Legacy of Kain: Revival - First preview

[Vincent]

Hey guys! 

I will soon be done with the basic monsters in my game.  I wondered if some of you would be interested in trying them out.  There are probably some bugs and some glitches to find but I don't find any now, and if you could give me a hand in finding them, I would be very grateful.  Also, if you have any suggestions regarding the skills and enemies, I'm all ears.

Tell me if you volunteer to give a look into it: I'll post it this week.  If nobody is interested in seeing the game at this stage of development (only a test room, enemies and skills completed, main character attacks not finished), then I won't bother posting it.

Thanks for your time! 

[bluemonkmn]

I'd be interested in seeing it, but I'm on vacation for another week and don't know how I'll be spending my time yet.

[Vincent]

Thanks bluemonkmn!

OK perfect!  I'll post the .sgdk2 file later this week.  Still got one monster to finish.

No pressure by the way, take a look at it whenever you want.

Oh, and there is a lot of stuff (rules, graphics, etc) that I would do differently if I had to start to project over, and it would definitely need a good optimization.  But whatever, it works as it is, so I think I won't bother optimizing it for now. 

[Vincent]

Well, as promised, I uploaded a first demo of my game.

It might not be easy to understand all the controls at first, so I provided an instructions file along with the sgdk2 file.  I recommend you read the instructions before you play the game, it's not long.

Just waiting for bluemonkm to approve the upload.

You will find the game under the sample section of the projects under the name Legacy of Kain: Revival or LokRevival, I'm not too sure what name I gave it. 

Look at it if you're curious and please give me comments and suggestions.  I'm here to answer questions too!

Thanks a lot!

[bluemonkmn]

I approved it, but just now tried it.  Is there a file missing "LokRevival.bmp"?

[Vincent]

Oh right!!!  I completely forgot to give the bmp file for the splashscreen!  My mistake.  I'll update the file!

Sorry!   

[Vincent]

OK, updated the file now.  Can you approve it please?

[Vincent]

Make sure the bmp included in the zip file is into the folder containing LokRevival.exe when you run the game.

[bluemonkmn]

That's somewhat better.  Now it starts up and offers the menu, but when I try to start a new game, I get an error about an InvalidEnum when attempting to check for an error after some operation in Display.cs.  This is the same error someone else was getting that I couldn't reproduce.  Now at least I have something to investigate.  Maybe I ran out of texture memory or something.  I wonder if I can reproduce it without waiting 2 minutes each time.

[Vincent]

Yeah, it's long, too long, to load the game up.

I don't have this error. 

I suppose everything is fine when you open the sgdk2 file with sgdk2.1?

Please keep me informed of your progress!

[bluemonkmn]

I posted details and questions at the end of this thread on the OpenTK forums:
http://www.opentk.com/node/1040

[Vincent]

Which version of the OpenTk.dll are you using?  Could it be related to that?

[bluemonkmn]

I was using 0.9.7 and downloaded 0.9.8 and got the same results.  Will look at the thread further today -- looks like Fiddler has some ideas.

[bluemonkmn]

In Display.cs, I searched for "2d" to find GetTextImage2D, and add some code to the GetTexture function in which it occurs.  Immediately after this line:

Code: [Select]

System.Drawing.Bitmap bmpTexture = (System.Drawing.Bitmap)Project.Resources.GetObject(Name);

I added this code

Code: [Select]

      int param;
      GL.GetInteger(GetPName.MaxTextureSize, out param);
      if ((bmpTexture.Width > param) || (bmpTexture.Height > param))
         throw new ApplicationException("Texture " + Name + " is too big top be loaded by the current video driver");

And then I reset the code and everything blew up because functions like "PushTowardCoordinateGravity" were not defined.  I guess you didn't put all your code in partial classes.  I could work around this by just modifying your project directly instead of modifying SGDK2 code and resetting your project, but I don't have time for that at the moment.

Anyway I suspect the problem is that some of your textures are too big for my video hardware/drivers.  The first one I hit is KainSlashZonesGraphicSheet.  I think your graphic sheets use way more space than necessary and could 1) use smaller cell sizes and offset the frames instead of positioning graphics within large graphic sheet cells, and 2) split graphic sheets into multiple sheets where necessary (and add the frames to a common frameset if appropriate).

My video hardware reports a maximum texture size of 2048.

[Vincent]

Yeah, without a doubt!  That's why I said the game needed a good optimization.  My biggest sprites take about 128x128 pixels.  That's huge.  But I've got so many of these sprites to remake in smaller versions that's it seems like a job for a titan.   I guess I don't have a choice though...

I thought I put all of my custom code in partial classes, but that's not what I did at the beginning of the project.  So it is not unlikely that there are still functions that I didn't transfer to partial classes.  I really learned a lot since the beginning of this project and some stuff I did at the beginning wouldn't be a part of a "Best Practices in SGDK2" guide.   (I admit I still do some... strange stuff.)

Oh well, I guess I will do it little by little.  It's unfortunate that is doesn't work for you, I would have like to hear your comments.

Thanks a lot for your time! I really appreciate it.