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My Game Engine Demo
Matt Weir
Member #7,476
July 2006
avatar

Hello all,

Just thought it's about time I released a demo of another one of my projects. ;)

This is (as you can see by the screenshots) just a cheesy platformer with super-cutsie-slightly nauseatingly-colorful graphics. Why? Beacause that's what I felt like doing. Why are there men made of cactus? What does a robot have to do with all this? Cupcakes? These are all questions without answers. :)

Engine wise it's mostly complete. It's based upon my GRIM skeletal animation engine so you have a chance to see that in action properly. I'd like to add scripting support to this game engine sometime in the near future but for now everythings just hard coded. (wanted to get a working demo of this together for my portfolio...)

Gameplay wise there isn't much. You may find the exit but all it is is a sign. You may shoot that boss for 20 hours straight but your not gonna get anywhere. On the flipside, neither is he, it's impossible to die. You can shoot the cactus men but other than pushing you around they're completely defenseless.

There's still a few quirks in there like how you can half walk off the screen on the left and top but I'm getting there...

Screenshots:
{"name":"591601","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/d\/1db0dc28782ec01b34125e2d805e4655.jpg","w":800,"h":600,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/d\/1db0dc28782ec01b34125e2d805e4655"}591601
{"name":"591602","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/a\/ca9c55fae247fb66356d02fb088700f6.jpg","w":800,"h":600,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/a\/ca9c55fae247fb66356d02fb088700f6"}591602

KEYS:
Arrow Keys - Movement and jumping
Crtl - Shoot

Most of the keyboard is mapped out to debugging helpers so don't be surprised if you hit other keys and weird stuff happens.

And here's the download:
Matt's Game Engine Demo

I cut the music out of this release just to keep the filesize down. ;)

There's still a lot of game content to do but it's nice to have the majority of the engine and the tools pretty much done. Still have to make a proper menu system though.... ::)

Enjoy!

Matt Weir. :)

PS: I just noticed on my other PC some crazy business with some of the particles going extremely fast. Not sure what that's about...

Indeterminatus
Member #737
November 2000
avatar

Very nice work! This shows your GRIM skeletal animation system has potential, and together with your GRIM editor this should make for a nice thing to have in your portfolio.

If there's ever going to be a playable game, it'll be on my hotlist ;D

(Oh, and about the cactusman cupcake thing: That's just the way it is, period. There's nothing wrong about having to collect cupcakes and finding magical donuts whilst throwing fireballs towards men that are entirely made out of cacti. That, and the fact there's ground floating in the air)

_______________________________
Indeterminatus. [Atomic Butcher]
si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses

CGamesPlay
Member #2,559
July 2002
avatar

The screenshots look good. I look forward to playing :)

--
Tomasu: Every time you read this: hugging!

Ryan Patterson - <http://cgamesplay.com/>

Matt Weir
Member #7,476
July 2006
avatar

Indeterminatus said:

If there's ever going to be a playable game, it'll be on my hotlist ;D

Thanks! There will be a playable game, I really enjoy thinking up and creating crazy skeleton things so you can expect lots of boss levels too. ;D This is kinda just me making the platform game I always wanted as a kid.

Quote:

(Oh, and about the cactusman cupcake thing: That's just the way it is, period. There's nothing wrong about having to collect cupcakes and finding magical donuts whilst throwing fireballs towards men that are entirely made out of cacti. That, and the fact there's ground floating in the air)

I'm glad you understand. ;D My sketchbook is full of crazy little pictures that make no real sense that will make it into this game...

Matt Weir.

CGamesPlay
Member #2,559
July 2002
avatar

Sounds fun!

--
Tomasu: Every time you read this: hugging!

Ryan Patterson - <http://cgamesplay.com/>

Kikaru
Member #7,616
August 2006
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Wow. Those screenshots came right out of my head. I really need to get a better padlock on it. And maybe a security system. :P

Matt Weir
Member #7,476
July 2006
avatar

Quote:

Wow. Those screenshots came right out of my head. I really need to get a better padlock on it. And maybe a security system. :P

Thankyou? ;D

Perhaps this isn't the platform game of only my childhood dreams... 8-)

If anyone has any crazy features they could think of, fire away. I've already implemented scaled drawing (except it's still a bit buggy) so some of the bosses can be (much) bigger than the normal screen and the camera will zoom out to capture all the action. One day when I get some time I want to implement wind and have a bunch of leaves blowing around in an 'Autumn' styled level.

Paul whoknows
Member #5,081
September 2004
avatar

Very impressive work! your characters animations looks well and very polished.
IMHO the game should be faster, at least the player character.
You did a great work!
How much time it took you to write the Grim editor and this demo?

____

"The unlimited potential has been replaced by the concrete reality of what I programmed today." - Jordan Mechner.

Matt Weir
Member #7,476
July 2006
avatar

Paul whoknows said:

Very impressive work! your characters animations looks well and very polished.
IMHO the game should be faster, at least the player character.
You did a great work!
How much time it took you to write the Grim editor and this demo?

Thanks! I'm really pleased with how the animations have been turning out. I've had to borrow a heap of books from the library on animation to try and learn stuff like walking cycles etc but it's much easier to do it all in my GRIM editor than draw each frame. :)

I'll probably wait until the gameplay's a little more defined before tweaking the speeds. The gravity could probably do with being a bit stronger too. That sorta stuff is always tough to get perfect, especially when you play the game everyday while making it.

The GRIM editor and the game engine we're built at the same time in tandam pretty much. The two are pretty intertwined. Also there's the level editor (pic below). Overall it's taken me about 4 1/2 months so far, I was aiming to be finished around July but since I've been doing a lot the last week working on my portfolio I can see it being more towards the end of May now. Will be nice to have something finished and done completely myself.

I've also got another platformer using this engine in the works (a lot of concept art and some actual art) which will be more of an 'Abuse' style 'mouse and keyboard' game. Darker and more intense. For that I'm researching into Inverse Kinematics for the GRIM Engine and perhaps some nice physics. ;D Maybe if the first game goes well I'll try and get an artist on board as well which will give me more time...

Add to that, I've always wanted to make a shoot-em-up so maybe I'll get around to doing that sometime. It's been in the back of my mind the whole time so this engine will actually support a game like that quite easily too... ;D

Matt Weir.

PS: I finally fixed the scaling bug so the engine has zoom now! (not the DL version)

Level Editor:

{"name":"591605","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/7\/47656d7b5bfd873836ff22118b2f666e.jpg","w":717,"h":521,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/4\/7\/47656d7b5bfd873836ff22118b2f666e"}591605

Kikaru
Member #7,616
August 2006
avatar

I am going to show this game to my friends. We will drool over the screenshots for a while. ;)

kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002

It looks and ran great Matt! A bit harder gravity and perhaps longer jumps would be nice. And some acrobatics would be cool. If you could rotate while in the air you could give out points for a nice landing after a 720 degree rotation and such stuff. ;D

Enough rambling. Impressive work! :-* I will be sure to keep my eye on this project as it seems to be lots of fun!

Neil Walker
Member #210
April 2000
avatar

Very nice.

Quote:

I finally fixed the scaling bug so the engine has zoom now! (not the DL version)

Yes it is, K and L :)

Quote:

don't be surprised if you hit other keys and weird stuff happens.

C is to have a wee

Neil.
MAME Cabinet Blog / AXL LIBRARY (a games framework) / AXL Documentation and Tutorial

wii:0356-1384-6687-2022, kart:3308-4806-6002. XBOX:chucklepie

kazzmir
Member #1,786
December 2001
avatar

The game didn't really work for me. I got about 1 fps most of the time even though my windows machine has some reasonable 3d card in it( nvidia something or other ). When I first started the game it was incredibly jumpy, the camera bounced up and down a lot. I was able to move the character a few steps but because I got 1 fps it was basically unplayable.

Paul whoknows
Member #5,081
September 2004
avatar

What are your PC's specs?

____

"The unlimited potential has been replaced by the concrete reality of what I programmed today." - Jordan Mechner.

kazzmir
Member #1,786
December 2001
avatar

I'll let my screenshots speak for themselves
{"name":"591630","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/e\/fef9f889cfa6e4b621e8c519d594fab8.png","w":607,"h":455,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/e\/fef9f889cfa6e4b621e8c519d594fab8"}591630

{"name":"591631","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/d\/7d11503f2f138cd211a1439ad34d6b94.png","w":825,"h":565,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/d\/7d11503f2f138cd211a1439ad34d6b94"}591631

LennyLen
Member #5,313
December 2004
avatar

Weird, your gfx card is better than mine, and I got ~35 fps. The demo seems to be one of the OL programs my gfx card doesn't want to run properly though, so I can't actually see anything but the FPS counter. I do have a later model CPU and twice as much main memory though.

Paul whoknows
Member #5,081
September 2004
avatar

Quote:

I'll let my screenshots speak for themselves

Only 1 FPS! and you have a 1300Mhz CPU with a GeForce 4 MX420!
I can play Warcraft III at a decent frame rate on that system, it seems that is time for Matt to do some optimizations.
It runs at 85 FPS here, my specs: p4 2400MHz, 128MB RAM, FX5700LE.

____

"The unlimited potential has been replaced by the concrete reality of what I programmed today." - Jordan Mechner.

Matt Weir
Member #7,476
July 2006
avatar

Quote:

It looks and ran great Matt! A bit harder gravity and perhaps longer jumps would be nice. And some acrobatics would be cool. If you could rotate while in the air you could give out points for a nice landing after a 720 degree rotation and such stuff. ;D

I agree! Everytime I make a big jump I expect to see some sort of flipping or something, it's just the landing I've got to work out properly...

In case nono onead noticed (and there's no real reason to), if you hold the DOWN key while in the air you'll drop faster. If your still holding it down when you hit the ground you will bounce. You have to let it go again ststraightfter you bounce to get more height. Currently there is no cap on how high you can bounce jump... This was originally a debug thing because the early levels before I made a decent editor sometimes had places you could get stuck otherwise. With a cap it'll probably make it into the game.

Quote:

I finally fixed the scaling bug so the engine has zoom now! (not the DL version)

Yes it is, K and L :)

Haha yup but you'll notice that it's not smooth if your not in the top left corner of the map. It is now though and the level editor uses it as well so you can go smoothly from looking at the normal game screen to the entire map.

kazzmir said:

The game didn't really work for me. I got about 1 fps most of the time even though my windows machine has some reasonable 3d card in it( nvidia something or other ). When I first started the game it was incredibly jumpy, the camera bounced up and down a lot. I was able to move the character a few steps but because I got 1 fps it was basically unplayable.

That is quite strange about the 1fps thing. I test every now and then on my internet PC which is about the same specs (AMD 1.4Ghz, 256RAM, almost inidenticalFX card) and it runs at 60fps for the big level, faster for the boss level. It used to run at about 10fps though until I updated the GFX drivers. I've made the game so that it should run reliably down to about 5fps but below this point strange things might happen. At 5fps, what's happening isn't really your biggest problem because you can't see it anyway.

LennyLen said:

The demo seems to be one of the OL programs my gfx card doesn't want to run properly though...

Yeah I've read about that happening with some OL programs, it's a shame to see mine is one of them. I'll try and look into it a bit more. The drawing code is abstracted out anyway so a port to another drawing library isn't out of the question.

Paul whoknows said:

...it seems that is time for Matt to do some optimizations.
It runs at 85 FPS here, my specs: p4 2400MHz, 128MB RAM, FX5700LE.

Thanks for all the reports on framerates and systems everyone! I'll definitely agree that optimization is in order and I'm already quite aware on some areas where this could be done effectively. As I always say though, get it working and then optimize. In this demo the skeleton system abuses COS and SIN like you wouldn't believe, lookup tables are already in the code but not used yet, I'm still tinkering with the precision to get it seamless. That and of lot of computing is still done on objects nowhere near the player...

Thanks for checking my demo out everyone. Hopefully I will have a new one out soon!

Matt Weir. :)

ngiacomelli
Member #5,114
October 2004

Worked wonderfully for me.

Quote:

As I always say though, get it working and then optimize. In this demo the skeleton system abuses COS and SIN like you wouldn't believe

The animation system is fantastic. I enjoy holding down SPACE and spawning hundreds of cactus men. It takes quite a while before my framerate drops to the single digits! Strangely, after I've done this... even if I walk to the other end of the level, the game never seems to speed up.

Perhaps the only graphical glitch I ran into was that the sky background had a visible seam, running vertically, through the middle.

Matt Weir
Member #7,476
July 2006
avatar

Quote:

The animation system is fantastic. I enjoy holding down SPACE and spawning hundreds of cactus men. It takes quite a while before my framerate drops to the single digits! Strangely, after I've done this... even if I walk to the other end of the level, the game never seems to speed up.

Thanks! I'm really happy with how the animation engine is coming together. BTW the cactus guy actually only has 5 frames total at the moment. 1 standing and 4 walking, every other bit is computed in realtime.

As for why the framerate stays up, only now am I starting to implement a system where objects scale how much CPU time they use based on their visability and distance from the player. The drawing already does this (ie. if it's not visable it's not drawn) but a lot of other stuff doesn't yet.

Quote:

Perhaps the only graphical glitch I ran into was that the sky background had a visible seam, running vertically, through the middle.

That only happens on some systems and I still have to get to the bottom of it...

Matt Weir.

Mika Halttunen
Member #760
November 2000
avatar

Quote:

That only happens on some systems and I still have to get to the bottom of it...

Are you clamping the texture to the edges there? If you have it on repeat/wrap, and you're drawing several background tiles -- I guess you are, there might be seams. I suggest you to try clamping, if you haven't already.

Btw, it worked fine here, although I too had that seam problem. Looks very nice, the animation system is really cool! :D The rain seems a bit weird to me, I guess you're checking for the top screen only (and not what's above the screen) when spawning the rain drops. But anyway, nice work! :)

---------------------------------------------
.:MHGames | @mhgames_ :.

Matt Weir
Member #7,476
July 2006
avatar

Quote:

Are you clamping the texture to the edges there? If you have it on repeat/wrap, and you're drawing several background tiles -- I guess you are, there might be seams. I suggest you to try clamping, if you haven't already.

I'm using OpenLayer for the graphics, any info how I might clamp the texture? I don't recall reading anything in the manual regarding clamping but possibly this is an OpenGL thing?...

As for the rain, yeah I am only check about 64 pixels above the screen when spawning the rain drops. This is mostly to conserve CPU and not have so many raindrops around at once (when you can't even see them). Proper use of the rain effect will be more of a game design issue, down to what kind of level your in are where you are in the level etc. It's easy to start and stop the weather effects at anytime (the snow in the boss level only starts when you see the boss) but since the rain was done I wanted to put it in the demo somewhere. :) It might not be obvious now with the extremely limited graphics, but for that certain tileset/level I want to have a subtle 'melencholy' feel happening.

Thanks for all the nice words everyone. I only wish I had more time and I'd finish this project sooner...

Matt Weir. :)

Kikaru
Member #7,616
August 2006
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I wrote a really fast sin/cos lookup table, using integers, that gives enough precision for most game needs. :)

GullRaDriel
Member #3,861
September 2003
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FANTASTIC ! (No time just now to add more comments, must leave work !!)

Just for information: More than 584 cactus (héhé I like that,touch e give me the info ;-) ) and still 30 FPS.

{"name":"591636","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/0\/d0e9996282c8270bb1f70f4562abeb6e.jpg","w":806,"h":625,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/0\/d0e9996282c8270bb1f70f4562abeb6e"}591636

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Ron Ofir
Member #2,357
May 2002
avatar

Doesn't work for me! Here's the logfile (seems like the relevant line is the last one):

12- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 026-a-00.png
22- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
32- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Found animation data file!
42- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 027-a-00.png
52- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
62- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Found animation data file!
72- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 028-a-00.png
82- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
92- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Found animation data file!
102- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 029-a-00.png
112- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
122- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Found animation data file!
132- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 030-a-00.png
142- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
152- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Found animation data file!
162- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 031-a-00.png
172- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
182- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Found animation data file!
192- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 031-b-00.png
202- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
212- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - No corrisponding frame data file found, using defualt values
222- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 032-a-00.png
232- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
242- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Found animation data file!
252- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 033-a-00.png
262- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 033-a-01.png
272- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 033-a-02.png
282- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 033-a-03.png
292- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 033-a-04.png
302- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 033-a-05.png
312- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
322- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - No corrisponding frame data file found, using defualt values
332- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 034-a-00.png
342- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
352- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - No corrisponding frame data file found, using defualt values
362- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 035-a-00.png
372- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
382- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - No corrisponding frame data file found, using defualt values
392- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 036-a-00.png
402- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
412- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - No corrisponding frame data file found, using defualt values
422- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 037-a-00.png
432- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
442- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - No corrisponding frame data file found, using defualt values
452- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 038-a-00.png
462- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
472- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - No corrisponding frame data file found, using defualt values
482- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Tileset - Jungle PNG/Tile 039-a-00.png
494- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - 'LEVEL::LOAD' - Read Problems = 0
502- 03/20/07 18:19:45 -
512- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Found animation data file!
522- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Entities/Cupcake/Cupcake-a-00.png
532- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Entities/Cupcake/Cupcake-a-01.png
542- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Entities/Cupcake/Cupcake-a-02.png
552- 03/20/07 18:19:45 - Loading frame file: ../Game Data/GFX/Entities/Cupcake/Cupcake-a-03.png
564- 03/20/07 18:19:47 -
574- 03/20/07 18:19:47 - !!!!! Sound System Failed!!!!!
584- 03/20/07 18:19:47 - FMOD error! (24) Unsupported file or audio format.

Oh, and I tried running GRIM editor and that didn't run as well, dropped a generic windows error, something like "the application configuration is wrong". Oh, and I have Allegro 4.2 DLLs in my PATH.

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