Trigonometry Wars 3 Redux: The Revengeoning (v1.0 released!)

[n0rtygames]

Code: Select all

/* 
Name:  bullet_create, by Beau-Patrick Finch
Usage: bullet_create(object,x,y,speed,direction);
*/
function bullet_create(a:Object,b:Number,c:Number,d:Number,e:Number):void {
	var bullet = new a();
	bullet.x = b;
	bullet.y = c;
	bullet.spd = d;
	bullet.dir = e;
	addChild(bullet); // add to stage with depth handling
}

Wouldn't you be better off maintaining a collection of bullets in used/unused states and then only creating new bullets if required? Like, initialise say 500-1000 at the start and only do 'new' if you actually need a new bullet?

[BPzeBanshee]

Maybe, but that's sort of out of my reach of Flash knowledge, and if I interpret what you say correctly may end up involving lots of fucking around with manipulation of object positions just to get a bullet to launch. Someone with more experience with Flash than I will have to answer that.

Of course in GM you don't even have an issue with creating multiple instances of an object (ie a bullet type).

[n0rtygames]

WAIT, WHAT?

Code: Select all

bulletWhip()
{
    int bulletSpeed = 3;
    while(bulletSpeed < 6)
    {
        make_bullet(blah blah);
        bulletSpeed += 0.25;  // WHAT IN THE FLYING POOP?
        delay(1); 
    }
}

I know this is pseudo code you posted, however I just noticed that you were actually adding 0.25 to an INTEGER. Is this some gamemaker specific voodoo, or just something you knocked together to illustrate the point in response to my question?

If gamemaker actually does this, I'm going to cry in to a pillow and gibber for a while...

[Giest118]

WAIT, WHAT?

Code: Select all

bulletWhip()
{
    int bulletSpeed = 3;
    while(bulletSpeed < 6)
    {
        make_bullet(blah blah);
        bulletSpeed += 0.25;  // WHAT IN THE FLYING POOP?
        delay(1); 
    }
}

I know this is pseudo code you posted, however I just noticed that you were actually adding 0.25 to an INTEGER. Is this some gamemaker specific voodoo, or just something you knocked together to illustrate the point in response to my question?

If gamemaker actually does this, I'm going to cry in to a pillow and gibber for a while...

Actually that was just me being a dumbass; in Game Maker you don't even declare variable types. It's like python in that you can just be all like "speed = 1;" and then "speed=speed+0.25;" and it'll be all awesome and badass.

[n0rtygames]

Actually that was just me being a dumbass; in Game Maker you don't even declare variable types. It's like python in that you can just be all like "speed = 1;" and then "speed=speed+0.25;" and it'll be all awesome and badass.

Despite what Trap says... GameMaker continues to actually impress me at times.

It also horrifies me, but if I ignore that and look at it from a high level.. it impresses me.

[BPzeBanshee]

Yea, you only get var (local variables, haven't seen much need for declaring with var) and globalvar (global variables, can be declared with globalvar or put 'global.' at the beginning), and from what I've read at bottom-level code they're signed floating point numbers. This has the disadvantage of having more memory stored to a single var as opposed to low-level control but allows for expandability and "not having to worry about that". There's DLLs around to allow that kind of handling if you *really* wanted to, but I digress.

For the record, trap15 actually doesn't know jack shit about GM: I snapped at him the other day because when I put him to the test, every piece of info he thought he knew about GM came from second-hand complaints about its flaws, and because the old runner (pre-GM:Studio) was made in Delphi. Of fucking course a language is going to sound bad if you only listen to it's bad parts. It's like saying "XNA sucks, I hear you have to install a runtime environment for it just to get a game to work on Windows and the only stuff made for it is shit Minecraft clones anyway".

[nasty_wolverine]

there are no bad tools, only bad mechanics...
GM is actually very good, but of course if step down C# or C++ you get more benefits but by sacrificing simplicity.
when you choose a language or tool, what you take into consideration is how simple it is to do things in it and what kind of performance it gives.
GM is simple but performance isnt its selling point. while C# or C++ is complex but performance is through the roof.

but if you know the limits of what you are working with, you can still create some great stuff.

[n0rtygames]

Watch out! Watch out!

A wierd bug report is approaching. The real coding begins now. ARE YOU READY?


Giest - I'm getting this really fucking weird issue, when my player ship is alive - the game seems to be running as though vsync or something is enabled and it's throttling to half the usual FPS. When the ship dies, there's no issue at all. Bullet and enemy speed returns to normal.

This wasn't an issue a few builds back (downloaded 11th February).

It makes the game pretty easy to play

[n0rtygames]

UPDATE!

Isolated the issue. "Configurable Control" seems to be causing the slowdown. Set that to off, no problem at all. Also, I notice that the controls menu is very unresponsive.

What have you done Giest? C'mon, be honest.. what have you done? *stares*

[Giest118]

UPDATE!

Isolated the issue. "Configurable Control" seems to be causing the slowdown. Set that to off, no problem at all. Also, I notice that the controls menu is very unresponsive.

What have you done Giest? C'mon, be honest.. what have you done? *stares*

The entire reason that configurable controls can be turned off is because of this issue. Otherwise why would I program such an oddly specific feature? :V

What you're experiencing is a rare thing where your hardware hates Game Maker; plugging in a gamepad will fix it, and so will just keeping the configurable controls turned off.

[n0rtygames]

Otherwise why would I program such an oddly specific feature? :V

Drugs, followed by stream of conciousness coding.

What you're experiencing is a rare thing where your hardware hates Game Maker; plugging in a gamepad will fix it, and so will just keeping the configurable controls turned off.

But then I can't play with ASD... and my shot is where the laser should be and the laser is where my bomb should be and and and and and..... (

Can't you make it read in defaults from a text file as a workaround for this issue? So the non-configurable ones are whatever gets loaded in at the start - from said .cfg file....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=katzz57tmm4

[Giest118]

Otherwise why would I program such an oddly specific feature? :V

Drugs, followed by stream of conciousness coding.

What you're experiencing is a rare thing where your hardware hates Game Maker; plugging in a gamepad will fix it, and so will just keeping the configurable controls turned off.

But then I can't play with ASD... and my shot is where the laser should be and the laser is where my bomb should be and and and and and..... (

Can't you make it read in defaults from a text file as a workaround for this issue? So the non-configurable ones are whatever gets loaded in at the start - from said .cfg file....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=katzz57tmm4

My choices are: Manually checking keys/gamepad button presses (the thing that's causing your problem in the first place) or using Game Maker's default keyboard events (which I have to hard-code). So, no, it is completely impossible for me to do that thing you just said.

You said this didn't happen until v0.8. What changed about your computer in that time?

EDIT: As a possible workaround (as usual with this crap I don't know if this would work) I could add an option specifically to turn off the gamepad controls entirely. I'll give that a try for v1.0. The current build I have is a bit too in-progress to release though, so I'm gonna have to ask you to either find a gamepad or deal with it for the time being. >_>

[n0rtygames]

EDIT: As a possible workaround (as usual with this crap I don't know if this would work) I could add an option specifically to turn off the gamepad controls entirely. I'll give that a try for v1.0. The current build I have is a bit too in-progress to release though, so I'm gonna have to ask you to either find a gamepad or deal with it for the time being. >_>

Excuse me while I go and have a self entitled tantrum...

I have a Madcatz TE (xbox/pc) -- that'll work. The only difference is that I've plugged a USB hard drive in today... I can see no reason why that would make a difference!

[trap15]

I can see no reason why that would make a difference!

I can...



GameMaker

[Giest118]

So, actual progress report.

Stages 2-1 through 2-4 are done, barring any bullet pattern tweaking I might do. I may have to tone down 2-2 substantially since the second half of it is facking bananas balls ass fuck. Which is empirically the worst thing a stage can be. The rest of the second loop stages are manageable, but really damn hard. :V

[ilikepie21k]

EDIT: So hey, apparently this is a known bug in Windows 8. Sad to say you're fucked if you use that OS. I don't think I'll endeavor to fix this; this is very much Microsoft's problem.

Microsoft broke everything with W8. People have narrowed it down to a bug in dmsynth.dll, but replacing the 8 one with 7 is damn near impossible. Microsoft super-secured the inner workings of the OS. Yet another reason 8 would be much better if it was a tablet exclusive OS.
TL;DR: W8 users (like me, sadly) are fucked.

[n0rtygames]

So, actual progress report.

Stages 2-1 through 2-4 are done, barring any bullet pattern tweaking I might do. I may have to tone down 2-2 substantially since the second half of it is facking bananas balls ass fuck. Which is empirically the worst thing a stage can be. The rest of the second loop stages are manageable, but really damn hard. :V

Beta?!

Not that I'm actually good enough to beat the first loop yet.

[Giest118]

"Beta" was the entire purpose of the v0.8 release. And thus far I haven't gotten that much feedback for it at all, other than the TLB seems a bit easy (as far as TLBs go), which was a little bit intentional.

But don't you worry, the full game is progressing. I'm in the process of making the REAL true last boss now. :3

[n0rtygames]

The True True Last Boss?

I've got an easier pattern on my TLB before the final madshit attack guaranteed to crush dreams, mostly to give a mental break. Was your reasoning something like that?

[Giest118]

The regular TLB is meant to appear at the end of the first loop. So, THAT is what I considered when making it. :3

The TTLB, however, is allowed to be much harder.

[n0rtygames]

The regular TLB is meant to appear at the end of the first loop. So, THAT is what I considered when making it. :3

The TTLB, however, is allowed to be much harder.

But will it be a loli-bee?

[ilikepie21k]

The regular TLB is meant to appear at the end of the first loop. So, THAT is what I considered when making it. :3

The TTLB, however, is allowed to be much harder.

But will it be a loli-bee?

I hope, because loli bees are all the buzz.
(that was terrible)

[Giest118]

So, a status update.

Every stage now has a second loop difficulty, and the True Last Boss has been programmed, barring getting it to actually explode properly. It's always important to get TLBs to explode. I've also added a third score extend at 100 million points, might change this value later.

Still left to do:

* Endings
* Connect the second loop to the first, and also decide second loop requirements
* Make it possible to turn off gamepad controls to fix that stupid retarded fuckshit
* Tweak the second loop stages to remove difficulty spikes/bullshit
* Do stress-tests on the scoring system to see how high it's possible to crank the score up in a theoretically perfect run. Having said that, I don't see this system exceeding a billion points.
* Add timeouts to boss fights

SO YEAH. Getting there.

[n0rtygames]

So, a status update.

Every stage now has a second loop difficulty, and the True Last Boss has been programmed, barring getting it to actually explode properly. It's always important to get TLBs to explode. I've also added a third score extend at 100 million points, might change this value later.

Still left to do:

* Endings
* Connect the second loop to the first, and also decide second loop requirements
* Make it possible to turn off gamepad controls to fix that stupid retarded fuckshit
* Tweak the second loop stages to remove difficulty spikes/bullshit
* Do stress-tests on the scoring system to see how high it's possible to crank the score up in a theoretically perfect run. Having said that, I don't see this system exceeding a billion points.
* Add timeouts to boss fights

SO YEAH. Getting there.

I think you should increase the speed of your bullets. People will love it.

About the gamepad controls - does that mean we can have custom keys without the lag, so long as pad is disabled?

[Giest118]

About the gamepad controls - does that mean we can have custom keys without the lag, so long as pad is disabled?

Yup. That is the entire purpose of me doing that.

[Giest118]

Update for today!

I added timeouts to the bosses, and made it possible to toggle configurable controls for keyboard and gamepad separately.
NOW EVERYONE IS HAPPY. FOREVER.

While I was fucking about with the controls, I decided to clean up the menu code because I was doing some retarded crap with it before.

[BPzeBanshee]

Giest, what the hell exactly are you doing for your configurable control code anyway? I asked n0rty to test GMOSSE out (about a week or two ago before I lost internet) to see whether it behaves oddly and would you believe it works fine for him.

[Giest118]

The gamepad checks all look like this:

Code: Select all

if (joystick_check_button(1,gamepadmap1))

... Where gamepadmap1/2/3/4 is whichever button they have set to shot, laser, bomb, or pause.

I had a look at gmosse to compare:

Code: Select all

if (joystick_check_button(1,global.joy1))

How about that shit? Looks exactly the god damn fucking same. :3

Only thing I can think of that would screw things up a bit is that, before this latest code update, I was checking both the keyboard input and the joystick input in an "OR" statement, of this form:

Code: Select all

if (keyboard_check(keyboardmap1) || joystick_check_button(1,gamepadmap1))

It's possible that doing the checks this way is what was screwing everything up, SO I MAY HAVE ACCIDENTALLY FIXED EVERYTHING BY SEPARATING THE CHECKS ENTIRELY. I don't have a computer that bitches at me about every little thing, so I have no way to really test. :3

[BPzeBanshee]

Strange indeed. And you're running GM8.1, with that code in Step like I am? Is the player movement code any different (other than say, adding by 2 etc)? I know GMOSSE's player code isn't very nice to look at at all (hasn't changed much since nimitz modified it in MK-IV) but if it's only in movement that causes the lag maybe it lies there?

I'd love to actually be able to recreate the issue and prove for sure whether it's definitely GM or not but our only test cases are n0rty and Cagar (who I could've sworn I PM'ed the first time I heard of this issue and got promptly ignored?). Might be worthwhile to make a separate thread although the lack of internet means it'll be a while before I get around to doing it regardless. Of course cunt15 could be right but I'm not one to go by the words of someone who's never touched GM before in his life.

[Giest118]

Strange indeed. And you're running GM8.1, with that code in Step like I am? Is the player movement code any different (other than say, adding by 2 etc)? I know GMOSSE's player code isn't very nice to look at at all (hasn't changed much since nimitz modified it in MK-IV) but if it's only in movement that causes the lag maybe it lies there?

And you're running GM8.1, with that code in Step like I am?

And you're running GM8.1

GM8.1

Version 8.0
Written by Mark Overmars

SON OF A MOTHERFUCKER COCKSUCKING SUPER CUNT SON OF A FUCK