MTM2.com

Customarily, I have yet another updated version for ya to try, and customarily, I'll do the friendly thing by including the urls in my post yet again... http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/itc320 http://mtmtracks.cjb.net/d2s/SplatMaze.zip

New with this version:

First and foremost: New keyboard commands. F2 starts a new game, so now you can get splatted and just start again without having to quit and run the program again. F3 now pauses (but P also still works in this capacity).

The scrollrate of the maze has been reduced slightly, from 1.5 tiles/sec to 1.25 tiles/sec. Moverate is back to 50% basic, 50% modified by health - I wasn't convinced that it was possible to die by running out of health while I was using 100% affected by health, as he slows down too fast, and once you get to about 20% health (= 20% moverate) you're going so slow it's practically impossible not to get squashed. Now it's not impossible to die without getting squashed, just really really hard

The HUD ("heads-up display") is now using bitmaps instead of Windows GDI to write on the screen. I've actually got a full bitmapped alphabet, so instead of boring text we've got pretty letters (you'll see what I mean when you play it), and same for numbers. The health readout has also changed...

Zippy's (I don't like to call him Zippy anymore, but I haven't got another name yet) health is now capped at 200% - no matter how many meat pies you eat he won't go above that (they'll still earn you points though). Health is now a graphical readout with a pretty lifebar, instead of numbers.

The game now keeps score, with a readout in the top right. Every second Zippy is still alive earns you 1 point, and every meat pie Zippy eats earns you 10. In lieu of any victory conditions, I've left it at that, but if I do decide on a collectible item I'll probably have it earn you 100 points. As it is, the game will still play forever, but you can now get a score for you performance (can you beat my highest score of 2213?).

Other changes include loading screens - I felt load times were significant enough (on my computer at least) to warrant them. I was tempted to have the loading message read "Getting lost in the outback..." but for now I've just used the utilitarian "Loading: Please Wait...".

Finally, the diagnostic mode (Shift+D) has been reinstated. I made some changes to the structure of my maze reading/collision detection algorithms, but some oversight caused it to throw exception errors on a regular basis - so I felt the best way to tackle it was to revamp the existing mode to find out what was going on. It's fixed now, or at least I'm pretty sure it is...

Tomorrow I go back to uni, so I'll see what my lecturers think of it at this stage (and actually find out when it's due!). I'm quite pleased with it as I think it's got quite a lot of polish - decent visuals, all the commands you'd expect, a fully-skinned HUD AND it actually works dependably - all it's lacking is a way to win the game!


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>> The graphics are almost fine

They didn't turn out too badly, considering I rushed through them (especially the maze tiles). Involved prodigious use of the airbrush tool!

>> the screen goes in one direction too long

I have an algorithm that randomly determines what direction the screen will scroll in, and the amount of time (in seconds, up to a maximum of 10) it will spend going in that direction. It should scroll in one direction for anything up to 10 seconds (randomly determined), then it re-picks the direction and works out how long to do it again. So it shouldn't go in one direction for more than 10sec, unless the algorithm randomly picks that same direction again when it's called.

Difficulty settings are a good idea. I think I should say, though, that I'm concerned about the problems you seem to have playing this game. This might be because of your abilities (I know that when my mother tried it, she was dying within a few seconds - she normally only plays card games...), or it might be something else at work. I know the maze generator needs some tweaking, but with a bit of practice, which I'm sure you would have got by now, and reflexes honed from games like MTM, you should not be dying as easily as you imply...

>> Varying screen res's etc. Save the settings some place. I don't want to set them every time I start the game.

I never got how to save data to a file and recall it later - we covered that topic in like 2 weeks last year. I'd have to do a lot of re-learning to implement that - although it would certainly be worth the effort and probably isn't that hard, I haven't the time or temperment for it now. I also had problems working with the listbox and setting a default, so I cheated by making the Play button unavailable until you pick one. Yeah, it's repetitive having to pick every time you want to play the game, but now that I've implemented a routine to start a new game without quitting it's much less of an annoyance.

>> Then have an option in game, if you can, to change it.

What're you trying to do to me?!? Resetting everything to start a new game without quitting was hard enough, and it took me a whole day just to enumerate the display modes available.
Ok, seriously now, I could do it, and it would be really nice... but the amount of time that would be required to do so means that it would be a low-priority thing to implement. To change the screen res, I'd basically just have to run through the same code I have on startup for scaling the bitmaps, etc - nothing hard about that. But I'd also need some sort of menu-driven system in-game so you can pick the new res - and building that ain't an attractive thought.

>> Low color is terrible.

LOL, I did warn you! If I knew what colour palette DirectX used for 8-bit, I could modify my bitmaps so that they'd appear a bit better. I don't, but it does look close to the colours available in MS Paint.

>> Optimal settings 800x600x32

I would've thought 1024x768 would be best, since all the bitmaps would appear full-size. At 800x600 they're reduced to about 78% of original, and at 640x480 they're only 62.5% (even at this res the tiles look alright, although the lizard appears to lose his tail). And the bitmaps I have used have all been reduced to 256 colour, so you shouldn't really need any more than 16-bits to display them.
As an aside, I've been doing all my testing at 800x600x16... my comp isn't even capapble of 32-bit colour...

>> Time for a new name now, don't ya think?

If you're talking about "Zippy", I concur... any suggestions?

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If it's a good idea,
Phineus has probably already done it.

In this new version i have a real problem with the moving wall. I get the feeling it gets "stuck" into moving to the right. I mean 3 times (after using F2) i got killed because the dang screen was only moving to the right and i got squashed evey time. Once i survived and the screen moved to the right for around 20seconds. That's way to much compared to the other directions.

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The humans think it is a poison of the blood that makes us what we are.
Fools, the blood only feeds the bodies we live in. To create a vampire,
one must steal a soul from the abyss to reanimate the corpse.

I am thinking:

If you hit the traps you should loose points. 5 or 10
Also when you are over the grass texture you shouldn't get any points. U know like in MTM2 when u are in the neutral area.

------------------
The humans think it is a poison of the blood that makes us what we are.
Fools, the blood only feeds the bodies we live in. To create a vampire,
one must steal a soul from the abyss to reanimate the corpse.

>>This might be because of your abilities

You're probably right. It must be all those dang card games. I've heard there's a twelve step program to help a person kick the habit at CGA (card games anonymous).

gameover

[This message has been edited by Phineus (edited 04-08-2002).]

>> I get the feeling it gets "stuck" into moving to the right

I haven't made any changes to the scrolling algorithm since the first version. Same for the maze generator. If it didn't do this for you before I can only assume it was blind luck that repeatedly sent it in that same direction. Though now I think of it, it may not be re-picking the direction on startup - so if you die while it's going to the right, when you start again it will continue going to the right for however long it had left to go before choosing again.
Four directions, 25% chance of any particular one being picked... it's possible (though unlikely) that the thing could repeatedly pick the same direction.

>> I am thinking:

I thought of that also for the traps, but haven't made my mind up either way yet. Good idea for the grass though - I hadn't thought of that.


>> gameover

LOL, I guess my maze generation algorithm just plain doesn't like you, Phin.

First, here's nine screen shots.

<table width="300" align="center" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr align="center" bgcolor="navy"><td> </td><td>256</td><td>16 bit</td><td>32 bit</td></tr><tr align="center"><td bgcolor="#16169C">640x480</td><td>*</td><td>*</td><td>*</td></tr><tr align="center"><td bgcolor="#16169C">800x600</td><td>*</td><td>*</td><td>*</td></tr><tr align="center"><td bgcolor="#16169C">1024x768</td><td>*</td><td>*</td><td>*</td></tr></table>


Notes.

- 640x480 modes for 256 and 16 bit color. The screen does not scroll.

- 32 bit color mode doesn't. My desktop is set to 32 bit color but psp's screen shots are only 16 bit. I don't know if that's psp or your program.

- boxed in syndrome. Happens all the time to me, and on those few occasions when I'm not boxed in, I'm sufficiently surrounded that I get splatted in short order.

[This message has been edited by Phineus (edited 04-08-2002).]

Hehe, i was just toying around with different screen sizes and also wanted to report the 640x480 no scroll bug.

The game in 800x600 looks ugly (compared to 1024x768).

------------------
The humans think it is a poison of the blood that makes us what we are.
Fools, the blood only feeds the bodies we live in. To create a vampire,
one must steal a soul from the abyss to reanimate the corpse.

I find that boxed in syndrome strange because i never had one of them.

------------------
The humans think it is a poison of the blood that makes us what we are.
Fools, the blood only feeds the bodies we live in. To create a vampire,
one must steal a soul from the abyss to reanimate the corpse.

>> First, here's nine screen shots.

Nice stuff Phin... although I notice in some of those there's no lizard or HUD readouts - just the maze. What gives? At first I thought that maybe you'd chanced on taking the screen dump just as it was drawing the frame, but then I remembered it's doing the rendering offscreen on a backbuffer, so that can't be it...

>> 640x480 no scroll bug

Yeah, I discovered that yesterday when I tried it on the uni machines. But it scrolls at that res on my comp. I believe it's due to the framerate, because I'm using the elapsed time between frames to scroll the world and because I'm scaling the scrollrates as well as the tile sizes to keep it constant. On the fast computer when it's doing 60fps, we have a small elapsed time between frames - so small, in fact, that the scrollrate is reduced to zero when it's rounded to an integer value. On my computer it can't quite do 60 all the time, so the elapsed time is a little larger and the resultant scrollrate actually has a value.

At any rate, 640x480 looks pretty poor so I reckon it should be reserved only for when you can't run it at an acceptable speed in a higher res mode.

>> 32 bit color mode doesn't. My desktop is set to 32 bit color but psp's screen shots are only 16 bit. I don't know if that's psp or your program.

Maybe both. I wouldn't know. The bitmaps are 256 colour, so maybe it decides it doesn't need any more than 16 bits of information for the screenshots.

>> boxed in syndrome.

I also find it strange, as I've hardly ever experienced it - you'll often get surrounded by hazards, but not to the point that you'd cark it straight away.

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And now, this is where I call an end to this project. It turned out that the assignment was actually due the first Monday back even though we all had the impression that we would have another week for it. In fact it could still be submitted up till next week, but with a 10% late penalty after Monday midnight. Our lecturers are being cruel to be kind, I suppose, since we can't afford to spend too much time on the one thing... but still, we weren't happy. I don't think anyone had it fully completed for handup yesterday.

Fortunately, mine was at the stage where I could easily add in the few remaining elements that I needed to complete all the assignment prerequisites and submit before the midnight deadline (11:51 pm actually!).
Unfortunately, it means a lot of stuff I would've liked to try out never saw the light of day. Powerups. Difficulty settings. Sound! I had an idea for a mobile enemy in the form of a kookaburra that files over the maze (thus sidestepping the need for complicated pathfinding, hehe) - if you are unfortunate enough to be in its path, it grabs the lizard and flies off! The idea of having different tilesets for each level also went begging, which was sad because I actually got a level count happening and it would have been really easy to implement - but I didn't have the time to draw any more bitmaps.

It's a pity, as I was having a lot of fun with it in the end. Maybe some day I'll come back to it and have a go at doing some of these items... but it's doubtful. Now that the assignment is submitted, the impetus to work on it is low: I certainly don't have the time now and I may not have the interest later.

Oh well. The 'final' (as in submitted) version of the game has been uploaded to the same places: http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/itc320 http://mtmtracks.cjb.net/d2s/SplatMaze.zip

It has a few tweaks and fixes over the old version. Now, grass slows you down to your basic move instead of halving your total move, since I found that once your health gets so low, the lizard comes to a dead stop in the grass instead of wading through it. So it has more of an effect the healthier you are, as it slows you right down.

The maze generator has also been tweaked and (I hope) is more balanced over its predecessor. Open ground has changed from 50% to 55, walls are down from 25% to 20, food and traps combined make up about 15% and grass is about 10%.

There are now some new elements in the maze. There are big holes which insta-kill you if you fall into them, but the maze generator is set to make only 2% of maze elements into holes. Unfortunately, the DirectDraw operation for shrinking an image doesn't support transparency, so at the moment you hit the hole you may see a black box appear around the lizard until it has disappeared.

You'll now see some bluish-coloured oval shapes in the maze. These are meant to represent opals/gemstones/pretty collectibles, and you get 100 points for each. This makes them well worth collecting so that you can open the exit to the maze...

Yes, there is now a way to exit the maze. At the start you should see a message stating the target score required to open the maze (this is just 1000 times the level number - so level 1 has a target of 1000, level 2 is 2000, and so on). Once your score reaches this value, you will see a message at the bottom of the screen: "Maze Exits are now Available...", and a tile element representing the lizard's den will appear. If you walk into this, you will win and then be given the opportunity to test your patience on the next level. I have set it to place one exit on every tile of the maze, so if you can't reach one exit another one will never be far away. You can of course continue to wander around to further increase your score, but absolutely nothing special will happen.
Oh, if you hit F2 to restart, the game will remember what level you are up to and restart you on that one. If you quit, however, you'll be back at level 1.

And I think that's it. According to my documentation that I submitted for the assignment, the lizard is now called 'Rush' (I didn't want to call him Zippy anymore, but it took me about 15 minutes to think up a different name!). Like I said, I may yet add some more to it, but only time will tell that...

Depending on when I hear back, I'll let'cha know what mark I get for it...

[This message has been edited by Drive2Survive (edited 22-04-2002).]

>> no lizard or HUD readouts

Weird, they were there yesterday. Could it be zippy (I won't get used to 'rush') got enough points and left? Either that, or it has something to do with 32 bit color.

>>I'll let'cha know what mark I get for it...

Yep, we'll be interested to hear. Good luck.

What kinda of a name is rush? Zippy is better. hehe


Good luck on your grade!

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The humans think it is a poison of the blood that makes us what we are.
Fools, the blood only feeds the bodies we live in. To create a vampire,
one must steal a soul from the abyss to reanimate the corpse.

Well, 'Rush' came from shortening 'Goldrush' which came to me because of his colour, and it also seemed appropriate because he's running around a maze trying not to get splatted. Go easy, I was pressed for time.

You can call him whatever you want. I actually have a few names for him, although most of those are unprintable here because this is a family-oriented forum...

The closing chapter of SplatMaze

Well guys, it's been fun. Thank you one and, er... both for your help and support with this. You'll be glad to hear that I must've I done something right, 'cause I got a mark of 100% for the assignment (I wasn't the only one, but still it's a nice thing).

I spent most of yesterday assembling a simple website for my account on the uni student server, onto which I have posted this and a few other fun programs I've done since I started university (and programming) last year. It's final resting place is http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~dcarr03/


And the future takes root in the present...

In spite of the fact that I've got enough work to do in the next coupe of weeks to last me until approximately 2005, I have from time to time still been drawn in by the lure of this deceptively simple game, and continued to tweak it here and there.

Aww, who am I kidding! I've already done some work to add in some of the functionality I sadly had to skip in order to get the thing ready in time for the deadline. I wanted to have something special for this occasion, so the version available for download on the website has two extra tilesets (a highway-theme and a cyberspace-theme) to add to the existing outback-themed one, and the functionality for you to easily add more (see the instructions on the website). Time will tell whether I now actually decide to leave it as is, or come back and add some more stuff to it further down the track...

As a taster of what's to come (ie my next assignments), in the next couple of weeks I'll have written some funky 3D apps...

Congrats on your mark!!!

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The humans think it is a poison of the blood that makes us what we are.
Fools, the blood only feeds the bodies we live in. To create a vampire,
one must steal a soul from the abyss to reanimate the corpse.