Gdash

CWS · Post by **CWS** » Sun Mar 17, 2013 8:49 pm

Congrats! This new version is a big leap!

I love the rocket launcher! I'll certainly try to design a new cave to test out its capabilities!

Do not know why you consider it alpha - I think it's at least beta!

By the way: CWS Boulder 3 wasn't ready for release as it's way beyond completion but what the heck - I'll continue with it with the new rocket launcher!

cirix · Post by **cirix** » Sun Mar 17, 2013 9:00 pm

CWS wrote:By the way: CWS Boulder 3 wasn't ready for release as it's way beyond completion but what the heck - I'll continue with it with the new rocket launcher!

Wait a bit, till we decide if the rocket launcher has one rocket or infinite

Maybe it should be one rocket, like (like in Krakout

) the bomb or the - to be thought about later - telescope hand.

CWS · Post by **CWS** » Sun Mar 17, 2013 11:12 pm

In terms of the Boulder Dash engine I think one rocket would be really better. So every rocket launcher should have one rocket loaded. If we need several rockets, we can place several rocket launchers in the cave. As the whole game logic bases on similar behaviors I think this would be the wises solution.

Just to be on the sure side there could be an option in the cave properties if it should be one or infinite rockets, like other effects. Same with a possible telescope arm...

benjamind2011 · Post by **benjamind2011** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 3:35 am

I notice now that the scrolling is dependent on the system that one is playing GDash on...

I have a pretty powerful quad-core i7-3610QM laptop with a very good built-in display (8-16ms response but an amazing 95% of NTSC color space - brilliant colors) and notice that the scrolling is not quite as smooth as on my i7-930 quadcore processor on my desktop system which has a monitor (Dell 2209WA) with a 6-12ms response.

Can anyone tell me how the scrolling smoothness differs on different systems, if indeed they have other systems to compare to?

Would GDash run really super-smooth on one of those nice 120Hz monitors (eg. Samsung S23-950D monitor which has a nice 80% NTSC color gamut - noticeably better than your standard 72% NTSC display) ?

Any 120Hz monitor should in theory provide a decent boost in scrolling performance especially if the processor is nice and fast, like the i7 ones.

Is this a thing with SDL? I know SDL is faster than GTK+.

CWS · Post by **CWS** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 7:13 am

I think it should run smooth on a monitor capable of displaying 50 Hz.

Maybe it's my imagination but the fine scrolling is definitively much better than in the old versions from 2010.

cirix · Post by **cirix** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 7:50 am

benjamind2011 wrote:Is this a thing with SDL? I know SDL is faster than GTK+.

Yes, but unfortunately SDL cannot always sync the refresh (and therefore my refresh requests in the scrolling routine) to the monitor refresh. Depends on the operating system and the video mode. For example, on Unix (+ Linux, + MacOS) at cannot do this in any video mode. On Windows, it can do this in a fullscreen mode, but cannot do it in a windowed mode.
Anyway, my OpenGL routines are 90% written for GDash, just not finished yet. If running on OpenGL, all the graphics should be hardware accelerated, and the refreshes hardware controlled - and what else knows better when to refresh than the video card?

CWS · Post by **CWS** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 1:23 pm

Nevertheless compatibility is more important than speed. GDash should run on as many different systems as possible - that ensures a very long lifetime for the game!

Marto · Post by **Marto** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 2:12 pm

Don't remember seeing the dust effects in the previous GDash I had. Looks good though.

Giving Arno Dash 1 a whirl, been a while

Great work cirix, thanks!

Marto · Post by **Marto** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 3:11 pm

Small things with the caves (nothing to do with the program itself)

- Don Pedro's BD7 Cave M is set to BD1 engine, when it needs to be set to BD2. Otherwise the amoeba is affected by the magic wall bug.
- Masters Boulder Dash Cave B, the inbox timing is out rendering the cave unsolvable (firefly smash under both PAL and NTSC), a quick change of the hatch value from 2 to 3 for all levels sorts that out.

cirix · Post by **cirix** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 9:52 am

Marto wrote:- Masters Boulder Dash Cave B, the inbox timing is out rendering the cave unsolvable (firefly smash under both PAL and NTSC), a quick change of the hatch value from 2 to 3 for all levels sorts that out.

These are presumably caused by the small inaccuracy of the cave timing routine (which tries to imitate an original c64). Maybe I will add the game as a special case, if i cannot tune the timing.

Anyway, I just tested GDash on Windows8. Interestingly, it ran much better without fine scrolling, than with it. (In fullscreen mode.) Maybe it depends on the operating system: one should try both settings, and see which one is better.

Edit: this is interesting. In the cave you mentioned, DonPedro/MasterBoulderDash/Cave B, the hatching time is 3 secs on the C64 as well. And in other caves, for example Cave A and Cave M, it is 2 secs. I don't know where this is set (where the values are stored). On the other hand, I measured 159ms / cave iteration in Cave B, and the values calculated by GDash are around 158-159-160, so its estimations are pretty accurate. (Thanks to CWS who helped me with measurements a long time ago

)
So this game will also be added as a special case.

LogicDeLuxe · Post by **LogicDeLuxe** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 12:23 pm

Marto wrote:- Don Pedro's BD7 Cave M is set to BD1 engine, when it needs to be set to BD2. Otherwise the amoeba is affected by the magic wall bug.

All Don Pedro caves are BD1 engine.
The magic wall bug only affects amoebas bellow the magic wall, which is not the case in this cave. I think, GDash doesn't emulates this behavior yet, though, but uses the 1stB conversion option instead, which should be turned off for this cave.

CWS · Post by **CWS** » Tue Mar 19, 2013 1:10 pm

One thing I always want to post here but never did: Do we have a graphic designer here as a member? GDash could use its own theme. I always thought about a retro stylish theme similar to the C64 theme but in higher resolution and more modern appearance. All objects should be drawn in the way that GDash could use the cave colors like the C64 theme.

The new theme should be similar what Derek Yu did for Spelunky and Spelunky XBLA (http://spelunkyworld.com/).

cirix · Post by **cirix** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 5:51 pm

100.000+ views of this topic

subotai · Post by **subotai** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 2:45 pm

Thanks for sharing and for adding the joystick support. When I use the analog stick for moving around and hold the stick to the up and just a little bit to the right, the player moves to the right. Here is a proposal to solve this problem:

Code: Select all

Const min_val = 25000 //just a guess
...
if x-axis>min_val  then move_right else
if x-axis<-min_val then move_left else

if y-axis>min_val then move_down else
if y-axis<-min_val then move_up;

cirix · Post by **cirix** » Wed Apr 10, 2013 8:50 pm

hello

does anybody know from which game this screenshot is from?
http://www.dazeland.com/images/Amiga/Bo ... _C64-2.png
http://www.dazeland.com/images/Amiga/Bo ... _C64-3.png
is it some amiga version? can it be downloaded from somewhere maybe?

cirix