New Western Miniture Golf Beta 2 (5/15/10) - need tester

[rrg]

I am happy to present my next game that i am about to release.
This game is going to be a freeware mini golf game but I would like to test it out before I release it.
If you come across any problems please let me know and I will try to fix it.
Such problems could range from AI get stuck to menu doesn't respond. Anything is appreciated.

new (5/15/10)

New beta version is out fix all problems mention by forum and some
other bugs that I found.

--Bugs fixed--

Fix camera getting stuck at the beginning of the hole after the camera fly by intro is done
Invisible walls next to hole fixed
expand physic world boundaries
add camera modes - change between top view or normal view ( this will help people not being able to see the ball when it is close to the wall, by changing the camera to a top down view)
tweaked some AI
Rearranged holes 10 - 18
Re textured all coarse walls and grass
fix option menu bugs with image quality along with tiny game menus bugs
add extra sound effects
some other small bugs and hole problems fixed

--Not going to fix--

This might upset some of you, but I am not going to redo the low res texture on the ground. I tried and I can't achieve a nice looking high res ground. I would say it's a learning process and next game I want make the same mistake.

Info:
Western theme mini golf
1-4 players
Computer Players
18 holes
DirectX 9.0c
Windows platform
vertex/pixel shaders 2.0 (deactivated if computer doesn't support it)
Newton Game Dynamics 2.18 engine

Any ideas for a name will be appreciated, because I think western mini golf seems plan.

Thanks in advance

Cheat

Skip player during game. (instead of watching AI, or you yourself finish the hole,
this tells the game that the player finished the hole)

esc -> open quit menu
f key -> close quit menu and activates cheat

This comes in handy during testing.

Download link - beta v2 (5/15/10)

http://www.filefront.com/16454781/Weste ... eta-2.zip/

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2PeFrHw19o

ScreenShots

[Virion]

another quality project. love it.

[Insomniacp]

started hole three and it stayed in the zoomed out centered view of the hole until i hit space to swing, it didn't count as my turn though which is good but still a bug. hahaha, the voices are funny. Also my ball seemed to magically hit a wall when going down the hill in hole three.

A way to zoom into basically the ball's view would be nice so we can tell the slope of the ground better, or something like a minimap with the height levels on it (could use an elevation map).

Glad there is an out of bounds (had to try ). Fancy, can hit another players ball. When next to a wall it is very hard to aim, maybe make the wall transparent if the ball is in front of it (do a raycast from cam to ball check if anything is hit first if it is make it transparent). Not the easiest thing to do but would be nice.

Hole 12 did the wait till he hits thing for me too. Another invisible wall type thing on hole 12... comp hit ball from 2 inches from hole and it stopped after 1 inch. I think it may just be a seam or something like that in the polygon which may be causing the stops

Sad the ball goes through buildings...

hope this helps

[rrg]

Thank for the comment Virion.

Insomniacp i see what you mean with it being stuck on hole 3 and 12. It has never done that with me on my machine. However i ran it in ubuntu with wine and got similar results. I wiil start fixing that immediately. I am glad you got a kick out of the voices.

I'm not sure what you mean when:

Also my ball seemed to magically hit a wall when going down the hill in hole three

Does the ball bouncy back like a wall is in the middle perpendicular to the slope. or is the invisible wall next to the hole like in hole 12.

The aiming next to the wall suggestion is a great idea and I was thinking about it. The only problem is if i set wall to transparent then the whole level's wall will be transparent. which looks awkward. I am thinking I will add the ability to to a top down view which will help.

I already know that the ball stops an inch from the hole because of bad polygons, but thanks for the info. That was something that was going to be fix during release but I felt being the game is in beta i wasn't going to fix it. (me being lazy).

I have a question for you. How was the AI? What setting were they set if any, and did the setting feel right. What I mean was easy set to a good level of easy and hard was set to a good level of hard.

Thanks so much for the info.

[Insomniacp]

I believe it was similar to hole three when i was close to the hole it bounced back and stopped (can't remember though...). I played on medium first time through and lost pretty badly I was testing but still trying a little, I think the parts that got me the most were out of bounds when hitting the ball off a ramp or something it was hard to determine speed i needed to get it there properly. The ai was moderately hard as far as I could tell I will try it with an easy, then medium then hard to tell differences.

[stefbuet]

I was doing a 18 holes, and at the 18th, I shoted the ball with max velocity -> the ball jumped out from the grass, to the sand, far away. But the ball stopped when she touched the ground (no bounces), and then, nothing. I could move the camera around the ball, but I couldn't continue the game.
Btw, nice game (Why the desert ground and shadows have a so low resolution?)

[rrg]

Thanks again Insomniacp for more info. You mention that you where unable to determine the power of certain shoots. Could this be do to you being new to the game, and you need more practice(not trying to be insulting) or is the power not consistent. Just a word of warning...Hard AI is in my opinion very hard so good luck. You should be easy. Easy AI practically hand you the game on a silver plater, which is good if you want to kick some computer player's butt.

Stefbuet, congratulation. On hole 18 you reach the end of the physics world (which I wasn't able to achieve). Which is a box 600 X 100 X 600. In Newton game dynamics if an object reach the end of the world it get stuck, because it pass into a none physic area so gravity and velocity, are not in effect. I will make the boundary box(physic world) bigger thanks for the info.

To answer your question:

Why the desert ground and shadows have a so low resolution?

The texture for the ground is 1000x1000 and some computer cant render more than that resolution. Believe me I made the mistake in my other game. What happens is the ground will become white. It was just a precaution so older computer could handle my game. Hopefully it doesn't take away form the nice shader and texture on the objects though. [/u]

[slavik262]

The texture for the ground is 1000x1000 and some computer cant render more than that resolution. Believe me I made the mistake in my other game. What happens is the ground will become white. It was just a precaution so older computer could handle my game. Hopefully it doesn't take away form the nice shader and texture on the objects though. [/u]

You could:

A. Use a detail map.

B. Split your ground mesh into multiple squares and use UV coordinates to tile a lower res texture across the ground - just make sure the edges match up.

C. Use a shader to tile a lower-res texture across the whole ground without the need to add more polys.

[BlindSide]

Very nice work rrg

C. Use a shader to tile a lower-res texture across the whole ground without the need to add more polys.

Catch 22, if it's so bad it can't render more than 1000x1000, then it probably won't support the shader

[slavik262]

Very nice work rrg

C. Use a shader to tile a lower-res texture across the whole ground without the need to add more polys.

Catch 22, if it's so bad it can't render more than 1000x1000, then it probably won't support the shader

Then you have a fallback on the other two options. Plus, unless the system is ancient, almost everything at least supports pixel shader 1 or 2. My main point is that using a 1000 x 1000 texture probably isn't the best way for going about it.

Know that this is just constructive criticism - the game looks awesome.

[Insomniacp]

more practice was just hard to tell how hard would make it jump over the gap but not shoot off the map. So more practice would fix that.

[rrg]

For the ground low level texture...

I think that I will divide up the ground into 4 section and then have 4 separate texture for that ground. This will take up more space the game will have on the hard drive but it seems that many people would like to have a higher resolution ground with shadows.


I added a cheat option that can be activated in the game which will come in handy if you want to skip a player or finish a hole without sitting and waiting while computer players or yourself putt the ball to the hole. The game allready has the cheat programmed you just need to activate it.

Cheat

this tells the game that the player finished the hole

esc -> open quit menu
f key -> close quit menu and activates cheat


Also, was the 'How to Play' option for the game ok...Did it do a good job explaining the putting and camera mechanics?

Another thing if you have any good ideas for names for the game that would be appreciated too.

Sorry if it sounds that I am so demanding. These are just question that anyone can answer.

Thanks

[Bate]

It's very nice and fun as well.

And yes, the explanation is sufficient.

"IrrGolf" of course
"DesertHole"
"Pushing Bodies Through Holes" (hehe, that's the title of a paper on combinatorial computing btw)

A tiny bug (I guess):
If you change options and click "back" the resolution is not being saved, but all the other options are. I can only change the resolution by closing the window after a change. Maybe a "Apply" button would be convenient.

[freetimecoder]

Cool game

It would be nice to have a mouse control. Also, the crow sounds seem wrong, you should use an eagle scream or something like that.

greetings

[Sir_Hans]

It's the best minigolf game I've ever seen But sometimes is the ball behind walls and you can't see it well.