Hello everyone,

I made a game demo featuring a near-infinite landscape. I say 
"near-infinite", because computers as they stand now cannot produce a 
string of random numbers which do not repeat. But you can get close, so 
close in fact that I bet you will never see my demo repeat itself.

Here's the file:
http://www.caltel.com/~abenge/NearInfinity.zip

And a screen shot:
http://www.caltel.com/~abenge/NIscreen.jpg

You can change many aspects of the program via "NI.ini", included in the 
zip.

You will need DirectX 8.0 or higher and the Windows operating system to 
run this program.

I hope you enjoy my little game. To make it more interesting, I have 
hidden a few easter eggs for you to find. Questions and comments are 
always appreciated. Have fun!

Sam

Post a reply to this message

> I hope you enjoy my little game. To make it more interesting, I have 
> hidden a few easter eggs for you to find. Questions and comments are 
> always appreciated. Have fun!

It's really cool, the controls remind me a little of the game Thrust I had 
on my old BBC computer - I loved that game.  I can see this could turn into 
a really fun game to play too.  Good job.

For the whole frame rate / game speed thing, I recommend you read this 
article - it really explains very simply how to make sure your game runs 
exactly the same way (in terms of physics and speed) no matter what the 
frame rate is.

http://www.gaffer.org/game-physics/fix-your-timestep

Not many people have 640x480 monitors anymore, perhaps you could make some 
higher resolution tiles and give the option to change the screen resolution?

I don't know what plans you have for the gameplay, but you could vary the 
colour of the tiles over a large scale (say repeating every 2000 units) so 
that the player has some idea to remember which parts of the map they are 
visiting - it's very easy to get lost because everything looks the same.

Post a reply to this message

stbenge wrote:

> You will need DirectX 8.0 or higher and the Windows operating system to 
> run this program.

If you can find a way to run a DirectX game *without* Windows, I'll be 
impressed! ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 escribió:
> stbenge wrote:
> 
>> You will need DirectX 8.0 or higher and the Windows operating system 
>> to run this program.
> 
> If you can find a way to run a DirectX game *without* Windows, I'll be 
> impressed! ;-)

Wine.

In fact, I bet this game works on Wine.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

>> If you can find a way to run a DirectX game *without* Windows, I'll be 
>> impressed! ;-)
> 
> Wine.
> 
> In fact, I bet this game works on Wine.

Wine supports DirectX?

OK, I'm impressed!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> 
>>> If you can find a way to run a DirectX game *without* Windows, I'll 
>>> be impressed! ;-)
>>
>> Wine.
>>
>> In fact, I bet this game works on Wine.
> 
> Wine supports DirectX?
> 
> OK, I'm impressed!

Well don't be too impressed until you get it to work ;)

Sam

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> I hope you enjoy my little game. To make it more interesting, I have 
>> hidden a few easter eggs for you to find. Questions and comments are 
>> always appreciated. Have fun!
> 
> It's really cool, the controls remind me a little of the game Thrust I 
> had on my old BBC computer - I loved that game.  I can see this could 
> turn into a really fun game to play too.  Good job.

Thanks! Is the collision detection too bouncy? I kind of like it that
way, as it makes the game feel "softer".

As a side note, this was more of a "proof of concept", rather than a
demo. I could have chosen a better description.

> For the whole frame rate / game speed thing, I recommend you read this 
> article - it really explains very simply how to make sure your game runs 
> exactly the same way (in terms of physics and speed) no matter what the 
> frame rate is.
> 
> http://www.gaffer.org/game-physics/fix-your-timestep

Thanks, I will read that. I tried to implement a lower limit to the FPS,
but everything I did resulted in an exponential speed increase, hence my
crappy patch in the config file. At least I'm learning to control the 
framerate without compromising functionality (ie. collision detection).

> Not many people have 640x480 monitors anymore, perhaps you could make 
> some higher resolution tiles and give the option to change the screen 
> resolution?

I thought all monitors were backward-compatible. What resolution would
you suggest? 1280x880? I think maybe I could get away with having a
variable resolution, as it appears any speed bottleneck occurs when more
pixels are drawn to the screen. A person could choose a lower res if a
high one is too slow.

> I don't know what plans you have for the gameplay, but you could vary 
> the colour of the tiles over a large scale (say repeating every 2000 
> units) so that the player has some idea to remember which parts of the 
> map they are visiting - it's very easy to get lost because everything 
> looks the same.

That's a good idea. It is possible to do this, and I could change the
color at each corner of every sprite for a smoother look. Maybe I could
do it with a perlin noise function, although the only one I found 
repeats rather quickly, hence my question in p.programming.

Sam

Post a reply to this message

stbenge escribió:
> I thought all monitors were backward-compatible.

It still doesn't look good to have such a big screen and have low 
resolution images (or a tiny 640x480 *window* centered in the screen).

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 escribió:
> Wine supports DirectX?
> 
> OK, I'm impressed!

I think the Wine developers worked more on DirectX than on anything 
else. How would you get *any* game working on it otherwise? :)

Post a reply to this message

>> OK, I'm impressed!
> 
> I think the Wine developers worked more on DirectX than on anything 
> else. How would you get *any* game working on it otherwise? :)

I was under the impression that virtually nothing works properly on Wine 
beyond *the* most basic applications. If they can get something as 
complex as DirectX to work, that's pretty damn impressive as far as I 
can tell. (Especially since Linux doesn't really support 3D hardware 
acceleration yet...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 escribió:
> (Especially since Linux doesn't really support 3D hardware 
> acceleration yet...)

...

I think I'll let Warp answer that.

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:31:27 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> Especially since Linux doesn't really support 3D hardware acceleration
> yet..

Funny, worksforme here, both ATI and NVidia cards.  XGL won't run without 
HW acceleration.  Maybe you should tell the XGL and Compiz folks that 
their software doesn't work... ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> Funny, worksforme here, both ATI and NVidia cards.  XGL won't run without 

I'll add Matrox G400/550 and Intel GMA945 on the list.

> 
> Jim

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 escribió:
>> (Especially since Linux doesn't really support 3D hardware 
>> acceleration yet...)
> 
> ...
> 
> I think I'll let Warp answer that.

OK, let me rephrase: "Especially since most hardware manufacturers still 
don't support Linux yet." That better?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 escribió:
> OK, let me rephrase: "Especially since most hardware manufacturers still 
> don't support Linux yet." That better?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

(Very crappy) edited image attached. Don't kill me.

Bah why do I bother saying "don't kill me". I know you will anyway.

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'anything.png' (73 KB)

Preview of image 'anything.png'

Nicolas Alvarez escribió:
> (Very crappy) edited image attached. Don't kill me.

Ahahaha. "I'm doing it wrong!"

Now with alpha channel deleted. I used it to temporarily save a mask, 
forgot to remove it, made it look weird :)

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Attachments:
Download 'anything.png' (62 KB)

Preview of image 'anything.png'

"Nicolas Alvarez" <nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> wrote in message 
news:47ea9e71@news.povray.org...
> Orchid XP v7 escribió:
>> OK, let me rephrase: "Especially since most hardware manufacturers still
>> don't support Linux yet." That better?
>
> http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
>
> (Very crappy) edited image attached. Don't kill me.
>
> Bah why do I bother saying "don't kill me". I know you will anyway.

   Was that actually worth posting at all?

       ~Steve~

Post a reply to this message

"St." <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote in message news:47ea9f2d$1@news.povray.org...
>
> "Nicolas Alvarez" <nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> wrote in message 
> news:47ea9e71@news.povray.org...
>> Orchid XP v7 escribió:
>>> OK, let me rephrase: "Especially since most hardware manufacturers still
>>> don't support Linux yet." That better?
>>
>> http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
>>
>> (Very crappy) edited image attached. Don't kill me.
>>
>> Bah why do I bother saying "don't kill me". I know you will anyway.
>
>   Was that actually worth posting at all?

       LOL! OK, you're forgiven.  ;)

         ~Steve~

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> 
> OK, let me rephrase: "Especially since most hardware manufacturers still 
> don't support Linux yet." That better?
> 

We have already covered working 3D-on-Linux for Ati, Nvidia, Matrox and 
Intel on this thread. Who else is there to blame?

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:28:04 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> Orchid XP v7 escribió:
>>> (Especially since Linux doesn't really support 3D hardware
>>> acceleration yet...)
>> 
>> ...
>> 
>> I think I'll let Warp answer that.
> 
> OK, let me rephrase: "Especially since most hardware manufacturers still
> don't support Linux yet." That better?

ATI, NVidia, Matrox so far.  Oh and Intel.

Take a look at the support for cards in XGL.  XGL requires HW 
acceleration in order to work at all - software only won't cut it.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

stbenge wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I made a game demo featuring a near-infinite landscape. I say 
> "near-infinite", because computers as they stand now cannot produce a 
> string of random numbers which do not repeat. But you can get close, so 
> close in fact that I bet you will never see my demo repeat itself.
> 
> Here's the file:
> http://www.caltel.com/~abenge/NearInfinity.zip
> 
> And a screen shot:
> http://www.caltel.com/~abenge/NIscreen.jpg
> 
> You can change many aspects of the program via "NI.ini", included in the 
> zip.
> 
> You will need DirectX 8.0 or higher and the Windows operating system to 
> run this program.
> 

It doesn't work on my win2000 machine. reinstalled DirectX 8.1 but still 
no luck. I get the HGE splash screen followed by a notice that NI 
generated errors and that I had to restart the program. NI.log does not 
seem too informative:
HGE Started..

HGE version: 1.70
Date: 26.03.2008, 22:53:37

Application: NearInfinity 2008 Sam Benge
OS: Windows 5.0.2195
Memory: 1048032K total, 453348K free

D3D Driver: nv4_disp.dll
Description: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
Version: 6.14.10.9371
Mode: 640 x 480 x X8R8G8B8

Init done.

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> stbenge wrote:
>> I made a game demo featuring a near-infinite landscape. I say 
> 
> It doesn't work on my win2000 machine. reinstalled DirectX 8.1 but still 
> no luck. I get the HGE splash screen followed by a notice that NI 
> generated errors and that I had to restart the program. NI.log does not 
> seem too informative:

Hmm, that log file is never very informative :(

What video mode are you running under? More specifically, what bit 
depth? My program runs under 32 bit color, but I didn't consider making 
it changeable since HGE seems to always detect the right mode. I can 
think of one other problem which might be causing the error, but that 
will also require a new release....

Sam

Post a reply to this message

> Thanks! Is the collision detection too bouncy? I kind of like it that
> way, as it makes the game feel "softer".

No, I like it too, it gives a different feel to the game (more fun) rather 
than if you just exploded or got damage when you hit into something.

> Thanks, I will read that. I tried to implement a lower limit to the FPS,
> but everything I did resulted in an exponential speed increase, hence my
> crappy patch in the config file. At least I'm learning to control the 
> framerate without compromising functionality (ie. collision detection).

The key is to run your physics calculations (movement, collision detection, 
etc) totally separately from the graphics.  You do your physics calculations 
with fixed time intervals (eg 50 or 100 times per second, whatever is the 
minimum needed), and just draw the graphics as often as you can.

> I thought all monitors were backward-compatible.

Yes, but 640x480 looks very poor on a 1920x1200 24" LCD ;-)  And very small 
when it's in a window.

> What resolution would
> you suggest? 1280x880?

In my programs (when running full screen or switching to it) I usually start 
by running in the same resolution that the desktop was in.  Then you can be 
sure that is working, and always give the option to choose some other 
resolutions.

> I think maybe I could get away with having a
> variable resolution, as it appears any speed bottleneck occurs when more
> pixels are drawn to the screen. A person could choose a lower res if a
> high one is too slow.

Yes, your game looks like it uses a very small amount of geometry as I 
assume all the sprites as just drawn as two triangles.  So the limiting 
factor will be the pixel throughput of the graphics card, then of course 
higher resolution will mean lower frame rate.

> That's a good idea. It is possible to do this, and I could change the
> color at each corner of every sprite for a smoother look. Maybe I could
> do it with a perlin noise function, although the only one I found repeats 
> rather quickly, hence my question in p.programming.

If I understand Perlin noise correctly, you can just scale it up and then 
add more iterations to keep the same fine detail level?  This would increase 
the repeat length.

Or just generate some number based on the x,y coordinate rounded to the 
nearest (say) 1000 pixels, then use those values to interpolate the colour 
for all other pixels.

Post a reply to this message

stbenge wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> stbenge wrote:
>>> I made a game demo featuring a near-infinite landscape. I say 
>>
>> It doesn't work on my win2000 machine. reinstalled DirectX 8.1 but 
>> still no luck. I get the HGE splash screen followed by a notice that 
>> NI generated errors and that I had to restart the program. NI.log does 
>> not seem too informative:
> 
> Hmm, that log file is never very informative :(
> 
> What video mode are you running under? More specifically, what bit 
> depth? 

1024*768*32 bit (first generation flat screen)

> My program runs under 32 bit color, but I didn't consider making 
> it changeable since HGE seems to always detect the right mode. I can 
> think of one other problem which might be causing the error, but that 
> will also require a new release....

Your 'Lights Out' and 'Maze' do work here.

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