My first Allegro/C++ game needs playtesters and hosting...

[typosoft]

I would do that Pip, but the game is 1500+ lines of code and finished. As of now it runs at 325 fps but skips frames so it appears to actually run at 60-70fps. If I wanted to fix it to run at 60fps I'd have to convert every number that has to do with speed and waiting for a certain ammount of frames to pass and randomly adding entities and blah...etc... This is a learning experience I guess: never set the framerate of a game to 325 fps. This is good for now. I leave for college Friday so I don't have time to change it up. I might redo the game in 3d someday.

fling: that's awesome. How can I get my file up on your web space? I made a small fix to the game and put the files in an installing exe. I can't load exes on geocities though.

[Piptol]

Ok cool

I guess I'm kinda at the same stage as you, just moved from QB and working on first C++ game. I'm have the opposite problem of trying to keep the framerate up tho It's ironic that speed was never a problem for me in QB (320x200x8bpp flew on any machine) whereas it is now in C++ (800x600x16bpp)...

[typosoft]

Piptol:
Yeah, I've never had so much power to program with. I wont do it again, that's for sure. Anyways, you're working on Squealer TNT 2, right? If you need any help or beta-testers just email me.

Fling:
send me an email with details & whatnot.

[na_th_an]

It shows 9/33 on the corner on my 500

A lil slow in my system, but nice aesthetics. You should polish some gfx's borders, tho.

Do you really need 32 bits? It will look OK with 16 and it will be a lot faster.

Also, are you using Allegro's capabilities to take advantage of accelerator cards?

[typosoft]

if I switch the gfx mode to 16 bit, what do I have to do to make everything display right? And no, I am not taking advantage of any hardware acceleration...I don't know how. If you could help me out it would be greatly appreciated.

hey! major speed boost when I set the gfx mode to 16 bit! And it looks the exact same. I just need to convert my makecol32 to makecol16...

Nate:
I got it to upload! Download the new version (I think it's the Final) and see if there is any speed boost. Hold F in the game to see the frameskips and fps variables.
http://usuarios.lycos.es/firstqbasic/fla...nload.html

[na_th_an]

Dramatical speed boost. It shows 9/36 now, but the game runs at double speed than before and is completely playable (and very funny). Now the fades are fades and the menu animations are animations

Great work, this game is very funny. You can low your specs to AMD K6/2 - 500 now

For acceleration:

a. Driver for set_scr_mode ::

GFX_DIRECTX_ACCEL
The regular fullscreen DirectX driver, running with hardware acceleration enabled

Or windowed:

GFX_DIRECTX_OVL
The DirectX overlay driver. It uses special hardware features to run your program in a windowed mode: it doesn't work on all hardware, but performance is excellent on cards that are capable of it. It requires the color depth to be the same as that of the Windows desktop. In light of the limitation of desktop_color_depth() (see above), the reliable way of setting the overlay driver on desktops reported as 16-bit is:

Code:

if (desktop_color_depth() == 16) {
            set_color_depth(16);
            if (set_gfx_mode(GFX_DIRECTX_OVL, 640, 480, 0, 0)
                != 0) {
               set_color_depth(15);
               if (set_gfx_mode(GFX_DIRECTX_OVL, 640, 480, 0, 0)
                   != 0) {
                  /* 640x480 overlay driver not supported */
                  goto Error;
               }
            }
            /* ok, the 640x480 overlay driver is running */
         }

then use one of these BITMAP types:

- Video memory bitmaps. These are created by the create_video_bitmap() function, and are usually implemented as sub-bitmaps of the screen object. They must be destroyed by destroy_bitmap() before any subsequent calls to set_gfx_mode().

- System bitmaps. These are created by the create_system_bitmap() function, and are a sort of halfway house between memory and video bitmaps. They live in system memory, so you aren't limited by the amount of video ram in your card, but they are stored in a platform-specific format that may enable better hardware acceleration than is possible with a normal memory bitmap (see the GFX_HW_SYS_TO_VRAM_BLIT and GFX_HW_SYS_TO_VRAM_BLIT_MASKED flags in gfx_capabilities). System bitmaps must be accessed in the same way as video bitmaps, using the bank switch functions and bmp_write*() macros. Not every platform implements this type of bitmap: if they aren't available, create_system_bitmap() will function identically to create_bitmap(). They must be destroyed by destroy_bitmap() before any subsequent calls to set_gfx_mode().

[typosoft]

thanks for letting me use your space. I think it'll only be temporary, if I can get someone to mirror it for me.
The pagflipping technique is much slower than a brute force blit, so I'm just not going to worry about hardware acceleration. On my 2.4 ghz it went from skipping about 6 frames to 0! There is a lot more to the game than meets the eye. Here is the description on allegro.cc:

Flatch is a game where you are a bubble generated by a fish's flatulence. You must help Flatch get out of the ocean in one piece. Dodge fish, snakes, seaweed, toxic waste barrels, and black starfish.

Beating the game is a difficult task (even for the programmer of the game) which I challenge everyone to attempt. If it gets too easy for you, increase the difficulty in the options menu.

Get powerups to help you along the way and meet requirements for awards to help you achieve the high score.
The powerups are: pink starfish which will make you smaller (which is a GOOD thing), a dark pink starfish that makes you bigger (a very BAD thing), a bright blue starfish which allows you to kill the fish and rack up on points, and a yellow starfish which kills all the fish on the screen and multiplies the combo level of a blue starfish.

Here's a list of awards you can try to recieve (awards help towards a REALLY high score):
Name Requirement
---- -----------
King Get 10 perfects
Captain Planet Kill 40+ toxic waste barrels
Martial Arts Get a 25+ combo
Opportunity Get 20+ powerups
Big Boy Get at least 2 black starfish and survive a whole checkpoint's worth

[KingCheetah]

It's possible to look at it with my P233?

Once I downloaded a SkyRoads clone with just 30-40 3D textured boxes on the screen at once, and I got 0.7 FPS Drakan runs on minimally 8FPS with max detail on 800*600...

[typosoft]

Are you asking if the game will run on your p233, or saying it does run on your p233?

[na_th_an]

It will run. MMX would help. A fast video card would help.

Typosoft: it is not page flipping, it is just having your buffers in video memory and not in system memory.