I really like the gameplay idea.. simple fun..

I like how screenshot#4 shows both the map and field of vision.

Here''s an idea for showing other players. When enemy is out of the fov but close to the player, indicate their location with rippling white circle that is bigger than the usual red circle. when enemy gets closer the rippling effects increases while the size of the circle decreases.. It''s sound idea where you can hear enough emeny''s footstep to guess their location but not enough to pinpoint them. So, when the enemy is not moving or just walking(with shift key down), you can''t hear them. Adds more strategic elements, no? (Possible alternate weapon such as sonic bomb that blinds(deafs) everybody, (like flash bang heh..) or sonic mine that fools the enemy..)

I couldn''t run the game at first. First I tried to run the game in windows mode but crashed. Second I tried the full-screen and it worked. The problem was that it was really really dark and FOV section was black while other areas can be seen (so it was reversed..) The game was really slow too.. couldn''t possibly play..

I have Athlon700, 256mb, MatroxG400MAX..

Just a comment

i have absolutely no idea why the fov area would be darker than the rest... :-\ you're the 1st with that problem. i'm still working on making the stencil buffer work faster and on more systems. meanwhile, more test scores are appreciated.

if you get less than 5 fps, try visiting www.glsetup.com and getting the latest OpenGL drivers for your video card. and PLEASE post here if it helped you.

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shurcool
my project

[edited by - shurcool on June 26, 2002 3:00:05 PM]

Somehow, the problem with the fov got fixed.. Maybe it was just a glitch in my video card (but i have no idea how or why)..

With the fov corrected the game seemed fine except the less than 5fps rate.. The enemy seems to popout out of nowhere.. I''m beginning to hate the blue circle.. it keeps killing me.. how do you restart the round anyway?

I can''t try the glsetup becouse it only supports win98&me.. I''m using WinXP. I''m using latest driver for my video card..

hope it helps

I see what your saying, but increasing the fov to be more first person does somewhat tend to make the game more of a shooter than a thinking game. As it will defintely change the dynamics of the battles, ie. much longer range attacks and large areas of possible engagement, makeing the player more concerned with just moving and surving, than coorindatiing with teammates.

The benifit of the top down view, is a smaller area of engagement and the ability to quicly assess teammates disposition and coordinate with them. You''ve already got the action game dynamics down, the game is fast paced. I would add macros to help teammate cooridnaiton as well.

Good Luck!

-ddn

sylee81,
i've looked at your video card specification (matrox g400 max) and it seems to support stencil buffer:
-32-bit Z-buffer including 8-bit stencil buffer
i'll try the following: i'll enable the depth buffer (z-buffer) and set stencil buffer to 8 bits (right now it's at 1 bit), and upload it. you, please, download it, and see if you start getting better framerate.

ok, download the executabe here (replace the older one with the one in this zip) and please tell me the results!!

[edit] hmm, it seems that same goes for tnt2 vid cards, so if you have that, try it as well, and tell me if it helped the fps. [/edit]

ddn,
i think it all depends on how you look at it. somewhere at the top, i said that if you see an enemy, all your teammates will see a red dot (or whatever) there (even if that dot is behind a wall for any teammate), allowing them to backstab him while you distract him. if you were able to see through walls, this great team-play addition would not be possible. and i think that if you could see through walls, you would be thinking more about how to eliminate an enemy, without exposing yourself to bullets from many enemies, etc. which is more combat than tactic... well, i can always have an option to toggle it.

thanks, later.

ps. you can't restart the round yet, and it pops out of nowhere bacause of the poor fps.

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shurcool
my project

[edited by - shurcool on June 27, 2002 9:12:40 AM]

I don''t know about everyone else but I can only see about 160-170 degrees at one time without moving my eyes, maybe less.

Bleu Shift - www.bleushift.tk

First off man, great start. Now I have a few things to say. First off, about performance. I''m running P3 500 w/ 640 mb ram, and a GeForce 2 64mb. Lots of people have been saying its slow in full screen and it wasn''t any different for me. I got less than 1 fps. But I know you are working on that. In windowed mode however, I got over 60 fps!!

Gameplay:
Definitely keep it 2D. Here are my thoughts about what to do with scope, and possibly aiming in general. Maybe you should do something similar to the way aiming was handled in Worms Armageddon. If you aren''t familiar, when you had a gun in Worms, you would have a little cross hair about an inch away from your character. You used that for aiming. It made it relatively easy to hit close people, but the farther they were, the harder it got...very much like real life. You could take it a step further though. Let''s take three possible guns: pistol, assault rifle, and sniper rifle.

Pistol: I would try leaving the pistol how the targeting is now, because it is like a secondary weapon, and isn''t as powerful or accurate as the others.

Assault Rifle: Have a pretty short line coming out of the front of your character. Not to obtrusive, but visible. This would make it easier to hit people a little farther away, but not too far away. I do like your idea of having it shake if they just run around in full auto. That could help balance the weapon by encouraging burst fire.

Sniper Rifle: Lets say that when they pull out the sniper rifle, it has no line(when unzoomed), like the pistol. Then when the player presses the key for zoom mode. The camera is no longer tracking the character. A line appears. It connects the player to a little X in the center of the camera''s view. The player moves the mouse to move the camera all around inside their FOV. I describe 2 methods of possibly implementing this at the URL below:

http://webpages.charter.net/meh/2DShooterHelp.htm

wakebrdkid12,
thank you very much for your suggestions, the lines idea and how far they are is sort of what i had in mind, but you made it all clear and nice. and about sniper rifle, i think 2nd method is very good, since it would allow you to see really far, much further than anyone else who isn''t zoomed it can (ur teammates), and it would require you to have cover from others, and you wouldn''t be able to use your sniper rifle as a pistol (unlike cs >:| ).

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shurcool
my project

I tried the new version.. The framerate is still around 3~5fps.. I read what wakebrdkid12 wrote and tried the game in windowed mode. The framerate was going over 80fps.. (I didn''t know you could see the bullets until now.. heh.)

I tried the older version with windowed mode again. It didn''t crash and actually ran faster going over 90fps..

Problem seems to be with going to full-screen mode.