Release Space Rocks!


I'll go by what both fits the theme and offers enough contrast. Lots of nice suitable pictures here. IIRC the license is Public Domain as well. Need to check before using :)
Just some personal taste, I would try to avoid mixingf up Pixel Art (Sprites) and Photo-realistic backgrounds, this "bites" each others somehow. ^^"   Yes, contrast is good, foreground stuff always should have much more contrast than the background. So no problem when the bg is more "pale" and has less contrast in it, it's actualy better, your images for the BG fit into this.

Do you already found this nice image?

http://opengameart.org/content/solar-system
 
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WARNING!  current Space Rocks PND, hopefully soon to be fixed, has a sadistic bug where if you play more than one game, the aliens will arrive late!

i.e. if you play one happy game to level 8 with plenty of aliens, in the next game there will be no aliens at all until level 8 (or until you exceed the score you had before).  Some problem with a counter not being reset.

In a normal game there should be one alien at or before 800 points, i.e in level 1 or 2, and another alien for each 400 to 800 points you get.  So restart the whole PND for each game.

This bug had me really furious, cursing the game, etc., when I'm playing all the way to level 10 with no aliens or power ups!  So I'm warning you too.  Anyway B-ZaR has fixed it in git, and I guess we can expect a new PND soon.

Dying subtracts 1 level from all weapons (to a minimum of 1).
Yeah, ouch!  it really hurts to lose a life in this game, when you get -1 on each weapon.

I'm loving the game now.

My next request is a 'time dilation' feature, although not sure how well it would work.  Like, an option to make everything go at 1x, 1.5x faster or even 2x faster, maybe at 0.1x increments.  That wouldn't make it easier to get high scores.  rationale: I'd like to be able to play a full game up to level 14 or whatever I reached in less than 40 minutes!  I guess this might be hard to code, so no worries if you don't like the idea.
 
I'm getting a problem with the new version. The taskbar from the desktop is flickering through while playing the game. I managed to start my wifi half way through a game.

Must be something to do with the change in graphics lib?

I'm using a CC Pandora with 256Mb ram running at 800mhz op3 and no swap file btw :)
 
Ooh, damn you Clouddef.  I was sure I had the number 1 spot for the end of night!

One thing I'm wondering about now - what if the powerup were physical objects - i.e. they bounce off rocks too.  I suspect this has been tried out already, which is why they're round icons.  I suspect it'd be a bugger in later levels when there are a lot of rocks about!
 
Just some personal taste, I would try to avoid mixingf up Pixel Art (Sprites) and Photo-realistic backgrounds, this "bites" each others somehow. ^^"   Yes, contrast is good, foreground stuff always should have much more contrast than the background. So no problem when the bg is more "pale" and has less contrast in it, it's actualy better, your images for the BG fit into this.

Do you already found this nice image?

http://opengameart.org/content/solar-system
Did you know that the current background is also a hubble image? Also the powerups and shots are vector art, not pixel art :p
Mixing styles works if you get the feel coherent.

WARNING!  current Space Rocks PND, hopefully soon to be fixed, has a sadistic bug where if you play more than one game, the aliens will arrive late!

i.e. if you play one happy game to level 8 with plenty of aliens, in the next game there will be no aliens at all until level 8 (or until you exceed the score you had before).  Some problem with a counter not being reset.

In a normal game there should be one alien at or before 800 points, i.e in level 1 or 2, and another alien for each 400 to 800 points you get.  So restart the whole PND for each game.

This bug had me really furious, cursing the game, etc., when I'm playing all the way to level 10 with no aliens or power ups!  So I'm warning you too.  Anyway B-ZaR has fixed it in git, and I guess we can expect a new PND soon.
Yup, fixed in the commit linked above. Will be in the next release.
My next request is a 'time dilation' feature, although not sure how well it would work.  Like, an option to make everything go at 1x, 1.5x faster or even 2x faster, maybe at 0.1x increments.  That wouldn't make it easier to get high scores.  rationale: I'd like to be able to play a full game up to level 14 or whatever I reached in less than 40 minutes!  I guess this might be hard to code, so no worries if you don't like the idea.
Well, it's not hard to code, per se. Basically at its simplest form it's just a multiplier to frame time reported to the game entities. Done this way it would affect gameplay though. To get it working the same way at all speeds would require moving to iterated world updates (like each frame the world is updated 10 times with 0.1x frame time). Not considering this right now, try to be patient or build skills to blast the asteroids faster :)
One thing I'm wondering about now - what if the powerup were physical objects - i.e. they bounce off rocks too.  I suspect this has been tried out already, which is why they're round icons.  I suspect it'd be a bugger in later levels when there are a lot of rocks about!
Yes, having them bounce around makes them a LOT harder to get. Having them predictable yields a better gameplay experience since you immediately see the options you have for getting it (where you need to get and how fast). The current risk/reward ratio curve is nice as it is, in my opinion :)
 
Ooh, damn you Clouddef.  I was sure I had the number 1 spot for the end of night!
Yeah, I'm currently visiting my family and had to show people who is the boss.

WARNING!  current Space Rocks PND, hopefully soon to be fixed, has a sadistic bug where if you play more than one game, the aliens will arrive late!
i.e. if you play one happy game to level 8 with plenty of aliens, in the next game there will be no aliens at all until level 8 (or until you exceed the score you had before).  Some problem with a counter not being reset.
This explains why I din't see any ufos after getting my score : D

I'm getting a problem with the new version. The taskbar from the desktop is flickering through while playing the game. I managed to start my wifi half way through a game.
Must be something to do with the change in graphics lib?
How the framebuffer context works in Spacerocks is that it renders the game on framebuffer, while keeping fullscreen X11 window on background catching all input / and prevent display fighting.

Most likely

A ) You opened 2 spacerocks

B ) Something opened over this window somehow

C ) You managed to switch desktops and the window spawned on wrong desktop.

D ) Taskbar has some special property? (Always on top etc?)

All of these cases, would cause flicker.

I need to research, if there is way to enforce better for the window always be on top.

(even though the current system using _NET_WM_FULLSCREEN should enforce this on obeying WMs, maybe setting override_redirect which would skip window manager would make it more bullet proof).
 
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Yeah, the powerups and how they expire really is a nice risk/reward mechanic as is. Like how if they're going mainly up/down you can just position yourself where they'll reappear and wait for them to come to you without having to fly too far or too fast, whereas if they're going mainly horizontal you know you'll have to make a mad dash since they'll barely make it once back around. Although if you do that and end up slamming into a rock, you'll undo the work of the powerup and lose a level off all the other weapons, hence the risk part of the mechanic.


On another topic, I have been wondering about the wrap mechanic. It looks like it waits until the center of the object approaching the border then warps it to the opposing side. Most times I've seen wrapping done it plots the object on both sides of the screen at once - one half one side and the other half the other side. I wondered if the current approach affected collison detection and could be exploited by stopping on the border, thus reducing your hit box by half (if you had good enough awareness to spot threats approaching from the other side of screen, which I don't).
 
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B-ZaR knocked down to #3?  I think he's just toying with us!
 
On another topic, I have been wondering about the wrap mechanic. It looks like it waits until the center of the object approaching the border then warps it to the opposing side. Most times I've seen wrapping done it plots the object on both sides of the screen at once - one half one side and the other half the other side. I wondered if the current approach affected collison detection and could be exploited by stopping on the border, thus reducing your hit box by half (if you had good enough awareness to spot threats approaching from the other side of screen, which I don't).
Here's a relevant comment in the code: https://github.com/bzar/spacerocks/blob/master/src/asteroid.cpp#L92 :p

There are some considerations here, like multiple hit circles (no hitboxes here) per object and beam wrapping. Just drawing the object to both locations is as simple as keeping a second sprite to be rendered to a suitable position when the object is near the edge. Getting everything to work like they were in both is a bit trickier :)

Not considering this a priority, but it is something I've thought a lot about. Something like this is not hard to implement when working from scratch, but making the current code work like that requires a bit more work.

sswam: :)
 
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B-ZaR knocked down to #3?  I think he's just toying with us!
The situation has been rectified with a good run of L8 and shields. Toward the end I trusted my slow but steady Beam to make wiggle room. High-power laser in level 19 fills the screen with tiny pebbles faster than you can say "oh crap". Also it results in a barrage of UFOs you can't hit without producing a gazillion more pebbles :p
 
Having a game author on this list doesnt sound fair. Having him grabbing #1 place feel like a steal (works for b-zar & cloudef)
 
It's mostly a skill game, not an information game. The mechanics are fairly straightforward. So the only advantage I get is more experience from testing the game extensively :p
 
Did you know that the current background is also a hubble image? Also the powerups and shots are vector art, not pixel art :p
No because have not played yet. :p    But I will I guess to see if I have ideas for backgrounds. Oh, and the Asteroids are Pixel Art I'm sure. ^^ Next Idea, more graphical fanciness could also be to set some "twinkle" spots for the backgrounds so the stars seems alive, at least some of them, matching colours options included and only decent to not interrupt the foreground focus.

P.S.: Why does the game is 92Mb tall?    :blink:
 
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No because have not played yet. :p    But I will I guess to see if I have ideas for backgrounds. Oh, and the Asteroids are Pixel Art I'm sure. ^^ Next Idea, more graphical fanciness could also be to set some "twinkle" spots for the backgrounds so the stars seems alive, at least some of them, matching colours options included and only decent to not interrupt the foreground focus.
When you play to ~level 17 you may see why you would not want any more moving stuff on the screen nor any more GPU resources wasted :p
P.S.: Why does the game is 92Mb tall?    :blink:
78MiB of that is music.
 
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When you play to ~level 17 you may see why you would not want any more moving stuff on the screen nor any more GPU resources wasted :p
I mentioned that my talents for gravity shooters are basicly non existant, so Level 17 sounds far away for me. :ph34r:  

78MiB of that is music.
Sounds like WAV? Well in that case, MIDI still rulez! :lol:
 
Ogg Vorbis at ~196kbps, 44,1kHz stereo, about 5-10 minutes and 6-10MiB per track, 10 tracks.

Sound effect WAVs take 8.4MiB

Images almost all the rest
 
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Aaand... it's all change at the top again (although I'm still stuck at number 2, bah)!


God knows how long that last run took me, but I'm going to have to call it a night again after that. Would be very nice if a future version supported suspend/resume. It'd also be nice if the pause screen had some indication of rock and ship motion so you could work out what to do when you restart - maybe some arrows which are bigger depending on how fast things are moving.


And while I'm on a theme of requesting changes, how about letting us change weapons in the start of level freeze screen? On later levels especially it's a mad dash to switch from whatever you were last using to tidy up tiddlers at range to something more suited for not making pebbledash in front of your face. Although perhaps that difficulty is part of it's charm, dunno.
 

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