My GM shmups - Last Chance,MEGATANK, Flying V, XYX, ZPF

[BPzeBanshee]

I have settled on an idea for my soon-to-possibly-exist GM: HTML5 project, too... already drawn a bunch of graphics for it and everything, yay!

Nice one! I'm interested to see how fast you can get it to run. I haven't tried HTML5 yet but from what I gathered it's slow, and doesn't support
WebGL (which is supposed to be something that could make browser games run like desktop apps - without external plugins).
Also sound is said to be really immature in HTML5.
Best of luck though!

You're not wrong, although it's been said by Yoyogames that WebGL was planned to be implemented at some point if it hasn't already. I hope this is the case.

Also, the actual performing speed of HTML5 apps is heavily dependant on your browser. I find all of the HTML5 apps I've tried run fullspeed on the latest version of Google Chrome, which is unrivalled in HTML5 performance. As for sound, GM's bad sound + HTML5 bad sound = something like this, so I'd probably avoid having background music entirely or just using it sparingly in some parts (there are good games that do this although no shmups that I know of, don't let that put you off though).

A sidenote: Going by the last post on Yoyogame's front page surely they've started if not have already implemented various optimisations to GM:HTML5 for the standard runner as well as the HTML5 runner since they've got GM working for one of these things in mind. If a GM game can run on a 700 Mhz Linux box the size of a credit card then surely when GM:HTML5/GM Studio/GM9 hits retail we can expect to have most of these issues completely solved and improved over 8.x releases for sure.

[Rozyrg]

I expected music would be a challenge with it, if for no other reason than you don't want players waiting around to download 30MB+ worth of OGG/MP3 files just for a quick go at a in-browser game. I'm guessing the handling of external music files (and music extensions at that) would work differently anyways, though.

.. but yeah, I don't think anyone wants to have to fall back on using General MIDI.

[BPzeBanshee]

I expected music would be a challenge with it, if for no other reason than you don't want players waiting around to download 30MB+ worth of OGG/MP3 files just for a quick go at a in-browser game. I'm guessing the handling of external music files (and music extensions at that) would work differently anyways, though.

.. but yeah, I don't think anyone wants to have to fall back on using General MIDI.

If they bothered to rewrite the engine to use module tracks it wouldn't be a problem IMO. Also, I believe external handling in HTML5 is nonexistant and not possible from what I've read around the place.

My optimistic side hopes they'll come up with something similar to GMFMODSimple in terms of functionality (various file format support, loop points, groups, pausing, volume control per sound and per group, etc), but my pessimistic side which is always right knows that they won't bother and we'll be relying on geniuses who can make cross-platform external plugins for the native apps and cutting out stuff entirely for HTML5.

[Rozyrg]

Just got it today, and honestly, I'm feeling like a complete early-adopter dipshit for doing it. -_-

In short, I put together a ridiculously simple game to test everything out and apparently 90% of what I wrote would not function all when exported to a browser, how perfect. I expected to have to make some adjustments to account for the change in formats; but if that's the functional consistency between them, good grief.

That's what I get for buying beta software, I guess.... and probably for being too eager to start something new when I already had enough on my plate. *sigh*


Note: I am pretty tired and cranky tonight, so you can take this (possibly premature) venting with a grain of salt.

[BPzeBanshee]

How odd.

Note: I am pretty tired and cranky tonight, so you can take this (possibly premature) venting with a grain of salt.

Oh, like me for the last two days.

Do let me know if you still can't get shit to work though. I know they took out a lot of what they consider archaic functions, and a lot of stuff that would work with an EXE like external loading won't work outright when exporting to HTML5. Maybe you're not being simple enough? Who knows.

[Rozyrg]

MEGA EDIT: FINALLY figured out what was going on...

Turns out the problem was nothing more than a subtlety concerning script arguments. Basically, under HTML5 you can't use script_name() as script_name(0), so in every script I had with something like:

Code: Select all

if argument0=0 {}

..it would simply skip those instructions, and considering most of those contained variable initializations and so on, it's no wonder nothing worked.

[Rozyrg]

Ok, now that it's behaving normally for me (and quite nicely at that), I do have some things to report:

1. Window resizing is interesting. Obviously, the standard scale/window settings don't work for HTML5 output for the sake of webpage formatting, so you have play with views and various other things to make your game scale how you want when displayed in a browser. I found sort of a 'cheat' for this by having the first room loaded set to a much larger size (2-3X the resolution of the actual game) and then it when it loads the main room and everything else, it will blow it all up to fit within that larger area of the screen. You can also manually set the canvas size in the corresponding html file GM outputs for pretty much the same result. The catch with doing this (for me at least) is that anything beyond 1:1 scale causes the game to run significantly slower.

I even tried just having the game scale everything up itself... the result was equally slow. All I can figure is some kind of color blending/interpolation process is dragging things down. Not sure what to do about this, honestly.

2. Sound is....weird. I can't speak much for quality since I automatically knock everything down to the lowest bitrate on importing; but how it handles it is definitely a bit odd. The main thing I noticed is that it can only play a sound as rapidly as it could if it were being cleanly looped. Maybe the same sounds simply can't be overlaid and it has to wait until the previous instance of it stops playing? Whatever's going on, it just sounds very strange and clumsy when you should have things like gunfire, lasers and explosions going non-step. Even tossing in sound_stop() like I usually do with sound-related scripts doesn't help with this.

Hopefully this is something they're working on..

[BPzeBanshee]

The sound handling issue is definitely something to report to Yoyogames. Normal editions of GM with its sound system plays sounds over eachother with no issues, so for it to be an issue in HTML5 sounds like a bug rather than a limitation.

Glad to hear you've actually figured out the problem. Should've guessed it would've been script-related: I know you code very differently from the way I do.

[Rozyrg]

I've seen at least one other person mention something similar about 'sound looping' on Yoyo's bug tracker site, with the staff response being that was a browser (API?) issue or something and that it was ultimately out of their hands. I'll still report it, though. >_>

Here's a quick test game I've been tinkering with.

Note:

• - this actually has nothing to do with the project I had been planning. I just tossed in some old, unused sprites and made a little mutidirectional shooter thing whilst seeing what all I could get out of GMHTML5. I think it could work as an ok little web game, though, so I'm going to spend some more time fiddling with it.
  - 2X size version may or may not be significantly slower depending on your PC. On my laptop, it runs about half as fast.
  - Having tried this on multiple browsers on two different PCs, I've found the sound can get even screwier depending on your browsing environment. On this PC, using Chrome, all sounds will cut out and never play again after only several seconds. Strange.

[SenpaiSamaKun]

Has three weapons. Orange is vulcan spread, blue is cross-way missiles, and green is wave spread.
Technically sound, its four way directions to attack, 8-way to move.
Though as a test, just alternating between directions each time you stop pivoting can get you far.
I personally got to wave 54 before I posted here.

Tested on Firefox and I hear NOTHING. While IE doesn't support it.
Sorry to pester, but how's matters on your "other" work?

Overall I pretty much see the sound support working just fine myself. If you could you could put your Game Maker games with some optimal graphic changes in a month or two.

[Rozyrg]

Oops.. I forgot to mention the 4-way directional limitation when shooting. I did have it set to full 8-way originally; but I kept getting that classic multi-key conflict issue when testing on my laptop... usually causing me lose at that. I just figured it would be safe to assume I wouldn't be the only one. Granted, I know I could just set the gun rotation to the mouse; but that control scheme always felt funky to me (not ruling out the possibility of having this as an option later on, though.)

My idea so far is to keep my "full" GM games separate and do significantly more simple stuff for the web/HTML5. I'm not completely discounting the possibility of porting anything over eventually; but they would need to be stripped down a good bit. Maybe I could just make SD versions instead?

I think it's fair to say the sound issue is really out of my hands at this point, as I'm using no more than the bare-bones commands and the lowest bitrate possible for all of them.*shrugs* I'll just have to wait and see what happens on Yoyo's front I guess.

Oh yeah, and I've got up to 77, personally.

[Rozyrg]

Title screen!

Since I've been working on it quite a bit the last few days, here's some more details:

• - game will consist of 2 rounds/levels
  - each round has 50 enemy waves and a boss
  - enemy firing rate and score value increases with each wave
  - there are no continues; but clearing a round gives you all your lives back
  - clearing both rounds will loop the game and lock enemy fire rate to it's maximum

I also replaced the car (leftover gfx from another project) with a cool tank, hence the title.

[SenpaiSamaKun]

Seems about right as far as difficulty and length.
Good old double stick stuff.

Considering submitting it anywhere but on site?

[Rozyrg]

I'm open to posting it elsewhere, sure. Preferably somewhere that hosts a lot of other web games (Flash/Java/etc.); but since HTML5 isn't fully supported by every browser yet, that might be awhile. If I can figure out how to get Adsense or something going, maybe I can make a few pennies off of my own little site in the meantime. yeah right.

I was thinking about offering the .exe version for a dollar or something, too; but it all just depends how it turns out. >_>

[BPzeBanshee]

There are HTML5 sites in similar styles to Flash game websites that should accept your game. I've seen them accept complete shit so yours should have no problems on there.

Shame about that sound problem though, hopefully Yoyogames get their act together for that. Maybe look around to see if there's some kind of Javascript extension for better sound?

[SenpaiSamaKun]

Well from what I've been researching about HTML5, it comes with the format for now.
http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2011/03/th ... tml5-audio
The only reliable command you can give it is....play and pause.
The future of the browser gaming and we're back on 8-track restrictions.

Though what music format are you using in the first place?
MP3s seem to be the only universal one, but chances are ogg is the optimal one like many an indie title.

[Rozyrg]

Doesn't surprise me..haha. After further experimentation, I still get pretty much all or nothing on Chrome and maybe one or two working sfx on Firefox (along with gimped speed.)

I actually haven't messed with any music yet. I really want to maximize speed and minimize loading time as much as possible, so there may only be 1 or 2 music tracks if any. Testing just now,though, it seems to take no speed hit just from having an average sized MP3 playing, so at least that's not an issue.

Still, all my tiny memory saving/performance precautions seemed to have paid off with the EXE version. Speed wise, it just screeeeeeeeaaaams. O_O I will probably have to recode a lot of the sound for it when I cut separate versions, though... no surprise there, really.

[BPzeBanshee]

Stupid question - have you tried updating your browsers? As of time of writing I'm at 16.0.912.63 m and even that's apparently outdated.

[Rozyrg]

Well, you know how Chrome is with it's ninja-like updater... always working from under the cover of shadow. Damn Google. >_> Every time I've checked recently, it's been up-to-date. I haven't even messed with Firefox past 3.6.xx, to be honest, though... the last thing I need on this POS (by which I mean my Vista desktop, of course) is a potentially even chunkier browser.

Strangely, I just tried it with the latest version of Opera (not even sure if it would work at all) and had zero sound issues with it... everything seemed to be playing and I didn't notice anything cutting out. The game ran at about the same speed it did within Chrome, too... not bad!

[BPzeBanshee]

Definitely upgrade Firefox. 4 was a clunky crapola but it's leaped massively in recent months - last time I tried it ran HTML5 games on Yoyogame's experimental website almost parallel to Chrome's with some missing sound effects, and by now that version would be outdated too. It's certainly a lot leaner.

Your mention of Opera was interesting though, I know they're pioneering a bit of the HTML5 stuff besides Chrome so they could be the way to go.

[Rozyrg]

Just upgraded....wow! Thanks for the advice. I get no missing sounds, about the same speed (if not slightly faster!!) and the way it handles scaling (no blurring/interpolation) makes it look far better than the others when blown up to 2X or more. Worst I can say about it is I seem to get a few more jitters during gameplay; but that could just as well be caused by the other stuff I had open at the time.

..also, I'm getting really close with the game itself, I'll (hopefully) have it finished later this week. I've settled on the kingly sum of $2 for the EXE version; but I'll probably be tossing it on the disc release of XYX as a bonus too, for those don't mind waiting.

[BPzeBanshee]

I upgraded Firefox myself and I really have to shove those old words of mine back down my throat.

When it comes to Game Maker games with sound, Chrome is behind. Funnily enough, even though experimental.yoyogames.com and html5.yoyogames.com have the same games it shows they're compiled with different versions of GM:HTML5 considering running Karoshi on experimental in Firefox led to stuttering and eventually lacking in control response while Chrome's HTML5 sound handling carked it shortly after I ran your game to test and compare (which only played like one sound at a time when it DID work).

[Rozyrg]

Yeah.. I'm getting about the best (and most consistent) speed out of Firefox, and how it handles scaling is so so so much prettier than the others by a ridiculous margin. Really makes me wish standalone GM scaled sprites that well.

Oh yeah... here's a little program icon design I just finished for the EXE version (blown up a bit, of course)

[BPzeBanshee]

Nice Megadrive cartridge there!

Protip for showing the game across the entire window - all browsers have had a Zoom function since the legacy era. It works just fine for MegaTank, in fact that's how I played it in Firefox with no noticable speed decreases (but then again your game test doesn't do much to be fair).

[Rozyrg]

Thanks. I've had the idea for each of my games to have it's own 'cartridge' for the longest time.

That's true about browser zoom, I just thought it might be awkward and a bit off-putting to have to ask the player to do that every time, unless there's a way to cause the switch within the HTML. Even if you could, that strikes me as being potentially naughty... kinda like forcing resolution changes for GM games. >_>

but then again your game test doesn't do much to be fair

Even with all the neat stuff I've added since, it still doesn't have anything too fancy going on under the hood. I've honestly had to go back to some more brute force methods just to make sure everything will work.. so yeah, you won't be seeing anything really advanced at play.

Oh, and if there's some specific stuff you want me to try out (for the sake of seeing if it will work), feel free to ask. Although that might come down to how well the 8.x importer works, too.. I honestly haven't even tried it out.
Just make sure any variables are initialized first.

[BPzeBanshee]

Thanks. I've had the idea for each of my games to have it's own 'cartridge' for the longest time.

That's true about browser zoom, I just thought it might be awkward and a bit off-putting to have to ask the player to do that every time, unless there's a way to cause the switch within the HTML. Even if you could, that strikes me as being potentially naughty... kinda like forcing resolution changes for GM games. >_>

I actually just discovered reading through the readme that F10 for GM games is the actual proper fullscreen like F4 for normal GM apps, but it slows down by a shitload if you do. Zooming the screen with the browser's zoom function is a lot better in that regard and it maintains aspect ratio too. For commerical purposes you might have to just have a large area like your 2x version as the standard and work around it like that. I'm sure there are commands to control your window size though going by what I also read in the help file.

but then again your game test doesn't do much to be fair

Even with all the neat stuff I've added since, it still doesn't have anything too fancy going on under the hood. I've honestly had to go back to some more brute force methods just to make sure everything will work.. so yeah, you won't be seeing anything really advanced at play.

Oh, and if there's some specific stuff you want me to try out (for the sake of seeing if it will work), feel free to ask. Although that might come down to how well the 8.x importer works, too.. I honestly haven't even tried it out.
Just make sure any variables are initialized first.

I don't suppose you could try and see if GMOSSE crashes and burns under HTML5? Unlike most of you fellow GM developers I've never had "treat uninitialised variables as value 0" on so I always initialise my variables properly. Or did you mean something else?

I realise advanced stuff within GM:HTML5 games are probably not going to happen any time soon but it will be interesting to see.

[Rozyrg]

Well, I tried it out and the bulk of the errors were it not recognizing sprite_add_sprite and background_add_background, etc, which I had heard about being an issue with GMHTML5 before. I can send you the whole log if you like, although I'm not sure how helpful it would be. There's really no telling what would or wouldn't have shown up on screen had it let it through.

You could try tossing together a stripped down version for me (no extensions, everything self-contained); but that might be more hassle than it's worth until you have the time to really dig into the program yourself. Up to you.

[BPzeBanshee]

Well, I tried it out and the bulk of the errors were it not recognizing sprite_add_sprite and background_add_background, etc, which I had heard about being an issue with GMHTML5 before. I can send you the whole log if you like, although I'm not sure how helpful it would be. There's really no telling what would or wouldn't have shown up on screen had it let it through.

You could try tossing together a stripped down version for me (no extensions, everything self-contained); but that might be more hassle than it's worth until you have the time to really dig into the program yourself. Up to you.

Ah, of course! Externalisation doesn't happen under the HTML5 runner DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Please do send the log, that'll give me a exact list of what to cut out. It probably won't work with sound either since all of that's done via GMFMODSimple I presume, and I nearly cracked my head in two trying to make GMOSSE support the GM sound engine as well as GMFMODSimple under container scripts, so when I get the log I'll take out sound too.

[Rozyrg]

Done. Hopefully you can figure out some of the other stuff, too.

Also......


MEGATANK BETA .1

Just about everything's in there content-wise, just needs some polishing and tweaking.... oh yeah, and people other than me testing it.
One odd thing: in-browser, the text seems to all be shifted slightly to the right. All I can figure is this is some subtle difference in how it handles spacing with sprite fonts. *shrug*

[SenpaiSamaKun]

- Screen barrier is slightly off in scale. You can get blind collisions tanks if you get too close to the edge. Though this is really just a problem of the instant wave change.
- ESC on the title screen doesn't have anywhere to exit, so it just....freezes.
- Sometimes it tends to spike a bit. It can just be the odd browser freeze, but it visibly speed ups to me. I'll give a video that shows it at the very end in a good while.
There we go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-70DiZP-gpk
Its not as noticeable with Youtube's framerate but right at the end with 2:41 is where every bullet hops four pixels and I can't react to it at all.
This also happens earlier from what I'm seeing, but I didn't die from those.