Testing Wanted For A New Gp2x F200 Game

[quasist]

I don't know how many others will be entering the competition, but I expect there are quite a few. To date I know of two others entering the comp. PeeJay and AndyH (both from RetroRemakes, as I am), have entries either completed or near to completion. People are either keeping their cards very close to their chests or there isn't a lot of interest. I really don't know. I must admit though, I do hope you're right

Alright
I'm participating too.
After I finished entry to PdRoms compo I need homebrew vacation out of 2bit color pallete
So I began few days ago with zero GLBasic experience, already got great progress as well of full touchscreen integration
40% of project is completed

 

[jbrodack]

why is this in I need help? anyway i tried to test your game using my f200 with gmenu but it wouldn't even start for me. any special instructions needed to get this to run?

 

[iprice]

@quasist: good luck with your entry. Can you drop any hints about your game's contents. Any screenies so far?

@jbrodack: It's in I need help, because I needed help! The game was running fine on pc, but I didn't have an F200 to run it, and I asked for testers, which have been invaluable. The game probably won't run for you because you don't have the media. It's only the code in the latest downloads and a few puzzles worth of data. The game has not been publicly released yet. There's not long to wait now though.

 

[quasist]

@quasist: good luck with your entry. Can you drop any hints about your game's contents. Any screenies so far?

Since I worked yet mostly on soundtrack, until I make Sprites the screens (except sexy menu's) are like "red box with border" jumps over three "blue boxes with numbers" and in front of all that is ahalf-of-screen with debug-info text

If your imagination has correct VSync, you should see what I see

 

[jbrodack]

oops I saw the posted download and figured you had opened up the testing. And I know you needed help but usually beta testing help goes in the beta testing section. Not complaining just saying. Anyway good luck with your game can't wait to try it.

 

[iprice]

@quasist: I can imagine a few coloured blocks and debug text all too easily

@jbrodack: It was actually a bit more than beta testing required, and I did actually state in my first post that the thread may have been in the wrong forum (there are far too many!), but nobody moved it.

TBH Up until now, the game had a persistant bug (as detailed in the last 12 pages), which threatened the game's actual existance - basically touchscreen didn't work properly, so releasing it to the masses in a highly broken state wasn't advisable. There's still a few things to fix and tweak, but it shouldn't be much longer. Thanks for the interest though

 

[iprice]

New update - http://www.iprice.remakes.org/stuff/bloxv1_063.rar

This adds a new "Direct" control method (in Options) to both keypad and touchscreen -just click/touch on a Slider and select direction to set it moving. I've not yet added Sticky controls - I'll see how this fares first. It does feel so much more fluid. This is not tested to any great extent.

Added a Cursor speed option too - you can select 10 different cursor speeds for D-Pad control (this should satisfy everyone - if it still skips then blame the GP2X controls). The option is selected via D-Pad only at the moment in the Options screen.

Fixed the non-scrolling background issue.

 

[Manjuu]

The touchscreen in the Options screen broke...

This adds a new "Direct" control method (in Options) to both keypad and touchscreen -just click/touch on a Slider and select direction to set it moving. I've not yet added Sticky controls - I'll see how this fares first. It does feel so much more fluid. This is not tested to any great extent.

The Direct method feels much better for the D-pad. It doesn't feel awkward.

When used with the touchscreen, it doesn't feel much different than the default one, except that it's more instantaneous. There were instances that it moved two sliders as I dragged along the screen, but the reason for that was the faulty touchscreen letting go.

I would go with the Direct method for D-pad controls and Default for the touchscreen. (Unless the Sticky method would change my mind.)

Added a Cursor speed option too - you can select 10 different cursor speeds for D-Pad control (this should satisfy everyone - if it still skips then blame the GP2X controls). The option is selected via D-Pad only at the moment in the Options screen.

Well it doesn't seem to skip on level 1 (and 0), but a little slow. So I personally would go with level 2 or 3. The higher levels than the default (5) are overkill; it's hard to go to an exact spot. :lol:

Why is it possible to set it to level 0? If it was a Volume bar, then level 0 would make sense, but this is for cursor speed. Just nitpicking.

I'm just wondering though, is it not possible to make just the 1st key repeat interval a little longer than the rest? My problem with the D-pad movement is that when I'm near the target slider, I prefer to tap the controls to accurately go to that spot, but because of the short key repeat, it would sometimes skip and miss the spot, which can become bothersome. If it is possible to just extend the 1st interval, then it would combine the accuracy when tapping and the speed when holding the button down.

Fixed the non-scrolling background issue.

It seems to be fixed. I no longer can spot any frozen square backgrounds. (Just diagonals, but you already explained why. )

 

[iprice]

Options screen broken again? It's obviously not (just?) the sound that was doing it then.

I meant to set the minimum cursor speed to 1, will do later. I'll set the default value as 3 or 4 I think.

Making the first keypress delay longer may be possible, I'll look into it.

The Direct and Default control methods are pretty closely linked - I think that if you're going to play with touchscreen, then leave it on Default - for D-Pad, use Direct. I'll see if I can separate them, but this may well break what's there now.

It shouldn't be possible to move more than one slider at a time - I'll have a looksee.

 

[Manjuu]

Yes, the Options screen broke again. It works for the first touch, then becomes "grab and drag" problem like before.

I do wonder why the touchscreen is fine while in the How To Play screen and Puzzle Editor, but breaks the moment I go back to the Options screen.

I noticed a side effect for the alteration of the cursor speed. The In-game menu bar is affected by the cursor speed. When the cursor speed is set to a high value, skipping would happen. When the cursor speed is set to a lower value, sometimes it would require two presses when tapping to move.

 

[iprice]

I can't understand why the Options screen breaks at all - it uses exactly the same principles as the other menu screens. I hoped we'd gone past this problem, but obviously not. There's still a few things I can do.

I will be implementing L & R for the menu bar too but I'll see what I can do with regard to menu selecting.

[EDIT] New update - http://www.iprice.remakes.org/stuff/bloxv1_064.rar

Not very much has changed in this one at all, but it may well give information about the Options touchscreen trouble. I've added an FPS (Frames Per Second) counter, which should remain around 60 (give or take a couple) - it does on F100. I want to see if the FPS drops too far, which might cause touchscreen to fail.

I've also changed the way that the stylus interacts with the screen and the results it gives. May do absolutely nothing.

The cursor speed default is now set to 3 (rather than 5).

Everything else can wait again, until this Options screen trouble is sorted once and for all.

 

[sbock]

The same problem with the options screen. It seems that only the 2 first selections ("Language" and "Background Scroll") are working with the touchscreen.
The framecounter goes to 30 fps when the touchscreen is pressed.

Regards,
Stephan

 

[iprice]

Wow - that's a huge loss of CPU time - maybe the machine isn't fast enough to cope with all that's going on

 

[sbock]

You can see this phenomena in the game without any framecounter: The background scroll is significant slower in the moment you press the touchscreen.

 

[iprice]

I did expect some degree of slowdown, but not 50%

There's not really anything I can do about that, but at least I'm more aware of it now.

 

[senquack]

I did expect some degree of slowdown, but not 50%

There's not really anything I can do about that, but at least I'm more aware of it now.

I know you're using GLBasic, but the way this is fixed in SDL apps is to add SDL_INIT_EVENTTHREAD to the list of SDL sub-systems to start when you initialize it with SDL_Init().

It somehow passes the handling off to Linux. Perhaps KungPhoo can utilize this info if you pass it onto him.

I did expect some degree of slowdown, but not 50%

There's not really anything I can do about that, but at least I'm more aware of it now.

I know you're using GLBasic, but the way this is fixed in SDL apps is to add SDL_INIT_EVENTTHREAD to the list of SDL sub-systems to start when you initialize it with SDL_Init().

It somehow passes the handling off to Linux and stops the touchscreen from blocking. Perhaps KungPhoo can utilize this info if you pass it onto him.

 

[iprice]

Who's KungPhoo? Do you mean Gernot?

 

[senquack]

Who's KungPhoo? Do you mean Gernot?

I imagine, he posts as KungPhoo on here, if it's the same person. Not sure.

 

[quasist]

Maybe 50% slowdown is caused by another SHOWSCREEN call without increasing count of custom frame counter (== fps drop 1/2)

 

[iprice]

Here's a new update - http://www.iprice.remakes.org/stuff/bloxv1_065.rar

However, there's also something of importance to note. I've just updated GLBasic, and a message stating "GP2X Touchscreen problem solved." Maybe all the problems I've had were down to GLBasic? I hope so, although the problem has taken lots of my time, writing and re-writing I'm really hoping that it was nothing I did and that my code was always fine.

Well, with this update, we shall soon see. If this works, I'll re-integrate the volume control back into the Options screen.

This update offers a couple of minor tweaks to the Options screen (may have been unnecessary following that update revelation?), and you can now over-ride an incorrect number of pads/sliders when Testing, Loading and Saving.