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Work in Progress / Last Half of Darkness: Society of the Serpent - Playable Demo available

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Xarshi
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Posted: 10th Dec 2009 19:02
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Quote: "@Xarshi - Someone else had a similiar issue - they mentioned they needed to select "Compatibilty Mode" - if that doesn't work try run right clicking on icon and "run as adminstrator" - you should not have to do this but for some reason it worked for that particular person.

Please post back and let me know if that works.

Thanks
Bill "

It did not unfortunately. I ran it as administrator and tried to run it in compatibility mode. No luck.

XenoPhysics - A Havok Wrapper for DarkBASIC Professional
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 10th Dec 2009 20:26
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Could it be a memory problem? What are your memory specs?
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Xarshi
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Posted: 10th Dec 2009 20:33
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My specs are:
9800gtx
core 2 quad q6600
6gb DDR2 800
Windows 7 x64
1.5tb HDD

I don't think it's my computer unless it's the operating system.

XenoPhysics - A Havok Wrapper for DarkBASIC Professional
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billy777
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Posted: 10th Dec 2009 21:41 Edited at: 10th Dec 2009 21:42
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@Xarshi - I tried emailing you at the gmail address listed on your profile - I may have a new version for you to try.
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mYsT!C
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Posted: 10th Dec 2009 22:25
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played the demo right now. It was pretty fun and really impressive. It ran quick on my notebook with win7.
when i came to the puzzle at the ice machine I first thought it was a jewel game 8)!
it's a pity that the demo stopped when it got interesting ! hope to play more soon!
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billy777
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Posted: 11th Dec 2009 19:48 Edited at: 11th Dec 2009 19:51
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@mystic - thanks for trying it out - glad it worked ok


There is an issue with memblocks creating an image on SOME computers - Some computers cannot create the image required for DarkVideo to play on - i.e. some users, such as Xarshi are experiencing the error. But these users have more than enough memory - At first I thought it might be a DarkVideo issue since its in the play video function - however after stripping the code of darkvideo dependancies - the memblocks still cannot create the image (again... just on some computers)

Does anyone know anything about this issue?

Thanks
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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 11th Dec 2009 20:46 Edited at: 11th Dec 2009 20:46
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a few thoughts re: Xarshi's issues with this:

1) make sure your video drivers are current
3) disable visual themes
3) question @Xarshi: what are your desktop settings?
4) set "Windows Color & Appearance" to Basic (vs Aero), if available. see screenshot:



i have Vista Home Premium 64 so whatever the comparable settings are for Win7 should be used.

i know when i run some apps (cs2 illustrator, for example) it automatically sets appearance to Basic (from my normal Aero setting) presumably to avoid graphic issues (it then reverts to Aero when i close the apps). adobe stuff automatically does this; if this ends up being the issue on some machines, there's gotta be a way to check and set (and reset) this from inside the app. itself so it's worth looking into and including for compatability's sake.

@billy777 - i don't know anything about darkvideo's functionality and requirements but it sounds like a "play animation to image" approach? if the creation of the image is causing the issue, why not load a pre-made image instead of creating one at runtime (or grabbing an image at desktop resolution instead of creating one from a memblock)? i'm guessing you're creating one so it can be the same size as the user's desktop? for now, how about loading an image (say a standard 800x600) and playing to that for testing purposes. (ie, a quick darkvideo demo that Xarshi can try). really, this all might be a darkvideo issue and something THEY need to explore, but, in the meantime, you could help track it down.

anyway, maybe this will be helpful

Virtual Nomad @ California, USA
AMD Phenom™ X4 9750 Quad-Core @ 2.4 GHz . 8 GB PC2-6400 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 3650 @ 512 MB . Vista Home Premium 64 Bit

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billy777
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Posted: 11th Dec 2009 22:20
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@Virtual Nomad - thank you for the suggestion to simply load an image rather than try to create one with memblocks - it's worth a try.

Thanks
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Xarshi
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Posted: 11th Dec 2009 22:59
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Quote: "a few thoughts re: Xarshi's issues with this"

Well see, the problem lies within the fact that I can load images from my own programs. It wouldn't make sense if it worked for one program and not for mine - it would still be able to at least load it.

XenoPhysics - A Havok Wrapper for DarkBASIC Professional
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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 12th Dec 2009 06:40 Edited at: 12th Dec 2009 06:42
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i can understand that but right now billy777 is creating an image via memblock at runtime for use with darkvideo which, i'm assuming from his response regarding your error at line 2300, is part of the problem. ie, perhaps darkvideo doesn't appreciate the way he's using the memblock or maybe the depth is wrong on the image he's creating, etc. so, i figured if he prepared the image outside the app and the darkvideo played fine, allowing you to play the game, he'd atleast know where he needs to make improvements or other arrangements.

again, i don't know the first thing about darkvideo, but figured it was worth a shot. maybe it uses memblocks that might conflict with others, etc. maybe your screen set-up is interfering, which means billy777 needs to find a way to avoid this, etc. just trying to help narrow it down.

for now, i'd recommend a check to make sure the image exists before sending/playing the video to it, regardless. if the image doesn't exist, for whatever reason, it should skip the video and continue on with the game.

Virtual Nomad @ California, USA
AMD Phenom™ X4 9750 Quad-Core @ 2.4 GHz . 8 GB PC2-6400 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 3650 @ 512 MB . Vista Home Premium 64 Bit
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Ortu
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Posted: 12th Dec 2009 07:06
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It's neat. Great atmosphere, but the longer I played, the less responsive it got when interacting with objects. sometimes he wouldn't say anything about them until I interacted with something else. eventually the player just moved to objects but wouldn't speak or take them at all. I had no trouble or pauses when moving though.

I'm on windows XP


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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 12th Dec 2009 12:36
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I've just run it for over an hour on my newish Vista 64 bit machine while I was doing other things and couldn't see any problems.

Could the problem be a memory leak? That would cause problems on some machines sooner than others. Lee recently fixed a leak in the camera commands - does the demo use those?

I'll see if it works on my XP laptop - but I suspect it's specs won't support this game.
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billy777
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Posted: 12th Dec 2009 21:53 Edited at: 12th Dec 2009 21:53
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I was using version 1.05 (it came with the bonanza package) - but upgraded the compiler to 1.074 - Please try the new version here:

http://www.lasthalfofdarkness.com/moon/
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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 13th Dec 2009 05:26 Edited at: 13th Dec 2009 05:55
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@billy777, you could just attach a new game exe (and whatever else changes with various updates, ie a patch) that we can dump in the folder so we don't have to keep downloading ~190mb each time you tweak something... just a thought.

alas, i'm re-downloading anyway since i didn't dl the last version (or 2?)

I'm back: played the latest demo version and everything looked good. one suggestion came to mind: when you click a location and the character starts toward its target location... if you click the same target while en route, the player stops and re-orients itself. if you compare new target to current target and they're the same, you could get rid of the pause/stutter caused by the re-orientation routine, allowing things to flow a bit smoother.

otherwise, i'm happy with the changes you've made thus far; good progress!

btw, were those items in the bathtub all along? i noticed them for the first time just now; shame on me for not being thorough before, i suppose

keep up the good work!

Virtual Nomad @ California, USA
AMD Phenom™ X4 9750 Quad-Core @ 2.4 GHz . 8 GB PC2-6400 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 3650 @ 512 MB . Vista Home Premium 64 Bit
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 13th Dec 2009 12:10
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Quote: "you could just attach a new game exe (and whatever else changes with various updates, ie a patch) that we can dump in the folder so we don't have to keep downloading ~190mb each time you tweak something... just a thought."


Yes, I'm finding that annoying too since each full download takes over an hour here.

Quote: "one suggestion came to mind: when you click a location and the character starts toward its target location... if you click the same target while en route, the player stops and re-orients itself. if you compare new target to current target and they're the same, you could get rid of the pause/stutter caused by the re-orientation routine, allowing things to flow a bit smoother."


I'd vote for that suggestion too.

Quote: "btw, were those items in the bathtub all along?"


Yes.

One possible minor oversight (in the first two versions at least): the sign outside the room on the opposite side of the doorway to the ice machine lights up the cursor but doesn't enlarge to anything when you click. It could just be a Red Herring of course.

I'm about to download the latest version. See me in an hour or two.
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 13th Dec 2009 14:56 Edited at: 13th Dec 2009 20:04
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No real problems except I'm not sure which version gets downloaded from the link in the original post. It says version 2 in the extract instructions but it's the third version I've downloaded. Perhaps the second one was version 1.5? It does have the spelling of Johnny corrected so that could be a clue. Could you give the downloads names that reflect the version so we don't get confused?

This ran exactly the same as the second download on my Vista machine - except there was one small glitch as soon as I moved away from the dresser when the character's shadow raced ahead of him. I couldn't reproduce that though.

I'll test it on my laptop as well to see if speed has improved.

Edit

From a few posts back:

Quote: "I'll see if it works on my XP laptop - but I suspect it's specs won't support this game."


Forgot to report the results of that test. Well, it did run and I could complete the demo but it ran painfully slowly. What features would cause such a slowdown? Anyway, I'll edit this post with the results for the latest version as soon as I can.

Edit2

The latest version (v2?) seems somewhat faster and more responsive on my laptop (XP and a bit old) but is still slow. With the previous version it was sometimes difficult to get the game to respond to mouseclicks - I haven't noticed that particular problem with v2.
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billy777
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Posted: 13th Dec 2009 23:59
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Thank you Virtual Nomad and Green Gandalf for taking the time to re-download the entire game again... I will provide just a patch link next time so you dont have to download the entire - however you guys have done more than enough - and would not expect you to download again.

Thanks for posting your experience - I will fix those issues you mentioned. Good suggestions!
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BearCDP
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Posted: 15th Dec 2009 20:28
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The issue of the dialogue not starting before I hit spacebar is definitely gone, and everything seems a lot more responsive in general.

Game Design, Audio, and Music Blog
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billy777
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Posted: 16th Dec 2009 18:49
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@BearCDP - Thanks for trying it out again and posting your experience.

If anyone else gets a chance to play - please let me know if its works ok.

Thanks
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Guyra
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Posted: 5th Jan 2010 01:09
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Hey, I actually played that online game once a couple of months back, and thought it was one of the best browser based games I've ever played. Never knew it was connected to a game series.

Also, the adventure game genre and the horror and mystery settings are right up my alley. I'm very likely to buy the series you've got there once I have the money for it. Looks really nice!

I'll be looking forward to playing both them and this new one. The demo won't work stand alone on Win7, but it seems it might work once I get DX9c installed and I run it in WinXP mode.


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