Alright, I just found this project, and am really impressed by what you have so far. Please keep in mind that this isn't just a bug report, but my impressions on the project as well.
On to the bug report:
Ok, I downloaded the Coldest428 build from the site, and the first thing I did was cringe at the GUI.
I think that it should have a minimalistic approach for now, such as Valve does (text as buttons with background pic).
Yeah, the GUI is going to need some work before release. I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do with it but it definitely won't look like it does now. The Valve style is very tempting because it would be the easiest, but we'll see. If I do go that route it will probably be later when the game is closer to finished so I can grab a screenshot to use as the background.
Oh, and if you think it's bad now you should have seen it a year ago.
Well, I got over it, still really excited to try the game. I go into the settings, change some options, and it crashes. I open it back up, and change each setting one by one, and changing the resolution froze the interface. When I end the program through the task manager and boot back into it, the game resizes to the resolution I picked before it froze.
This one is definitely a bug and I am aware of it, but I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet. The problem is that (especially on Windows) the GUI needs to be reloaded after changing resolutions, but right now if I do that the game will crash. I'm pretty sure I know why, but there is a workaround to the problem (hit the ~ key and type quit - it won't show up but the game should exit and save your new resolution) so I haven't been motivated to fix it yet. That's another thing that's definitely on my todo list before releasing a proper beta though.
Here's the
DxDiag if you need it.
**After I realized that the game had sound, I tried it again with my headphones on, and the sound played back with no problems.
Otherwise, there are a few design choices with the inputs I don't like, but meh, it's a mech game. I'm VERY impressed with what you have so far, especially as you seem to be the only one working on it. Keep up the good work, and don't loose sight of the goal!
--Lockblade
Thanks for the encouraging words. I'm curious what you didn't like about the input - some of it will be configurable eventually but that's another thing that's still on the todo list because right now if something really bothers me I just change it in code (and for testing a lot of things the controls aren't that important). If it's weapons-related then I'm still not 100% sure what I'm going to do with that, and I may wait for some playtesting before making any final decisions.
PS: Two things: What language are you using? I might be able to help code the boring parts. Second, you should really play Armored Core: For Answer. I know it's for PS3 and XBOX 360 and not everyone has it, but that's more the area I think you should go, as your level design is more PvP and arcade than mech sim. Look forward to hearing back!
It's pretty much all C++. There's a little Python with QT4 for some tools, but the game itself is C++. I'm planning to open source it at some point once I get license information added so I can safely release it. Once I do that, you're certainly welcome to take a look and decide if you want to deal with all the spaghetti code.
The game should get finished at some point anyway though because I'm doing it for fun so I'm not all that bothered by the boring parts. Sometimes it's even nice to take a break from fighting with the collision detection and rendering code and work on something easier.
As far as the arcade vs. sim thing goes, that was actually a conscious decision on my part. It's already a pretty ambitious project and adding the complexity of sim gameplay might be too much for a small project like this to deal with. I think it would require a lot of playtesting to get right and I'm not sure I'll be able to do that. Once I finish improving some of the really awful models that I have right now I'm planning to see if I can get some people on a forum I frequent to beta test the game (I'll post information on the site too of course, but at this point it's still not getting a ton of traffic so for all intents and purposes it will be like a closed beta). At that point I'll see what the feedback is like and if people are looking for sim-like elements I might bite the bullet and go that direction. Right now the style is pretty heavily influenced by the
Savage series, even though the settings and gameplay are very different, so we'll see if that works out.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback and hopefully in a month or two a lot of this stuff will have been taken care of and we can actually start playing the game.
