Squares V0.51


Guyfawkes

Certified Idiot :)
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
Messages
795
Age
47
Location
London, UK
Website
www.emuholic.com
I updated my game originally entered into the GP2X Coding Competition a few days ago to fix a couple of bugs that have been found. If you havent heard of it or tried it yet, heres a quick overview:
The game is a remake of the flash game Squares and in addition features some new extra game modes to play with. The game comes with a PDF manual fully detailing on how to install and play the game in its single or two player game modes. USB Mouse is fully supported if you have a breakout board and if you have your favourite MP3 or OGG format songs on your SD card the game can also play them with the built in Media Player.​
Changes in this version are:
- fixed a bug with the media path not being read for some users after their text editor automatically adds a line break.
- fixed a bug where it may crash if you have a lot of music files which are added to the playlist
- fixed a bug if the path to scan is correct but no music files are found, if this happens the music is disabled in the game, do not enable it otherwise the game will crash.
- I changed the speed limiter a bit so the game should hopefully not stutter due to the music buffering from the SD card.​
A proper update of the game will be released in the new year with all the features that didn't make it in time for the GP2X Community Coding Competition deadline. You can download the game from my software homepage here or direct from the GP2X Archive here. Have a good Christmas everyone! :)
 
thanks for the update.

by the was the last version was kind of flickery especially in menus though im not completely sure about in game.

however, im sure that with tv the whole game is flickery with the last version.

havent given this version a try yet though
 
The new v0.51 version might help with the flickering as the frame limiter has been tweaked which should reduce or stop the flickering as it was caused by the buffering of music from the SD card.

Also does the game display properly on TV out (apart from the flickering), my GP2X wont do TV out and I haven't been able to test it so I have no idea how it looks.
 
If you could try with the music disabled in the game - Options -> Audio Options -> Music. If I am right, the flickering should stop once its disabled, please let me know either way. Thanks for helping!
 
Nearly forgot about this post. I am not sure why its flickering on some gp2x and not on others. Possible cause could be speed of the SD card but as music is disabled it wouldn't affect it.

It is like another issue I had with the menu background squares being near invisible on some gp2x and easily viewable on others. It looks to be a difference between MK1 and MK2 gp2x, MK1 has no problem, MK2 is near invisible... I had to change this so on MK1 the squares nearly clash with the menu text in order for MK2 users to be able to see them.

I'm doing some work on the game over the next week or two. I added .mod music support in the game (other similar formats don't seem to be supported in this sdl_mixer) and fixed some small bugs. Before the next release I will try and get the media player finished and hopefully find out why usb joypads are not working on the gp2x build. Also I may try an improved TV-out version of the game if I can find a tester who has tv-out.
 
Guyfawkes posted on Dec 27 2006 at 09:41 AM said:
Nearly forgot about this post. I am not sure why its flickering on some gp2x and not on others. Possible cause could be speed of the SD card but as music is disabled it wouldn't affect it.

It is like another issue I had with the menu background squares being near invisible on some gp2x and easily viewable on others. It looks to be a difference between MK1 and MK2 gp2x, MK1 has no problem, MK2 is near invisible... I had to change this so on MK1 the squares nearly clash with the menu text in order for MK2 users to be able to see them.

I'm doing some work on the game over the next week or two. I added .mod music support in the game (other similar formats don't seem to be supported in this sdl_mixer) and fixed some small bugs. Before the next release I will try and get the media player finished and hopefully find out why usb joypads are not working on the gp2x build. Also I may try an improved TV-out version of the game if I can find a tester who has tv-out.

I believe it has to do with the hardware libs I had problems like this when I was using them so I switch to the official sdk and all of my problems went away. The flickering might be in the refresh rate of the gp2x screen depending on which setting different people use?
 
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I am doing work on the game again, USB joystick support is working now so you can play the three player mode, I need to make some changes so everything is working correctly as I disabled some stuff due to it not working before.

The main reason for this post is to find out how many people are actually going to use the 3 (or potentially 4) player mode which can be played with a mix of gp2x joypad/buttons and/or a mouse, upto 3 (or 4) usb joysticks if you have them. If there is enough interest I will spend some more time on this mode otherwise I will just finish up and release it as a final version in a day or two.

This will probably be my last project for the GP2X as there doesnt seem to be much interest in homebrew games for it (or maybe just my games :)), so I will probably be moving to DS or something and code some stuff on that instead. If you want to prove me wrong reply here with your suggestions, even bad ones will do :)
 
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no need to make my head bigger than it already is :), so theres no need to say for me to stay etc as it wont make a difference. I just want feedback on software I am making.

For example I posted a basic version to get feedback about the Round Em Up idea a few weeks ago and got hardly any replies, I wouldn't have minded even if there was 100 posts saying it was the worst game ever but half a dozen replies from the usual people that give feedback is frustrating, I end up thinking why bother making it if there's absolutely no interest from people when I'm trying to make a game and get people involved with ideas for features in it.

Dunno if its just me expecting too much from people or something. Just the way I feel at the moment which is why a change of scene (no pun intended) seems a good idea.
 
no need to make my head bigger than it already is :), so theres no need to say for me to stay etc as it wont make a difference. I just want feedback on software I am making.

For example I posted a basic version to get feedback about the Round Em Up idea a few weeks ago and got hardly any replies, I wouldn't have minded even if there was 100 posts saying it was the worst game ever but half a dozen replies from the usual people that give feedback is frustrating, I end up thinking why bother making it if there's absolutely no interest from people when I'm trying to make a game and get people involved with ideas for features in it.

Dunno if its just me expecting too much from people or something. Just the way I feel at the moment which is why a change of scene (no pun intended) seems a good idea.
There is interest, Just look at the number of downloads things get from the archive, people are just too damn lazy to reply.
 
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no need to make my head bigger than it already is :), so theres no need to say for me to stay etc as it wont make a difference. I just want feedback on software I am making.

For example I posted a basic version to get feedback about the Round Em Up idea a few weeks ago and got hardly any replies, I wouldn't have minded even if there was 100 posts saying it was the worst game ever but half a dozen replies from the usual people that give feedback is frustrating, I end up thinking why bother making it if there's absolutely no interest from people when I'm trying to make a game and get people involved with ideas for features in it.

Dunno if its just me expecting too much from people or something. Just the way I feel at the moment which is why a change of scene (no pun intended) seems a good idea.
If you get more response from another scene it will be simply because of the sheer number of users. The gp2x scene appreciates its coders and if 1000 gp2x users download something then that is like 520,000 ds users downloading it (yes i did the math).
 
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number of downloads is not really the point im trying to get across. it can be downloaded a million times but having next to no feedback for a developer isnt very good for them.

what I am saying is that it would be better if more people got involved and downloaded games and played them. looking at this forum the vast majority of posts are emulator related and it seems that homebrew games pretty much get ignored by the majority of gp2x owners. look in the news forum to see what i mean, a couple of replies for homebrew games news but several pages for emulators news in similar time spans.

I am just trying to get people involved in homebrew games because there is some great stuff out there and as it was shown with the gp32, if games are given enough interest great things can come out of it.

heh you gits, now i guess i have to finish coding the game :) ill post a proper thanks on the announcement post when its online.
 
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