GFX Revision 47 - controller updates, completed dual play mode (for now)

MrHoppyX — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 20:42:30 -0000

(in rev 45 release) Now dual play mode has choice of 1 or 2 players in each team, separate weapon choices.

(in rev 47 release)

controls:

joypads vary in their button number mappings. happily, since this game uses few buttons, by assigning multiple button ids to the same function, on all tested joypads (xbox 360, logitech wingman, and ps2- and snes-style joypads), buttons in given places have certain functions.
If you try using other buttons on the joypad, you may notice that they also do something!

fire gun = joypad buttons 0 or 2 - so xbox,logitech A / playstation X / snes B is covered
fire special weapon = joypad buttons 1 or 3 - so xbox, logitech B / playstation O / snes A is covered
thrust = joypad buttons 4,5,6,7 - so all digital trigger buttons (LB,RB Xbox 360, L1,R1 PS / L,R SNES) are covered.
left/right turn uses "POV" direction, which is d-pad on most things with analog sticks by default, but can be toggled in some cases.
where this is zeroed (including on SNES controller), the standard direction is used.

From seeing others play the game, redefine keys/alternate control scheme may be a welcome addition, but a job for another day.

in previous releases, joypads were not usable in 1 vs 1 mode.
now first two joypads are used for players 1 and 2, who can also use keyboard controls.
players 3,4 use 3rd and 4th joypads.

in this update (rev 47) shortcoming that if only have 2 joypads, can't have other 2 players on keyboard. (previously players 3,4 used joypads 1,2)
I assume that on a dual play tv, using keyboard isn't a great idea anyway. Unless hear different, not intending to change this.

GFX Revision 44 - 4 player mode for "dual play" 3DTVs

MrHoppyX — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 18:47:03 -0000

Now selecting "dual play" option for offline vs mode gives 4 player mode.
on normal tv this looks stretched. designed for "dual play" 3d tv. see earlier blog posts.
Players are in teams. Teammates start on same launchpad. Win by destroying both players on other team before your team is destroyed. Currently 2 players use keyboard, other 2 are 1st 2 joypads.

The code supports each side (left, right) of dual play mode being split by any of the standard splitscreen options. However, menus are not done yet. In dual play mode, each team's screen split side/side at this time.

When menus are done, each team in dual play can either be a single player, or player plus a wingman, with selected split screen type.

Future updates planned for 1.9 (tickets to be made):
Allow wingman on/off for dual play. (Ability to play 1 vs 1 in dual play was available in previous version)
Ability to use joypads for 1 vs 1. (was available in previous version)

Future updates, that may or may not make 1.9:
redefine/choose keys
let wingman choose colour/weapons (currently white, copied weapons from teammate)
Teams/free for all.
Make replays support >2 players
Add wingman support to online.
Add 4 player mode for standard single screen mode.

GFX Revision 12 - Fix for ticket 6 "Reduce slowdown from explosions"

MrHoppyX — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 09:45:45 -0000

https://sourceforge.net/p/gravityforcex/tickets/6/

I recently got a new graphics card because the onboard graphics on my desktop machine doesn't support multiple monitors. However, my PC's manufacturer didn't see fit to put in a full size PCI-E slot. I cut the end off the short slot and put in the new graphics card. It seems that the communication between the graphics card and motherboard is a bottleneck.

Following this, the game was slow when many explosions (or players colliding with level) happened about the same time. Investigation showed that this can be reduced by reducing number of image paste operations to bitmaps in graphics memory.

The level blast hole cutting and collision detection works by keeping 2 copies of the level image - one in regular memory for reading, and one in graphics memory for drawing. When a hole is cut by an explosion, an image is pasted to the regular memory image. The previous implementation which was causing slowdown would immediately copy this area to the graphics memory bitmap. The new version batches these operations together, with some cap on how long to wait before actioning each one (currently 11 game mechanic iterations). When one action reaches its expiry date, all other pending actions that meet some criteria are taken with it in a single image copy operation.

Having no restriction on which pending actions are batched together can result in the whole level being updated, if there is are edit operations in opposite corners of the map. This was the fastest version on my desktop. However, my netbook had some performance hit in this situation. Therefore there is some limit to patch size in this version of the code, which leads to the game working acceptably on both my machines.

The criteria is to group together image operations where the difference between the new area of rectangle containing both does not exceed the sum of the two areas by some limit.

There are many ways this might be improved, but system in rev 12 work sufficiently well.

Next up: controller support in menus, 4-player party mode!

GFX Revision 7

MrHoppyX — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 01:02:57 -0000

Switched from standard DBPro joystick input commands to using "multijoy" plugin, which is great! No longer have slowdown with multiple joypads. Game now configured to use keyboard or joypad (no support for joypad in menus yet)

P1:
WASD. left ctrl (A=fire, D=bomb)
P2:
Arrows, right ctrl (up arrow=fire, down arrow=bomb)

joypads:
left and right on d-pad (must enable digital mode)
1/2 or A/B buttons for fire and bomb
right trigger = thrust

GFX Revision 6

MrHoppyX — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 23:40:29 -0000

The theme of these recent updates are to make a game suitable for playing while sat on the sofa.

1)
"Dual Play" support for use with "dual play" glasses and SD TV. See http://www.lg.com/uk/tv-accessories/lg-AG-F310DP-dual-play-glasses . Each player sees a different view. Works well. Split side/side. Each view expanded to full screen width for one viewer.
To do:
Add top/bottom split (more suitable for passive TV with polarisation handedness switching for each horizontal line.

2)
Controller support. Only for player 1 (can use P1 keyboard controls or controller). Unfortunately DBPro seems to run extremely slowly when switching between 2 controllers to take input. W
to do:
try to get multiple controllers working properly by using http://cmcgames.darkphear.com/2008/12/multijoy-plugin-for-darkbasic.html .

SVN

MrHoppyX — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 23:14:33 -0000

Tried and failed to use SVN here. Made a repo in Dropbox instead. Releases archives contain code. I'll put release notes for revisions in this blog.

Recent posts to blog

GFX Revision 47 - controller updates, completed dual play mode (for now)

GFX Revision 44 - 4 player mode for "dual play" 3DTVs

GFX Revision 12 - Fix for ticket 6 "Reduce slowdown from explosions"

GFX Revision 7

GFX Revision 6

SVN