

I was kinda shocked about Prometheon. Even with these walls of texts it was playing nicly on the PC and seemed like very professional done. But then on the pandora, even at 8000Mhz, it ran way to slow. It's one thing to impress PC gamers with great shadows and lightning, but isn't this a handheldcompo after all? I haven't tried it on the WiZ, I hope it runs better there...

Oh, this could explain why the game feelt so strange onto the Pandora. I havn't tested it onto the PC but I will do, I hope it supports Joysticks, my SF4 Tournament Arcade Stick could be great for this Game. For a 2D game it indeed runs slow onto the Pandora, I really thought our Handheld has more Power, games with such Graphics are actualy onto way more weaker machines fast enough, maybe it uses transparency Effects or alot of SFX stuff that makes it so slow.

EDIT: Indeed, this game is onto the PC really better playable, no wonder I failed so hard onto the Pandora. But it doesn't work with my Arcade Stick, like other Homebrew Games (rRootage for example), only the buttons work, the stick doesn't, I wonder if XBOX360 Gamepads/Joysticks are somehowdifferent there, because Prometheon actualy support Joysticks...

There are unused graphics in the demo that I forgot to remove, thus increasing the file size. The size will be fixed.

You could convert every single Graphic to 256 colour PNGs, shouldn't make any difference if you use Photoshops Indexing colours Option. I use the "PNG_OUT" Plugin of IrfanView to make the PNG files even smaller, takes a while but this tool optimizes PNGs so that a 70kb file is reduced to 50kb without visible quality loss for example. Not even saving gfx with Photoshop can keep up with this.

 

[SiegfriedCroes]

Thanks for the feedback on Rainy Day The intro will be shorter in the final game (as the 2 riotDigtal screens will be gone) + I'll make the screens skipable.

@Blackcurtain: I know it's short, I also never called it a game or a demo because I know it isn't one yet (I have always called it a preview). We're working on the final game now I don't know when it'll be released but I can already tell it will be free (and open source in the end)

How did you guys made these Graphics? Free hand or using real stuff and "pixelate" it? I already have trouble to make good looking Pixel bricks with Photoshop, I never could do these clean Graphics of Rainy Day, there seems to be every Pixel at the right spot and the colours match perfectly. ^^ I guess I had to render this stuff in 3D first, to get it somehow acceptable. Are these 256 Colour images for each graphic or 16bit or more? The game runs great onto the Pandora so I guess it would make not an difference if the game uses High Colour Graphics instead of 8-Bit Textures.
I still wonder if the colour depth of game graphics has an effect to the Speed onto the Pandora so I just ask.

I don't know exactly how Archibald does it but I think it's a mix of using photos and editing + painting on top of them (He really is good at digital painting ) All images have indexed colors (done in photoshop) to make the file size smaller it doesn't really affect the speed of the game.

 

[Schnatterplatsch]

There are unused graphics in the demo that I forgot to remove, thus increasing the file size. The size will be fixed.

That, but when a .zip decreases the size by 90%, using .pngs could have a similar effect.

We've worked equally hard as the rest of the competitiors on our entry, so why shouldn't it be allowed to win?

I don't intend to flame at you, you surely did a great job on you game. But all I can rate here is the demo, not the full game. I have a ...unsure... feeling about this. You see, people donate money to get great games, but they would, in your case, "just" get a demo of a comercial game that, to really play it, they would have to buy. However, that's just _me_, others will rebalance my bigotry.

Oh, this could explain why the game feelt so strange onto the Pandora. I havn't tested it onto the PC but I will do, I hope it supports Joysticks, my SF4 Tournament Arcade Stick could be great for this Game. For a 2D game it indeed runs slow onto the Pandora, I really thought our Handheld has more Power, games with such Graphics are actualy onto way more weaker machines fast enough, maybe it uses transparency Effects or alot of SFX stuff that makes it so slow.

I think its Bennu, as being interpreted, and the alpha effects. Could be inefficienties in programming (maybe they used 32 bit fb?) as well, but that's hard to judge. As I assume the engine is based on "Nether dimesisonal runner" and that game runs great on my wiz.

 

[Imerion]

Hi everyone! Thanks for the feedback on Prometheon!

Sorry about the game running slow. Thing is, I don't have a Pandora so I got some help to make a Pandora version. I did optimize some stuff, such as switching from 30 fps to 24 fps on the Pandora and reducing the amount of particle effects, but perhaps it wasn't enough. There are two ways to make it run faster though: One is, as mentioned, overclocking. As default, it runs on standard speed, so perhaps a faster cpu clock would make it work better. The other is to not use the scale option. In the options menu you can choose to run the game in original 640x480 resolution or stretch it to the Pandora-native 800x480. But doing that really slows the speed down by a lot. So please try it again without that option if you used it.

Also, about the hacking mini-games. Perhaps me and Marcus have gotten so used to them we didn't realize their difficulty. That will be fixed in the final version!

Finally, there is a lot of text, because we wanted to have some light adventure-elements in the game. There are decisions which can affect how the game turns out and how you play can sometimes change things in the game. But if you don't want to read it all, the game can be played just fine by simply skipping the text. You probably noticed, but the intro can be skipped as well, so you won't have to watch it each time.

 

[Imerion]

I wonder if XBOX360 Gamepads/Joysticks are somehowdifferent there, because Prometheon actualy support Joysticks...

Those should work! I have only tried with a few different gamepads and there is for the moment no option to change which buttons are used. So all gamepads and joysticks might not work. But 360-controllers have been confirmed to work fine.


I think its Bennu, as being interpreted, and the alpha effects. Could be inefficienties in programming (maybe they used 32 bit fb?) as well, but that's hard to judge. As I assume the engine is based on "Nether dimesisonal runner" and that game runs great on my wiz.

It's probably a bit of everything. There are loads of effects in certain scenes, everything from particles and explosions to dynamic shadows and colouring-effects. It uses 16 bit though, so 32 bit fb is not the problem.
I tried to write it as optimized as possible and had the goal of making it work without problems on my netbook, which it does. But I guess the netbook is a lot faster than the Pandora after all.
Btw, the engine has been upgraded quite a lot from Runner, but some stuff is the same.

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi everybody

@ foxblock: Is there an option in schizophrenia to start the game all over again, and not from the last checkpoint ?

I have quickly played each entry I have access to do so and there really is some quality homebrew in this compo!

+1

@ fusion_power: couldn't agree more with you about the games And don't worry about your Pandora, ED will fix it quickly, and your baby will be back in a week or so !

About Puzzle tube: I guess it uses software renderer...Maybe a port to OpenGL ES 2.0 would help with the slowdowns ?

@ Imerion: Does your game use SDL ? If it's yes, then you could use Notaz improved version which features hardware scaling support.

Bye and thanks for all these great games !

Magic Sam

 

[fusion_power]

I don't know exactly how Archibald does it but I think it's a mix of using photos and editing + painting on top of them (He really is good at digital painting ) All images have indexed colors (done in photoshop) to make the file size smaller it doesn't really affect the speed of the game.

And the Graphics look way more colourful than you would guess by an indexed image, very impressive.

Hi everyone! Thanks for the feedback on Prometheon!

Sorry about the game running slow. Thing is, I don't have a Pandora so I got some help to make a Pandora version. I did optimize some stuff, such as switching from 30 fps to 24 fps on the Pandora and reducing the amount of particle effects, but perhaps it wasn't enough. There are two ways to make it run faster though: One is, as mentioned, overclocking. As default, it runs on standard speed, so perhaps a faster cpu clock would make it work better. The other is to not use the scale option. In the options menu you can choose to run the game in original 640x480 resolution or stretch it to the Pandora-native 800x480. But doing that really slows the speed down by a lot. So please try it again without that option if you used it.

I tested it onto the Pandora with 4:3 unstretched, I forgot to tell. So this can't be the speed issue. Does Prometheon uses any Hardware Acceleration the Pandora offers?
I noticed the game uses indexed graphics and they are small, so this can't be a Performance bottleneck. Very interesting by the way that you store an entire Level as an complete image (per layer), the levels are not "tiled" with defining the Level layout per level dat file or something like this. I've never seen this technique before but it seems to work great.

Those should work! I have only tried with a few different gamepads and there is for the moment no option to change which buttons are used. So all gamepads and joysticks might not work. But 360-controllers have been confirmed to work fine.

strange, it doesn't work with my Arcade Stick and the Stick works in MAME and other programs without problems. Prometheon only recognizes the buttons but not the 4-Way-Stick. :unsure:

 

[Blackcurtain]

Thanks for the feedback on Rainy Day The intro will be shorter in the final game (as the 2 riotDigtal screens will be gone) + I'll make the screens skipable.

@Blackcurtain: I know it's short, I also never called it a game or a demo because I know it isn't one yet (I have always called it a preview). We're working on the final game now I don't know when it'll be released but I can already tell it will be free (and open source in the end)

How did you guys made these Graphics? Free hand or using real stuff and "pixelate" it? I already have trouble to make good looking Pixel bricks with Photoshop, I never could do these clean Graphics of Rainy Day, there seems to be every Pixel at the right spot and the colours match perfectly. ^^ I guess I had to render this stuff in 3D first, to get it somehow acceptable. Are these 256 Colour images for each graphic or 16bit or more? The game runs great onto the Pandora so I guess it would make not an difference if the game uses High Colour Graphics instead of 8-Bit Textures.
I still wonder if the colour depth of game graphics has an effect to the Speed onto the Pandora so I just ask.

I render my backgrounds in 3dsMAX and the rest of the sprites are made in Photoshop, pixel by pixel (time consuming but worth the result).

 

[Imerion]

I tested it onto the Pandora with 4:3 unstretched, I forgot to tell. So this can't be the speed issue. Does Prometheon uses any Hardware Acceleration the Pandora offers?
I noticed the game uses indexed graphics and they are small, so this can't be a Performance bottleneck. Very interesting by the way that you store an entire Level as an complete image (per layer), the levels are not "tiled" with defining the Level layout per level dat file or something like this. I've never seen this technique before but it seems to work great.

It doesn't use hardware acceleration at all. (I don't think Bennu has support for that.) It's probably just a combination of many effects and that I don't always use the most efficient ways to shuffle them around. Combined with the complete image levels you mention. (Fun that you noticed!) The reason for using that method is partially because its practical and partially because Marcus, who draws the levels, finds it much easier to work with than tiles. We can also have much more detail that way, so it works great.

strange, it doesn't work with my Arcade Stick and the Stick works in MAME and other programs without problems. Prometheon only recognizes the buttons but not the 4-Way-Stick.

Weird, but once the final version is done I will create a better way to support joysticks and try more models. That should probably solve it!