H-Craft Championship now on Android

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:16 pm

ErUs, I've had that same problem on some video cards with my games too. If a solution is found to this, please release it.

BlindSide · Post by **BlindSide** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 12:41 am

Looks like the skybox texture if you ask me, try the "FORCE32BIT" flag or something...

Ive yet to try this on my desktop computer with the MX440 so ill see if it happens on there too and maybe I can tweak something...

SiriusCG · Post by **SiriusCG** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:41 am

Feedback: Generally I like the feel of the game and it performs well on my system. See specs below.

My crits:
1. The "fly by keys" system is awkward and not "intuitive" for the kind of vehicle you're controlling. A joystick interface would be better, IMHO.
2. Hovering-type vehicles generally don't "bank" significantly in corners, they "tilt" a bit however
3. The physics model needs work. Mass and momentum would keep a hovercraft moving in a particular direction longer unless the vehicle were grounded or able to produce thrust to counter.

It ran well on my system: Athlon 3000+ 2.4Ghz, 512M Ram, nVidia 7600GS /256 with latest drivers, XP SP2

You might find the book: "Physics for Game Developers" from O'Reilly useful if you intend to tweak your physics model. I'm using it myself in another "hover vehicle" style game (different game genre entirely) and it's helped me a lot. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/physicsgame/

Last comment: congrats on getting this far with your gaming effort. Few people do... Looking forward to the finished version.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:31 pm

@erus and monkeycracks: If you have any irrlicht example running with a skybox, could you try if you get the same effect with those texture settings?

Code: Select all

videoDriver->setTextureCreationFlag(video::ETCF_OPTIMIZED_FOR_QUALITY, false);
videoDriver->setTextureCreationFlag(video::ETCF_OPTIMIZED_FOR_SPEED, true);

@SirusCG: The game has a joystick interface. Because PC-Joysticks don't have a standard for axis it is possible that the default settings don't work for your joystick. But you can configure the controls completly in options - controller setup. You can even configure the controls individually for each profile :-)

Thanks for the book-tip. I know the book somewhat but don't have it here. For my physic i used an old schoolbook ;-). The physic would already support another behaviour. Basicly the behaviour you describe could be reached by changing the rollfriction and airconst parameters in the physic section in media/config.xml. The bank behaviour is set in the steering section.

While we have made a physic simulation for the controls we tweaked the values generally for playability over realism. Like you can see from former messages, for some people the momentum feels already to high. Unfortunatly it's hard to find settings which satisfy the feeling of all players. But we did we best thing we could - we tweaked those values quite often over several months until we had liked it ourselves :-). So please just give it a try for a while, you might like them the way they are!

ThePlague · Post by **ThePlague** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 9:35 pm

I heard some Gothic3 leached sounds on level 3....

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 9:50 pm

@ThePlague: What are you talking about?

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:16 am

Code: Select all

driver->setTextureCreationFlag(video::ETCF_OPTIMIZED_FOR_QUALITY, false); 
    driver->setTextureCreationFlag(video::ETCF_OPTIMIZED_FOR_SPEED, true);

I noticed a 10-12FPS gain in the Terrain Rendering example but no other changes.... I'll have to start using that code

Also, here's code for detecting bit depth and resolution

Code: Select all

        //Detecting Depth and Resolution
        dimension2d<int> DesktopResolution;
        dimension2d<int> getDesktopRes() 
        { 
          dvc0 = createDevice(EDT_OPENGL,dimension2d<s32>(400,100),32,false,false,false,this); 
          IVideoModeList *list = dvc0->getVideoModeList(); 
          DesktopResolution = (list->getDesktopResolution());  
          return DesktopResolution; 
        }
        s32 DesktopDepth;
        s32 getDesktopDepth()
        {
          IVideoModeList *list = dvc0->getVideoModeList();
          DesktopDepth = (list->getDesktopDepth());
          dvc0->closeDevice();
          return DesktopDepth;
        }

Do the resolution one first, the the depth one, the create the device like this :

createDevice(DriverType, DesktopResolution, DesktopDepth, flagsgohere);

It seemed to fix the problem for me with my app.

kompromis · Post by **kompromis** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 3:08 pm

nice grapix
not that god gameplay
and its realy hard to stear else a nice game

liger13 · Post by **liger13** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 7:31 pm

yeah, i had a pretty hard time steering as well and couldn't get passed the second level... the bots could keep full throttle and easily run around the course but to stay on the track i had to cut the engines several times to get around corners...

else it looks great, and i get about 17 fps on my 4 year old dell dimension 2350.

FriendlyWarlord · Post by **FriendlyWarlord** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 10:51 pm

Hi, I don't have my specs and stuff posted yet, but I tried the first 2 versions. I thought it was pretty hard too, but one day I changed the control scheme and I was suddenly pretty good (could've been a combination of practice and coincidence too...). I used my gamepad (Logitech DUAL ACTION), and set the left/right D-pad (the 4 direction things like on NES controllers) to steering, and the up/down analog stick to accelleration & brake - it felt VERY confortable. (I'll also note that the right analog stick and the left d-pad were the only gamepad controls that the game would detect - the left analog stick and all the buttons don't do anything.)

Some very nitpicky suggestions you MIGHT want ot look into:

1) Configuable buttons for the menu - it's a little odd to have to put down the controller between each race, it'd be nice to be able to navigate with the d-pad & a button exactly the same way as with the arrow keys & Enter.

2) The finish line is hard to see, so you have to remember where it is - it'd be nice to have a checkered line on the ground, or something else that's not so overused.

3) Why are the trail particles shaped like vertical ellipses? It looks weird how all the particles have big spaces between them...

Like I said, very nitpicky suggestions. Great game =]

As for performance - very smooth at 1280x1024 resolution with all options on highest. Unfortuately my graphics card is old, so antialising did not work. Also, there were some major problems with the textures for me (some models' textures get screwed up close to the camera, some models get weird lighting, sometimes the menu screen and/or loading screens get insanely messed up), but closing the program fixes it (temporarily, sometimes) - and I'm very convinced that it's 100% due to my messed up old graphics card and/or drivers which have caused weird problems in other games in which no one else has ever reported. So don't worry about it =p

Oh yes, one more complaint (that might have been fixed already): at the start of the race, or after you unpause it, it is often very choppy - sometimes so choppy that some messed up stuff happens. Often the camera will not move to the starting line for the first few seconds before the race starts (it will look at part of the track in the distance at a horizontal orientation... I can get a screenshot if it's not fixed).

Well, I guess I'll try out 1.5 now...

[Edit]

Ok, tried 1.5... does it get easier each version, or am I just getting better? =P

Still the same choppyness-at-start-of-race bug, I can't notice a difference with anything else either.

A couple more tiny suggestions that don't really matter:

4) The music stops when loading the race, which is all well and good... but maybe it shouldn't start back up again when it's done loading?

5) The sound affects seem a little 2D... it'd be nice if hitting a left wall made the sound come more from the left speaker, and same with other cars passing you, etc.. Or maybe it already does, and I just didn't notice.

Well, fun game, but I wish I had more of the levels (maybe someday!). The only thing besides that that I can think of that would make it REALLY amazing (but hugely ambitious) would be splitscreen multiplayer. And I must say, great graphics, really shows off Irrlicht's capabilites (and your team's artistry, of course!)

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:12 am

Thanks for the feedback.

I must say i'm somewhat surprised that a Logitech Dual Action causes problems. That's exactly the controller i prefer using myself. My settings for that are the one used as defaultsettings (therefore left analog-stick is used for steering here). Unfortunatly it will be hard to debug. I just use the axis&buttons which i get from SDL and can't reproduce it here. I'd appreciate any ideas.

As for the configurable buttons for the menu. That's added in 1.5. But only the digitalcontrols can be used (and 'pause' is used for buttonclicking). I'm using those digitalkeys on the right for directions and one of the front buttons for clicking. Using Analogsticks for the menu is unfortunatly quite tricky on PC's as they cause often calibrationproblems and the menues would get a crazy behaviour by that. Maybe i find a solution in my next project, but so far i found no good way to solve that.

I've heard of the problems at start, but that's been some months ago and i couldn't reproduce it so far. I will look into it once more and try some more stuff.

2) 3) Oh, well... my artist does read this thread also and might meditate upon that ;-)

And for general information - there will definitly be a beta 1.6. I hope soon. 1.5 has serious problems with low framerates which i'm currently fixing.

FriendlyWarlord · Post by **FriendlyWarlord** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 4:13 am

Hmm, strange. The analog inputs (analog steering, brake, acceleration) can accept only the left D-pad and right analog stick. All the other inputs (the ones that are keyboard by default) can accept all of the other buttons on the controller (including pressing in the analog sticks), but NOT the d-pad directions (and of course neither of the analog sticks' axis). Here are how my racing control options are set up:

Analog steering: JS-AXIS 0 (left/right d-pad)
Analog acceleration: JS-AXIS 3 (right-hand analog up)
Analog brake: JS-AXIS 3 goofy (right-hand analog down)
(the rest are defaults)

So the menu buttons do work if I change the keyboard steering and acceleration to controller buttons. I'm happy with it, just thought this info might help =]

xray · Post by **xray** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 4:53 pm

Hi,

System: WindowsXP SP2
Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E6600 [2.4Ghz]
Card: ATI Radeon X1900
Memory: 1024 MB
FPS: 62

System: Gentoo Linux 2.6.19
Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E6600 [2.4Ghz]
Card: ATI Radeon X1900
Memory: 1024 MB
FPS: --

On Gentoo it isnt working, I get the following message:

./hcraft_bin:error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.6: cannot handle TLS data

sio2 · Post by **sio2** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:31 pm

xray wrote: On Gentoo it isnt working, I get the following message:

./hcraft_bin:error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.6: cannot handle TLS data

As someone who recently implemented multiprocessor code in a commercial app, I'd say that TLS sounds like Thread Local Storage, which is thread-specific data.

My $0.02...

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 6:48 pm

xray: Did you start the hcraft shell script or did you directly start hcraft_bin?. In case you did the latter, could you please try it again by executing the hcraft shell script?