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johannesprix
Fluffy Bunny of Doom


Joined: 03 Oct 2003
Posts: 19
Location: Graz

PostPosted: Fri Oct 03, 2003 9:37 am    Post subject: FreedroidRPG (Linux Version) [quote]

Hi guys!

A few friends of mine and me initially cloned Paradroid for the Linux operating system. We called the clone 'Freedroid'. But after the work was done, we've started to make it into an RPG. Meanwhile a lot of time has passed, so I thought maybe it's time to post a few screenshots. The graphical style is a bit going after the Diablo series and also the stats/equipment system. Too bad, the story is very short as of now. We've even ported the previous release to the Windows operating system, but that port isn't on the public download server. When the next release comes out, I think we'll also offer some binaries, that can be run under Windows too. But we just love Linux :)

Screenshots are in the screenshots section of the project home page :) If it will load, that is :)

http://freedroid.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php

See ya, Johannes.
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Rainer Deyke
Demon Hunter


Joined: 05 Jun 2002
Posts: 672

PostPosted: Fri Oct 03, 2003 2:44 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Cool. Not really my cup of tea, but cool nonetheless.
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johannesprix
Fluffy Bunny of Doom


Joined: 03 Oct 2003
Posts: 19
Location: Graz

PostPosted: Fri Oct 03, 2003 4:04 pm    Post subject: Thanks [quote]

Rainer Deyke wrote:
Cool. Not really my cup of tea, but cool nonetheless.

Thanks. Well, it's cool now, because there are several people working together. There's basse from Finland, who's really good with computer graphics and my brother who can do the build/makefile/cross-compiling/porting/installation issues, so together it's much easier.
Also, we've asked some guys from www.khavi.org for permission to use some of their *great* music tracks, and they were all for it. Yeah, and of course anyone is invited to contibute, though I think saying that would make more sense once there's a well-tested Windows port available... Story, maps and characters still are under-developed...
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johannesprix
Fluffy Bunny of Doom


Joined: 03 Oct 2003
Posts: 19
Location: Graz

PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 12:03 pm    Post subject: UPDATE: release 0.9.9 is out [quote]

Hi guys!

We've just completed and uploaded release 0.9.9 of FreedroidRPG. So far, it still runs only on the magnificent Linux operating system. If you have broadband and OpenGL capable hardware or otherwise at least a decently fast Linux machine close by, you might want to give it a try and send us some feedback, comments or even better, some bug reports about what is annoying or not working and needs to get fixed. That would be most kind.

Thanks a lot and see ya, jp.
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Happy
JonA's American snack pack


Joined: 03 Aug 2002
Posts: 200

PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 11:31 pm    Post subject: [quote]

I find the game as a whole extremely annoying. Mostly because of the interface; it's confusing, rather unforgiving, and really not intuitive at all. What's also confusing is the dialog. Streamlined dialog windows are so much more easier to follow.

The size of the download is simply not justified, sorry.

Also, Linux is not an operating system. Linux is a kernel.
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janus
Mage


Joined: 29 Jun 2002
Posts: 464
Location: Issaquah, WA

PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 5:37 am    Post subject: [quote]

Happy wrote:
Also, Linux is not an operating system. Linux is a kernel.

Also, RMS is not an expert. RMS is a nutcase if he thinks he invented Linux.

If you want to say that GNU/Linux is a kernel and not an operating system, sure. But Linux is an operating system. Unless IBM, SCO, et al are all incorrect and RMS is right?
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johannesprix
Fluffy Bunny of Doom


Joined: 03 Oct 2003
Posts: 19
Location: Graz

PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 9:52 am    Post subject: thanks for the feedback, please explain some more [quote]

Happy wrote:
I find the game as a whole extremely annoying. Mostly because of the interface; it's confusing, rather unforgiving, and really not intuitive at all.

Oh :( And I thought we had improved the interface and controls so much in this release. Clicking somewhere to go to that place with automatic pathfinding, clicking some enemy to attack, a friend to talk and an item to pick it up seemed to me like the simplest and most 'classical' choice. In what way could be improve the controls?
Happy wrote:
What's also confusing is the dialog. Streamlined dialog windows are so much more easier to follow.

What do you mean by 'streamlined'? Should the dialog output be in one window that's maybe scrolling up or something? Like in a xterm or something? Or it it something else?
Happy wrote:
The size of the download is simply not justified, sorry.

Yes, that's of course an issue. Well, if you got blender, it should be possible to save some 30 megs of download size, by rendering the tux part images on your own machine. Takes about 2 hours of full cpu power but saves the bandwidth. Maybe in future releases, we can persue that some more, so that it becomes a real option. Thanks anyway for your comments. See ya, jp.
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Bjorn
Demon Hunter


Joined: 29 May 2002
Posts: 1425
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 10:54 am    Post subject: [quote]

I'll go and try out this game later today, having Slackware 9.1 running on my laptop now.

Please don't continue the Linux debate, as it's both offtopic and pointless. The definition of an operating system is not very strict, and basically waters down to enableing users to use the hardware in a convenient and efficient manner. If these users are humans, a kernel is not the OS, but from the viewpoint of programs, the kernel would be the OS.


Last edited by Bjorn on Sun Jan 18, 2004 7:39 pm; edited 1 time in total
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johannesprix
Fluffy Bunny of Doom


Joined: 03 Oct 2003
Posts: 19
Location: Graz

PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 6:42 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Bjørn wrote:
The definition of an operating system is not very strict, and basically waters down to anableing users to use the hardware in a convenient and efficient manner. If these users are humans, a kernel is not the OS, but from the viewpoint of programs, the kernel would be the OS.

Heh, that remindes me, during the M$ antitrust trials, their lawyers and 'experts' claimed, that KDE was an operating system and serious competition to them, so no monopoly anywhere to be found... Cute, eh?
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Bjorn
Demon Hunter


Joined: 29 May 2002
Posts: 1425
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 11:59 am    Post subject: [quote]

Hehe, that's funny.

What's not funny though, is that I'm now stuck in 640x480 after this freedroidRPG crashed on me. Here's its output:
Code:
bjorn@box:~/bin$ ./freedroidRPG

Now calibrating passability check maximum stepsize...
Final calibration for passablilit check produced multiplier : 3.
The key obstacle type for this calibration was : 1.Illegal instruction
bjorn@box:~/bin$

It did show the main menu, I created a new hero, watched text scroll by (much too fast for me to read, better would be pausing the text and asking for a keypress to go on), then thereafter it suddenly closed without putting back 1024x768. :-(

The size of the download is insane indeed, 60 MB! But I'll wait with judging if it's worth it when I might be able to play this game.

Oh, and I needed to move the the SDL_net.h that it needed from the /usr/local/include/SDL/ dir to the /usr/local/include/ dir. Maybe it's better to make the game compatible with the default way in which SDL headers are installed? Or am I doing something wrong?


Last edited by Bjorn on Sun Jan 18, 2004 7:40 pm; edited 1 time in total
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johannesprix
Fluffy Bunny of Doom


Joined: 03 Oct 2003
Posts: 19
Location: Graz

PostPosted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 1:06 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Bjørn wrote:
What's not funny though, is that I'm not stuck in 640x480 after this freedroidRPG crashed on me.

Oh, that's bad indeed. You might try for a test to use freedroidRPG -w, so that it runs in a window and not full-screen. Of course this doesn't explain the crash.
Bjørn wrote:
Code:
The key obstacle type for this calibration was : 1.Illegal instruction
Bjørn@box:~/bin$

Hmmm, the calibration thing is normal. The Illigal instruction puzzels me a bit. Never heard of such a thing. Does someone have a clue? Could you try to give debug output i.e. call "gdb freedroidrpg", then "run -w -o" or something and then, after the crash, maybe type "info stack" and send me the output directly to my e-mail address (johannesprix AT users DOT sourceforge DOT net). That would be most kind. Hope I can trace this bug...
Bjørn wrote:
It did show the main menu, I created a new hero, watched text scroll by (much too fast for me to read, better would be pausing the text and asking for a keypress to go on),
Ahh, very good. I'll add that it waits for a keystroke/mouseclick. You can otherwise control the scrolling speed using the cursor keys and have it scroll back up too.
Quote:
The size of the download is insane indeed, 60 MB! But I'll wait with judging if it's worth it when I might be able to play this game.
Thanks... Hope the game is not so dismal when it's actually played ;)
Quote:
Oh, and I needed to move the the SDL_net.h that it needed from the /usr/local/include/SDL/ dir to the /usr/local/include/ dir.
I see. Well, we found so far that each distro likes to place these things where they want. Hope our install person can teach the configure script to take a closer look. Thanks for trying out the game and the feedback. See ya, jp.
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Fooolking
Xmark's Caged Bitch


Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 79
Location: Toronto, Ontario. Canada

PostPosted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 4:49 pm    Post subject: [quote]

I don't know much about coding and what not.

But I think your game has a very nice look to it.
_________________
Never milk cows that have uni-brows.
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LeoDraco
Demon Hunter


Joined: 24 Jun 2003
Posts: 584
Location: Riverside, South Cali

PostPosted: Sat Oct 25, 2003 9:38 pm    Post subject: [quote]

johannesprix wrote:
Could you try to give debug output i.e. call "gdb freedroidrpg", then "run -w -o"

There's an easier way to pass arguments to programs in GDB; when invoking the debugger, the --args flag will treat any arguments thereafter to be arguments to the program being debugged.
Quote:
or something and then, after the crash, maybe type "info stack"

You can get the same information via the "backtrace" command.
_________________
"...LeoDraco is a pompus git..." -- Mandrake
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Bjorn
Demon Hunter


Joined: 29 May 2002
Posts: 1425
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Sun Oct 26, 2003 10:47 am    Post subject: [quote]

Ok, after being able to run it, and about the size of the game...
  • The speech is almost 20 MB, but does that really add to the game? I suggest this to be a seperate download for those who think it does, at least while you're releasing it to the internet.
  • The animation is very smooth, but have you tried making it half as smooth? It would save a lot of data as well.
  • 16 walking directions for Tux, while it might look that tiny bit better, I think 8 would do fine. You can still allow him to walk in 16 (or more) directions, just show the picture closest to his direction. Of course he will be slightly sliding, but in my opinion the extra data doesn't justify the improvement.
It still crashed the second time I tried it in the debugger, and have emailed you the stack trace. Some more about the game though, I liked it, as well as the real time combat with the Bots. It still has a lot of small control issues though.
  • The dialog feels slow and unresponsive.
  • Clicking a crate didn't seem to make Tux walk to it.
  • You have to click an object two times to pick it up (first to walk to it, then to actually pick it up)
  • A click for each time you want to attack isn't really convenient. Look at Diablo 2, which allows you to just hold your mouse button to keep attacking, no matter if you loose the target with the mouse.
  • It would be nice if I could just hold the mouse button to walk somewhere as well, and not have to click each time I want to walk to the next spot. (again, see Diablo 2)
  • It was nice to be able to control the scrolling text with the arrows, think about making this possibily obvious from the user-interface, maybe adding arrows or even a scrollbar. You shouldn't have to read a manual to figure something like that out.
  • When picking up an object that makes the graphical appearence of Tux change, the game pauses while loading the new huge graphics set. This is another reason to reduce the amount of graphical data. The pause is long enough to be annoying and almost justifies a progress bar or a change of the mouse to a ticking clock or something.
So, in my opinion there's a lot of things that can use improvement, but it's shaping up to be a nice game.
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johannesprix
Fluffy Bunny of Doom


Joined: 03 Oct 2003
Posts: 19
Location: Graz

PostPosted: Sun Oct 26, 2003 11:28 am    Post subject: heh, thanks for the detailed comments... [quote]

First of all, thanks a lot for the detailed comments and stack trace!
Bjørn wrote:
  • The speech is almost 20 MB, but does that really add to the game? I suggest this to be a seperate download for those who think it does, at least while you're releasing it to the internet.
Right. We were lazy again. We had offered a separate package with the voices for the previous release. Well, maybe simples would be to remove the voice samples alltogether, at least until they are really worth anything :) Yes, that might be best solution for now...
Bjørn wrote:
  • The animation is very smooth, but have you tried making it half as smooth? It would save a lot of data as well.
  • 16 walking directions for Tux, while it might look that tiny bit better, I think 8 would do fine. You can still allow him to walk in 16 (or more) directions, just show the picture closest to his direction. Of course he will be slightly sliding, but in my opinion the extra data doesn't justify the improvement.
There might be something I can offer here. But maybe it wouldn't be everyone's taste since it involves more steps: The thing is that the whole Tux animation series could be generated automatically from 2 files (less than 1 MB each), and rendered on your machine. That might save some 30 megs of *compressed* download size, but requires blender and some extra time (>1 hour) for rendering. Would you prefer such a concept?
Bjørn wrote:
It still crashed the second time I tried it in the debugger, and have emailed you the stack trace.

Thanks a lot for the debug output. Alas, either it's something from outside our game or I'm simply too dumb in this case...
Bjørn wrote:
It still has a lot of small control issues though.
  • The dialog feels slow and unresponsive.
  • Clicking a crate didn't seem to make Tux walk to it.
  • You have to click an object two times to pick it up (first to walk to it, then to actually pick it up)
Very good points. I'll put that on top of my task list now, so it should be sure to be fixed in the next release.
Bjørn wrote:
  • A click for each time you want to attack isn't really convenient. Look at Diablo 2, which allows you to just hold your mouse button to keep attacking, no matter if you loose the target with the mouse.
Ah. I got the shareware demo of Diablo II somewhere. Didn't know you could move the mouse away...
Bjørn wrote:
  • It would be nice if I could just hold the mouse button to walk somewhere as well, and not have to click each time I want to walk to the next spot. (again, see Diablo 2)
Strange... I thought this is implemented and working. Holding down the button should keep the Tux running to whereever you move the mouse. This doesn't work?
Bjørn wrote:
  • It was nice to be able to control the scrolling text with the arrows, think about making this possibily obvious from the user-interface, maybe adding arrows or even a scrollbar. You shouldn't have to read a manual to figure something like that out.
A good point.
Bjørn wrote:
  • When picking up an object that makes the graphical appearence of Tux change, the game pauses while loading the new huge graphics set. This is another reason to reduce the amount of graphical data. The pause is long enough to be annoying and almost justifies a progress bar or a change of the mouse to a ticking clock or something.
Yes, that might be good. We can also add an option for it in the config menu in case some users don't like the progress bar.
Bjørn wrote:
So, in my opinion there's a lot of things that can use improvement, but it's shaping up to be a nice game.

Thanks for the encouragement. At least now I know what to do next :)
See ya, Johannes.
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