Z MATRIX

Dont get it everyone! Its a VIRUS!!



Haha just kidding, I played it. When you said 2d shooter, i thought you meant like a 2d FPS like duke nukem3d or doom or something. Instead it was a game like galalga or something. It ran really fast on my computer. I dont know if that was intentional or not, but it was hard as hell! I die after about .5 seconds. The sound worked and i like your mouse clickey interface. pretty cool.

Its pretty dissapointing, I love programming and Im about to graduate with a CS degree, and I dont think i could make a game as simple as this one. (no offence though, i think it has potential)

It''s cool.. a little hard

how do you exit the application?

Runs nice and smooth...some suggestions though: the particle system is nice but the explosions from killed enemies might stay on the screen for a bit too long--maybe you could have them scroll down with the stars to keep the illusion of an upward velocity. It would elimate some of the "clutter." Good job with the enemy patterns, you seem to have a good start with keeping a variety of movements.

Ack, even with my vertical sync on it runs way too fast... there''s also too much going on the screen at one time.. difficult to tell what''s going on..

Wow great replies!!! Thanks!

About the speed issue--

Sorry about that. I've been testing it out on my work computer which is really damn slow so I turn off the frame limiter. I updated the zip file so the speed issue SHOULD be fixed. You can download it from my original post, or right here.

Let me know if that helps!

AP and falkone: Try the new file, that should help with the speed issue. Also, if v-sync is on, check what monitor refresh rate your at. I've played the game at 85 fps, which is what my monitor is set at (85hz). In future versions I'll add an option to increase/decrease game speed.

thehurricane: Thanks for the suggestion concerning the particle explosions. I never thought about it that way, but your right, it does kinda destroy the illusion of an upward velocity. I'll add some 'gravity' and speed up their fade and see what happens.

MrBeaner: Press ESCAPE. If that doesn't work let me know (one of my other friends was having problems exiting).

AndreTheGiant: Sorry to dissapoint you! I've heard them called shooters and shmups. I don't know why I called it shooter in the subject title. Try the new version and see if you can live a little bit longer.

All- Ideally, the game should run between 40-85 fps. I'm still playing around with v-sync/refresh rates/frame limiters to get the game at a playable speed for any system.

Again, thanks for the comments and questions!

-Q

[EDIT] Let me know of any highscores you get! My highest is 11400 [/EDIT]

[edited by - Qa303asmGuru on March 6, 2003 10:09:21 PM]

[edited by - qa303asmguru on April 29, 2003 2:15:12 AM]

it sounds like you arnt using time independent movement, and are developing on a slow computer.

to compensate for the slow cpu speed, you probably did something like bullet.y += 50. or something along the lines of that. this is due to teh fact that the slow computer you might be developing on runs through the game loop less times then a faster computer in one second (hence the faster computers processing bullet.y += 50 more times than you computer, going way fast).

use a time difference.

bullet.y is a float.

bullet.y += speed * timedelta. (time different between frames... calculated each frame).

this way, on faster computers... time delta is smaller... but runs more times... moving x amount of space.. when the time delta on slower computers is higher (Because its slower), but computes that change a less amount of times per second, also moving x distance. this allows your game to run at the same speed on each computer. (the choppyness will depend on the computer, getting better/worse framerates).

hope this will help you. as this is what i used in my 2d shooter.

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i code therefore i am.

Aero DX - Coming to a bored Monitor near you!

escape did not work...even in the updated version...nor did i see a cursor to click the menu...do not know why...maybe i suck :D...i wouldnt worry about this tho....programs i make almost never run perfect on other people''s computers...but its good u arent lazy to fix them
anyways overall very fun game, speed is nice, cant wait for some graphics

I don''t care what anyone says. I like it being poly''s Great game. Easy to die though. Main reason is that the enemy bullets blend in with the star field. Maybe loose a level of the star field or dim them so they don''t distract... Otherwise, excellent!

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Always remember, you''''re unique. Just like everyone else.
Greven

Looks very cool, but it was going really fast (yes I downloaded the updated version).

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Realm Games Company

how did it end up exactly 65,536 k? sweet game

Great comments all!!!

Let''s get those questions/comments addressed:

Neen10do: Thankyou SO MUCH. I would have spent hours trying to figuring that out, but I knew it was possible. I will definetly implement that asap. That should correct the speed issue nicely, and no more worries about v-sync

SnakeHunta: Nah you don''t suck Problems can''t be fixed unless they occur in the first place. Sometimes I have problems on my work computer getting things to appear, and I believe the color depth is the cause. Sometimes switching to 16 mysteriously makes text and some graphics dissapear. In fact I just notice that my PFD was set to 32.....

Greven: Good point! I think I will dim those stars out a little bit so you can see the bullets easier. Someday those bullets will be bitmaps tho, and then they should appear just fine. Glad you like the poly''s, a friend of mine is ''designing'' some more complex polygonal ships.

GreatOne: Yeah, I''m going to try and resolve the speed issue with Neen10do''s advice.

billybob: Visual Studio .net created it. Don''t know how it worked out to be that exact size, but I assure you, it won''t stay that way for long!


I can''t tell all of you how much I appreciate the comments and questions. It gives me great motivation and enthusiasm!

My spring break is all of next week (until a week from this Monday). I''ll be working on it all break and I plan on using the time away from school (whoopee!) to do some serious development. I won''t be able to post any updates until I get back though because I don''t have the internet at my house (my parents are old school, lol). I leave tomorrow, so any comments or bug reports you can submit before tomorrow evening will give me plenty to do over break!

Thanks again all! Glad I seem to be off to a good start.

-Q

I'm back after a long but productive spring break!

As promised, I used as much time as I could spare in the past week to do some development. The new version is ready for download and testing!

Get the latest version here. You can get the download from any other post that I've posted a link as well (all link to the same folder).
File Size: 216K

Additions:
- 8 redesigned enemy attacks
- Level 1 boss
- More sound fx
- New ship design and firing style
- Powerups (just one right now, the Quad-Laser powerup)
- PAUSE added (mapped to the pause key on the keyboard)

Issues:
- I'm still working on the speed issue. My first attempt did not use a high enough resolution timer (worked okay for slower machines, but didn't for faster pc's). I'm going to try the high res timer supplied with the DirectMusic API this week, but before I do that I'll release a version that supplies and option to set the game speed.
- No 'real' levels yet, I'm just playing around with gameplay and enemy patterns. Game will repeat itself after the boss is destroyed.
- I'm still told the game is too hard although I've gone through the entire thing without dying once (and no I didn't cheat ). When I implement the levels, the difficulty will be more balanced.

Guess that's all for now. I look forward to feedback!

-Q

[edited by - Qa303asmGuru on March 16, 2003 10:59:46 PM]

[edited by - qa303asmguru on April 29, 2003 2:16:10 AM]

I feel like a noob. (Wait, I am! )

I remembered seeing something about QueryPerformanceCounter a while ago, but forgot about it until now. I''ve never actually used it, but I just checked it out on msdn and this is the high-res timer that I need. I will definetly try to have the timing fixed by the end of this week.

Stay Tuned.

-Q

Fun game, powerups made the game even more fun. Those evil red rectangles from hell are annoyingly fun. The game ran perfectly fine on my system.

Extremely annoying was the fact that there was no way to exit the game. Escape didn''t work. I ended up having to close the process to quit.

2.4GHZ 256 DDR Geforce4 Tit

oo nice work Qa303asmGuru!

Definately a good start, I bet it would be much nicer on my own computer but I ran it here on a 200mhz 32mb ram win 95 machine.

The good news is that it still works on old machines

some points:

The game speed didnt appear constant, even without enemy sprites the speed was fast then slow then normal, then slow etc. (I had downloaded the latest version too)

How are you timing the enemies? On this system I didnt even know enemies were in the demo as it took a long time for anything to appear so it was a suprise when they appeared

I ran it in 800x600 and it looked as though some of the area was offscreen?

But its all good, I like the firing sound - very satisfying

Keep up the good work!

Cool cool cool.

After 2 days, here''s where the game stands:

- Still haven''t fixed the timing issue. I''ve put it off long enough so tonight I''m going to address it and see if I can get the game to lock to a specific FPS. I''m hoping that the time difference that I implemented will work properly with the higher resolution timer.

- Added a homing shot powerup (Seeker)

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A.P. Thanks for the info. I haven''t tried alt+tab yet...but thanks for the tip. Several people seem to be having problems with the keyboard controls so I''m going to re-do keyboard input to use directinput. Right now I''m just using GetAsyncKeyState and I see that it doesn''t work for all keyboards.

haro: Evil red rectangles from hell? LOL! I told my friend who is helping me with music about that one. Everybody who has played the game that I know personally has said they ''hate'' that part Sorry for Escape not working, as mentioned above, I''m going to implement dinput for keyboard control. That should solve the issue.

Genaside: Hey man! Not nearly as cool as your game, but thanks for the nice comments! (ya know I''m still trying to get past level 2 on hazard ball ) I appologize for the timing...again, right now all the enemy attacks are timed absolutely, so on slower systems it will take longer for anything to happen. I''ve found the timing bug to be the most difficult to fix for this game, but I''ll get there eventually. How did you time your game to work on different machines?

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Thanks to all who have tested the game so far and for your comments. I really hope to get the timing issue resolved soon. The next release will have some actual levels to play, and certainly better looking menus .

-Q

Important updates:

- I fixed the timing issue for faster systems. The game will now lock to 85 fps if the framerate is anything above 85.

- I believe I fixed the "No Exit" bug people were having trouble with. DirectInput now handles the keyboard so it should be handling keypresses okay now.

If those of you who had problems with either one of these issues, please test this new version out and let me know if you still encounter those bugs.

Note: I haven't adjusted the speed for slower systems yet, too tired to do so tonight.

Grab the new version here, or from any of the other replys.

Thanks!

-Q



[edited by - qa303asmguru on April 29, 2003 2:16:37 AM]

Nice and smooth on one of my computers:
1GHz Athlon
512mb
Geforce2Ultra
DX8.1

Lot of fun.. the purple bullets are a little hard to see sometimes and the seeker is awesome - perhaps a little too good?.. maybe have it only go up +/- 45 degrees.. so it won''t do a 180 turn to come back to hit enemies.

(silencer)

Brilliant stuff. Fun as hell!

Trouble is that after 1 game it locks up and I can''t do anything except kill the process.

Played it twice. Got a top score so far of 32,500.

Athlon XP 1700+
Win XP Pro Pre-SP1
GF2-MX Integrated
512 MB DDR SDRAM