Sharkfighter 2: the revenge. (testing tech)

theo · Tue 22/02/2011 13:27:36

DOWNLOAD HERE

Me and my colleague Henrik have just begun preliminary work on the JDHD project and are currently experimenting with codecs etc to see what works technically, and what doesn't. We've quickly thrown this slightly moronic "tech demo" together, to try out running Scotch's theora plugin together with some high res character stuff, on top of each other.

So why am I posting this here?

In short, I'd be very thankful if anyone out there would like to download the "game" and see that it runs properly on their computer. We are afraid we are about to spend a couple months working on something that later will turn out not to run properly on the average home computer.

* Is the ogg movie showing and looping in the backdrop? (it's short and isn't supposed to loop seamlessly.)
* Are you getting a decent framerate?
* Does it initialize in fullscreen? (does it crop oddly?)
* Is the character scaling smooth or are you experiencing any nasty tearing/artefacts?

Walk to the bottom right corner to hear my own brilliant voice acting!
Quit the game with good ol' CTRL+Q

THANK YOU!

Matti · Tue 22/02/2011 14:00:59

Everything runs fine on my laptop.

I have 2x2 GHz, 4 GB RAM and a rather crappy graphic card (SiS Mirage 3).

Can't wait to see the updated chapter one

Edit: The only thing that bothered me was, when looking at the feet of the sharkfighter, they seemed to stutter strangely. When I didn't look at the feet the walkcycle looked great. I'm not sure what's causing this, but I don't think it really matters.

mode7 · Tue 22/02/2011 14:10:47

Works here - I had no idea AGS could do that - oh the posibilities.

Ilyich · Tue 22/02/2011 14:21:05

Yes, slightly moronic indeed, I did not want to see that during lunch

Everything works perfectly smooth on my laptop too, fullscreen, no cropping, animated loop in the background, walking shark-person-thingy...

Smooth 3d characters like that would definitely fit perfectly in JDHD, best of luck with that and keep us informed.

arj0n · Tue 22/02/2011 15:44:56

Checked at work [2x3 GHz, 6 GB RAM, NVIDIA Quadro FX380] and it looks fine [as expected], but indeed:

Quote from: Matti on Tue 22/02/2011 14:00:59
Edit: The only thing that bothered me was, when looking at the feet of the sharkfighter, they seemed to stutter strangely. When I didn't look at the feet the walkcycle looked great. I'm not sure what's causing this, but I don't think it really matters.

theo · Tue 22/02/2011 16:00:54

Thanks all!

I appreciate it very much!

Quote from: Matti on Tue 22/02/2011 14:00:59The only thing that bothered me was, when looking at the feet of the sharkfighter, they seemed to stutter strangely. When I didn't look at the feet the walkcycle looked great. I'm not sure what's causing this, but I don't think it really matters.

Yes, I too noticed this. Anyone have a clue why it's doing this? I first thought it had something to do with the continuous scaling, but I tried ditching that but it didn't help.

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens · Tue 22/02/2011 16:01:39

There is a bit of jitter as it moves regardless of where (just look slightly off to the side as it moves). Also, you'll probably want to slow down movement speed as the character moves into the background to help simulate depth and distance.

Oh, and the shark has nice boobs.

Knoodn · Tue 22/02/2011 16:11:40

runs fine on my laptop. 2.66 GHz Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M.

one point:
is the (nice) sharkfighter guy scaled up more the 100% in de bottom area of the screen?
it looks fine and smooth in D3D mode, but in DX5 the sprite contains a lot of scaling artefacts. that is one thing that bothered me in the original TJD game.

Monsieur OUXX · Tue 22/02/2011 16:36:00

The game runs smoothly full-screen for me on a laptop with a graphic chipset (CPU= Intel T2400 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, Chipset=Intel 945 Express Chipset). the FPS is not written on-screen but it was decent.

I couldn't test it using D3D9, though. I had to use DirectX. Otherwise the chipset fails to initialize 1024x748x32. That's common to every AGS games if I'm not mistaken.

On a separate note:
ÃŒ guess it's not the "AGS_MoviePlugin" plugin ( http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=41562.0 ). I couldn't find the thread corresponding to the theora plugin you used. Did you develop it yourself?

Matti · Tue 22/02/2011 16:41:54

Quote from: Ouxxey_games on Tue 22/02/2011 16:36:00
I couldn't test it using D3D9, though. I had to use DirectX. Otherwise the chipset fails to initialize 1024x748x32. That's common to every AGS games if I'm not mistaken.

I used D3D and it worked fine. One of my games has the same resolution/color depth and works fine with D3D too.

Quote
On a separate note:
ÃŒ guess it's not the "AGS_MoviePlugin" plugin ( http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=41562.0 ). I couldn't find the thread corresponding to the theora plugin you used. Did you develop it yourself?

As he said, he used scotch's plugin: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=34910.0

theo · Tue 22/02/2011 16:59:51

Quote from: Ouxxey_games on Tue 22/02/2011 16:36:00
I couldn't test it using D3D9, though. I had to use DirectX. Otherwise the chipset fails to initialize 1024x748x32. That's common to every AGS games if I'm not mistaken.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping not to run into. What a shame. As Knoodn pointed out, DX5 offers way crappier scaling than D3D9 - Not to mention the fact that it would be nice if the game could run "straight out of the box" without any manual settings done by the player.

I still haven't figured out where the choppiness in the animation comes from. When looking at the walkcycle in the view editor I see it's smooth as heck. Something wonky is going on when the animation is being played.

Igor Hardy · Tue 22/02/2011 17:41:03

Works great on my computer.

arj0n · Tue 22/02/2011 18:33:30

Does run using either the Direct3D 9 or the DirectDraw5 graphic drivers but very slow.

Specs: AMD Duron-1000 (1000MHz, 512 MB) with nVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (NV34) (128 MB)

Is there a key to show framerates?

Monsieur OUXX · Wed 23/02/2011 08:40:36

Quote from: Matti on Tue 22/02/2011 16:41:54
Quote from: Ouxxey_games on Tue 22/02/2011 16:36:00
I couldn't test it using D3D9, though. I had to use DirectX. Otherwise the chipset fails to initialize 1024x748x32. That's common to every AGS games if I'm not mistaken.

I used D3D and it worked fine. One of my games has the same resolution/color depth and works fine with D3D too.

What I meant was that MY chipset often has trouble using D3D. But it's only that crappy little laptop chipset I wouldn't worry too much about that, Theo.

theo · Fri 25/02/2011 10:50:03

Thanks Ouxxey for clearing that up! Laptop graphics cards tend to truly suck. :-

Also thanks everyone else who helped out testing this! I'm very glad to hear we had no issues with the codec. That was my main concern.
We will most likely be doing more tests in the future - there are definitely more things I feel might screw up.

Timing .ogg movies with audio for one thing... that's doomed to mess up. Also, if and when we finally get the chance to run AGS at hihger resolutions, that no doubts will need to be tested extensively as well. Hopefully these are both things we will get the chance to test in Sharkfighter 3! 8)

Too bad it doesn't run smoothly on your computer Arj0n, but honestly I'm not surprised. Good to know though. Thanks!

Again thank you everyone. This preliminary testing phase is critical to say the least, all help is greatly valued and highly appreciated.

arj0n · Fri 25/02/2011 11:17:25

Quote from: theo on Fri 25/02/2011 10:50:03
Too bad it doesn't run smoothly on your computer Arj0n, but honestly I'm not surprised. Good to know though. Thanks!

Nah, no surprise at all. Just thought let test it also on a low-performance PC - testing boundaries....

Sughly · Sat 05/03/2011 05:32:50

Does this by any chance mean a 2.5D JDHD? Because that makes me a little bit sad :'( (but that's just my personal opinion of course, I know many disagree with me).

theo · Sat 05/03/2011 08:38:50

If you by 2.5D mean pre-rendered 3d characters, yes. If you mean real-time rendered 3D characters on a 2D backdrop, no. We actually discussed going the real-time 3d path several times but in the end we realized we'd be spending half of the project battling exporters if we did that and, well, it's just not worth the effort unless you already have a working pipeline.

Anyhow, don't worry. If it looks shite, I won't release it 8)

We are currently trying out different rendering techniques to find something that blends with the backdrop style nicely. Currently, it feels very promising. (Though we've only done stills so far, lord knows what it looks like when we start animating it.)