Elysian Door - NARAKA [WIP]

[nasty_wolverine]

This is something i have been working on for over a year in my free time. Hope you like it, feedback would be great.
This is still in its very early stage. so its like 2 mins long, just testing out basic functionality.
Also, enable V-sync in your graphics card, or else you will get screen tearing.

Requirements:
Win7 x64 (I will make x86 version if somebody wants it, havent tested on anything below Win7)
MSVCR110 runtime (you will need x64 and x86, not sure why it needs x86, but it needs it)
OpenGL 2.1 compatible card

Keys:
Esc: hold down for a while to quit
S: scanlines
F: fullscreen
R: rotate display

Z: tap for fire, hold for focus
X: subweapon (has a short recharge period)
C: bomb (hold down for bomb to travel farther)
V: autofire
arrow keys: movement

It does support joystick but right now it isnt remappable (upcoming feature)

Things to do:
- hiscore and config saving
- remappable keys
- A nice HUD and a proper scoring system (Yagawa + Hellsinker' esque )
- more content

build date: 9/25/2013
changes
- added a frame limitter (only active when vsync is off, when vsync is on will rely on hardware buffer swap for timing)
- added a FPS display in game
download_x64


build date: 9/21/2013
changes
- replaced glu code with glm, should fix intel integrated problems
- organized the file structure a bit (logs go in logs folder, put other library license texts to a seperate folder)
- added a README.txt
to do
- will be posting a x86 version soon
download_x64

build date: 9/14/2013
download_x64

[nasty_wolverine]

here is a new video - http://youtu.be/c5aKHbA-5Ho
sorry for the shaky camera works...
this is still more of a prototype than anything..
a few more things need to be added to this, like lives and game over predominantly... and gamepad and fullscreen support...
once thats done will post a playable demo...

[n0rtygames]

sorry for the shaky camera works...

Shaky propped up cam videos are the best kind!

This is looking good man.

[n0rtygames]

Oh, sorry to criticise but I have to say - although this is a WIP I do find the font used a little unreadable at a quick glance.

Have you considered rendering the score twice with a plainer font? One in black slightly offset and one in front full white to give you a drop shadow effect and make it pop out more

[nasty_wolverine]

That font was what I was using for testing, the engine uses ttf to render fonts, and I haven't found time to create a font of my own to use which I plan to eventually...
this will take a hell lot of time and feedback to complete and every bit is very appreciated...

[BPzeBanshee]

There's a few free ones around that while are stereotypical retro are quite readable. Perfect for temporary/debug text until you get your own proper one going.

Have you considered rendering the score twice with a plainer font? One in black slightly offset and one in front full white to give you a drop shadow effect and make it pop out more

I'm no expert in XNA/C++ but from my experience that's a performance hog and not the greatest idea.

[nasty_wolverine]

There's a few free ones around that while are stereotypical retro are quite readable. Perfect for temporary/debug text until you get your own proper one going.

Have you considered rendering the score twice with a plainer font? One in black slightly offset and one in front full white to give you a drop shadow effect and make it pop out more

I'm no expert in XNA/C++ but from my experience that's a performance hog and not the greatest idea.

Depends on how you implement it:
1) use ttf fonts, and render from ttf to raster every time a text needs to be rendered - this is a huge performance hog
2) render ttf fonts to bitmaps of a few different size, use bitmap to render fonts depending on size - quite a lot of improvement from above
3) render ttf fonts to bitmap of one size which is midroad size, use it every where (white font on transparent bg) - fastest and what i use

[BPzeBanshee]

Well that certainly puts my mind at ease. Sprite-based fonts (your bitmap fonts) with outer edges where we would normally draw the text twice is a huge performance improvement over the latter in Game Maker, seems you guys get it even better.

[nasty_wolverine]

pre pre alpha alpha demo - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/67121055/release_x86.zip

this is probably gonna be part of the first stage:
things to do
- transistions
- animations
- more different sound effects
- game pad support (uses only the arrow and Z key)

[nasty_wolverine]

sorry to bump...
but has anyone tried this yet...?
would appreciate some feedback. i have gotten some more stuff added on.. will post once the first stage is complete and i have added in the subweapon system...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Just tried it out now; it runs at a crazy 300-500 FPS (the number keeps jumping around wildly). It's literally so fast that even if I try tapping shoot for the spread shot it registers it as if I'm holding the button down (my machine's running Windows XP). O_o

Basically, unplayable. Going to try this on a Windows 7 machine in a minute.

(What are the controls? Just Z to shoot?)

On my Windows 7 machine, it's now jumping between 500-1000 FPS (!!!). Runs way, way faster than it's supposed to. Uh... what's going on? Any way to run a debugger or something? I notice your screenshots list it as running at 1000 FPS, except the YouTube video you posted has it running at a very reasonable speed.

[nasty_wolverine]

Just tried it out now; it runs at a crazy 300-500 FPS (the number keeps jumping around wildly). It's literally so fast that even if I try tapping shoot for the spread shot it registers it as if I'm holding the button down (my machine's running Windows XP). O_o

Basically, unplayable. Going to try this on a Windows 7 machine in a minute.

(What are the controls? Just Z to shoot?)

On my Windows 7 machine, it's now jumping between 500-1000 FPS (!!!). Runs way, way faster than it's supposed to. Uh... what's going on? Any way to run a debugger or something? I notice your screenshots list it as running at 1000 FPS, except the YouTube video you posted has it running at a very reasonable speed.

The thing uses opengl, there is no way set vsync in app with opengl, u can only suggest... The vsync is set by the videocard driver, so on nvidia atleast u can open up nvidia control panel on advanced settings set vsync to program settings... It works fine like that on my win7x64....

Thanks for trying it, I will implement something atleast so that if vsync is disabled it will use an internal timer to keep a stable framerate.... The FPS numbers are actually based on the draw call times so that's why they are so high...

the game right now just uses z for everything, its more of a proof of concept....

I already put in a miniboss and a few more things, I will post another update once stage one and weapon systems are ready...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, sorry my computer's a bit shit and doesn't actually have a decent video card in it.

[nasty_wolverine]

Not your fault actually, its how windows and video card manufacturers deal with opengl, natively windows doesn't support anything more opengl 1.1, with decent to even modern video card ur stuck with buggy implementation and drivers, and timing in windows is horrible, 10ms precision on default and 1ms with some more api calls, sleep is horrible, so only busy loop waiting... Compared to linux with precision timing upto nanosecs.

I decided to keep it on opengl becoz of keeping cross-platform... If I have to face anymore problems I ll switch to dx....

[n0rtygames]

I'm no expert in XNA/C++ but from my experience that's a performance hog and not the greatest idea.

Not hugely. You're essentially drawing the same texture twice and issuing two draw calls. So there's no texture swapping happening there. To call this a performance hog is exaggerating somewhat and showing signs of severe premature optimisation.

You can afford these draw calls. These are not expensive.

The point at which it starts to get a bit hairy is when you do multiple passes on the rendering of your bullets. If you were doing say 700+ draw calls for your bullets in and then doing those again but scaled slightly for an additive glow or similar - then yes, you're going to run in to problems. But two draw calls per frame? Not going to kill your game by any means.

It's all about perspective..

[BPzeBanshee]

This'll probably sound like a rant and I didn't intend it to be such, but here goes. No hard feelings. :3

Drawing additional layers of text for the sole purpose of aesthetics, however minor you seem to think it is, still strikes to me as unnecessary regardless and although it may not make a performance difference under the XNA environment I certainly noticed the difference with Aero Flux on machines that weren't dual-core/i3s. The framerate improvements as a result of getting rid of that alone were significant.

Your point is completely valid too, there's certainly a lot of worse ways to degrade performance, like having glowing bullets and multiple draw calls on 200+ objects etc. If I got a dollar for the amount of times I see a game running horribly because the devs thought a 1024x768+ minimum res and 09280912809238 particles/glow effects I'd be a millionaire.

But why settle for the slack option of 2 draw calls to make stuff look pretty, when you can do a little more work and have a HUD/textrender that isn't going to chew the crap out of anything post-2006? Frankly I think it's that whole "oh it's just a minor thing so I'll ignore it" attitude that leads to complete pieces of garbage games coming out as a result, and bugs in otherwise very good and polished games making remain unfixed. Sine Mora anyone? Irem Collection? <inserttypical30FPS3Dshitgamehere>?

[nasty_wolverine]

As a general rule, i try to do all effects outside of the game as much as possible... shadows and glows can be done in gimp if patient enough.
Draw everything back to front, clip things outside the camera in code, order things by texture, should be more than enough for hardware accelerated draws... dont what optimisations software drawing would need...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

like having glowing bullets and multiple draw calls on 200+ objects etc.

lol, Score Rush. Spoiler: It ran so much better when I disabled the glowing bullets.

[nasty_wolverine]

16:9 shmupping... http://youtu.be/gTo9Z4DJ7RM

also new hellsinker/RSgun style sword weapon..

[railslave]

nice, a bit of glow and your away (even though thats getting way overused) ..hey if you ever need any lofi music

so simple but so nice, it always amazes me how effective sprites like that are, i cant do it .. <<dont know the meaning of subtlety

[nasty_wolverine]

thanks,

most of the stuff is just placeholder... i drew the sprites on my phone (sketchbook mobile) and touched it it up in gimp a bit...
i cant do pixel art, so i stick with vector art... i need to hire a artist... but its hard to see what i see in my head...
something like techno-gothic, even i dont know what it means..

and about the lofi music... i would need that.. but after i complete atleast 50% of the work..
i want spacey burn down the heavens kinda soundtrack

[railslave]

thanks,

most of the stuff is just placeholder... i drew the sprites on my phone (sketchbook mobile) and touched it it up in gimp a bit...
i cant do pixel art, so i stick with vector art... i need to hire a artist... but its hard to see what i see in my head...
something like techno-gothic, even i dont know what it means..

and about the lofi music... i would need that.. but after i complete atleast 50% of the work..
i want spacey burn down the heavens kinda soundtrack

Hey ill try do some sprites for you if you want ...im getting better at pixel art..techno gothic, ill have a go if you want ? Im not much of anything but an artist and musician.

what kind of resolution do you need? 30x30 ?

like these ?

[nasty_wolverine]

i need to iron out some really bad things in the engine before i can focus on earth...

well after that, you will be first on my list to contact

and the art you linked, definitely looking good, my next planned game is gonna be military in the vein of DOJ and ketsui...
they look really gundam-ish, awesome...

[nasty_wolverine]

So due to family problems, exams and shit that i dont need in life...
things have been on hold for a while...

anyway heres demo video of the title screen...
http://youtu.be/CegHpYATJzM

[BPzeBanshee]

Nice Hellsinker-inspired screen!

[nasty_wolverine]

Nice Hellsinker-inspired screen!

thanks, very much appreciated...
Hellsinker is the primary inspiration... along with a few other games...
next up is the menu system and demo graphics for the first stage...

[nasty_wolverine]

FUCKING FIREBALLS!!!

[relminator]

Wow! This looks good. I like the visual style. when can we expect a demo?

[nasty_wolverine]

Wow! This looks good. I like the visual style. when can we expect a demo?

Thanks, means a lot.
only half of first stage is finished as of now..

things that need work:
- menu system
- replacing some of the placeholder graphics
- a presentable HUD

so i think, may be a month or two for a playable demo.
If all things go according to plan, i probably will release it by the end of the year.

[nasty_wolverine]

cool fancy menu's, its 4:00am and i should be sleeping
http://youtu.be/4ulT8dCn5Bw