Cosmic Trip to be released

[erikd]

Hi there,

I'm quite actively developing Cosmic Trip again, since I decided I might as well just go for it and finish it. When all is ready and finished, it will be released by Cas' Puppy Games. I'm very proud of that  
Of course a lot has to be done still but I've made a lot of progress too in the meantime. Mainly in playability, game content and seriously cleaning the code (I deleted many evil premature optimizations, which resulted in much cleaner code. There's no a lot of object creating and deleting in the mainloop for example, and still no GC glitches at all. Kudos to Sun for that!).
The downside is that I won't be updating the version currently online but that one wasn't played much anyway.

Here is some new screenshots to hopefully wet your appetite  








Please note that a lot of graphics will change, because there is still some graphics there that's either ugly or... ahem.. err... ripped from Unreal  

Erik

[princec]

It is looking very beautiful nonetheless I just hope you manage to make it absolutely manic! And mouse controlled.

Cas

[kevglass]

This is great news! I've always found Cosmic Trip inspiring.

Look forward to buying the full version!

Kev

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

[Preston]

Looks very nice. :-)

[Herkules]

LSD?

[erikd]

LSD?

Just a software substitute without the side effects  

[Jens]

Looks a bit like the Descent game series.  

[wiederke]

Hi,

looks GREAT. Keep it up to the end!!!


ciao torsten

[darcone]

I expect you to add those poker playing monsters from Unreal as well!

[erikd]

Just added particle explosions, plus one more baddy
However, I think I'll be rewriting some parts to make it use the latest LWJGL before adding more content.
That will also mean creating the GLU functions CT still uses...

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

[oNyx]

If you add a bit more freedom to move you can easily make a game like Starfox (aka Starwing) from SNES/N64

Oh and the screenshots look pretty sweet

[erikd]

If you add a bit more freedom to move you can easily make a game like Starfox (aka Starwing) from SNES/N64  

It's a good idea, but it will surely complicate things. I'm not very good at 3D math and AI and stuff, see?  
First I'd like to make this a fun (if maybe technically simple) game.
But maybe something for Cosmic Trip 2?

Oh and the screenshots look pretty sweet  

Thank you (and everybody who commented)

[erikd]

Little update:

* added mouse control
* added a config for keyboard set-up, screen set-up and such.
* added some multi-texturing (really improved the look of many things  )
* rewrote some parts in the scene management to use ArrayList and Collections.sort(), but that was a disaster: Things got really slow and choppy and even more so if you played longer. I think I could have gotten around it by implementing my own List but decided to simply go back to the old code using 'good-ole' arrays, which worked pretty well already (if somewhat less clean). I probably will implement my own List if I were to start from scratch with a new game though and see how it goes.

Just to let you know it's not dead already  

Erik

[princec]

ArrayList is good enough, the problem is the very generic quicksort algorithm implementation in Collections.sort(). Radixsort would probably be best for you as you're pretty much guaranteed of its execution time and the implementation I use is much, much, much faster than Collections.sort().

Cas

[erikd]

ArrayList was spending a lot of time in RangeCheck(index). Maybe Collections.sort() caused that, but for now with the old code, all is well.

[erikd]

Ok, I've played the game way too much and I totally lost sense of what the experience is like to anybody else but me
So I need play testers to see if it's not too difficult, not too dull, to see what I need to add, change etc.
If you're interested, mail me.

Erik

[jaigouk]

looks great!! hope to see your game soon.

[erikd]

There is a 3 level demo available at
http://www.mycgiserver.com/~movegaga/cosmictrip.jnlp

It supports windows, linux and mac.
Due to the current web start issue on the mac lwjgl version, it most probably won't work on mac. Mac users could try to d/l the jnlp and download the jars mentioned in the jnlp file manually...

Controls:
cursors : menu
enter : select
mouse : steer
mouse button 1 : shoot
mouse button 2/TAB : change view
A/Z : speed

Locally, a directory .cosmictrip is created with a .config.xml file. You can change some settings there, such as vsync on/off and the preferred video mode.

Erik

[Orangy Tang]

The new collision spark effect looks much better Could perhaps do with a few more triangles though (changed in a detail setting if needed?).

[elias]

hmm, it doesn't quite work here. It runs, switches mode, but nothing shows up. I can quit on esc though, and the game looks responsive from the logs:

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36

Game starting. Init config... Loading config...Ok. Entering set-up... Failed to choose preferred display mode, falling back to any mode:1024 x 768 x 24 @0Hz /data/ship1.jpg /data/txtr17-256.jpg /data/smoke5.png /data/flare2.png /data/expl_0.png /data/expl_1.png /data/expl_2.png /data/expl_3.png /data/expl_4.png /data/expl_5.png /data/expl_6.png /data/expl_7.png /data/expl_8.png /data/expl_9.png /data/target.png /data/score.png /data/level.png /data/dist.png /data/fuel.png /data/19x16Lucida.png /data/ct.png /data/menu.png /data/flare3.png /data/difficulty.png /data/bgrad.png Loop ended. >killWLWindow() Mouse destroyed. Keyboard destroyed. GL destroyed. Game Ended.

I'm on a SuSE 9 with latest nvidia drivers (GF FX go)

- elias

[erikd]

hmm, I have absolutely no idea  
It used to work on linux before...
IIRC, you are limited in choosing the video on linux as they are kind of 'fixed' which is why CT falls back to any video mode it can find. Could you maybe try to set your video mode to either 16 or 32 bits? (I never trust 24 bits for some reason  )

[zparticle]

On a Win2k box with and Intel graphics card: Changes mode then just sits there with a black screen. Randomly hit the arrow keys and enter. Got into the game, very jerky (no surprise on this card). Hit escape and the machine locked up, had to pull the power cord.

[erikd]

any logs?

[zparticle]

Not that I can find, sorry.

[Matzon]

worked fine on my xp box - however got a black screen first, which I pushed a lot of buttons first - and then it displayed itself. Worked fine, though the mouse movement is a bit oddish/jerky ?

[erikd]

JWS application manager has an option to write a log. I'd hate to ask to crash your machine again though  

[erikd]

worked fine on my xp box - however got a black screen first, which I pushed a lot of buttons first - and then it displayed itself. Worked fine, though the mouse movement is a bit oddish/jerky ?

Maybe I should add a 'loading...' screen.
Dunno about the mouse movement. It's quite smooth here... What do you mean by 'oddish'?

[EgonOlsen]

Doesn't work. Here's the log (Radeon 9700pro, Cat4.2 drivers, Win XP):

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27

Maybe selecting mode 800 x 600 x 32 @70Hz Maybe selecting mode 800 x 600 x 16 @60Hz Maybe selecting mode 800 x 600 x 32 @85Hz Maybe selecting mode 800 x 600 x 32 @60Hz java.lang.Exception: Problem starting loop       at net.movegaga.BaseWindow.start(BaseWindow.java:223)       at net.movegaga.GameWindow.main(GameWindow.java:309)       at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)       at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)       at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)       at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)       at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeApplication(Unknown Source)       at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeMainClass(Unknown Source)       at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.continueLaunch(Unknown Source)       at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleApplicationDesc(Unknown Source)       at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleLaunchFile(Unknown Source)       at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.run(Unknown Source)       at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.lang.Exception: Problem initialising GL       at net.movegaga.BaseWindow.createGLWindow(BaseWindow.java:173)       at net.movegaga.BaseWindow.start(BaseWindow.java:186)       ... 12 more Caused by: java.lang.Exception: Failed to set display mode.       at org.lwjgl.Display.setDisplayMode(Native Method)       at net.movegaga.BaseWindow.createGLWindow(BaseWindow.java:154)       ... 13 more Game Ended.

In my own LWJGL stuff, i can set 800*600*32bpp @ 85Hz without a problem.

[elias]

Well, 24 bit colors _are_ the linux way of saying 32 bits per pixel. I'm suspecting that you draw the menu (or whatever) too close to the near view plane, since the controls seem to work. And depending on z buffer precision the menu might suddenly disappear.

- elias

[erikd]

Well, 24 bit colors _are_ the linux way of saying 32 bits per pixel. I'm suspecting that you draw the menu (or whatever) too close to the near view plane, since the controls seem to work. And depending on z buffer precision the menu might suddenly disappear.

Linux's got a funny way of saying things  
Let me check z clip thing, although it would surprise me that is in fact the problem. I've tested on my work PC with intel video, and I have the same problem with the black screen instead of menu (pressing enter in the black screen puts you in the game), where before I didn't have any problems.

In my own LWJGL stuff, i can set 800*600*32bpp @ 85Hz without a problem.

But can you set 800*600*32@60 without a problem? It crashes on Display.setDisplayMode(mode).

worked fine on my xp box - however got a black screen first

Did you see the menu?

Thanks for testing guys, it seems it only works fine on my PC and Orangy Tang's (maybe Matzon's too, although I'm not very happy with the black screen) which is a pretty embarrassing score.

Back to the drawing board :-)

Erik