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test my tile engine!

Started by thehurricane Feb 24, 2003 at 9:49 PM 14 replies 450+ views

Original Post

Feb 24, 2003 at 9:49 PM

Using OpenGL and SDL I've got a basic multi-layer, parallax scrolling tile engine up and running, with a Lua scripting enviornment and console built in. I'm interested in seeing how it smoothly it runs on other people's machines. Though its written in SDL, right now it's only compiled for Win32: http://68.65.132.7/ztile.zip Basically I'm curious to see how smoothly it runs, and if there's any glaring problems with the approach I'm taking with orthographic OpenGL drawing. Make sure to look at the readme.txt file for some important info and for the various keys you can use...but really all you need to do is fire up the executable and hit L to load the test level (with the horrible art

and use the arrows to scroll...let me know what you think, the goal is a Metroid-like exploration focused sidescroller, but if you're expecting any sort of gameplay at all, you'll be disappointed, its just an engine test at this point

NOTE: I forgot to mention in the readme.txt file that F4 switches to full-screen, please try it and tell me if it works, I had some trouble with it before... [edited by - thehurricane on February 24, 2003 11:04:38 PM]

Yohumbus

Feb 24, 2003 at 10:03 PM

couldn''t run it said it needed MSVCP60D.dll =(

Zern

Feb 24, 2003 at 10:06 PM

Runs smoothly. Nicely done.

PenIII 900mhz
512mb ram
Radeon 9000 pro ( 128mb )
WinXP Pro

thehurricane

Feb 24, 2003 at 10:08 PM

Hmmm...I don''t know...try downloading http://68.65.132.7/MSVCP60D.zip and put the DLL in the ztile folder. Do you have Visual Studio 6 installed? Maybe its a file only people with MSVC would have, if that''s the case I need to include it in the distribution.

MOVSW

Feb 24, 2003 at 10:10 PM

Compile the file without Debug information.

thehurricane

Feb 25, 2003 at 3:10 PM

I recompiled the exe without debug information, so it should work for anyone, even people who don't have MSVC installed.

I'm also interested in any ideas about how I could use the Lua system with game objects. It's pretty cool, even right now in its current state, because you can bring up the console with F11 and then create a variable...

var = "foo"

And then print that variable with conprint...

conprint(var)

What I need to implement is multiline input so you could define functions, for say a switch to trigger a moving platform, a cutscene, or maybe a boss sequence.

Also, does anyone know a good tutorial on how to take drawings or photographs and how to make them tile?

[edited by - thehurricane on February 25, 2003 5:31:56 PM]

darookie

Feb 25, 2003 at 4:48 PM

NULL pointer exception on startup.

MOVSW

Feb 25, 2003 at 8:28 PM

quote:
Original post by thehurricane

Also, does anyone know a good tutorial on how to take drawings or photographs and how to make them tile?

[edited by - thehurricane on February 25, 2003 5:31:56 PM]

Quick and dirty trick is just to mirror the texture vertically and horizontally.

thehurricane

Feb 26, 2003 at 4:13 PM

quote:

Quick and dirty trick is just to mirror the texture vertically and horizontally.

The problem I see there is that you still have to deal with the seams in the middle...what should I be using for those--Photoshop''s blur effect?

MOVSW

Feb 27, 2003 at 12:01 AM

If you mirror it correctly you shouldnt have any seams. Say I have an image 16x16 that I want to make tileable. In photoshop I'd make new workspace 32x32 and paste the image at (0,0) in the corner. Copy image, create transparent layer, paste & mirror it horizontally and place it next to existing one at (16,0). Copy merge what you have (0,0)-(31,15), create new layer, paste it and mirror vertically. You can see an example of image I made using this technique.
http://irontroopers.virtualave.net/progsite/images/background.jpg

[edited by - MOVSW on February 27, 2003 1:03:48 AM]

thehurricane

Feb 27, 2003 at 6:08 PM

I will have to try this. The hardest part, I think, is getting enough art to make a tiled game look good...that includes character animation, which I''m finding to be exteremly hard to get right.

deadalive

Feb 27, 2003 at 6:41 PM

Just thought I''d tell ya it runs very good on my very crappy PC here at work. Win95, pIII, Nvidia Riva TNT (*CRAP* CARD!)

see SDL is very good!
are you really using ALL THOSE dll''s?
not that it''s wrong, but they might end up hurting the speed once this develops into something bigger..
for starters I''d dump SDL_Image and make your own image loading function(s).
good luck with this! ;D

Prozak

Feb 28, 2003 at 12:36 AM

Runs fine here also:

Dual P2 1Ghz, 1Gb Ram
Hercules GForce 2 Pro GTS 64

[Hugo Ferreira][Positronic Dreams]
Need [3D Artist] & [ Sound Designer]
for small project. Contact me plz...

Dragun

Feb 28, 2003 at 1:17 AM

Runs smoothly. Reminds me of the FastGraph library.

thehurricane

Mar 1, 2003 at 12:34 AM

Glad to see it runs on several different kinds of graphics cards...

Having seven layers with multiple layers of parallax is looking REALLY slick, I''ll have a new build with more art and tiles up soon.

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