Free super ultra limited beta keys inside!

[Kharinde]

Free Super Ultra Limited Beta Keys Inside

Well, not really... What that link does contain though, is a .ZIP file contraining the first prototype/beta test of an 'oldschool' sidescrolling platform game I've been working on for a while now (single Windows .exe only, no Mac port I'm affraid). It's essentially my personal homage to classics such as Megaman and Castlevania.

Preview images

Not everything is equally polished yet; Player movement in the water is still very experimental and doesn't behave like I want it to, and there's also no 'player death' animation yet (just a full reset upon death), among other things... But this testlevel is fully playable nonetheless, there's even 4 different weapons to toy with!

And while everything so far runs smooth on my own system, I've not had the chance to test performance on others. This is where you all come in

It'd be awesome if some of you could try it out and provide me some feedback. This is the very first playable release, so basically all/any comments are welcome, but what I'm interested in most is simply "how does it run"?
Level design and more complex game mechanics are in the works, but before I continue on that, it'd be good to know the basic engine at least runs as expected.

The game requires DirectX 9 and a videocard capable of handing PS 3.0 pixel shaders, but seeing how you're all playing WoW I don't think this should be a problem. Currently it only runs at 800x600 pixels, windowed or fullscreen (switching between the two only works at runtime, not during the intro screen, and doing so causes a few seconds of horrible lag), but other resolutions are planned for future versions too.
If all goes well, the game should run smoothly at 60fps V-synced (excluding the temporary minor dip in fps upon changing areas, but that's simply cause I've not put in any pre-loading yet).

But I think I've rambled on too long already, so just download the thing, be amazed by my awesome pixel art, and let me know! 

Enjoy,
K.

P.S. Since it's only a single test level, it doesn't end when you've seen and done everything there is to do. Apologies for the anticlimax.

P.P.S. Even though the jetpack is fully functional, I've disabled it in this version since it made things far too easy (and it's not all that hard to begin with yet!)

P.P.P.S. Aside from toggling the music on and off, there's no audio controls (aka volume) yet, so you might wanna turn down the speakers a little 

[Selassie]

It's running perfectly for me. Oh... funny little detail I just noticed: the robot keeps shooting while I'm typing, but only spacebar seem to trigger when the window isn't focused.

Curios geek want to know tech details:
are you using some kind of 2d game engine? Allegro or something?

[Selassie]

OMG Daleks!!!!

[Skraa]

Works mostly fine with my computer*. One small issue I noticed before 5th(?) room: fullscreen mode has the usual problem with desktop extended to two monitors, and there needs to be also "windowed-fullscreen" mode to fix that problem.

RAM usage ~81MB (~105MB according to ProcessExplorer) and CPU usage jumping in 5-9% range.

* Win7, i5-2500K, GTX460, 4GB RAM

[Selassie]

Fullscreen works for me with 2 monitors. They're diffrent sizes and aspect ratios though.

[Katimi]

Shall endeavour to give this a quick play at some point on Friday!

[Hookgab]

After a quick play, I'm running @ 17 FPS, but the controls kinda make the game unplayable. I'm experiencing horrible lag, of about 500+ ms.

Processor usage is ~8-12%, and RAM ~70-80MB.

Specs:

Win7
Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2GHz
Integrated Graphics Card (X3100 or GMA965)
2 GB of RAM

[Rowain]

Nice!

Runs fine on my comp, CPU usage between 10-25, fps capped at 60, memory usage 80.

Core2 8400 (3 GHz, 6 MB cache)
AMD 5770 1 Gb


off question for Skraa: I'm planning to upgrade to i5-2500 but decided to delay because of the bug. Is it fixed by now?

[Skraa]

off question for Skraa: I'm planning to upgrade to i5-2500 but decided to delay because of the bug. Is it fixed by now?

Sadly not yet, but I'm perfectly happy with the current computer. Framerate in 25-man raids doubled from 3-core Phenom (playing at mixed high/ultra video settings).

[Eramor]

Runs nice and smooth on my comp with dualscreen.

AMD Phenom II X4 955
Ati Radeon HD 4890

Edit: First crash! Woohoo!

[Kharinde]

Glad to see people trying it out

It never even occured to me to run a 800x600 game on dual screens haha. I'll have to look into making it display properly on multiple screens, but that's hardly a priority issue.

Good to hear most people are getting steady framerates so far though.

I'm running @ 17 FPS, but the controls kinda make the game unplayable.

Given your dual-core with 2Gb ram (which should be plenty for this little game), I suspect your integrated vid card may not be all that fond of the pixel shaders.
For the next test version I think I will compile two executables, one using the shaders, the other without them, to gauge the performance diff.

As for the controls making it "unplayable"; do you mean you find the actual control layout (space, x, z & cursors) annoying, or were you merely referring to the horrible framerates?

I do intend to give the final version customizable controls, but again that's not really a priority issue right now.

Also, the memory usage people are noting is kinda on the high side for such a small proggy, I know. I hadn't optimised all of the sprites yet, and all the sound and music is still uncompressed. Should be able to chip off tens of Mb's once I get around to optimising.

Oh... funny little detail I just noticed: the robot keeps shooting while I'm typing, but only spacebar seem to trigger when the window isn't focused.

Yeah I noticed this too, and frankly it's puzzling me quite a bit. None of the controls should respond when the window's not in focus, and I have no idea why the spacebar refuses to obey this simple rule.

OMG Daleks!!!!

You noticed

First crash! Woohoo!

Did anything in particular seem to cause this crash?

In any event, thanks for all the feedback so far. My I idea for now is to try and not become too ambitious. Think I will stick with maybe 5 levels, each having 5 to 10 individual areas, and polish those up the best I can. I'm still not sure what the goal of each level should be though. Right now there's only the crystals to collect, but it seems kinda boring to make that the only goal. I need to think of more collectables, power-ups, items, etc. Also... end bosses. And more animated bits in the (still very static) background. Back to the drawing board!

K.

[Rowain]

Oh forgot: here it crashes every time when I exit using ESC.

[Hookgab]

Given your dual-core with 2Gb ram (which should be plenty for this little game), I suspect your integrated vid card may not be all that fond of the pixel shaders.
For the next test version I think I will compile two executables, one using the shaders, the other without them, to gauge the performance diff.

Yeah. My thoughts exactly. I'm suspecting that it has some problem with the shaders.

As for the controls making it "unplayable"; do you mean you find the actual control layout (space, x, z & cursors) annoying, or were you merely referring to the horrible framerates?

My bad. I wanted to say that the lag makes the game unplayable, not the controls (grr). The controls (space, x,y,arrows) are quite enjoyable, so no need to bother yourself with implementing the layout change yet (it's cool at least from my perspective).

[Eramor]

Did anything in particular seem to cause this crash?

Not really, happened when changing screen, and I was unable to get it to crash again etc.