Beta testers wanted for my space shooter

How do I...?
1

I just completed a demo for my space shooter game and need some testing done to find any bugs that I need to squash before making it public. Any takers? I have it uploaded to Dropbox here:

Updated http://goo.gl/BLDKdR

It will create a Settings.txt wherever you have the game to save difficulty and fullscreen settings.

Controls are on the Help screen, but for the impatient:
Move: Left / Right arrow keys
Shoot: Space key
Pause: Esc key

It only has 2 levels right now, but I’ll be building on this to make 15-20 levels, more game modes (ie: survival mode, arcade mode, etc), and an upgrade system to add shields, increase the fire rate, and move faster. The story will also be fleshed out a good bit too.

What I know isn’t there/working:

  • Engine burn
  • Button sounds (might skip that one though)
  • Player damage/death sounds
2

I have this message:

“We’re sorry, the file is infected. Only the owner can download infected files.”

(That’s hilarious but I’m not joking…)

The message don’t comes from my antivirus but from the Googledrive itself and it don’t even starts the download.

Try to pack it to a compressed file and change the extension.

If it really had a virus then, well, I’ll know it.

3

Sorry about that. I guess I should have checked the download in private browsing first. I noticed Chrome sometimes comes up saying some EXEs are malicious. Happened when I was downloading uTorrent.

The link’s updated. {Nevermind}

Scratch that. Still said it was infected. Working on it now.

4

It’s not Chrome, I tried to get it from Chrome and Firefox and get the same message. It’s something with Googledrive.

5

I saw that. I commented before checking it out.

At any rate, Dropbox seems to be more friendly to the files, so I uploaded it there and that’s where the new link leads to.

6

Ok, so I already tested your game and this what I have to say:

Good things that deserve to be noticed:

  1. The game looks very profesional. Things like menu design, logo screen, title screen, pause option (can you explain how to pause a game with all that sprites moving in a lot of directions please?).
  2. The game works perfectly for what it intends to be, a shooter.

Right now, I own two computers, a high-end graphics desktop PC that I rarely use and when I do it’s only for gaming, and a lowww-end graphics netbook that I use for almost anything else.

I’ll tell you about my poor little netbook: it’s very handy, it has only 1GB of RAM and the integrated graphics card just support pixel shader up to 2.0 and it has only 8MB of VRAM… yes… not jocking… 8MB of VRAM… 8… megabytes (yes, I know, what I’m writing… megabytes)… of video dedicated memory.

I had my netbook equiped with very specific modded drivers that allows me to run some games that seems impossible to be played on a 8MB VRAM netbook, so I can run almost any 3D game that requires pixelshader 2.0 or lower and that its minimum requirements in matter of dedicated video memory are 128MB (yeah, I can run it with a lack of 120MB of VRAM). For example I had played Resident Evil 4 or Tomb Raider Legend at a very playable 28FPS speed; what makes me think that all the manufactured electronic hardware from the last two decades is severely underused in sake of commercial competition (and makes me think too that the modded “pirate” drivers I own are originally developed as part of a pact with the devil). Anyway, that’s just for experimental purposes as I said before I own a suited-for-gaming desktop PC.

So, by now you had to be thinking: cool, but why the fuck is erdo telling me all this shit?

And here’s why:

How it’s possible that a computer that can run very-complex full-of-graphics-effects calculating-lots-of-freaking-polygons games, lags when your 2D shooter display a bullet in screen?

I don’t know. So I tried your game in my sister’s laptop (a very good laptop) and guess what? your game lags when it shoots a bullet.

Lastly I turn on my desktop PC and try your game in it. And even when it’s barely noticeable in my gamer-PC it stills lag when it shoots and I can assure you: if something had an almost unnoticeable lag in this computer it will have a noticeable lag in any normal-for-the-current-standards computer.

Ok, it just lags for maybe half second (in the normal computers) and it’s just when the fire button is pressed, in the moment when the player shoots. Once the bullet is in the air the game returns to it’s normal speed so it’s no due to many sprites on the screen, it’s for whatever happens when the player press fire.

So, how many things are calculated in that moment?
Maybe you need to take a look at what your script is doing when the player shoots.

In the other hand, sounds and gameplay are great.

Take care and good luck! :wink:

7

Thank you erdo, for the feedback. I especially like the bits about what was right. :smiley:

As for what happens when you fire…

Conditions:

Space key is pressed The timer "PlayerShoot" is greater to 0.30 seconds
Actions:

Create object LaserGreen at position Player.X(Shoot);Player.Y(Shoot) Play the sound Sounds\sfx_laser1.ogg Reset the timer "PlayerShoot"
Somewhere else in the code, it also sets the speed for the laser.
It doesn’t make sense that this causes lag. It’s one of the more simple events in the level.

It also works pretty smooth on my Acer netbook. What CPU(s) are you using? 32 or 64-bit? Single or dual-core? Windows version - 32/64-bit?

I’m not sure about how Game Develop compiles… if I’m using 64-bit Windows, does it create 64-bit EXE? If so, that might be the problem if you are running 32-bit Windows on your computer. If this does make a difference, I’ll have to start compiling with another computer or use both.

For pausing the game, I tried to keep that simple too.
Conditions:

Escape key is pressed

Actions:

Do =1200 to X position of camera ( Layer: "Paused" ) Set time scale to 0 Show layer "Paused"
To unpause, just moved everything back… camera to 400, time scale to 1, and hide the layer. I keep it hidden because it’s also on top of the end of level screen, which is just right of the main screen.

8

Like I said to you, I had tested your game in a lot of computers… well… four, by now.

But yes, the lag is just an unnoticeable blinking in the 64-bit architecture but it takes half a second in 32-bit architecture computers.

So, maybe perhaps who-knows it’s due to the computer from what you are compiling.

I’ll compile a game in my desktop PC, try it in the netbook and tell you the results.

BTW, I had discovered is better to put the sound event at the last position, because sometimes it lags the actions that comes after it.

About the pause feature,

Thanks for the explanation. I perfectly understands how the layers works but what I don’t understand is how changing the time scale to 0 just pauses the game. It’s because it pauses all the timers and your gameplay relies on timer events? or it’s because changing time scale to 0 just pauses all the system? and if it’s the case, how it not prevents the input events to stop running?

9

erdo, I moved the sound to the last position of the event. I tried it on my older dual-core 32-bit Windows 7 laptop and it seemed to work pretty well. I’ve uploaded it if you want to give it a try.

I’m going to be working on some other stuff before moving to new levels, like an upgrade system and some achievements (and how to save them so people can’t edit a file to cheat). I also want to get an engine burn in there, but I either have to figure out the particle system in GD or use sprites. I’d rather use the particle system. But I think these should be done before adding more levels because it would be more hassle to apply them to extra levels.

I’m a little conflicted over the buttons. Do you think there should be sounds when they are clicked or when the mouse is over them? Some people like a sound event to let them know something happened. Personally, I don’t care for clicky sounds, but I’m not making the game for just myself, so I figured I’d ask other people.

10

Cool, I want to try that new version.

The particle system seems scary at first but once one is able to control its parameters everything goes easy. It’s lot of times more economical in terms of processing to use the particle system for some effects than big explosion sprites.

About the saved game files thing, you just had to write a normal XML file, then encrypt with the AES algorithm function and then delete the original XML file. That way nobody can edit the saved games to cheat :wink:

About the click sounds, ehrmmm, I don’t know, it’s a game so maybe some very subtle sounds can fit nice for the menu buttons.