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CiNiMoDZA
03-08-2007, 10:38 PM
I decided to download Dislekia's Monochrome! At first look, i thought it look pretty rubbish, ut oh my bum does this game rock!!! If anybody believes that you have to have outstanding graphics for a game to be good, just look here!

@Dislekia: Could you please post a tutorial on how to make replays! Also if you could, one on network gaming!!! You dont have to rush, one day when you free, and bored or something!!! I've tried some on the net, but most of the time I get errors, and the replay thing I cant get to work!?! Thanks!!!

dislekcia
04-08-2007, 02:38 PM
Hahaha! Glad you enjoyed it :)

I've given a few talks on networking in games before, I'll post my slides when I've got a little more time... Actually I can post slides and an explanatory article that I wrote for NAG too. I'll stick them on the G.D site.

As for replays: They were a direct result of the networking system. Because I'd designed the game to work deterministically (google it, it's a very important concept) in response to network messages, all I had to do was save any network messages to a file. Then, when you wanted to watch a replay it simply opens the file and pretends to "send" each message to the message receiving system at the time that they were originally sent. *poof* Replay.

I'm actually working on a small rewrite of the networking stuff to decrease the size of messages a lot, as well as make the time progression scalable, allowing for slow-mo effects and the like...

So I take it you got the replays working in Monochrome then? There are a few "undocumented" controls while watching a replay:
-Z will switch between map view and normal view, map view shows you the whole playing field.
-P pauses the game.
-Left Mouse Button switches between players (and bots) that you're following.
-Right Mouse Button switches between follow and free-cam modes (WASD to move in free cam).
-F fast forwards the replay at 4x speed, although it does tend to slow down while doing this due to effect numbers going through the roof.

-D

FEN1X
04-08-2007, 08:03 PM
Game doent work on my PC! Just get error message after i press start game.

Acid apple
04-08-2007, 08:20 PM
Ok, I downloaded it. 2 questions:

Can you play on the internet?
If so, how?

dislekcia
04-08-2007, 08:50 PM
Game doent work on my PC! Just get error message after i press start game.

What does the error message say please?
Can you take a screenshot?
Which OS are you running?

Also, are you running it straight out of the zipfile? - That causes errors because the game can't find the timing DLL it needs ;)

-D

dislekcia
04-08-2007, 08:53 PM
Ok, I downloaded it. 2 questions:

Can you play on the internet?
If so, how?



Yes, although the game isn't designed for internet-style latency. It's primarily a LAN game.
You'd have to know what your internet IP was (not local IP, we're talking about the one assigned to you by your ISP) and pass that on to someone so that they could use the Connect To IP option to join your game directly. The game has no NAT punchthrough or internet master-server systems built into it, it will only list games on the same LAN subnet that it discovers.

Acid apple
04-08-2007, 08:58 PM
Ok, thanks. How about making a host? Then you can post an IP which can join that game. Only prob is that the host would have to be online all the time. Thanks anyway, great game! 10/10

Vexo
07-08-2007, 08:57 PM
I also enjoyed the game.
I have Vista and it works 100 % .
Got game maker a couple of days ago and did the basic tutorials
and im loving it :).

UntouchableOne
10-08-2007, 10:35 PM
Super cool game Dis, That proved to me that GameMaker can really be powerfull. I am now a believer...How long did it take you to complete that project Dis?

Thaumaturge
11-08-2007, 03:26 AM
This is a very cool game, Disleksia!

The bots seem to be pretty effective (well, against me, at least ^^; ), and seem to know the use of the various weapons. The weapons themselves have a nice variety.

All in all, nicely done! ^_^

dislekcia
11-08-2007, 07:05 PM
Super cool game Dis, That proved to me that GameMaker can really be powerfull. I am now a believer...How long did it take you to complete that project Dis?

Thanks :) I'm hardly actually doing anything special with GM in Monochrome. I've got other prototypes that do much more complicated effects and have crazier systems. GM is a lot more powerful than people give it credit for.

Monochrome took me about two to three months worth of random development to get to where it's at right now. I think the last tally in terms of actual time spent on it was about two weeks of full-time development... Of course, it really helped that I'd tried to build a networked game before: I knew all the things I shouldn't try to do ;)


This is a very cool game, Disleksia!

The bots seem to be pretty effective (well, against me, at least ^^; ), and seem to know the use of the various weapons. The weapons themselves have a nice variety.

All in all, nicely done! ^_^

Thanks too :) The bots are actually rather simple: About 5 times a second they generate a random spray of points and then score each of them depending on a bunch of different factors: A hurt bot will score places that it can't be seen by you (or other bots) higher than an aggressive bot, likewise for proximity to health, etc. Then the bot starts moving towards the highest scoring point, firing at the best target it can find in range.

I used the same technique that UT did with the bots and weapons: Each weapon has a couple of methods on them that tell the bots how and when to use them. This means that I can easily add or remove weapons without having to re-code the bots at all :)

-D

UntouchableOne
11-08-2007, 11:31 PM
When exams are over and I have time, I would like to learn more about GM, maybe you could post some of those crazy prototypes Dis...

dislekcia
12-08-2007, 01:09 AM
When exams are over and I have time, I would like to learn more about GM, maybe you could post some of those crazy prototypes Dis...

Good point. A lot of them used to be posted but were lost in forum resets over the years. I'll start putting up a few of them again, the ones that I'm not actively working on improving ;)

-D

Thaumaturge
12-08-2007, 03:38 AM
The bots are actually rather simple: About 5 times a second they generate a random spray of points and then score each of them depending on a bunch of different factors: A hurt bot will score places that it can't be seen by you (or other bots) higher than an aggressive bot, likewise for proximity to health, etc. Then the bot starts moving towards the highest scoring point, firing at the best target it can find in range.

I used the same technique that UT did with the bots and weapons: Each weapon has a couple of methods on them that tell the bots how and when to use them. This means that I can easily add or remove weapons without having to re-code the bots at all :)

Aah, very clever, both of those ideas! I should try to remember those when next I might use them - they sound very useful indeed! ^_^

Tr00jg
12-08-2007, 02:19 PM
Dis, post the specular mapping (I think that is what you call it) thing! That was awesome.

SkinkLizzard
12-08-2007, 04:49 PM
fake environment mapping, or is that the same thing troojg is talking about ?