rock E.T.

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Rado1
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Post by Rado1 »

Hi,

Ville: I like disabling elements you provided in latest beta. A small improvement would be to allow disabling/enabling selected elements (even more than one) from context menu of the project tree. I observer a problem when generating exe - disabled elements ARE taken into account in final exe (so they are not actually disabled).

Another request: would it be possible to allow generating linux (and possibly also OS X) binaries in ZGE betas? player_linux.bin and player_osx86.bin are missing.

Kjell: Visualization of collision bounds is great for debugging! I already used it several times and I started to understand some rules that are not obvious (even if written in online help), e.g., Rect2D uses absolute size, Rect2D_OBB relative, size of Box3D is tripled (I do not know why, is it correct?), size of spheres is radius not diameter... You know, usual problems of a greenhorn. The only problem is that this functionality is not integrated in ZGE.
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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

Multi-disable selected components is a good idea. I named it "DesignDisable" because I wanted to make it clear that it is disabled only in the designer as a temporary debugging technique for trying out things. I'd rather not include the code for ignoring disabled components in the runtime-engine for size and efficiency reasons. But I guess I could remove disabled components from the binary stream when generating exe-files.

About Linux and Mac-binaries in beta: the problem is that building those runtime is a semi-manual routine that take an hour or two of boring work (starting up a vm-ware session, copying files, build, test etc). Since I want to release beta-updates often, I don't bother with the other platforms. Also it is my impression that no one ever use ZGE to generate files for those platforms anyway :). But if the other platforms become more important then I will try to find a way of making the build-process more automated.
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jph_wacheski
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Post by jph_wacheski »

Code: Select all

ZZDC<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
<Condition Comment="NULL" Expression="return 0;"/>
This works great in editor preview and in exe,. and you can past whatever in there. I often use it to just store parts of strucures Im not sure Im cutting out yet.

Yup, collisions (like all code you didnt write yourself!) are a tad querky at first, and do requier some testing to figure correctly,. I just noticed that the order they are named in the DefineCollision has an effect on some responses,. if it don't work as expected try swaping them. (still figuring exactly what the effects are)
iterationGAMES.com
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Rado1
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Post by Rado1 »

Hi,

a new version of rock E.T. is coming up. It comprises the following improvements:

* adding small batteries as bonuses for shooting enemies
* capacity of full energy is now 33 shots instead of original 20; if you take into account automatic charging, you have ca. 40 shots of interrupted shooting (this must be enough!)
* each level finishes with a creature (I call it "ufopus" = UFO + octopus); to defeat it you must first to destruct its tentacles by shooting orange ends, then hit body 10 times
* improvements in graphics (smaller and colorful background stars, better shooting bullets, usage of better spheres, more visible asteroids, shining of batteries, ...)
* performance optimization; e.g., smaller textures, more optimized meshes, particles with less emissions per second
* switching background music and sound effects on/off is controlled separately; M (music) and S (sound effects) keys
* better application icon (higher resolution)

Playing tip: if you press both up + down keys, rocket's position is being stabilized.

Waiting for your comments.
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rockET.zip
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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

The "Ufopus" is a great addition :). It's a fun and challenging mini-boss creature. I bet you had some trouble getting the body-arms hierarchy of models to work (since it is not supported in ZGE) but it works perfectly.

The difficulty level feels right now, probably partly because I've gotten used to the reverse thrust that allows me to back out from danger.

The icon does not show here on Windows 7 but it's a know problem that ZGE only supports old-style icons and not the full color png-icons that are supported in Vista and onwards.

So what's your goal with this game? Are you spending time learning different game maker tools and comparing features?
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Rado1
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Post by Rado1 »

Creating of Ufopus was a small challenge. I had to learn myself some tricks with local model variables and instantiation of models with setting their local variables; I applied them for setting the desired relative position for each particle. Also final tuning of behavior (proper setting of SteeringControllers) took many trials and reworks (I used DesignDisable feature many times).

Basically, the goal with rock E.T. was to learn ZGE and to create/publish a small game.

I had a look at the following game making tools: Game Editor, Novashell, Gamestudio / A7, 3D Rad and Unity (which is my favorite for realistic scene-based 3D games). However, ZGE is the best tool for smaller "artistic" games, demos and screen savers. Simple to learn and use. To improve ZGE, I would appreciate support for networking (to be utilized in multiplayer games) and 3D physics for models, both discussed several times in the forum.
Last edited by Rado1 on Tue Jul 06, 2010 8:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Rado1
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Post by Rado1 »

I found a bug of disappearing asteroids after playing without crashing the rocket for longer time. Fixed now. I also added the pause/resume functionality. Here it is...
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rockET.zip
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mkranga
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cool

Post by mkranga »

good job.
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