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Program Announcements / The Battle Of Doom Demo

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Jan Eise
20
Years of Service
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Joined: 18th Dec 2003
Location:
Posted: 18th Dec 2003 17:23 Edited at: 18th Dec 2003 18:41
Hello programmers, I've have just created a demo, and i'm very proud of it. It is one level, accept it is very large in size, would someone like to give me his/her opinion about it?
It is absolutely worth downloading (for the right framerates, you need a fast computer to play this game)

downloadable on www.pixelpro.tk
spooky
21
Years of Service
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Joined: 30th Aug 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 18th Dec 2003 17:30 Edited at: 18th Dec 2003 18:12
Downloading now. Got to see why game is 56 megabytes compressed!!

[Edit] After installation, game is 117 megabytes so I was expecting a really good game. How wrong I was...

For me game is completely unplayable. I die after about 20 seconds whatever I try and do. Mouse movement is really bad and jerky.

There is no reason to have main menu graphics at 5 megabytes each. Have you not heard of compression?

There maybe a good game in there somewhere but I can't see it.

Lets see what other people say...

Boo!
Andy Igoe
21
Years of Service
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Joined: 6th Oct 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 18th Dec 2003 19:17
Welcome to the forums Jan,

Regretably I really cant see why you released this. I dont like to be negative in program release threads and preffer to stick to giving encouragement - where possible I try and give advice rather than criticism, but...

The installation is bodged. An .exe that installs the setup.exe ? What was setup2.rar for? I just copied it into all the various install directories hoping I got it right.

The game itself. Lots of unarmed soldiers charging at a heavily defended line of some kind. You created the atmosphere well with lots of sound and speach samples, but unarmed soldiers charging? I guess you just didnt have a weapon model or something - that struck me as very silly.

Worst though was the gameplay, my computer is not the latest spec but it is not bad. 2Ghz, 512mb Ram, and a GeForce 2 MX. I think I got about 3 frames per second. Just what specification is required to run the game?

The weapon model that I was holding was untextured, it seemed to be a shotgun or something, and i'm suprised in such a large filesize there wasn't room for a weapon texture.

The menu's are at a very high resolution and this caused interlacing on my screen (1280x1024 or 1600x1200 perhaps?). The menu's where only slightly faster than the gameplay making menu option selection very difficult.

I couldn't explore very far because the fps was too low, but overall i'm suprised this was such a massive download.

So what can we draw from this to improve things?

Well, firstly you clearly have a good web server, 40 thread views so far and you havn't exceeded your bandwidth limit. I downloaded at 40kbps so that's a good start. However when we're downloading over 50mb to start with, why the second file? I suggest you integrate your installation into one file and change the method of installation so that the user does not end up with lots of different install directories.

Next the menu. I would increase the responsiveness by lowering the resolution. I would also convert the images from .bmp to 100% .jpg and .png for filesize.

Then the game. Texture the weapon, give your other soldiers weapons and an AI, or they just are not soldiers. I dont know what kind of surreal alternative reality it was meant to be, but even if they dont shoot their guns and are there to be blown up then just put a gun in their hand for some kind of plausability. Consider reducing the quantity of them for fps or using a low poly distance model (LOD).

Then work on framerate, optimise your code and your object handling. Make your world objects dynamic (keep things hidden when they are not near the camera or in view - group them together and build an array for faster checking). Try to get at least 25fps on a high specification computer, prefferably on a medium spec.

Lastly, i'm not sure if Pixel Pro really is a limited company and a registered trademark, if it isn't then do your self a favour and remove the claim, with this as your flagship product it presents a company image of a 12 year old with a C64 and a modem in his bedroom.


God created the world in 7 days, but we're still waiting for the patch.
Jan Eise
20
Years of Service
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Joined: 18th Dec 2003
Location:
Posted: 18th Dec 2003 19:44
I guess you're right... I will try to modify the source code and improve this demo. quite strange though about the low framerates, On my computer the framrate is about 25 fps.
AMD Athlon XP 1800+, 256 mb ram, Geforce 4 TI 4200 128mb
Rob K
Retired Moderator
21
Years of Service
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Joined: 10th Sep 2002
Location: Surrey, United Kingdom
Posted: 18th Dec 2003 21:43
Hi Jan,

You should be aiming to get framerates of > 100 on your PC then and hopefully everyone else will be able to play.

The maximum size you should use for ANY GRAPHIC is 512x512, above that will cause extreme slowdown (last year I tried to use a 1200x1500 graphic as a SkyBox, replacing it with a 512x512 graphic improved FPS by 15!)


BLUE GUI Plugin:http://blue.robert-knight.net / BLUE IDE http://blueide.sf.net-Free Replacement editor for DBPro
computer clown
20
Years of Service
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Joined: 19th Dec 2003
Location:
Posted: 19th Dec 2003 12:45
Well after these reviews I was very curious about the game so I've downloaded it. Well what I can tell you it's great and I don't have any problems with fps it runs at a steady 25 fps on my pc.

My pc specs:
1200 Mhz
512 Mb ddr ram
geforce 4 64 mb ddr ram
Sphyro
20
Years of Service
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Joined: 19th Dec 2003
Location:
Posted: 19th Dec 2003 19:44 Edited at: 19th Dec 2003 19:44
Well, i'm the Website designer...
Tell me some stupid mistakes or something..
If you can, put htem on the site's forum,
or u can mail on the site...

Greetz Sphyro
Dsarchy
20
Years of Service
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Joined: 4th Oct 2003
Location: UK- Kent
Posted: 20th Dec 2003 17:35 Edited at: 20th Dec 2003 17:39
i got a bug when moving around i just went under the floor

"Is it really good is a hoover sucks?"

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