Zplax 1.0b out

[Alistair_Dickie]

Well after two months of coding in my spare time the beta version of my game is out. Zplax is a shooting puzzle game developed with Xith3D and jogl. It needs a 1.4.2 or later JVM to run (I think). You can get it from http://zplax.alistairdickie.com/.

I have only been lurking on this forum and have few posts. I would really value the opinions of other developers.  I have not got a Linux or Mac box to test the installers on. I am not really sure if the game will work on those platforms and am especially interested in feedback on that.  

I have conceeded that I am not the best modeller and my modeling is pretty simple. Felllow developers can write skins for the game using Xith3D. You can find our more on the website.

I will write a seperate post on some of the challenges that I found using Xith3D.

Regards,

Alistair

[William Denniss]

Hi,

Congratulations on your 1.0 beta!

I installed using the applet onto my OS X system (PowerBook G4).  The installer worked (although it caused strange things to happen to Camino, not that this is your fault).  The game ran nicely too.

Have you thought about adding a JNLP distribution as well?  Mac's at least come with a JVM stock standard, so you won't find many Mac users who have to download a JVM.

A note about the Apple JVM.  Java 1.4.2 is only available on OS X 10.3.4 and later.  So you should indicate this on your download page (instead of 10.0.0).


My Comments:

I played a game and managed to finish it on the standard settings.  I love the effect when you hit the water intentionally.  

It was harder than it should have been to start the game I think -- you want to make it as easy as possible for the person to start playing.  

I found the sound effect when you sucessfully matched the colours got a bit annoying after a while as the event happens so often.  A simple "blip" would suffice IMHO.

The loading effect was snazzy although I thought unnessesary.  Why not just let the application load in a small window, or completally obscure the background.  That way I can't see the work that I should be doing instead of playing your game while it is loading

Good Luck,

Will.

[Alistair_Dickie]

Will,

Thanks for the comments. I am moderatly amazed the installer worked on the Mac and kind of amazed that the game ran without me having to fix something.  I was just trusting the folks from ZeroG. It was actually a little difficult to configure.

I did seriously consider JNLP but there are a few things that have turned me off. First there is the way I handle skins. jar files can be dynamically added as you are playing the game if they are put in the skins directory. I am pretty happy with the idea that a game downloaded using JNLP goes somewhere but I feel that many users will just want a shortcut (forgive the windows like thoughts here).

I fixed the Mac OS X 10.3.4 thing on the install page - thanks for that tip.

I take it the effect you mean when you hit the water is the ripple? That should be happening when all balls hit the water. I hope this is the case for you.

The point about easier starting is good. Maybe I will put a special start game button somewhere.

Sounds are all kind of screwed and very betaish. I think I will fix them for the production release. I need to get the levels right and fix quite a few of them.

I kind of got carried away with the loading effect. I thought of it in the shower and just wanted to see if it could be done. I think I will make it so if you click anywhere on the splash panel or the surrounding faded and blured desktop it will revert just to a floating splash panel, or maybe just minimise the lot. I ditch the whole frame at the end of the loading phase in any case.

Regards,

Alistair

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

[c_lilian]

Exits after "loading textures" without a message.

error message is : no "jogl in library path".
I've discovered it starting it with command line.

I suppose you can't assume JOGL is preinstalled and you should package it with your app (but may be it's the case but java.library.path is misconfigured)

Lilian

tested on iMac G5 with latest JRE.

[William Denniss]

Ah yes, I do have jogl in my  "/Library/Java/Extensions/" directory.

You can't expect this of end users, but it's pretty easy to setup for anyone wanting to give the game a spin.

It is impressive that the installer worked on the Mac with no testing.  Don't forget to give some credit to the JOGL developers too though  It is certainly a great asset of the API's that we use that one can deploy a game on Mac without even testing it first!

Re: loading
Don't get me wrong, from a technical standpoint I thought it very cool, just maybe not so practical

Regarding JNLP, can you load the skins from a given directory?  E.g. a direcotry named "zplax" in the user's home dir.  Also JNLP does create shortcuts.

The ripples did stop for some reason, no error message that I could see (though I didn't have any way to see System.err/System.out.

Will.

[Alistair_Dickie]

Lilian and Will,

Please have a look at the zplax installation directory on your Mac's. Do you have a directory called lib? This should have been where the mac jogl librarys went.

If they are there then I may be referencing the libray path the wrong way. I am not 100% sure how InstallAnywhere does stuff on the mac but I think you should have a file called zplax.lax in the installation directory. These are the settings that are passed to the LaunchAnywhere. You should find a property:

lax.nl.java.option.additional

This should be set to:

-mx256m -Djava.library.path=.:./lib

I think that this is the right way to set the library path on a mac but I am not 100% sure.

Will - you can have a look at System.out and System.err by altering the following properties in the zplax.lax file. From the InstallAnywhere help file:

lax.stdout.redirect
The location of your application's "stdout" output. Set to null to suppress, console to write to a console window, or any file name to output to a file. Note: If you are specifying a path name to a Windows file, make sure to use escaped backslashes (i.e., c:\\myfolder\\output.txt)

lax.stderr.redirect
The location of your application's "stderr" output. Set to null to suppress, console to write to a console window, or any file name to output to a file. Note: If you are specifying a path name to a Windows file, make sure to use escaped backslashes (i.e., c:\\myfolder\\output.txt)

Regards,

Alistair

[Alistair_Dickie]

OK - I succumbed to the pressure and have made it JWS compatible. This has temporarily broken the ability for users to create skins and add them to a skins directory however by the production version there will be a way for dynamic skin additions.

Go here

http://zplax.alistairdickie.com/zplax.jnlp

I have also made a few little changes like dismissing the start-up sequence by clicking, a help file loader and the way scores are temporarily exported.

Regards,

Alistair

[arne]

Hi Alistair_Dickie
I tested your game and it all worked fine until I got an ICQ message. This message totally broke it. I wasn't able to exit the program, or even to call the taskmanager. (i'm using windows) I just had the snapshot of the current state of the game, and nothing happened. At the end I had to restart the computer.

[arne]

I tried it again, but no errors occured

[c_lilian]

JWS doesn't work (Mac)

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: input == null!
     at javax.imageio.ImageIO.read(ImageIO.java:1338)
     at zplax.MySkyBox.<init>(Unknown Source)
     at zplax.ZplaxMain.loadSkins(Unknown Source)
     at zplax.ZplaxMain.<init>(Unknown Source)
     at zplax.Zplax.main(Unknown Source)
     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
     at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:324)
     at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeApplication(Launcher.java:848)
     at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeMainClass(Launcher.java:808)
     at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.continueLaunch(Launcher.java:682)
     at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleApplicationDesc(Launcher.java:397)
     at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleLaunchFile(Launcher.java:199)
     at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.run(Launcher.java:167)
     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:552)

Lilian

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

[arne]

JWS worked for windows

[Alistair_Dickie]

Lilian,

I have changed the way I do some of the image loading and have uploaded a new version. I am not sure this will fix it but if you have the patience please have another try.

Regards,

Alistair

[ewills]

Just a small point  

The water reflection doesn't change when the camera moves.  You can use the TextureAttributes.setTextureTransform(Transform3D t) method to set the texture transform equal to the view transform before each frame is rendered.

[c_lilian]

Lilian,

I have changed the way I do some of the image loading and have uploaded a new version. I am not sure this will fix it but if you have the patience please have another try.

Regards,

Alistair

Same results (i've cleared the JWS cache to ensure having the latest version).

Lilian

[Alistair_Dickie]

ewillis,

Yeah - I do that with the reflection. It is working on my JWS version and when I use the installer on my Windows machine. I did have some trouble when I ran it through proguard but I thought I fixed it. I have more or less given up on proguard. It was breaking too much.

I will be updating the installer tonight. version 1.0 beta3 dated 2 Apr 03 is the current one (see the about screen in the help menu).

Thanks,

Alistair

[Alistair_Dickie]

Maybe someone who is really mac savy can help me out with what is wrong with my image loading so I can get it working for lilian.

I try to find the URL for the image in the jar file like this

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URL imageURL = this.getClass().getResource(filename);       if(imageURL != null){         return imageURL;       }       if (imageURL == null && loader != null) {         loader.getResource(filename);       }       if (imageURL != null) {         return imageURL;       }       else {         try {           imageURL = new URL(filename);           try {             InputStream in = imageURL.openStream();//a hack to see if the URL exists            in.close();             return imageURL;           }           catch (IOException e) {             imageURL = null;           }         }         catch (MalformedURLException e) { //              e.printStackTrace();        }       }

loader is the ClassLoader that loaded the main application. The string (filename)I pass is of the form:

1	skins/standard/data/box/ft.jpg

and this is the location of the image a jar file that is in the classpath. Do I need to use \\ instead of / for a mac? I thought that was just for File's and URL's were standard across all systems?

[blahblahblahh]

Hi Alistair_Dickie
I tested your game and it all worked fine until I got an ICQ message. This message totally broke it. I wasn't able to exit the program, or even to call the taskmanager. (i'm using windows) I just had the snapshot of the current state of the game, and nothing happened. At the end I had to restart the computer.

Almost certainly bugs in your graphics card driver, I would guess.

[William Denniss]

Maybe someone who is really mac savy can help me out with what is wrong with my image loading so I can get it working for lilian.

loader is the ClassLoader that loaded the main application. The string (filename)I pass is of the form:

1	skins/standard/data/box/ft.jpg

and this is the location of the image a jar file that is in the classpath. Do I need to use \\ instead of / for a mac? I thought that was just for File's and URL's were standard across all systems?

Loading resources from .jar files can some times be strange.  I know "strange" doesn't sound very scientific, but sometimes things just don't seem to work how they should.

TextureLoader has an inbuilt method for searching .jar's for a resources.  You can see how it is used from any of the demos (all which work through JWS).  For resources, normally '/' works.  Macs nativly are '/', and URL's are always '/'.  Only windows bucks the trend I think.

Aside:  It's always good to use either System.getProperty("file.separator"), or File.separatorChar when dealing with cross platform paths.

Will.