Hey, Tycho, I happen to be an Amature REALBasic coder. I have the ability to right simple programs to help myself at certain tasks (such as recognizing voice commands and telling an I/O device to move this motor for x seconds etc.). I haven't been able to find any websites that explain much about sprites, however. The most I can do with sprites is make a little smiley face move around when I press arrow keys. I have no idea how to create objects like weapon shots, code collisions, etc. Do you know of a good website that could explain this to a beginner? Or must I crack down and buy a book (and which one would be best suited for sprite/game code)?

Thanks!

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"Do or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

Oh, you're thinking about networking this in the form of a simple 1vs1? Well, here is my .02˘. Tell me if it helps any. I would create a Socket object, and since all the data involving health, weapons, positions of sprites, etc. is already in integer form (hopfully floating point form soon?), it would be fairly easy to transfer that information in packets and render them on the other players' screen. There are plenty of examples on how to do this floating around on the internet. Good luck. I doubt this will be called EVMP, since the legal issues will most likely prevent this, but good luck anyway!
-Dave

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"Do or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

First bug of a8:

I flew around for a few seconds and got the error "Exception of NilObjectClass was not handled. This application must quit."

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"Do or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

That error you mentioned seems to be fixable: I just gave it more memory and it went away.

Ny complaint is that the purple helian always seems to win. Even if he never shoots - the blue one just blows up of it's own accord eventually. Also, the images of the old ships and explosions seem to stil be on the screen when a new game is started.

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Mazca

Moderator, EV Developer's Corner.
Roses are red
Violets are blue.
I'm schizophrenic
And so am I.

website: [www.jpw.op.nu

](http://www.jpw.op.nu "External link")

Quote

Originally posted by J.Ace21:
**sorry. but i have a VERY strange ISP. I can't download certain files from certain servers outside of Korea. so would you mind email ing HelianWars?

PS this is to Tycho. I don't wan't to have to download something like 5megs on this 56k modem because too many people sent it to me.....

Thanks.

**

did anyone hear me??
my email is JAce21@chollian.net

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(url="http://"mailto:JAce21@chollian.net")mailto:JAce21@chollian.net(/url)JAce21@chollian.net

Yeah I hear ya man. It's in the mail.

First off. Bug about the nilobject is because of memory. Thanks for pointing it out. The 'bug' with the pictures not leaving the screen after you die: I don't know how to fix it. I have a slight idea but, c'mon it's only alpha.

A good place for realbasic sprite examples is:

Realmac Games (url="http://"http://www.realmacs.co.uk/")http://www.realmacs.co.uk/(/url)

The guy that runs it has made an excellent game called starlands. Version 2 is coming out soon. Thanks for the info on sockets. I think the only information I'll need to send is key inputs like turn left, roght, thrust, fire. Then each client can handle taking health away and drawing sprites. That's how Marathon does it anyway.

Cool, that about wraps it up. Next version will be ready by about next friday. This will support more weapons and ships! Hooray! Networking will be after that. And I guess by the enthusiastic response, a windows version will not be made. Fine by me. I'd have to convert all my picts to bitmaps otherwise.

Tycho

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Where the Hell's my roof?

Quote

Originally posted by Tycho:
**Yeah I hear ya man. It's in the mail.

**

thanks

Quote

Originally posted by Tycho:
**Cool, that about wraps it up. Next version will be ready by about next friday. This will support more weapons and ships! Hooray! Networking will be after that. And I guess by the enthusiastic response, a windows version will not be made. Fine by me. I'd have to convert all my picts to bitmaps otherwise.

Tycho

**

How will the multiplayer work? Would it be like you tell it the hosts IP address like in Q3? or would it be made for LAN??

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(url="http://"mailto:JAce21@chollian.net")mailto:JAce21@chollian.net(/url)JAce21@chollian.net

It could be either or both depending on what everyone else wants. I could probably put both networking in right now and have it ready by tomorrow, but I'm a lazy man.

I'll see if I can get a little test for you guys to muck around with.

Tycho

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Where the Hell's my roof?

Some improvements that would make the game better.(i'm sure everyones thought about these before)
-Slower and Random firing of the cannon.(can't think of a code that would make it possible. it's been a VERY long time since i've even touched Real..)
-You are going to add homing for the missle right?
That's pretty much it considering you're already going to add a credit system, etc....

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(url="http://"mailto:JAce21@chollian.net")mailto:JAce21@chollian.net(/url)JAce21@chollian.net

Here's a simple one... Since you're still using a static game screen, why not make a fancier background? There's no reason not to have nebula's, fancier looking stars, planets, moons, ect...

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Slower random firing? OK.
Homing missiles might not be too good for a small arena. I'll make it bigger when I network it and then add it.

Alright I'll add planets and such and such.

Tycho

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Where the Hell's my roof?

I know the nilobject exception thing can be fixed with memory but I've found out that it only happens when you make a 180 degree turn. Just create the proper rsrc in Resedit to set the standard memory higher, I can do it for you if you want.
If you're going to make this multiplayer make a bigger arena and add support for up to 10 players via TCP/IP. Carriers, when they launched their fighters the fighter scould be controlled by other players over the internet. You could offer to help in battles to earn creds ad could transfer from one "bank account to the other. You could even set up a Java based bar.

It would be different from EV/O but would be a very cool game, please keep working on it because it's looking VERY good so far

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Wham!Man - The original and still the best

10 players? Bah! Get the packets right (1 byte for rotational value, 2 bytes for position depending on the size of the play field, 1 byte for what weapon they are firing, 1 bit for if they are firing, 1 byte for speed, 1 byte for accel, 1 bit for if they are thrusting) and you can have alot of people. Lets see, thats a total of 6 bytes and 2 bits for each packet. To keep things from jumping around too much, lets say 15 packets a second. Thats almost 94 bytes (93 bytes and 6 bits). 94 bytes a second. With 32 people, thats 3008 bytes a second, or 3k/sec being sent to all 32 players and being recieved by 32 players. 6k a second. A v.90 56k modem can usually do about 6k a second, so there would be minimal lag. Assuming everyone had a v.90 56k modem. 32 should be the limit, but lagless games should be a bit smaller.

Speaking of modems, I have a question to anyone else who has an AGP G4 with an internal modem:

Have you ever gotten more than a 56k modem can recieve in your downloads? I've gotten a sustained rate of 11.2k/sec with my 56k, and thats not possible. 7k isn't even possible because of line static. I made sure it wasn't an error by downloading a 900k file from one of the faster ftp servers I could get speeds like that from. It took about 83 seconds to download that file. Thats about 11k/sec. Anyone have any thoughts on how/why this is happening?

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"Do or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

(This message has been edited by Dave Lesovoy (edited 06-18-2000).)

Thanks for the help with the memory but I can just amp it up when I make the next build.

When it first gets networked it will probably only have a maximum of four people. But if you think about it that's plenty. When it finally gets a universe each individual client will obviously not have to keep track of every ship playing.

About the lag. I don't think each client will have to send and recieve everyone's velocities and acceleration. All I'm getting them to do is send "left", "right", "Thrust", messages. Then each client figures out the sprites movements. Now this might cause some really bad out of sync cases where everyone playing thinks they have won. I don't know. Come join the testers and we'll see what happens.

Tycho

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Where the Hell's my roof?

I've made a (better) readme for a8 that I've already mailed to you tycho (everyone seems to be too busy making chat programs to bother about the little things).

BUG REPORT FOR a8
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Screen does not refresh after a new game

Explosion sound is too overdone (well, i think so)

Fighters are prone to explode after a while of shooting the laser (especially the blue one)

Explosion is simotanues (grammer.....)

You can still move around and fire (in an invisible ship) aftter you have died for a period of about 6 seconds

The explosion graphic has the same rules applied as the ship graphic (you can be covered up by the explosion
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Some ideas for final version :

Java based chat "bar" (Maybe that chat progran someone was working on would be implemented ? )
More ships
More weapons
A splashscreen
Bigger Arena
The ability to be a carried fighter
Teams (Blue or Purple or Green )
Ability to make different arenas (Can you say "Plug-in" ? :))
Special Arenas where "wars" can be carried out (say...Confederation vs. Rebels)
Clan Ladders
A info tab (like avara) where pictures and clan nicks can be put in
Combat Ratings
Handicaps
A secondary dialog to select different secondary weapons (Ev)
Target dialog
You can board ships and get their money
Bank accounts
Ability to buy weapons
Ability to buy upgrades/armour
Ability to transfer money from one bank account to another
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Wham!Man - The original and still the best

There should be a 2 player game over the net and then there should be a team game over a net. Like 5 rebel cruiser vs 5 confederate cruisers or something like that. Or, a mixture of Ares and EVO. That wouldn't be that bad but is it oringal.

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