Here's an updated screenshot of that same map, now with a dense forest. Also note the extensive use of pattern breaking. (This was created with the Tiled Automapping feature. It's very difficult to get right with complex positions, and the Automapping really makes this happen like magic.)
And yes, the outside area is a single map. This is it: https://bitbucket.org/parasyte/lpcgame/src/ec5cf4e61923/resources/map/ea... If you can use Tiled 0.9 and its auomapping feature, that would be ideal. The earth.tmx map is already configured for it, and there are rule maps in the 'rules' subdirectory.
If you can't use any of those features, I can still import the map data from a TMX ... I think. Or I could always use an image layer, I guess. Will make it difficult to modify later, though.
I suggest using fewer straight lines in the map wherever possible. Like, here's a zoomed out view of the "earth.tmx" map. Notice my path is angled in kind of a random fashion:
Hi verbalshadow. I don't have Rekonq, or any quick way to get it for testing. Are you able to find any error messages in the console? ... If it has a developer console? That will help debug the problem, I think.
Good, good. I did a bit of profiling on the memory leak, and it seems to be Chipmunk-js. I didn't get into it a great deal, though.
I agree with the colors on FF. I spent WAY too much time last night investigating that area, and I've determined that FF is just being incooperative, like it is applying color management to images regardless of configuration or ICC profile tags in the images themselves. Chrome and GIMP agree on the actual RGB values, so that's good enough for now. I can't spend a lot of time on it...
I'm not supporting non-free browsers (for obvious reasons) but it's good to know IE9 at least tries. I know one of the problems with IE8 offhand is my use of Array.prototype.forEach() just about everywhere -- I haven't used a compatibility method on the prototype, it's just expected to be there. The lack of sound is because I'm only using Ogg-Vorbis audio; again, it's a free software thing.
Awesome work on QA. And thanks for the offer to help with maps! the only real ideas I have left in mind are: a large outdoor area with a village (4~6 small houses), mountain, field, and forest. It is going to be a large island (surrounded by beach and water). The houses will have insides to find more items, talk to NPCs, etc. There will be a number of NPCs scattered around this large map; sadly they will have to share sprite images, because I do not have many available.
That's probably more than I can accomplish in the time remaining. But it's still not the complete vision! :\
I also noticed it was strange to talk to someone who wasn't even paying attention. ;) But it was 6am by the time I had AI working in a way I liked. "NPCs pay attention when talked to" is on my TODO list for sure.
Going back to my QA notes: "- Semi-frequent pauses due to JavaScript GC." The pausing comes from the JavaScript engine stopping everything to run garbage collection. And that means I'm "leaking" memory somewhere. Shame these kinds of problems are ridicoulsly difficult to debug in JavaScript. :\
Another thing I also noticed in Firefox (not apparent on Chrome) -- the animations run rather quickly for the first few seconds after loading a new map, then slows down to what I consider "normal" over time. Is that what you're talking about? It might be realted to the next thing...
Which is the game pauses when it loses focus -- at least, it tries to with varying degrees of success. There was a crazy bug in the game engine earlier where changing focus multiple times caused the game to speed up each time. This was related to the window.requestAnimationFrame() method, which is still experimental(!) I might disable it and see if it changes the weirdness in animation.
The music is from Nelson James Gatlin's LPC entry. The title of the track is "Bells (menu theme) #two": http://opengameart.org/lpc-art-entries (second one down) He has a lot of great music there.
Thanks again for your comments! They are super helpful.
About the color issue -- ugh! Pixie gave me a THIRD color as I was inspecting the screen. That pointed right at the real culprit: color profiles! DAMMIT GIMP! So I disabled color management in GIMP and removed the color profiles from all the images. Pixie shows everything is correct, now! Hooray!
Which browser and operating system were you using? For reference, I'm developing on Chrome 22 (dev channel) and Mac OS X. I also briefly tested with Firefox 13.
I'll try to answer each of your points:
For your first point, those are two separate issues. The skipping sounds a lot like the physics time stepping going crazy, probably because of a low framerate. I'll just have to do some tuning in that area so worst case there will be a lower framerate and the perceptual "time" will slow down (things will move slower instead of jumping to the location they should be). The animation speed has to do with (I think) the size of the map. A smaller map has less to draw == higher framerate, so animations run faster.
I think rectangular collision boxes makes it feel more "old school". ;) But that's not really what I'm going for anyway. I will probably change Rachel and NPC collision shapes to circles, and the trees can be turned into octagons. But that means you'll have a lot more difficulty pushing NPCs around! hehehe
The color is really odd; I hadn't noticed that in Chrome or Firefox at all. The tiles and background color use the same hex notation color: #156C99. But the background color is actually being rendered as #196B9D! This is a bug in the game engine. If I can't fix it, I'll go back to using the solid-color tiles. Nice catch!
Here's a video recording of how the game plays as of today: http://youtu.be/JagSFQOMyQc (Sorry for the poor quality. Youtube did that.) I also added it to the original post.
And here's a screenshot of what to expect from the video.
The past two days have been a tremendous effort to get this thing ready to go live in just over 10 days! Here's the progress since my last post:
Coins are collectible.
Quests are implemented.
Added background music and sound effects.
Added support for map animations.
Minor changes to the island map.
Added silver coins (worth 1/100 of a gold coin).
Fixed rendering order; prioritize by Y-coordinate.
Added a HUD which looks ... familiar.
Chests are implemented. They don't contain items yet, but one contains a warp to ...
Rachel's room. This is where Rachel's adventure will begin. It also looks ... very familiar. Hmm.
Added some tools to aid in debugging.
Did a LOT of tuning on the collision detection (again).
Hours upon hours spent on internals again. (I hate being a perfectionist.) But at least the foundation is becoming very solid because of it!
The first 5 in the list are available in yesterday's snapshot. Today's snapshot will contain the rest of the changes in this list, and hopefully even more!
And before I forget, here's a screenshot of Rachel's Room. Normally I would not post screens, because It's easier (better) if you just visit the snapshot and start playing. But this is a special occasion, only because this map isn't in the snapshot at the moment.
Here's an updated screenshot of that same map, now with a dense forest. Also note the extensive use of pattern breaking. (This was created with the Tiled Automapping feature. It's very difficult to get right with complex positions, and the Automapping really makes this happen like magic.)
Cool! I don't have any set limits on tilesets. The ones I am already using are listed here: https://bitbucket.org/parasyte/lpcgame/src/ec5cf4e61923/resources/img (They may be renamed from original assets.)
And yes, the outside area is a single map. This is it: https://bitbucket.org/parasyte/lpcgame/src/ec5cf4e61923/resources/map/ea... If you can use Tiled 0.9 and its auomapping feature, that would be ideal. The earth.tmx map is already configured for it, and there are rule maps in the 'rules' subdirectory.
If you can't use any of those features, I can still import the map data from a TMX ... I think. Or I could always use an image layer, I guess. Will make it difficult to modify later, though.
I suggest using fewer straight lines in the map wherever possible. Like, here's a zoomed out view of the "earth.tmx" map. Notice my path is angled in kind of a random fashion:
Does the browser support Ogg-Vorbis format audio? Do any of the following links play in the browser for you?
http://parasyte.kodewerx.org/projects/lpcgame/resources/bgm/bells.ogg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Dance_Of_The_Sugar_Pl...
Hi verbalshadow. I don't have Rekonq, or any quick way to get it for testing. Are you able to find any error messages in the console? ... If it has a developer console? That will help debug the problem, I think.
Good, good. I did a bit of profiling on the memory leak, and it seems to be Chipmunk-js. I didn't get into it a great deal, though.
I agree with the colors on FF. I spent WAY too much time last night investigating that area, and I've determined that FF is just being incooperative, like it is applying color management to images regardless of configuration or ICC profile tags in the images themselves. Chrome and GIMP agree on the actual RGB values, so that's good enough for now. I can't spend a lot of time on it...
I'm not supporting non-free browsers (for obvious reasons) but it's good to know IE9 at least tries. I know one of the problems with IE8 offhand is my use of Array.prototype.forEach() just about everywhere -- I haven't used a compatibility method on the prototype, it's just expected to be there. The lack of sound is because I'm only using Ogg-Vorbis audio; again, it's a free software thing.
Awesome work on QA. And thanks for the offer to help with maps! the only real ideas I have left in mind are: a large outdoor area with a village (4~6 small houses), mountain, field, and forest. It is going to be a large island (surrounded by beach and water). The houses will have insides to find more items, talk to NPCs, etc. There will be a number of NPCs scattered around this large map; sadly they will have to share sprite images, because I do not have many available.
That's probably more than I can accomplish in the time remaining. But it's still not the complete vision! :\
Thank you again! You've been great already.
Circle for Rachel, Poly for NPC. Got it! :D
I also noticed it was strange to talk to someone who wasn't even paying attention. ;) But it was 6am by the time I had AI working in a way I liked. "NPCs pay attention when talked to" is on my TODO list for sure.
Going back to my QA notes: "- Semi-frequent pauses due to JavaScript GC." The pausing comes from the JavaScript engine stopping everything to run garbage collection. And that means I'm "leaking" memory somewhere. Shame these kinds of problems are ridicoulsly difficult to debug in JavaScript. :\
Another thing I also noticed in Firefox (not apparent on Chrome) -- the animations run rather quickly for the first few seconds after loading a new map, then slows down to what I consider "normal" over time. Is that what you're talking about? It might be realted to the next thing...
Which is the game pauses when it loses focus -- at least, it tries to with varying degrees of success. There was a crazy bug in the game engine earlier where changing focus multiple times caused the game to speed up each time. This was related to the window.requestAnimationFrame() method, which is still experimental(!) I might disable it and see if it changes the weirdness in animation.
The music is from Nelson James Gatlin's LPC entry. The title of the track is "Bells (menu theme) #two": http://opengameart.org/lpc-art-entries (second one down) He has a lot of great music there.
Thanks again for your comments! They are super helpful.
About the color issue -- ugh! Pixie gave me a THIRD color as I was inspecting the screen. That pointed right at the real culprit: color profiles! DAMMIT GIMP! So I disabled color management in GIMP and removed the color profiles from all the images. Pixie shows everything is correct, now! Hooray!
Whew! Not a game engine bug after all.
Awesome feedback! Thank you.
Which browser and operating system were you using? For reference, I'm developing on Chrome 22 (dev channel) and Mac OS X. I also briefly tested with Firefox 13.
I'll try to answer each of your points:
Thanks again! That was all very helpful.
Here's a video recording of how the game plays as of today: http://youtu.be/JagSFQOMyQc (Sorry for the poor quality. Youtube did that.) I also added it to the original post.
And here's a screenshot of what to expect from the video.
Hi all!
The past two days have been a tremendous effort to get this thing ready to go live in just over 10 days! Here's the progress since my last post:
The first 5 in the list are available in yesterday's snapshot. Today's snapshot will contain the rest of the changes in this list, and hopefully even more!
And before I forget, here's a screenshot of Rachel's Room. Normally I would not post screens, because It's easier (better) if you just visit the snapshot and start playing. But this is a special occasion, only because this map isn't in the snapshot at the moment.
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