Tiltilation

[kevglass]

Here is my current work in progress (2 months or so in, so far to go ). I'd be really interested in what you guys think since I'm hoping to get people to buy the full version.



Other Screen 1 Other Screen 2

Some of you might remeber the first version of this game that was made for Java 4K 2005. The current version is populated with 10 demo/test levels. Gamepad support is through JInput2. Everything seems to work and the testers so far have already set some impressive times!

Downloads:

The webstart can be found here:

Webstart

and standalone (i.e. no VM required) packages are available here:

Windows Installer ~ 5 meg
MacOSX Bundle ~ 3 meg
Linux Package ~  8 meg

The website is here: here

Known Issues:

- No music, this is under way through a 3rd party.

Any and all feedback appreciated.

Kev

[Don Kiddick]

Good work. Worked fine on my work pc over 100 FPS

[kevglass]

Whats the spec of your work machine?

Kev

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[ChrisM]

Good work!  JNLP version rocks, GCJ version sucks! j/k

I was running about 490 FPS.

-Chris

[Jamison]

Very cool game. It ran at about 40 FPS on average until I got to the level with the laser trip wire thingys than it ran about 15 FPS from then on. I have a very slow CPU by the way (400Mhz), that's why.

[kevglass]

Eeep, thats a bit worrying - what graphics card / sound card etc?

Kev

[darkprophet]

At the moment, this game is the sole purpose I exist. Its frickin addictive, one of your best games IMHO. As Empire magazine would put it "5 stars"

DP

[oNyx]

Well, as I said... add a broad collision phase (even a really crude one will do the trick). That should boost the performance quite a lot (especially with weak CPUs)

Like creating a grid (with dunno... ball size squares). For each cell you can have some array (or similar) will all entities, which are sorta kinda inside this cell. And then simply collide with all things in those cells which intersect* the moving rect (dont worry about checking the same thing seval times**) and then look for collisions with moving entities.

[* by that I obviously mean that one has to figure out the start and stop values for those two for loops]
[** any book-keeping wouldnt be worth the trouble in this case... well feel free to add tagging... like do these two for loops twice and set a flag on the first pass, but its unlikely that it will make a difference in this case]

In most cases there will be only a handful of collision checks per frame and it scales reasonable well. Since the speed of the ball is rather slow you can do it like this. If it would move faster the moving rect would be a bad idea, because it would contain too many uninteresting cells and you would have to use ray casting then.

[oNyx]

Looks like I was wrong. There just arent enough collision checks for making much of a difference. :x

[swpalmer]

It's too hard.  I find the control very difficult.  Maybe I need a Wii

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[kevglass]

Yeah, the current levels are pretty difficult. You might try gamepad if you're feeling up to it - I find it much easier there.

Kev

[swpalmer]

Game pad is broken.  The configuration asks me to move the stick to the left and up.. and guess which directions I can't tilt in thegame?  I can't tilt "down" or "right".  Makes things hard .  Maybe you aren't allowing negative values or something?

[woogley]

cool game as usual kev, but I never got above 20FPS! the "new dawn games" took over a minute to finish playing!

WinXP // 512MB // 2.19GHz AMD 3200+ // nVidia GeForce4 MX (64MB vram)

I dont think its my card because most other games (including yours) run at 60fps without a sweat

[kevglass]

Game pad is broken.  The configuration asks me to move the stick to the left and up.. and guess which directions I can't tilt in thegame?  I can't tilt "down" or "right".  Makes things hard Smiley.  Maybe you aren't allowing negative values or something?

Ooops, wierd. Gamepad has worked on all platforms for different people (so I think I have negative values covered ) - guess theres something odd going on here. Its JInput2 - so I'm well open to finding issues   What platform are you using?

cool game as usual kev, but I never got above 20FPS! the "new dawn games" took over a minute to finish playing!

WinXP // 512MB // 2.19GHz AMD 3200+ // nVidia GeForce4 MX (64MB vram)

I dont think its my card because most other games (including yours) run at 60fps without a sweat

Eeeep, you should be getting 100's of fps on that config - I guess its a timing issue. Is the 3200 thinger a dual core or something odd like that. You played it once before was it a problem then?

Thanks for trying this out and reporting back guys!

Kev

[swpalmer]

I played on Mac OS X 10.4.6 and Ubuntu Linux "Dapper Drake" (beta) and the frame rate was never an issue (always above 30 - typically 40-60.  (Mac is 1GHz G4 Powerbook ATI 8900, Linux was Dual 1.7GHz Xeon GeForce 5200)

With a different mouse and different OS (Linux) I was able to control it a bit better and finished all the levels with a gold star. yay for me.

I think it would be better if the ball remained in the center of the screen and the level shifted around underneath it.. or maybe a combination of that and how it is now...  I find it harder to control when the ball is near the edges ofthe screen.  I suspect it is because of the shift in perspective.


Gamepad issues are under Linux,  Ubuntu "Dapper Drake".

[woogley]

cool game as usual kev, but I never got above 20FPS! the "new dawn games" took over a minute to finish playing!

WinXP // 512MB // 2.19GHz AMD 3200+ // nVidia GeForce4 MX (64MB vram)

I dont think its my card because most other games (including yours) run at 60fps without a sweat

Eeeep, you should be getting 100's of fps on that config - I guess its a timing issue. Is the 3200 thinger a dual core or something odd like that. You played it once before was it a problem then?

AMD Athlon 3200+ is not dual core AFAIK (although the AMD64 one is)

when I played the earlier version before I didnt see an FPS counter and the "new dawn" intro wasnt there either.. so I'm not sure if there was any FPS difference. both versions are insanely easy if that hints you to anything. the board responds slowly and the game is very easy due to how slow the ball is moving.

basically it takes rougly 6 or 7 seconds (in real time) to go from the top of the board in level 1 to the bottom of the board. also, the in-game timer at the top is about 5 seconds realtime per 1 second gametime.

[ChrisM]

Eeep, thats a bit worrying - what graphics card / sound card etc?

Kev

Athlon 4000, 2GB RAM, ATI X700, Creative Audgey II

-Chris

[g666]

cool game as usual kev, but I never got above 20FPS! the "new dawn games" took over a minute to finish playing!

WinXP // 512MB // 2.19GHz AMD 3200+ // nVidia GeForce4 MX (64MB vram)

I dont think its my card because most other games (including yours) run at 60fps without a sweat

Eeeep, you should be getting 100's of fps on that config - I guess its a timing issue. Is the 3200 thinger a dual core or something odd like that. You played it once before was it a problem then?

I also have that card. It really is sucky. -MX is a bad thing.I ran bout 24fps in 32bpp, might be better in 16bpp, then again might not even work.

EDIT: seems faster in 16bit, dunno what fps tho. Also the textures looked bad in 16bpp, but that seems to happen with all lwjgl programs in 16bpp...

[ChrisM]

I also have that card. It really is sucky. -MX is a bad thing.I ran bout 24fps in 32bpp, might be better in 16bpp, then again might not even work.

EDIT: seems faster in 16bit, dunno what fps tho. Also the textures looked bad in 16bpp, but that seems to happen with all lwjgl programs in 16bpp...

OT but, yeah, MX is crap.  How they got away with basically re-badging GeForce2 based cards is beyond me and was amazingly confusing to the mraket....

-Chris

[woogley]

true, and the card is 3 years old, but the scary thing is I can run Wurm at 40fps constant. I can run the LWJGL Gears demo at 1500+ fps, but then there's this game.. 22fps at best... o_O

[OverKill]

Damn nice!
Runs very smooth. A little hard to control but thats np.

[Jamison]

Eeep, thats a bit worrying - what graphics card / sound card etc?

Kev

Pentium II 397Mhz, 192MB RAM, 64MB Video RAM.

Yeah, it's time for an upgrade... I'll be doing that real soon though.

Best guess is the CPU, but it could also be the RAM that's slowing it down. But since my RAM was never at 100% usage (or anywhere near that much), I don't think it was my RAM.

[oNyx]

The new version runs way faster btw. 2-4 times faster actually

[kevglass]

Just incase anyone tried it today - we're (newdawn) are having server issues right now so availabilty may be spodratic.

Kev

[kevglass]

And we're back... reasonably painless. cokeandcode is a bit screwed, but Tiltilation should be available again.

Kev

[Jamison]

Here's a suggestion kev:
Use a tile based algorithm for the collision (unless you are already are...). You won't get so precise collision, but it will decrease the amount of CPU and RAM usage by a lot.

[kevglass]

Tile based collision simply wouldn't work here, the physics wouldn't allow it. Without precise collision nothing will work correct.

However, as Onyx suggests above, a broad collision sweep initially might help alot (although profiling tells me that isn't a bottle neck). Incidently, a tile based system over the current system would improve CPU usage but would increase RAM usage - not that RAM seems to be much of a problem given the size of the levels.

Kev

[Jamison]

Ahh I guess your right. Well, whatever works.

[TheAnalogKid]

Really cool game Kev!  The only problem I've found is that level 2 is really too hard. And what about having a background that is more unique? Kind of unrealistic one.

And the game ran at 90 fps in 800x600 with a NVIDIA Quadro NVS. It's the machine I have at work so don't ask why this card.

[kevglass]

Woogley - could you try it again and let me know the details of the renderer being used from the log file

TAK - cheers. I actually chose the background intentionally for its calming properties due to the infuriating nature of the game. Level are (as noted above) just feature tests right now - so all of them are way way too hard.

Thanks again for trying and suggestions guys,

Kev