Naming Games

[darkprophet]

Hi all,
I have my game ready for a title, so far, all ive comeup with is XVII, pronouced seventeen (for those who dont know roman numerals  )

Any more ideas?

Its a tactical espionage action sort of game, sorta like Metal Gear solid meats Iraq sorta thing.

[kevglass]

Show us the game and we'll give you a name

"Infiltration" or "Infiltrator" come to mind tho..

Kev

[blahblahblahh]

Show us the game and we'll give you a name

"Infiltration" or "Infiltrator" come to mind tho..

Kev

Sticking with the "filtrator" theme, howabout "Liebig Condenser" ?

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[darkprophet]

its gonna be a comercial game, simply because im skint, so you'l only see the alpha.

When I hear you say? wait for it...when its ready!  

Edit: One more thing, im gonna sell it for 99 pence, so less than a pound or less than $1.50  

[darkprophet]

Can you please tell me the performance you obtain from the following demo, and yes blah^3, its webstarted!  

http://www.myjavaserver.com/~digiwired/xv.jnlp

Keys: Right to move
         Space to shoot

Can you please include your system specs, the fps obtained. And can you please comment on the starting up times.

Thanks

[swpalmer]

Synced to 60fps without trouble..  it doesn't really do much yet so I would be surprised if it couldn't keep up.

Need a key to exit though!

[darkprophet]

Alt-F4 does the trick. The test was the shear amount of vertices made without culling. there were 1024 blades of grass, each with 12 vertices and 24 faces. So you can imagine, quite alot of stuff going on, even tho it doesn't show. Thats not counting the model, and the lighting.

[blahblahblahh]

Same old problem with many recent LWJGL games - your mode selection routine is broken. I'm guessing now that it's actually LWJGL's mode selection that is broken because so many LWJGL games keep failing (where older ones all worked).

I just get a completely meaningless useless error saying it failed to select a screen mode. Not helpful. Looks silly.

[darkprophet]

you are using Linux right? so did you choose 0Hz?

Also, you said your using 1.5Beta, try 1.4.2_04, that works with me on Windows

[cfmdobbie]

Blah³h, try selecting "0Hz (Linux)" in the frequency drop-down.  That's what fixes it for me... on my Win98 box. :-/

Yep, works here.  FPS shows between 59-62, so the frame rate lock appears to be holding.  Startup time is okay.

Win98SE, 700MHz Athlon, GeForce4 MX 420, 56.64 drivers, JDK 1.4.2.

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[cfmdobbie]

you are using Linux right? so did you choose 0Hz?

Actually it's not only Linux that reports 0Hz, but that's irrelevant - you shouldn't allow the selection of any mode that doesn't appear in Display.getAvailableDisplayModes().

On my computer, for instance, LWJGL reports resolutions from 640x480 to 1920x1200 at either 16- or 32-bit, and all at 0Hz.  Allowing me to select anything that isn't in that list is guaranteed to fail.  And as you aren't allowed to create DisplayMode objects manually any more, you'll have to walk through the list manually checking the input and handling bad input yourself.  Approach display mode selection from the other side and you'll find everything gets easier.

[blahblahblahh]

I never use the beta jvm except on special occasions! So, this is 1.4.2_04, and no modes work. I'm not kidding. None of them. At least, I've been here before and tried stepping through them one by one and not a single one worked.

The irritatingly pointless error message (it tells you nothing of any use - no suggestions, no explanations) just adds insult to injury but everyone else's is the same (I've sent some suggestions to the jME guys about how they could make a dialog that instead of annoying users and not working, with no error details, could actually help, and maybe they will come up with something that they give back to LWJGL...)

AFAICS, it is absolutely essential that LWJGL and JOGL provide their own API's to do this - mode selection is definitely NON trivial and yet easily encapsulated to work for every single developer. (if any JOGL or LWJGL guys intend to have a go at improving things, I could forward them the suggestions I sent to jME - but if no-one's going to work on it then there's no point ).

[DrBizzar0]

Ran smooth at the chosen refresh rate.

winXP, geforce4, athlon2.0ghz, jre 1.4.2_04

As for a title what about combining your own and kevglass idea - Infiltrator XVII.  

[princec]

It's a bit of a mystery why LWJGL screen mode selection is suddenly broken, despite our best efforts to prevent people from getting it wrong.

Cas

[blahblahblahh]

It's a bit of a mystery why LWJGL screen mode selection is suddenly broken, despite our best efforts to prevent people from getting it wrong.

Cas

Do you think it's just co-incidence that it's happening a lot lately, or that it might be some change to LWJGL in recent versions?

[princec]

It wasn't anything I did to it Actually it might have been Elias now I think of it... he tweaked the code to use ARB pixel formats. And now I think of it even more it broke Super Elvis and I removed the pixel format code and recompiled my own dll...

...time for an interim release methinks.

Cas

[monkeyget]

windows98
geforce3
java1.4.2

I have the invalid display mods problem too (for all the games, not just this one), 0hz trick works fine.
javaw crash when i make alt+f4 (i think it's not just for this game either).

Runs fine at 60fps.

[darkprophet]

blah^3. If you would like to change the resolution or frequency or depth that are not available in the little dialog box. Open Properties.cfg file, and change the attributes accordingly. But I will have to change a property in the game first.

As for the "invalid display mode" we are simply getting input back, either true or false, from lwjgl and giving it to you. Honestly speaking, we dont know whether it was the frequency that is not supported by you card, the depth or the resolution! Im sure lwjgl has a method to do so, and we're simply not using it.

Are there any other linux box's out there? Ive tried jME on my box and it works like a charm, not sure whats going on with your box blah^3. Maybe its about time you invested in a better graphics card? Geforce2 are 5 generations old  :-/

[blahblahblahh]

blah^3. If you would like to change the resolution or frequency or depth that are not available in the little dialog box. Open Properties.cfg file, and change the attributes accordingly. But I will have to change a property in the game first.

OK, I might try that (suddenly very busy at work again though, so maybe just wait to see if Cas's interim LWJGL release does the trick?)

Im sure lwjgl has a method to do so, and we're simply not using it.

IIRC it doesn't give sufficient information here, which is why debugging these display mode problems is very hard. Maybe this is because the APIs that LWJGL is using don't give enough info either .

Maybe its about time you invested in a better graphics card? Geforce2 are 5 generations old  :-/

If only! Laptop...

[kevglass]

Maybe its about time you invested in a better graphics card? Geforce2 are 5 generations old  

Unfortunately an undeniably popular card with todays gamers (especially when you're looking at budget market).

Kev

[darkprophet]

I totally agree, but this game wont be finished for another month or so, so hopefully by that time, Geforce's are out!  

[princec]

LWJGL gives *tons* of display mode debugging if you but ask it to...

Cas

[blahblahblahh]

LWJGL gives *tons* of display mode debugging if you but ask it to...

Cas

Wonderful. In which, case it definitely needs a higher-level API on top of it, because I've never seen an LWJGL game which gives an error message any more verbose than "couldn't select screenmode".

Which, as noted above, is entirely useless. You might as well not have any text at all, and just display the "error" icon! (many games don't seem to say anything much beyond "invalid" or "failed" )

EDIT: and JOGL games don't seem to be any better ?

[princec]

Typical amateur (hah! professional too) code looks like this:

1   2   3   4   5

try { Display.setDisplayMode(someModeIJustPickedFromThinAir); } catch (Exception e) { // ignore }

Except without the // ignore comment.

There is actually an org.lwjgl.util.Display class that lets you filter, match, and sort display modes and then tries everything it can until it gets one that works before it throws its hands in the air and raises an exception.

Personally I am 100% against allowing the user to select a display mode from a game. Ever.

Cas

[blahblahblahh]

There is actually an org.lwjgl.util.Display class that lets you filter,

So, you're saying it's just an education problem? ...time to get the LWJGL doc projects going?

Personally I am 100% against allowing the user to select a display mode from a game. Ever.

I too believe it should be unnecessary, although I haven't tried it enough in recent years to have your conviction that it truly isn't ever necessary.

[Orangy Tang]

EDIT: and JOGL games don't seem to be any better ?

Actually this is one of the areas in which Jogl fails badly in. LWJGL (as above) raises an exception right when you try creating a display, giving you an option to try something else instead of giving up. Jogl on the other hand continues just fine on creation, only to give you a rather cryptic "context could not be made current" when you actually get round to drawing anything. Made even further complicated by the fact that the same error gets kicked off for practically any Jogl error. :S

End result being that although LWJGL display creation is tricky, it can be much more robust than the current Jogl create-and-pray method.

[oNyx]

[...]
Personally I am 100% against allowing the user to select a display mode from a game. Ever.
[...]

Ye... I wish there won't be TFTs :-/

Maybe I should just stay with a fixed 800x600 resolution? I don't know.

[princec]

More and more I'm inclined to either insist one a particular resolution - 8x6 is good - or use the user's desktop resolution without changing the display mode.

Cas

[darkprophet]

right, enough of the hijacking of my thread and back to the original subject

We got "Infiltration XVII", any more? Keep em coming in.

[princec]

Invade a Furrin Country And Murder Them While They Sleep?

<edit> j/k!

Cas