[WIP] Darkvoid flight mechanics demo

[Riven]

Graphics looked great, but I got lost pretty quickly after flying around with WASD and mouse control

Navigation and orientation in 3D has never been the strength of humans (especially with the lack of reference points)

[endolf]

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

I'll look in to adding a launch now screen, I still need to figure out what I'm going to do about shortcuts, which might mean changing installers. I could also bundle up more files in the initial installer.

The demo does indeed have all the ships doing the same thing, orbiting in a circle pointing out from the centre line. I put that in to test that the game steps were doing the right thing. Those ships are given an initial velocity and accelerations and just left to it. The fact that they fly in a nice 'orbit' indicates to me that I got the movement calculations correct, nothing more. I can make them stationary again instead. The guns you see spinning are given a rotational acceleration and left to get on with it, so they should spin on a local axis and get faster and faster. I found I had problems with rotational speeds and acceleration over 180 degrees a second. So again, it's just for me to check I've not broken anything .

The HUD probably needs an xzy coord display somewhere so you can always get back to 0,0,0 if you wish, once it's a game there will be the standard HUD waypoint sort of thing.

Endolf

[endolf]

I've removed the windows exe installer as there seems to be a bug in it when creating shortcuts. The plus side is, that it now creates shortcuts if you wish.

Also made the downloader/updater dialog slightly larger as proxy settings dialog was falling off the screen.

Also made the game world static by default, had 2 people report graphics problems where there were lots of ghost ships moving. Because of the movement they hadn't noticed they were all different and meant to be there

Is it behaving any better for you tonight Riven?

Endolf

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

[endolf]

Ok, I've rewritten the installer. There are 3 options, windows exe installer, executable jar installer, or zip file with the contents of what gets installed . Check them out here.

Feedback requested and appreciated .

Thanks

Endolf

[Riven]

I've removed the windows exe installer as there seems to be a bug in it when creating shortcuts. The plus side is, that it now creates shortcuts if you wish.

Also made the downloader/updater dialog slightly larger as proxy settings dialog was falling off the screen.

Also made the game world static by default, had 2 people report graphics problems where there were lots of ghost ships moving. Because of the movement they hadn't noticed they were all different and meant to be there

Is it behaving any better for you tonight Riven?

Endolf

I deleted the dvsf directory and downloaded
   http://www.darkvoidonline.com/dvsf/dvsf-installer.exe

Running into the same problem during the downloading of JARs.

1	2012/01/14 12:34:26:682 INFO g.a: Downloading resource [url=http://www.darkvoidonline.com/dvsf/ardor3d-core.jar, size=1202091]

So it seems I'm still downloading from the same server. Have you tried to host the files somewhere else?

[endolf]

Not tried hosting else where as you seem to be the only person having troubles. I'm still intrigued. What happens if you try to download the files manually?

Cheers

Endolf

[Riven]

What happens if you try to download the files manually?

Works just fine

[endolf]

Have you got a weird proxy or something set between you and the net?

Just trying to figure out how your setup is causing getdown a problem

Endolf

[Riven]

Have you got a weird proxy or something set between you and the net?

I do not use a proxy, or anything else (not even a wireless network).

[endolf]

Can you send me a traceroute, mtr if possible, trying to figure out what is causing this issue that only manifests itself for you. Are there any other networks you could try, wondering if there is something that an isp is doing that is causing getdown to fail.

PM it if you don't want to publisise your IP

Thanks in advance.

Endolf

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

[Riven]

I think we already ruled out connectivity problems, as I can download the files just fine from a browser. Hence I don't see how a traceroute could help, it's obviously a problem in GetDown.

[endolf]

But it's a problem that only happens in your environment. There must be something with your setup or connection that getdown has troubles with. You've said before that it gets 1 file ok and fails on the next. So rerunning it gets there eventually. This makes me wonder if it is reusing the http connection for subsequent files. Ideally we need to try that. I could knock up a quick test app for that to see if it is the problem.

Endolf

[Riven]

But it's a problem that only happens in your environment. There must be something with your setup or connection that getdown has troubles with.

You only had a handful of downloaders. To claim that it is a one person problem is a little far fetched. There is nothing wrong with my connection. GetDown is the only app that has connectivity problems, as I can download everything else just fine, even multi gigabyte files without a hickup.

You've said before that it gets 1 file ok and fails on the next.
..
This makes me wonder if it is reusing the http connection for subsequent files. Ideally we need to try that.

As said before, it stops downloading a file halfway, even during the first download, so potentially reusing the connection is irrelevant.

[endolf]

You only had a handful of downloaders. To claim that it is a one person problem is a little far fetched. There is nothing wrong with my connection. GetDown is the only app that has connectivity problems, as I can download everything else just fine, even multi gigabyte files without a hickup.

Sorry, it wasn't a personal attach, what I meant was, out of the people who have tested it, it only happens in your environment. Also, getdown is used by three rings in their apps, and by at least one other person on jgo, it can't be a general getdown issue otherwise it would work for far less people. That narrows it down to something about the combination of your end, my server end, something in between and getdown, the combination is the problem, as I already know what's on my server end, and I have the source for getdown, the unknown to me is your end and what's in between. It might be that there is a problem with the combination of my server and your ISP, I have no idea, an with no data it's impossible to tell or fix. At this point with no more data I only have 2 options, ignore this one (for now) problem and hope it goes away or is unique to you, or change servers (I already pay for this one) and just hide the issue, not that it's certain to solve it as we don't know what the problem is yet.

As said before, it stops downloading a file halfway, even during the first download, so potentially reusing the connection is irrelevant.

Ok, I misunderstood your previous comments then, I thought it got the first file ok each time, but always failed on the second.

I've still no idea what the issue is. I've posted on JGO, Ardor3d, facebook, twitter and people at work have tried, while I agree this is still a small number, and I don't know what countries/ISP everyone has tried from, I've only had 2 reports of the application failing, this one, and a fail from a family member where the game demo itself fails, I've yet to get any data from them too, so again, I can't fix it, but it's certainly a different problem.

I do appreciate help in trying to locate this issue, but with no data it's very difficult to narrow it down. My current theory is that no one part of the system is at fault, it's a combination that is highlighting an issue in 1 part, I'd like to find and fix the issue rather than just work round it.

Endolf