I think everyone's busy helping design the game ;)
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I think everyone's busy helping design the game ;)
First the fm20.dll is an enhance form control that support more options (from the properties menu) that the old one (that load first when you create a new project) have not.
Secondo if you'd like to know which dll ocx and all required files your games need you can know it with the installation wizard.
In the tools in the Microsoft Studio Folder you'll find the wizard for deplying your applications (which is very un appropriate cause it have some bug)
1- Select a standard application with your projetcs
2- Ask for a stardard installation
3- Follow what's mark on screen and at some point you'll come to a page that tell you to add your own files to the project (the one for the graphics, sound, manuel, everything that's not dll or ocx) cause all the dll and ocx are listed there! so you write them and you'll know exactly with dll and ocx you need for your program.
4- You cancel the installation after you've written which files you need
I know it's a bit long to do but with the installation setup that I use it don't tell me which dll and ocx I need
you can take a look at the installation package that I use (which is very good)
http://www.jrsoftware.org/
and now you can distribute your game and you'll know that everyone will have everything to make it work!
No more dll hunting on the net ;)
Thanks Megistal.
I had already realised which DLL it was, I'd merely forgotten to include it. I changed the scrollbars within the game and forgot I'd had to use forms 2 in order to do it.
Simple oversight.
So, have you played it then?
ARBITER!!! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?!
I hate it when people ignore my posts :rolleyes:Quote:
(About the components that appear in the ground when you blow up a mech)
Anyway, you don't need to make a new unit type or something, you just have one more parameter in the Pods, like "NoBox", and it would be drawn with a small component graphic instead of inside the box graphic :)
Doesn't sound too hard to me... :rolleyes:
Yes I've try it!
I was very stun by the graphics! They are great!
Also the game "mode" like "civilisation / outpost" is a genre that I like :)
I like the whole aspect of the intro and game (I've not play with it. I've juste went through the program without playing a "real'' game)
In general, it's well started.
But some changes may be made...
major:
1- my taskbar appear when the game is playing :/
minor:
2- the scroll bar for the volume and/or panning of music is in the window color instead to be black or the color of the game
3- the loading time is very long :/ (I have a 200 Mhz and 64 ram) and I don't want to test it on my 25Mhz lol!
Personnaly:
4- If you have time you can change the cursor to be more appropriate for your game ;)
If it were my game I would be very proud of it! keep up the good work!
Are you alone for this game? I mean are you the one you made all the graphics, sound and coding?
Megistal,
Glad you like it. :)
Answers to your comments.
1) DAMN! Someone else had reported that but I've never had the problem before. I wonder why it's doing that.
2) Yep, that screen's not finished. If there's any bits that look too 'VBy' they'll be work in progress bits.
3) Funny you should say that. I'm working on a solution to that very things as we speak. When I upload the next version, you'll only have a long load time the first time the game is loaded. After that, it should be pretty fast load time. --- Also, just remember that good things come to those who wait... ;)
4) Yep, I'll Behemoth to look into that - which brings me nicely to number 5.
5) Nope, I'm not alone in creating the game. The coding was done solely by myself, but the graphics were all done by my partner in crime Behemoth. Also, the people inhabiting these forums have be invaluable in providing ideas, support and testing the game.
Thanks again, and I look forward to more comments from you!
Jotaf,
I didn't ignore your post. I thought I'd already responded to your suggestion. However, here's a more detailed reply.
I don't think it's going to be practical to have components lying around on the floor for a few reasons, which are:
1) The framework doesn't support it. Those pods aren't pods, but buildings (or so the game thinks), they merely belong to player 9 - a fictional player. When they're interacted with they are removed and something happens ( a unit is spawned, energy increases etc).
2) How would you get the components back? You'd pick them up with your 5ton scout mech (with no arms) and then? You'd have to kick them all the way back, or we'd have to come up with some type of mech which goes along gathering things up. I thought this would be a bit too much work for only a little extra functionality.
3) What's going to be left of the components after the mech goes critical? There's going to be a few globs of metal lying around which an RMV could collect, but nothing vaguely recognisable as a component.
4) The graphics. Currently we have no component graphics that would look sensible at the kind of size required (20*20). Behemoth would have to draw a whole new fleet of graphics to support such a small amount of functionality.
Now, don't get me wrong I LIKE the idea, but it's just not feasible. If'd I'd have been planning to put it in from the beginning I'd have probably structured the game differently. I had to cheat in order to get the pods in!
Because there's only 1 coder for Sentience and 1 graphic artist we have to weigh very carefully all the pro's and con's of adding new stuff. We might like the idea, but if we put in all the cool ideas that we heard of you guys then we'd never finish the project.
Do you see what I mean?
Still getting the out of memory error when loading the sounds :/
System :
Duron 800
384 RAM
Kyro2 64mb
SBLive value.
tis very bizzare :o
Beats me.
Maybe one of the sound files is corrupt. You could try downloading it again.
You do have directx 7 or above don't you?
For the taskbar, you could remove it when your game have the focus and make it reappear when your game lost the focus.
(If you need to know how I'll try to make a small example next time if asked)
And I envy you! each time I start working on a project everyone that I had convince to work doesn't do anything :/
One problem with that idea, if the game locks up, it will disapper until you do one of the following: A) Reboot your machine, and B) start up a program which does the same thing, and pray it doesn't lock up.
Yes that's a point, then make your application to be visible on top (use the api always on top)
so when the game will crash the taskbar will be visible and when the game is running nothing will come over the game.
If you lost focus you turn off the "always on top" and when your app gain the focus ou turn on "always on top"
Better like that?
hehe yeah, i've done the complete driver reinstall just to try and solve it... 4in1s, dx8a, latest kyro drivers... IT JUST HAAAAEEEETTSSS me ;D
just so i know... does it use ddraw or d3d or is the only component dsound?
Guys, oh guys, oh guys!
The latest version is now uploaded (but it's nothing special). Fixed some more of the faults pointed out by Plend and increased the speed of the startup.
Tanus,
I'm intrigued by your problem. You're the first person who hasn't been able to get it to work at all. Well done!
Could you narrow it down to exactly where it happens. Walk me through the process of running the game please.
I'm going to create a special version for you which will report out all the problems in the startup to a text file which you can then send me.
Megistal,
Do you have your start menu set to something odd, like autohide?
What version of Windows are you running?
double click the icon, up pops the splash screen, does the 'Loading' in green letters, then 'Loading Sounds' which is where it pops up the error.
I've attached a jpg of the screen when it crashes, but hopefully having a debug version will help a bit more :)
Also, i imagine there would be but i've never looked, are there programs available to monitor memory accesses? Cause if there is, i'll run one and try to start sentience up and see what/where its trying to access illegal memory.
Edit : One thing it may have something to do with is the fm20.dll thing. The version i downloaded is 1.07MB, and is from 1996 :o if you're going to upload a debug version, can you put your fm20.dll in there too so i can try that ?
The only thing I can think of is that one of the sound files is corrupt.
try this
open the Sentience directory, open the scripts directory and copy in the attached options.ini. It will prompt you to overwrite.
It's called options.txt - rename it to .ini before you copy it in.
This will disable the sounds meaning Sentience won't even bother loading them.
See if that helps...
nope :o
There's a copy of fm20.dll uploaded at
www.btinternet.com/~bstap
It's the same version as the one I have, but it's only for scrollbars and if it didn't work, you wouldn't be getting that error.
Try the options.ini and see if that works.
For the sake, of the future, of all mankind - it MUST work!
What?
It didn't work?
Rats.
Try redownloading the gamedev.zip and extracting it.
Then dowload the update and copy the contents over the stuff in the Sentience directory.
You could also try stabbing ctrl+alt+del and killing everything that's running in the background.
Then run Sentience.
Oh, and what version of Windows are you on?
argh! i got excited and though it was going to work... the green status bar moved about a centimeter to the right, but then it crashed again :) hehe
i'm running winME, and i always run with the bare minimum of stuff to make windows work properly... if you want, my icq is 101651526
Was that after you'd redownloaded?
It was definately after installing the update wasn't it.
Well, Sentience clearly doesn't like running the sounds on your machine.
Open the options.ini in the scripts folder and ensure that all the sound options are set to false.
You could also try running the dx setup and reducing the hardware acceleration for sound. This sometimes clears up problems.
Do you have the latest drivers for your sound card?
Sorry, but your ICQ number's no good to me - I'm at work and as such do not have chat programs running.
Another (sneaky) trick is this.
Run something that makes sound in the background. Like winamp. Set it playing music. Then run Sentience.
S is smart enough to detect that and disable sound at a base level as it can't compete. This should shut off all sound and abort the sound loading, giving you a message in the process. It should then carry on with loading the rest of the game.
Try that one...
My taskbar is always on top. I never want it to auto-hide, which is really ugly in win95 (no smoonth action)
Me version of windows is Win95 4.00.950 B
I use this windows cause it's the one who use the less ram memory.
DO you have the same problem with your taskbar Arbiter?
I've download the Sentience Update and install it... and after I launch it of course :)
Surprise! This time I wasn't able to see the "full" screen of the main menu!
I was seeing only the middle of the main menu / picture, and only 4 options was visible (the load option and the 3 others below it)
Something like a picture is in 1024x768 and your seeing only the middle of it in 800x600. So all the borders of it are invisible and I wasn't able the reach the Exit Button :P
Even the "New Game" page was like that.
Now that one's baffled me as well. Where are these bugs coming from? These never existed before!
Quick question, how could you tell the new game screen was like that if you couldn't see the button (it's the top one).
The First Time, I've only download GameDev.zip and run sentience from there, even if the patch was available I didn't download it, so In that version I was able to see to whole screen (like it was suppose to be) + the taskbar bug.
After 2-3 days, I've download the patch and run the game. That time has the bug I mention earlier (the smaller view on the screen)
Am I having the wrong version them?
I would like to know (I don't want the code) how (which algo) did you use to scroll the map in the game?
The one that's moving by the 2 scrolls bars...
1- When the map move, you load each "square" of graphics from the disk and the load the with bitblt?
2- Load all graphics "square" in memory and when the map move you bitblt them?
3- Or did you use DirectDraw?
I believe it's the 2nd option, Arbiter wouldn't be so lame as to use the 1st one, right? :)
Oh and DX works the same way as BitBlt, except that it has some very strict rules and complex functions :p
Arbiter, you got me wrong: what I meant was, you would use a *general* graphic that would be used for ALL components. The real size of a component would be so small that it would look just like a small chunk of metal with some tubes on (like 8x8 pixels) :p
They would be just different pods, that's all. I mean, in my opinion it wouldn't be that hard. But if you don't wanna do it/think you can't do it, that's ok :)
Yep, the mighty Jotaf is right. I load everything into memory DC's and then throw then onto the screen when it's updated.
No, you seem to have the right version.
Is anyone else reporting this screen fault.
Jotaf, have you downloaded the patch? Do you have the same problem?
The major differance is that direct draw is much faster. And besides, direct draw offers some more advanced functions.
I got an 'error code 7, out of memory' error :)
system:
athlon 650
328mb ram
geforce2 64 mb ddr
win2k
Dunno whats wrong with the program, cant wait to play it ^_^
about directx/draw: It's not THAT hard, you just have to try it again and again and again and one day you'll understand it ^_^
Oops, sorry Arbiter but I'm too busy to download your patch :)
Maybe I'll download it later. Sorry for the inconvenience :p
Hey Arbiter, it's about the last bug I mentionned, the one where the image size was bigger than the screen... well I've tried the old one (Sentience) again and I got the same Problem! so the problem must be my system and not your game, though I don't understand why for now :/
Hey Arb, are you gonna put free components in the pods?
h00ray, it's not just me :D
Okay dokay, it's Monday morning and I've some things to answer - so here goes...
Usako, DaoK,
Try running the game from a fresh boot. Ensure the machine hasn't been on for the past 4 weeks solid without a shutdown and you're not trying to run 2000 things in the background.
That normally solves it.
Failing that, could you tell me at what point you're getting the message (screenshot as well if poss). DaoK, if that screenshot was just slightly bigger it would have been great, but you've missed off the scrollbar at the bottom so I don't know where it's up to.
Tanus has been getting this problem as well and I'm about to knock up a debug version for him. If you (Usako, DaoK) still can't get yours to work then you can try the debug version and send me the log it will produce. I'll upload that version tonight.
Megistal,
That's really odd. It was fine before - have you changed anything on your system?
Jotaf,
No probs, download the update when you get chance - it's mostly bug fixes anyway.
And yes we will be having free components in the pods. We have a list in the Comms forum of what we're including (a couple of pages from the back I think). If you can think of anything to add then I'd appreciate suggestions.
Tanus,
Did you try the trick I mentioned? Play MP3's in the background and then try running Sentience.
cant upload anything (internet connections falls out or something :( ).
Anyway, in the 'bar' thingy is 'Loading Sounds'.
And out of memory sounds a little memory since i have 328 mb ram and my video card has 64mb. And I have about 10gig of free diskspace...
Oh well ^_^
Try playing some MP3's in the background (or something else that makes noise).
Sentience should detect that the sound card is in use and bypass sound altogether.
Let me know how you get on....
Loading sound and that crash. And I had rebooted my computer like 2 hours ago so I do not think that's the problem of my computer. I tested your program with and without that patch and I got the same error message.Quote:
DaoK, if that screenshot was just slightly bigger it would have been great, but you've missed off the scrollbar at the bottom so I don't know where it's up to.
Hope that will help you :)