MegaCorps Online - Java FPS with realti

[khashayar]

Hi everybody

We've just released the first beta of our tactical multiplayer online FPS. It features some cool effects like real-time shadows, dynamic lighting, bump maps and other state-of-the-art stuff that we can hopefully see more of in the future...

Feel free to download, try and get back to us with comments and suggestions.


http://www.megacorpsonline.com

Khashayar

[Herkules]

First glance here at work .... doesn't run at all on NT4, unable so start on XP (menu issues somehow).

But we don't have GF3 cards here of course.

Will try again at home .... ah shit ... GF2 there only! No way to run on a GF2?

[blahblahblahh]

Where's the requirements?

And how come no webstart?

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

[khashayar]

I've tried it at home on my GF2 and it works... kind of... Actually it should not start becouse of "CG Error", but when I tried it I could run around with strange looking white/bright shadows... Tried it on GF3 with almost the same result but then the shadows went completly black... In both cases it sholud give CG Error. I'm guessing maybe some drivers allow you to run anyway.

Strange that it didn't work on NT4 and XP. It's been tested on XP and 2K. I even tested it on a fresh XP installation with Java just to make sure that it would work. Maybe there is some issues with differing versions of OpenAL32.dll in the system32 directory.

You can find the requirements and some troubleshooting in the manual (pdf document).

This is a very early beta (more of a tech-demo)... next beta (comming after the summer I would guess) will have fixed the bugs in the menus and also have Java Webstart

Thanks for your input. Keep it comming  

[tom]

Lots of z-fighting and rendering artifacts on my radeon 9500 pro.

[Herkules]

The reason for 'no NT4' is quite obvious. No DX8!

For the XP problems *here* I really suspect the graphics card is the reason. Some Intel thing ... but typical for 'business' machines.

Even FlyingGuns with its very decent hardware requirements doesn't run too quick here (~20FPS).

[jojoh]

Looks very promising!

Sound version did not work, and did not find any different OpenAL32.dll...

I also saw a lot of gfx artefacts, and some strange things that looked like z-buffer problems and something that looked like black reflections(?) in the walls. Mostly in large rooms.

Running on an IBM laptop with Radeon 7500.

Will try it on my up to spec machine at home later.

Just fix those problems and add bots and physics a la Half Life2 and you have a winner  

Keep up the good work!

[Flynn]

Impressive: Same problems here concerning Z fighting and Texture anomalies this might help

Spec:
Athlon XP 2400+  
1.5 GB
XP sp1
Radeon 9200

1   2   3   4   5   6   7

[A9PortalNode]-> Starting in: greenroom Building VBO LOADING VERTEX SHADER: data/skugg_vertex.cg A9GLCGVertexShader()::init()::PROFILE_VP20 CG ERROR : The profile is not supported. Reseting 13.0972 Reseting 13.1616

[silentx]

Looks VERY good, and you're website is awesome. Couldn't seem to connect to my server I started though, I click connect and nothing happens. If this was Web-started, I think I would have a new favorite game. Blah I think it's your turn  

[Tomas]

Quick note on the spec.

MCO only works with graphic hardware that support programbale vertex shaders. That is in nvidia terms GF3, GF4 (GF4MX not supported), GFFX. We have not tried it on ATI hardware but it should work on all systems that supports VP20 profile. (Radeon 9800 ?!?! ).  

Check for the following errors on the console:
A9GLCGVertexShader()::init()::PROFILE_VP20
CG ERROR : The profile is not supported.

The sound support is VERY Beta, and might not work on all systems. Try the nosound .bat file.

Webstart, fullscreen and will be available in the comming releases, stay tuned.

Have Fun

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

[erikd]

Looks very promising!
I couldn't make out any bump mapping though (on a GF4) and yes, (like you mentioned) the framerate isn't very consistent at first. But later the fps gets good (~75fps).
It looks very cool. Maybe it could look even better if your bullets would be light sources as well?
Collision detection seems a bit erratic sometimes (the mentioned stairs, but also when you bump into for example a desk in that office room, there are slow downs).

Any chance there will be a public server so we can test online play?

[erikd]

Oh wait, I think I see the bump mapping. A bit hard to see when there are no moving lights I think.

Some other things I noticed  (couldn't test multiplay here):
- I didn't see shadows from myself
- Mouse is a bit laggy
- You jump fairly high compared to your movement speed.
- You move a bit slow
- You fall a bit fast
- A bit of head bobbing would be nice :-)
- Some places are a bit too dark
- you can't jump in quick succession

[Bombadil]

With my Radeon9600 I just see dark fonts on dark background so I can't read most of the text in the game menu and so no chance to start play I'm afraid...
Will scan the console to see what kind of errors are being printed (if any).

[SpuTTer]

If you dont start a server and put in the correct join IP it will crash when it tries to connect. You should catch those network errors and allow it to try again or just time out.

Game is looking awesome! Keep it up!

[swpalmer]

Climbing stairs is difficult - just  hit the first step and slide over and walk past them.

The mouse tracking is bad - you can see this with the mouse curosr in the menus, ocassional it flickers backwards from the direction you are moving the mouse.

Contrast seems ultra high - very bright stuff, very dark stuff.

Frame rate is poor and inconsistent usually < 30 fps.   This may be the graphics hardware..  The machine is a dual 2.4GHz or something,  There is a Geforce card in it, but I forget which model (not at that machine now).

[Herkules]

What I feel a bit bad about is that good'ol Q3 runs with 200fps on this kind of machines.... and somehow looks better.....

[darkprophet]

Render Artifacts:



Machine Specs:
P4 2.26Ghz, 512 DDR RAM, Radeon 9200 256Mb VRam

This is a pretty high spec machine for anygame to be honest, CoD runs v. well on this. So does Moh, so does all the GTA range.

[Tomas]

MCO note:

Seems that this release have problems with ATI based cards.
The artifacts is due to that ATI does not seem to support ARB_VP20 which I find odd.  The light/shadow algorithms are 100% dependent on vertexshaders.

Anyone with shader experience and ATI ? Which vertex shader profiles are supported by ATI.

Has anybody with Nvidia  >GF3  had any problems with artifacts ?

Happy testing

Tomas
CTO Agency9

[BugBear]

We're using multiarb for Ground FX and it works fine on an ATI card.

[silentx]

OK I got it to work, I just had to host the server on another machine and it worked. Got 30 - 74 fps on my: p4 2.8, 512, geforce fx 5900. It looked really good, and I tried it on my p4 1.8, 256, geforce mx 400 ( ), turns out it ran!! got a pretty decent (compared to my fx 5900) 14 - 20 fps. The stairs are funny  

[blackbull]

[Evil-Devil]

wow, nice one. fps were moderate and jumping around from 20 to 70. Most time i got ~50fps. But the shadow artifacts are really anoying.
The jumphigh is ok, but the jumpspeed is to high. Even the walkspeed should be more applied to the jump. I feel like i only jump into the high and not forward even if it wasn't.
The Trailer movie wasn't played and i got no menu music. And i was only able to see some of the menu subtitles, so i had to tryout which value stands for what...

My Specs:
AMD Ahlon XP 2400+
Creative SB Live! 1024 Value
Radeon 9600 XT
Win XP Pro - DX9b

[khashayar]

New version of Megacorps Online is now available for your enjoyment.

It's got Webstart so get in there and start playing.  

Most of the game has been rewritten and the game platform Megacorps Online has grown really stable. Also AgentFX 2 Platform the 3D-engine powering the game has made some real cool progress on the gaming market... more info about that will hopefully be available soon.

Some of the updates offered in this release:

• Highly improved FPS and performance
  
• Much, much faster loading
  
• The character cast his own shadow
  
• Webstart system, just click and play
  
• Highly increased network capacity
  
• Improved mouse handling
  
• Mouse sensitivity settings
  
• Improved Linux and ATI support
  
• Fullscreen mode (not supported in X-Windows)
  
• New menu system
  
• New level, designed for action death-match
  

http://www.megacorpsonline.com

/Khashayar

[blahblahblahh]

It's got Webstart so get in there and start playing.  

Send us a JGF submission ?

[khashayar]

Comming right up...
Just give me some hours and I'll get it to you

/Khashayar

[Inquisitor]

Very nice, ran nearly perfectly on my oldish computer (1200mhz, radeon 8500).

You really should add an invert mouse option, even though it's a preview version.
Oh and the loading-image/text appeared upside down.

[Hansdampf]

nice!
chasing and shooting my shadow, I noticed that my left arm didn't move.
Looks like my shadow cries for some foes  

[dranonymous]

Maybe move this to the 'Your games here' forum, since you're getting lots of feedback on hardware issues.  

I ran it on my 1.3ghz laptop/512/ATI mobility U1 graphics.  The first time, I got a white screen after starting the server.

I reran it after closing some apps down, I think I had an out of memory issue.

This time I got graphics, 0fps, and 100% cpu.  After a bit, cpu dropped to normal but nothing happened.  Below is a clip from the JWS log -

A9MC2Game]->  ### SpawnPoint: tower  index:3  P:{-4.0,6.8,-4.0}
ShadowNode()::Update()
ShadowNode()::Update()
[A9PortalNode]-> Starting in: tower
net.java.games.jogl.GLException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
     at net.java.games.jogl.GLCanvas.displayImpl(GLCanvas.java:205)
     at net.java.games.jogl.GLCanvas.display(GLCanvas.java:75)
     at com.agency9.megacorps.game.A9MC2Game.run(DashOB8605)
     at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
     at java.awt.EventQueue.invokeAndWait(Unknown Source)
     at net.java.games.jogl.GLCanvas.displayImpl(GLCanvas.java:203)
     ... 3 more
Caused by: net.java.games.jogl.GLException: Method "glGenBuffersARB" not available
     at net.java.games.jogl.impl.windows.WindowsGLImpl.glGenBuffersARB(WindowsGLImpl.java:8199)
     at com.agency9.render.peer.jogl.A9IndexGeometryBufferPeerImpl.buildVertexBuffer(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.peer.jogl.A9IndexGeometryBufferPeerImpl.enable(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.geometry.A9StaticIndexTriangleGeometryBuffer.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.geometry.A9GeometryNode.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.A9Node.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.A9Node.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.light.A9LightNode.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.A9Node.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.agentfx.portal.A9PortalNode.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.A9Node.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.transform.A9TransformNode.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.agentfx.camera.A9Camera.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.A9Node.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.shader.A9ShaderNode.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.A9Node.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.buffer.A9BufferNode.render(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.megacorps.game.A9MC2Game.INGAME(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.megacorps.game.A9MC2Game.display(DashOB8605)
     at com.agency9.render.A9RenderFactory$A9GLRenderEventManager.display(DashOB8605)
     at net.java.games.jogl.impl.GLDrawableHelper.display(GLDrawableHelper.java:74)
     at net.java.games.jogl.GLCanvas$DisplayAction.run(GLCanvas.java:221)
     at net.java.games.jogl.impl.GLContext.invokeGL(GLContext.java:290)
     at net.java.games.jogl.GLCanvas$DisplayOnEventDispatchThreadAction.run(GLCanvas.java:238)
     at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(Unknown Source)
     at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForHierarchy(Unknown Source)
     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(Unknown Source)
     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(Unknown Source)


Please don't say my video card is too junky.  Its a laptop and I can't upgrade.  

HTH,
Dr. A>

PS - If it is my card, it would be nice if you had a simple test button that showed whatever openGL features were needed and tried to make an openGL view using said feature.  You could check for exceptions and know the mode was available.

[Tomas]

Your video card is too junky.  

The reason for the crash is that your drivers do not support VBO. Try to upgrade your OpenGL. If that don't work your are out of luck  :-/

Better error handling is due in the comming weeks. Stay tuned.

All comments, working or non-working, are welcome. So please let us know.

// Tomas
CTO Agency9

[selendic]

Me on Linux, Suse 9.1, Nvidia. Strange problem, game starts, lets me choose the host, opens the main window with those upside-down "loading" letters, and dies with:

Exception in thread "Thread-22" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /home/neko/.java/deployment/cache/javaws/http/Dwww.megacorpsonline.com/P80/DMdownloads/DMlib/RNjogl-natives-linux.jar/libjogl_cg.so: libCg.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
     at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method).... (tell me if you need more of trace)

Strange, because those files seem to be there.