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From: stbenge
Subject: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 25 Mar 2008 21:00:06
Message: <47e9ae26$1@news.povray.org>
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


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From: scott
Subject: Re: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 26 Mar 2008 02:42:26
Message: <47e9fe62@news.povray.org>
> 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.


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From: Orchid XP v7
Subject: Re: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 26 Mar 2008 06:05:24
Message: <47ea2df4$1@news.povray.org>
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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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 26 Mar 2008 10:47:20
Message: <47ea7008$1@news.povray.org>

> 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.


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From: Orchid XP v7
Subject: Re: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 26 Mar 2008 10:49:34
Message: <47ea708e$1@news.povray.org>
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*


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From: stbenge
Subject: Re: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 26 Mar 2008 11:04:22
Message: <47ea7406@news.povray.org>
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


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From: stbenge
Subject: Re: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 26 Mar 2008 11:08:08
Message: <47ea74e8@news.povray.org>
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


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 26 Mar 2008 11:24:23
Message: <47ea78b7$1@news.povray.org>

> 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).


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 26 Mar 2008 11:25:22
Message: <47ea78f2@news.povray.org>

> 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? :)


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From: Orchid XP v7
Subject: Re: NearInfinity game demo
Date: 26 Mar 2008 11:31:13
Message: <47ea7a51@news.povray.org>
>> 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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