Starbreak

[daneos]

Hello,
I'm developing a simple game: Starbreak.
You are a photon, and have to escape a star, avoiding collisions with plasma particles.
Every collision changes your direction, reduces energy and changes color.
You can also collect tachions, time slowing bonuses.

Here are screenshots:

And here we can see a tachion (this yellow-green particle, in game they look much better)


Although most features are not implemeted, I decided to release first public alpha.
I think about posting this game to Steam Greenlight when more "complete".
I'd like to know your opinions and suggestions about it.

Ad-supported download link: v.0.1_public_alpha
Please tell me what you think and have fun!

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EDIT:
New version available!
Now it has highscores system:

Highscores are sorted firstly by color, that corresponds energy left when escaped the star,
then sorted by time (years) it took. So you can be fast, but if you lost much energy you will be low in the table.

I've also added some introduction messages to explain what the game is about, one on the very beginning:

and one when the first tachion is seen:


Once we get here, I have a thing to ask you.
I heard that Lua have some problems with UTF-8, specifically string lengths.
The name in highscores is limited to 16 characters. I've done just

Code: Select all

if #self.playername < 16 then ...

and it works under Linux,
but I have no computer with Windows or OS X. So if you have Windows or Mac please tell me if it works.
Thanks in advance and as always have fun!

Ad-supported download link: v.0.1.3_alpha

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EDIT:
Not much changed, for last week I haven't got a computer.
Firstly, you can disable debug mode in options to see the game without black frames and circles.


Secondly, tachions are at last moving! (well, I can't show that on a screenshot )
And last, I've made win animation. As for now it's really ugly, but I hope I'll do something with it soon.


Almost forgot, at highscores screen there are now averages (from all scores, not only these in highscores)

Ad-supported download link: v.0.1.4_alpha
Have fun!

[Form]

It looks pretty neat from those screenshots; the only complaint I would have would be the UI icons, they need some anti-aliasing. You can place the UI icons into a canvas, which will just act as a regular drawable, and then sample them at a higher resolution with FSAA; this method will give you a much smoother looking UI:

Code: Select all

local UI = love.graphics.newCanvas(*width*, *height*, "normal", *however many samples it takes to get rid of all the jaggies*)

UI:renderTo(function() UI:clear() *UI icon draw calls here* end)

love.graphics.draw(UI, 0, 0)

[baconhawka7x]

I like it a lot! Good feeling gameplay and super awesome art. Nice job.

[daneos]

the only complaint I would have would be the UI icons

I didn't really thought of icons and stuff, these are just random pictures from the internet just to show concept
Even the images have different sizes and are scaled to look the same
Your method looks pretty interesting and I'll play around it and see what will happen. Thanks.

[Positive07]

When working with UI icons I use fonts that can be scaled without losing detail. Its the best method to have vectorial graphics in LÖVE

[daneos]

When working with UI icons I use fonts

That's a really nice idea, especially considering that Form's code eats all RAM available
It's not a big deal on Linux, but try to run this on Windows

[Ranguna259]

rr.PNG (18.98 KiB) Viewed 7370 times

Never experinced this error before with love applications.

[daneos]

Never experinced this error before with love applications.

Hmm.. that's weird, I see this error message for the first time, too.
I'd say that your graphics card doesn't support shaders.
Can you see the first screen (with Simple Games Factory text) ?
It should dump some debug data like OS, graphics driver, etc. in the terminal, could you paste it here?
Line 11 in gamestates/menu.lua is just a generic love.graphics.newShader()
And last, what version of LÖVE do you have? I have only tested it under 0.9.0 and 0.9.1, works fine with both.

=================================================
EDIT:
What I found out is that this issue is usually driver related. Try to update your video driver or if using nouveau or something similar, try to install proprietary drivers. I know that nouveau drivers have many issues, I had 10 FPS in this game before installing Nvidia drivers.
I strongly encourage you to run the game from the command line and post the output here.

[Ranguna259]

I'm using love 0.9.1 and my drivers are up to date (340.43, official drivers) on a GTX 650, it supports shaders.
The game crashes right after I open it, I don't see the first screen.
Here's the console output:

qwe.PNG (46.72 KiB) Viewed 7207 times

[daneos]

Here's the console output:

I see it crashes before any debug info is displayed...
I don't really know what's happening, according to nvidia's developer forum this issue should be fixed in 326.41 driver.
As for now, I can only ask you to run this quick test

shaderhotfix.love

(8.1 KiB) Downloaded 170 times

and post the console output. Maybe it will show something interesting...
If this wouldn't work, could you test on 331.79 driver? This is version I use and it compiles all shaders with no warnings or errors.

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EDIT:
Just installed 340.24 driver (newest available for Linux) and it still works.