KRAKOUT: work in progress (with BREAKABLE bricks!)

[Wampus]

Looking forward to playing this one when its complete. Great work ampos.

[Ian Price]

Right, I've had a chance to test the Wiz version and it's not good I'm afraid. I know it's very early days, but here's my initial findings (and i know that most of these issues should be easy to iron out or have probably already been sorted).

1. The scrolling background has a chunk (long black bar) missing from it near the top - although this might be hidden if the barrier appeared as it should; it still appears fullsize, like pc version, not scaled to the Wiz's screen.
2. The ball is also too big. Appearing disproportionate to the Wiz's screen (a la barrier).
3. The bat and ball are a tad sluggish - touchscreen control just isn't upto it at the moment. It's not far off, but it's not properly playable yet either.
4. The polyvector scrolling background flickers pretty badly too. It's lovely on pc, but perhaps the Wiz might be better off without it? 

Maybe the large bitmap background images (barriers etc.) are slowing the game down. It would be nice to have an on screen FPS counter, to see how bad the slowdown is.

I've taken a few (very poor photos - I've got to get a new camera soon!). See attached.

I do still look forward to a playable Wiz version.

[ampos]

LOL, you forgot to put the pictures in the rar...

Currently I am redoing all the graphics.

C64 screen was 320x200, but pixels were not square, so I am asuming they was like 320x240. I am redoing all the gfx to this new 320x240 aspect.

[ampos]

Ok, new version.

-Win: Low Res (aka 320x240) and Hi-Res (aka 960x480)

-WinCE: cool on my iPag, althoug PNG alpha seems to not work.

-GP: just test it. Does PNG alpha (inner shadow) work as in Win-Low, or is strange?

You can move now with every at your hand  mouse, cursor, joystick, dpad, touchscreen...

Graphics are scaled to full-fill the entire screen on any resolution.

Press C, Calendar or B keys to change to C=64 mode.

[ampos]

Right, I've had a chance to test the Wiz version and it's not good I'm afraid. I know it's very early days, but here's my initial findings (and i know that most of these issues should be easy to iron out or have probably already been sorted).

1. The scrolling background has a chunk (long black bar) missing from it near the top - although this might be hidden if the barrier appeared as it should; it still appears fullsize, like pc version, not scaled to the Wiz's screen.
2. The ball is also too big. Appearing disproportionate to the Wiz's screen (a la barrier).
3. The bat and ball are a tad sluggish - touchscreen control just isn't upto it at the moment. It's not far off, but it's not properly playable yet either.
4. The polyvector scrolling background flickers pretty badly too. It's lovely on pc, but perhaps the Wiz might be better off without it? 

Maybe the large bitmap background images (barriers etc.) are slowing the game down. It would be nice to have an on screen FPS counter, to see how bad the slowdown is.

I've taken a few (very poor photos - I've got to get a new camera soon!). See attached.

I do still look forward to a playable Wiz version.

1, 2 & 3: it was because shoebox does not make directories, and I stored all the graphics with the same name but in 320/ and 960/ for different resolutions. In my iPaq it crashed, so I copied the /media dir, so it worked. Now I checked the Win-Low and LOL, everything was HUGE.

4: changed background, test if it works fine now. Of course it will have background off/quiet/follow/random on all the versions.

[Ian Price]

The new WIZ version is much better and fixes pretty much every problem. It's still slower than it should be, but not unplayablly slow. The shadows around the barrier aren't transparent - they are showing as solid black (see attached image - sorry, I don't know how I could have left the old images out (D'oh!!) - if you still need them I can post them later.).

Control is much better with DPAD than touchscreen, but touchscreen doesn't feel right for this type of game anyway. The C64 mode looks good,  can you add a keypress delay between switching between update and original graphics though. Pressing B swaps the images too fast and it can take a few attempts to get the desired graphics set.

All in all, a significant improvement.

[ampos]

Yeah, WinCE has the same problem with shadows.

I will remove it in little versions, and perhaps add an option for enhaced effects (background color and normal shadows).

How is now the backgropund pattern scroll? Nicer?

[Ian Price]

The scroll is much smoother than the previous version (probably because the game is running faster anyway), but there is a slightly odd regular banding issue (on the new background only) - kind of like every 32 pixels there is an odd horizontal disparity between the background image. It's not like the banding moves - if so, I'd suspect an image problem, but it appears to be due to the Wiz. However, my Wiz's battery is flat (I'm running it via USB charge from my pc), so that could explain it. Maybe it's the size of the dots/squares within the image, creating an optical illusion. In fact you can see this in the images above.

The C64 version appears to run a tad faster and doesn't seem to have this banding graphical quirk.

[Neurox]

Hi,
I've tested with Gamepark console:

GP2X F100, firmware 3.0.0
Very slow and poor movements.

GP2X F200, firmware 4.1.1
Slow movements.

With to F100 and F200 for exit, I've pressed the volume key and GP2X is locked and I had to reset. But I think it's a GLBasic problem.

GP2X WIZ , firmware 1.2.1
Good movements and much betters ever.

Neurox

[ampos]

Added fps counter and I have removed the shadows, and get stable 30 fps on WinCE.

Test on your plattaform.

Now on Mac too! 

[Neurox]

Now on Mac too! 

I have an iMac with 10.6 and  Krakout run very well.
But I've added the extension ".App" otherwise the system don't see
And I've modify the attributes with "chmod x WIZ_parallax.app / Contents / MacOS / MacOSX" 

[ampos]

No idea what are you talking about this Mac stuff... 

[ampos]

New version, with random bricks on screen.

I lost 1 frame on iPaq in PLUS mode.

[Ian Price]

Tested the Wiz and pc versions tonight - both Wiz and pc play at or around 29FPS (pc is rock solid steady at 29FPS), so pretty contant and consistant. The banding appears to be gone from the Wiz - it looks like you've enlarged the background pattern and looks much better as a result - either that or the blocks hide the problem. I'd go as far as to say that the Wiz version actually looks better than the pc version - it's much more vibrant.

Shame the game isn't truly playable yet.

[ampos]

Strange I set SETLIMIT 30 and it is at 29  on my PC too.

About the pattern, I remade it, just this. And it has to be redone again, has a little "banding" still.