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SpeedHack post-releases
Bruce Perry
Member #270
April 2000

Lean forwards (up arrow), and thus point yourself down. As you start to fall, the air flow from front to back will generate lift, countering gravity. Since you are aimed slightly down, the lift force will be in a slightly forwards direction, thus you accelerate forwards. :)

You start on top of a rising air column, which is powerful enough to prevent you from falling initially. Once you leave that, you will have to keep speed up or else you'll fall (and restart the lap). Also, the more you point yourself down, the faster you'll descend. You will notice this when you first leave the air column, and you'll have to adjust by leaning back (down arrow).

Sorry the readme was so brief. I had about twenty minutes to write it at the end. :)

--
Bruce "entheh" Perry [ Web site | DUMB | Set Up Us The Bomb !!! | Balls ]
Programming should be fun. That's why I hate C and C++.
The brxybrytl has you.

Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
avatar

Quote:

OscarG's has a problem... you have to use grabber and open his data file, then extract the 2 pngs and put them in the same dir with the exe, then you can play (I had to hack his src to find that)

That's fixed in the version I posted in my last post :)

He probably didn't comment mine because it sucks :P (IMO it's not the game itself that sucks, but the track I provide, because it's too fast. I must do one with more turns, should be much better).

Anyway, forgot about something in the other post. As I mentioned I added joypad support, but I did it blindly (not joypad here), so I'm not sure if the controls are correct. Anyone would be so kind to test it? :)

[edit]
for that, open allegro.cfg and change the line player1 = keyb1 to player1 = joy1

kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002

Bruce Perry said:

Lean forwards (up arrow), and thus point yourself down. As you start to fall, the air flow from front to back will generate lift, countering gravity. Since you are aimed slightly down, the lift force will be in a slightly forwards direction, thus you accelerate forwards.

Yes! Got it working now! Great game! Real innovative! It´s hard in the turns though, but a game should be sort of hard. Do you manage to not miss any holes yourself?

I haven´t tried hang-gliding, i have parachuted though (by myself) and i guess it´s pretty similar in the handling. There where no rings to fly through the (two) times i parachuted though so it´s hard to compare. ;)

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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Oscar: I will test it now with my psx controller ;)

[edit] to make the binary zip for here, i only have stock speedhack source. can you post the config file in a code box for me>

Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
avatar

The config file is included in the zip. Anyway:

[game]
language = en.txt
player1 = joy1
player2 = keyb2
player3 = joy1
player4 = joy2

This way player 1 will use first joypad. In theory, buttons A and B shouls accelerate/break (this should work), and you should be able to turn with left/right (I'm not so sure about this, maybe the movement is inverted, or even worse, it's up/down instead of left/right).

Note: the readme explains this :)

Zaphos
Member #1,468
August 2001

FrankyR: is that music legit? It sounds rather like the "raindrops keep falling on my head" tune written for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Getting stuck in the clouds is a definite worry; maybe it should just tell the player they lose when the other guy wins, instead of waiting for both to finish? It's a cool game aside from that; very light fun, and the graphics are awesome :)

And kentl skipped The [Someword] Virus, too ... sadness.

Edit: Oh, and BAF: Teams are covered in the speedhack FAQ; yes they are allowed. If they weren't, you couldn't have done your project with Peitz, right?

FrankyR
Member #243
April 2000
avatar

Well, about the music...
I just ripped that from some midi site. I'll change it in the future, I just thought it was sooo perfect for the stress-free requirement.

kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002

Zaphose said:
kentl skipped The [Someword] Virus, too ... sadness.

Now i don´t follow.. Which word is that? :o (if you are referring to misspellings i am all past that! which != witch && zaphos == zaphose ;))

[append]Oh! I got all sensitive about my spelling! I guess my post is so very funny that i will leave it alone anyway! ;) (yes! It´s time to turn on the flamethrower :-[)

Bruce Perry
Member #270
April 2000

kentl, thanks :)

Quote:

Do you manage to not miss any holes yourself?

I can do it; I just completed two laps without missing any hoops. It took some practice to be able to do that though, and I tend to miss if I approach a turn while wearing a jetpack. :)

How are you faring against the computer players? I'm finding I shoot off ahead every time now, and I thought they were more competent than that. :-/

I'm gradually making my way through the plethora of games. So far I've tried four ...

Elias, Allefant 2. Given the rafts' inertia, I would like to be able to see further ahead so I can turn earlier to avoid buoys, collect power-ups and avoid power-downs. The camera did zoom out further when I didn't need it to, and then I saw the perimeter 'pop in and out of existence'. But the game is original and nicely presented and runs smoothly, and I love the soundtrack. ;D

Inphernic, Duckie Dash. Nice idea. It was all a bit sameish, but that's nothing more features couldn't fix; do carry on working on it. It could do with some more cues as to how it works; as I understand it, collecting certain power-ups allows you to go faster? Also I think the computer players cheat by turning faster than I can turn; see if you can make them follow the same physics as the player, though I know it's hard to make it a challenge (see my game for example). I love the way the duckie markers proceed up the right-hand side of the screen as the duckies reach the checkpoints. ;D ;D ;D

Baffles, Relaze. Easy to get into and very moreish. I agree those freezes are annoying, but otherwise it's good. It's well presented, with text to indicate what the power-vertical [up/down] you just collected did. And kudos for the maze generation algorithm.

Ricardo Staudt, Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? Great! The code is a bit iffy (e.g. including .c files, which confuses the person trying to compile it) but nevertheless it's well implemented and very funny. I lose every time. :)

[EDIT]
kentl, (Zaphos and Goodbytes' entry) is called The [Someword] Virus. [EDIT #3: added brackets to aid parsing!]

[EDIT #2]
Oh, I also tried out Gnatinator's entry DJ Space Racer, but it crashes randomly and frequently. I'm waiting for a bug-fix release, because it looks fun ...

--
Bruce "entheh" Perry [ Web site | DUMB | Set Up Us The Bomb !!! | Balls ]
Programming should be fun. That's why I hate C and C++.
The brxybrytl has you.

kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002

Zaphos: I checked out your game now! I missed it when i went through the list. It was good! The enemies made me smile! They are so damn good looking! ;) One suggestion could be to have some kind of floor color and a sky color / picture. So that the walls doesn´t seem to "float" as much.. Otherwise what can i say, impressive as hell! ;D

Bruce Perry: The computer players still race away from me, i have some trouble handling the glider still. But i bet that i can outrace them soon enough! :) The psycadelic patterns together with the music really sets a mood for the game!

Bruce Perry
Member #270
April 2000

You will be offered more power-ups if you fall behind. The idea is to keep the players quite close together so the game could turn around at any point (Magnet contributes to this too). Which makes it all the more embarrassing that the computer players can do so badly. :-/

If anyone gets a chance to play with another person, let me know how it goes :)

--
Bruce "entheh" Perry [ Web site | DUMB | Set Up Us The Bomb !!! | Balls ]
Programming should be fun. That's why I hate C and C++.
The brxybrytl has you.

Zaphos
Member #1,468
August 2001

Lohr: I would so love a version of your game in which one does not have to go back to the beginning after losing a 'level' -- it's an awesome game :), but it's hard and that makes it a bit repetetive.

kentl: Yay, thanks! About the sky: I had meant to add that, but somehow managed to forget entirely. One of those "I'll just leave that out until the key parts of the engine are done" ideas gone wrong ... oops!
Maybe we should have just done a starscape background. That would at least explain the title screen sometimes reading "The Space Virus" ... :)

Edit: Oh, in case anyone is playing the official windows binary version, it starts at level 2, presumably because the person who uploaded it (Matthew?) played two levels. So ... select "restart" instead of "continue" if you want to start at the beginning (a very fine place to start). Normally it would just say "Play" the first time you loaded it up.

Bruce Perry
Member #270
April 2000

Yay, I found another bug in my entry! It ignores the number of laps you request and goes for two laps! ::)

If anyone can be bothered, open game.cpp, add the header "options.h" [EDIT: not above common.h], and in game.setNumLaps(2) near the end, change 2 to Options::numLaps. I've updated the two downloads linked in my first post.

There is another 'bug' whereby jetpack exhaust particles 'fall' upwards, but after a while I decided I liked it. Fire does rise. :)

--
Bruce "entheh" Perry [ Web site | DUMB | Set Up Us The Bomb !!! | Balls ]
Programming should be fun. That's why I hate C and C++.
The brxybrytl has you.

Inphernic
Member #1,111
March 2001

Quote:

Inphernic, Duckie Dash. Nice idea. It was all a bit sameish, but that's nothing more features couldn't fix; do carry on working on it.

Thanks. I had all sorts of features planned, such as obstacles and ground, but didn't really get that far. Shooting was in for a while, but I decided it wouldn't really be all that relaxing to include an element of violence. ;D

Quote:

It could do with some more cues as to how it works; as I understand it, collecting certain power-ups allows you to go faster?

Yeah. There's also a manual which goes over everything in the manual directory (although it might contain so many typos that it's unreadable). :)

Quote:

Also I think the computer players cheat by turning faster than I can turn; see if you can make them follow the same physics as the player, though I know it's hard to make it a challenge (see my game for example).

I was already about to say that they do, but was tempted to check it out from the code after all (shows you how good my memory is :)). You're partially right. They can perform a big turn (180 deg) 2-3 times faster than the player. On the other hand, they can be about ~1.5 times slower when doing a <90 deg turn - whereas the player turning rate is constant. But, if the turn is >90 deg, they also slow down a bit so that they won't do a big arc. Oh, and they also accelerate a little bit slower than the player. :)

It is somewhat possible to follow their movements with correct timing (or was during playtesting) and win the race, but one mistake can cause the horde to zoom right in front of you. Life ain't easy in the Duckie realm, at least not when the horde is searching for a new alpha male. ;D

Quote:

I love the way the duckie markers proceed up the right-hand side of the screen as the duckies reach the checkpoints.

Thanks again. :)

edit:

I'll also put up some preliminary reviews on this thread when I get back home.

Zaphos
Member #1,468
August 2001

Bruce: I think I'm getting the hang of your game! It is Very Cool, especially, now that able to play decently. The version you didn't provide seems to be less efficient, and hangs for maybe half a second on occassion, which is strange because it doesn't seem like the game is doing anything too intensive, but is probably just something weird on the side of the person who made the zipfile.
Also, I was playing your version & just spinning around for a while after it told me I won (:)) and then it exited without a peep. Is that supposed to happen, or is it a crash? In the context it wasn't clear.

Bruce Perry
Member #270
April 2000

If it exited completely, it's a crash - unless you somehow pressed Esc twice in quick succession. It should however return to the menu five seconds after the last player finishes the race.

--
Bruce "entheh" Perry [ Web site | DUMB | Set Up Us The Bomb !!! | Balls ]
Programming should be fun. That's why I hate C and C++.
The brxybrytl has you.

Arron Shutt
Member #935
January 2001
avatar

I'm working my way through the official entries for rule compliance at the moment. You'll have to bear with me, as I have a heavy workload on at the moment (I've cancelled two days off because I can't really take time off), but I'll try and get through them all.

As for declaring a SpeedHack whiner..er..winner, well..you can decide that amongst yourselves. There's no prize, but I guess that you can hoist the winner aloft up on your collective virtual shoulders and parade him or her through the streets of allegro.cc if you like ;)

Krzysztof Kluczek
Member #4,191
January 2004
avatar

Maybe we should have some voting system as soon as possible (voting system != website - I mean just how to review games and how votes will be counted). Everybody will probably look at other games but I guess not many people would return to them later. I think I could review at least some of them (if not all) but I simply don't know how review should look like. :)

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
avatar

if there isn't going to be a voting system here, i can throw one together on my site they everyone can use :)

http://www.allegro.cc/forums/view_thread.php?_id=375511#target The only change with that is a couple lines of code to update dumb less often, letting it run on slower computers. Also an option to turn of music so it will run on even slower computers.

As for the official binaries package, I made that and before i deleted the .o's and .exe's i played it (it was compiled with allegro 4.1.14, I had to downgrade to make the thing.)

Anyway, the copy of that package at http://baf.is-a-geek.com:14464/misc/sh2004winbins.zip is fixed for the right level, and when Matthew copies it back over here it should work again.

james_lohr
Member #1,947
February 2002

Quote:

What usually happens is someone, Matthew or Arron, compiles and re-release all the entries in a collective zip file or list them all at some page. Then the voting begins

That sounds like a good idea! At least then people will play all of them before voting.

Quote:

It looks like nothing happens if i tap RSHIFT just before landing though? The guy still seems to stumble.

What it is meant to do is increase the tolerance of the landing angle (but he still does the stumble animation). I agree that it's a bit dodegy because neither of my brothers nor two of my friends who tested it could get this feature to work :-/. It works fine for me though. -I think the key is not to tap it repeatedly because it has a cool-down to prevent it from being abused (and the cool-down is activated even if you do not land successfully).

Quote:

I would so love a version of your game in which one does not have to go back to the beginning after losing a 'level'

That's exactly what I had originally but then I thought that I would make it a bit harder for the speed hack release so that you can't complete it in a few minutes with easy. When it has more levels I'll change back to continuing on the level you died on so that it;s more fun :).

Bruce:
I had trouble with yours at first 'cause I kept falling out the sky (and looking for an acc key ;)) for at least ten tries in a row. Then suddenly it clicked! hglider... GLIDER! You have to GLIDE! .. and then I was away gliding through hoops. Cool game - nice work!

Bafsoft
I also had trouble with the mouse pointer. I have a 2.66 Ghz P4, Geforce 4, 512mb RAM so I don't think it's system requirements (or at least it certainly shouldn't be!). Otherwise the game worked fine, nice music and the maps are generated randomly which is nice but why only one map? -couldn't you have had it lead onto another randomly generated map?

Mark
Nice game - maps look cool, it controls fine. Nice work! The "oh no" sound effect is classic ;D.

Zaphos Wow! an FPS speed hack entry cool! The game played well (but the mouse sensitivity was a bit high). I liked the firey ground and the big enemies :). Music was sort of FF7 Aeriesish which is nice and relaxing. Well done!

Jcnossen
I like this game! The music really suits the camera tracking :)! Although I don't like the "you are dead because you run out of time or had too many collisions" message, and it seemed to all be over a bit quickly :(.

InphernicProbably my favourite so far! I love the little ducks (which look even cuter if you imagine them as off-colour baby seals :)). I didn't know what I was doing but I enjoyed it anyway which is always a good thing! Music suited the game and all the GFX looked cute and went nicely together. Good work!

Oscar Giner Best intro screen so far. The game itself looked a bit incomplete (needed more GFX) although the background is very pretty :). I found myself only really looking at the minimap so see where to go :( - probably once you have more bonuses and things this won't happed as much. Otherwise not bad at all.

FrankR
I quite enjoyed playing your game but then the music got to me and I just couldn't play it any more. Nice sprites (did you draw them yourself?) and the game controls are very responsive so it's easy and fun to play.

Loads of cool entries this year! Good work everyone! I apologise if I've missed any majoy features of anyones games but I will read the readmes and play them all in depth when it comes to voting.

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
avatar

Quote:

-couldn't you have had it lead onto another randomly generated map?

Yeah, but I didnt think of that. And it should run better now, did you download the new one that i posted in the other thread that i linked to?

BTW, You can get another new map by hitting play again ;)

Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
avatar

Quote:

I found myself only really looking at the minimap so see where to go

very true. I was going to show an arrow in the main screen pointing to the direction you should go, but finally didin't did it.

I think I spent too much time with the physics engine (this is the game with more complex physics I've ever done), so I couldn't finish other parts.

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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heh, i've never had the pleasure of doing a physics engine ebfore. What do they consist of?

Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
avatar

Quote:

heh, i've never had the pleasure of doing a physics engine ebfore

After trying to remember a bit, the only physics engine I've done before was for a pong, if you can call that a physics engine ;)

Quote:

What do they consist of?

In my entry, I based everything on vector forces. When you press accel, what you're really doing is applying a forward force. There's the cinematic force that applies a force proportional to your actual speed. Collisions apply a force in the opposite direction of the collision angle. Can't tell if it's the proper way. I made this up during the competition (and some previous thoughts about this) :P

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
avatar

my pong game just has bouncing code (dx = -dx; dy = -dy) and collision detection. that is extreme pong, and its crappy anyway

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