superspace-discuss Mailing List for Super Space War
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From: Benno L. <ben...@id...> - 2004-05-03 07:16:35
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Dear Open Source developer I am doing a research project on "Fun and Software Development" in which I kindly invite you to participate. You will find the online survey under http://fasd.ethz.ch/qsf/. The questionnaire consists of 53 questions and you will need about 15 minutes to complete it. With the FASD project (Fun and Software Development) we want to define the motivational significance of fun when software developers decide to engage in Open Source projects. What is special about our research project is that a similar survey is planned with software developers in commercial firms. This procedure allows the immediate comparison between the involved individuals and the conditions of production of these two development models. Thus we hope to obtain substantial new insights to the phenomenon of Open Source Development. With many thanks for your participation, Benno Luthiger PS: The results of the survey will be published under http://www.isu.unizh.ch/fuehrung/blprojects/FASD/. We have set up the mailing list fa...@we... for this study. Please see http://fasd.ethz.ch/qsf/mailinglist_de.html for registration to this mailing list. _______________________________________________________________________ Benno Luthiger Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich 8092 Zurich Mail: benno.luthiger(at)id.ethz.ch _______________________________________________________________________ |
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From: <no...@so...> - 2001-05-06 00:12:11
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Read and respond to this message at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=153296 By: richardsmith You can get Allegro from: http://sunsite.dk/allegro/wip.html Sorry I havent been here this last month. I've got exams for another couple of weeks. ______________________________________________________________________ You are receiving this email because you elected to monitor this forum. To stop monitoring this forum, login to SourceForge and visit: http://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=52475 |
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From: <no...@so...> - 2001-04-12 15:38:36
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Read and respond to this message at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=141008 By: jo-shi cool, but where to get allegro.h from? suse 7.0 / kernel 2.2.16 686 ______________________________________________________________________ You are receiving this email because you elected to monitor this forum. To stop monitoring this forum, login to SourceForge and visit: http://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=52475 |
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From: Thomas M. <th...@dc...> - 2001-03-08 22:47:05
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Dunno, goodish idea but sound a bit comical for a serious space game. We could make up the religions of course, and it would give the advantage of allowing different teams to have completely different ships and styles of play (one thing sub space lacks) so maybe; I just don't don't think it's a good idea to go to the same extreme lengths as the Worms games! Tom ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Smith" <ri...@no...> To: <sup...@li...> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 9:19 PM Subject: [Superspace-discuss] Themes > I have been looking at www.jesuschristsuperstore.net and it has given me > an idea. What about instead of having rebels vs empire or humans vs > klingons or red vs blue, we have teams based on world religions? (For > instance, all the Islamic ships could be equipped with suicide bombs. > And Christian ships would find themselves ressurected by Jesus's ship) > > The only problem with this idea is that there would be few people it > wouldn't piss off. I mean if we did an Atheist team (suffering from the > in-game handicap of only having one life!), and well as the religions, > then *everyone* would be angry. Probably because the game would then > become a true reflection of the world. > > What do you think? > > -- > Richard > > > "There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the > notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the > public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged > with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face > of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange > doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither indivudals > nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock > of history be stopped, or turned back." > - Life-Line, 1939, Robert A. Heinein. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Superspace-discuss mailing list > Sup...@li... > http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/superspace-discuss |
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From: Richard S. <ri...@no...> - 2001-03-08 21:17:21
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I have been looking at www.jesuschristsuperstore.net and it has given me an idea. What about instead of having rebels vs empire or humans vs klingons or red vs blue, we have teams based on world religions? (For instance, all the Islamic ships could be equipped with suicide bombs. And Christian ships would find themselves ressurected by Jesus's ship) The only problem with this idea is that there would be few people it wouldn't piss off. I mean if we did an Atheist team (suffering from the in-game handicap of only having one life!), and well as the religions, then *everyone* would be angry. Probably because the game would then become a true reflection of the world. What do you think? -- Richard "There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither indivudals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Life-Line, 1939, Robert A. Heinein. |
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From: Richard S. <ri...@no...> - 2001-03-07 23:08:48
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Just thought I would let everyone know what is going on. I havent done much programmming for a while, because I think we have to have the network code done before we can test any other meaningful features. I think I know how I'm going to do the network code, so hopefully it will be done soon. We have exams until the end of May, so obviously I don't expect people to spend so much time worrying about Super Space... but on the other hand, no need to stop programming completely! We have had two artists offer to draw the spaceships, for which I am greatful, and one programmer offering to help... I don't really want to refuse him, but I think it's a bit early to bring in people from other countries yet! -- Richard "All I want is to be a happy man." - Sparklehorse, 'Happy Man' |
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From: <no...@so...> - 2001-03-03 01:17:06
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Task #27254 has been updated. Project: Super Space War Subproject: War Summary: Networking Percent Complete: 0% Status: Open Authority : richardsmith Assigned to: Description: Create client and server code to enable networking. Later, add client prediction to reduce lag. ------------------------------------------------------- For more info, visit: http://sourceforge.net/pm/task.php?func=detailtask&project_task_id=27254&group_id=16548&group_project_id=8363 |
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From: Richard S. <rt...@dc...> - 2001-02-26 23:59:25
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On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Thomas Manning wrote: > > Visual > > Studio is the best program i've found for writing code for. It has lots > > of nice > > things like heirachical views of classes, easy managment of large > > projects, edit > > and continue debugging etc. Although you have to avoid using MFC as it > > is _evil_. > > I love all things Microsoft; Richard, can you lend me your copy of MVS > then?? Sounds like I have to give it a try No, cos then you will expect me to tell you how to get Allegro working on it. Besides, you can get the current version from your uncle! Mine is very old. > You can find a copy of Subspace in the bitbucket here at university; run > it, register as a player then go to 'trench wars'. Basically this is the > inspiration behind our game, it an absolute classic and way more fun > than 3D games like Quake 3. This game is 5 years old but still 1000s of > people play it every day which really says something. Our game should be > like this (i.e. two bases, space based combat, a chice of ships with > different abilities) but we also wanted to introduce a ground based > element (so the two teams bases' are actually on the ground and you can > also play as tanks). This means that a player may attack a base in a > spaceship while fighting gravity or blast their way into space and fight > in zero gravity (hence the fact that the sky gets bluer as you travel > upwards). I just thought what would be nice: stormy cloudy skies, with multiple layers of parallax clouds, and lightening. Dunno how you would do it though. Do you think gravity should be constant for a map, or vary according to the map tile you are over, or worked out correctly by calculating distance from massive objects? The third approach is the most complicated, but it would allow us to have things like mobile black holes. I just discovered something else rather spooky. According to Bits, the late-night computer review/wanking programme, the first graphical computer game was Space War on the PDP-10. And it does bear quite a similarity to our own Super Space War. Maybe I subconsciously knew that when I chose the name. -- Richard |
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From: Richard S. <rt...@dc...> - 2001-02-26 23:23:19
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On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Tim Brown wrote: > Java is a nice language, its just a shame its impossible to write > anything useful > in it. I think you'll find that C++ is much nicer for writing games in. As a language I dont think Java is substantially better or worse than C++. It is less powerful, because it has some 'dangerous' features removed, but for the same reasons it is also easier to develop in. It's not impossible to write anything useful; many servers are rapidly prototyped in Java, and only rewritten in C++ if speed becomes an issue. But sadly the things they use it for in universities are not things it is used for in the real world. > Ah, time for a relegious war i think :). Or maybe not. > > I code for windows simply because i use it and am used to coding in it. > I hadn't > used Linux until i came to uni, and i haven't really tried to code > anything for > it, so i'm not to familiar with X windows etc. > Personally i think that some of microsoft's stuff is quite good. You're right. Office is good. And Internet Explorer is not bad. And... and... oh dear, I can't think of anything else :) > Directx > these > days is quite nice to code with, although if you tried to use the > earlier > versions of directx it was quite painful. Early Direct3D was _very_ bad. > Visual > Studio is the best program i've found for writing code for. It has lots > of nice > things like heirachical views of classes, easy managment of large > projects, edit > and continue debugging etc. Although you have to avoid using MFC as it > is _evil_. > I've heard many people say that emacs is good, personally it looks like > a glorified > text editor from the ancient days of command line OSs. But thats > probably because i > haven't used it much. It's not a *glorified* text editor: it is the *original* text editor. According to Richard Stallman, it was the first. (Maybe the Vi people would argue with this). So therefore all modern editors are to some extent imitators of it. I dont use 99% of its features, I just use it because it's such a nice environment for editing text. You shouldn't be so dismissive of 'command line' OSes. Unix itself does not include a command line or a GUI, they are both separate programs. The fact is, the command line is faster for experienced users, which is why it remains so prominent in the Unix world. And the reason it is hardly used in the Microsoft world is (a) Microsoft made the mind-numbingly stupid decision to write a GUI directly into the kernel, and (b) the command line shell supplied with Windows, MS-DOS, is crap. (If you are forced to used Windows you should install the Cygwin Unix tools immediately, just for the shell.) > Thats why i asked, i've played Asteroids but not thrust or sub space or > scorched earth. I think Tom answered that one. > > > > > > You seem to be using fixed point math for the stars and the body > > > positions etc, why are you doing this? > > > > Cos we need to be able to move fractions of pixels. The alternative is to > > use ints and divide them by 1000 before plotting to screen, but fixed > > point is faster than that and the code looks cleaner. > > > > > Fixed point math isn't any faster > > > than floating point math on most modern processors. I think > > > multiplication may be slower using fixed point math than with floating > > > point, certainly if the operators aren't written in inline assembly. > > > > Fixed point is simply bit-shifted integer. I find it very hard to believe > > that integer operations are slower than floating point. Maybe a 3D > > graphics card has more FP units than Integer, but I doubt an x86 does. > > > > I dont see how writing inline assembly for (int * int) is going to produce > > code that is any faster than the compiler can produce itself. Okay, so > > one of the operands will have to be bitshifted before the multiplication, > > but that wont slow it down much. Plus, we use a lot of trig functions. > > These are implemented using Allegro's fixed point lookup tables, which are > > surely faster than the C library's floating point trig. > > > > Your 'default' variable type should always be int. Only use float when > > there is a need for it. And in this case, there isn't. > > I'm pretty sure that integer and float multiplys will be ~the same > speed, > but with the addition shift with every multiply operation, fixed point > math will be slower. And anyway, its unlikely that the operations on the > basic positions etc will be the bottlenecks, so you should be using > built > in compiler types int and float rather than allegro's fixed type, as > then > you don't have to use special functions to multiply etc., so making the > code simpler. Fixed point vars were useful in the days before decent > math > processors when people used 486's etc, but these days there isn't much > point for them. > > Your 'default' variable types should always be those built into the > compiler. > Only use user defined types when there is a need for it. And in this > case, > there isn't. :) The special functions to multiply and divide are called automatically if you are using the C++ wrapper, so they dont make the code more complicated. And they are merely doing bitshifts so the compiler should be inlining them anyway. If you can show me benchmarks to prove floating point arithmetic is faster than integer, then maybe I will change it :) -- Richard |
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From: Thomas M. <th...@dc...> - 2001-02-22 16:36:55
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> Visual > Studio is the best program i've found for writing code for. It has lots > of nice > things like heirachical views of classes, easy managment of large > projects, edit > and continue debugging etc. Although you have to avoid using MFC as it > is _evil_. I love all things Microsoft; Richard, can you lend me your copy of MVS then?? Sounds like I have to give it a try > Ah, well i've never been taught how to write a design doc so i don't > have a clue > how to write one. However, i do like to draw a few diagrams and make > lists of program > components etc at the start of a project to help me think about how to > structure it. Bah, all that should be done in your head my boy > > If you have played Thrust, Sub Space and Scorched Tanks then this is > > pretty clear. If you havent, you might need a little more explanation. > > Thats why i asked, i've played Asteroids but not thrust or sub space or > scorched earth. You can find a copy of Subspace in the bitbucket here at university; run it, register as a player then go to 'trench wars'. Basically this is the inspiration behind our game, it an absolute classic and way more fun than 3D games like Quake 3. This game is 5 years old but still 1000s of people play it every day which really says something. Our game should be like this (i.e. two bases, space based combat, a chice of ships with different abilities) but we also wanted to introduce a ground based element (so the two teams bases' are actually on the ground and you can also play as tanks). This means that a player may attack a base in a spaceship while fighting gravity or blast their way into space and fight in zero gravity (hence the fact that the sky gets bluer as you travel upwards). Also try to download a C64 emulator and play Thrust, it's a perfect example of a great game that involves gravity, and even though you haven't played Scorched Earth you've probably played one of Team17's Worm games which are have their roots in it. Anyway, don't know anything about floating point numbers so over-and-out Tom |
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From: Tim B. <tk...@dc...> - 2001-02-22 16:15:30
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Richard Smith wrote: > > I hope you don't mind me replying on the list. No-one ever seems to want > to post on the list, and I'd like to tempt some lazy second-years into > replying. > > On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Tim Brown wrote: > > > Hi, I had a look at your project and wouldn't mind joining it. My > > sourceforge user name is TKBrown44, if you want to add me to your > > project. > > I'll add you, but don't go changing anything! > > > Looking at your project, i've done a couple of similar things before, > > although mostly i've been working with MS visual c++ in windows with > > directx/opengl, and i'm not familiar with the Allegro libary. > > OK, I'll fill you in on my/our experience. We are Java programmers. I've > just started learning C++, this is my first C++ program. Tom and Justin > haven't really learnt any C++ but they say they intend to. The main > purpose of doing this game is learn C++. Also, it's simply not possible > to do decent games in Java. The reason the game is 2D is that 3D is a lot > more complicated and not suitable for a first project. Java is a nice language, its just a shame its impossible to write anything useful in it. I think you'll find that C++ is much nicer for writing games in. > > I better explain a bit about the philosophy behind my programming. > First, I'm a Free Software bigot and I don't like Windows for moral > reasons. Second, I think Windows is pretty shit, and I wouldn't use it > even it was Free Software. Therefore I decided to make a game for Linux. > > Now, there are several graphics libraries available for Linux. Most Linux > games either use X windows directly, or else via the SDL library. Tom > pointed out that most people will only a play if its available for > Windows. He is quite right; XShipWars for instance is Linux-only, and > hence no-one plays it! X windows code is not portable. SDL and Allegro > are both portable. I took a look at both of them and Allegro looked > nicer, so that's what I chose. > > DirectX was never an option, because it's Windows-only. The game *does* > use DirectX, but it does it via Allegro, so you only have to learn the > Allegro interface. > > OpenGL is something I would like to learn, but 2D openGL is not very good, > and as I said, this isnt a 3D project. > > You can supposedly use Allegro on MSVC. Rather embarrassingly, I actually > paid money for a copy of MSVC 5 back when I was a naive schoolboy who > didn't know about the wonders of open source. I did try and see if I could > get Allegro to work on it, but I couldn't. So I decided the Windows > version would use the same compiler as the Linux version, GCC. The > MingW32 port is probably the best, and I have a fully working installation > of it in the BitBucket which you can download and use at home. > > XEmacs a is better IDE than MSVC anyway :) Ah, time for a relegious war i think :). Or maybe not. I code for windows simply because i use it and am used to coding in it. I hadn't used Linux until i came to uni, and i haven't really tried to code anything for it, so i'm not to familiar with X windows etc. Personally i think that some of microsoft's stuff is quite good. Directx these days is quite nice to code with, although if you tried to use the earlier versions of directx it was quite painful. Early Direct3D was _very_ bad. Visual Studio is the best program i've found for writing code for. It has lots of nice things like heirachical views of classes, easy managment of large projects, edit and continue debugging etc. Although you have to avoid using MFC as it is _evil_. I've heard many people say that emacs is good, personally it looks like a glorified text editor from the ancient days of command line OSs. But thats probably because i haven't used it much. > > > I looked through the source code and have a couple of questions: > > > > What is the final game going to be like? Do you have a list of specs or > > design doc or something i could look at. > > When you get into the second-year you will get all the design docs and > requirement specifications you can stand. If you get Professor Fenton as > a lecturer, you will spend about 15 weeks on nothing BUT design docs. > Therefore we are deliberately doing as little planning as possible. Ah, well i've never been taught how to write a design doc so i don't have a clue how to write one. However, i do like to draw a few diagrams and make lists of program components etc at the start of a project to help me think about how to structure it. > > The project page contains this summary: > > "Think of Asteroids. Now add a bit of Thrust. Now imagine the multiplayer > aspect of Sub Space. But with high-colour graphics. And finally, imagine > there is a game of Scorched Earth going on at the same time. There you > have Super Space War." > > If you have played Thrust, Sub Space and Scorched Tanks then this is > pretty clear. If you havent, you might need a little more explanation. Thats why i asked, i've played Asteroids but not thrust or sub space or scorched earth. > > > You seem to be using fixed point math for the stars and the body > > positions etc, why are you doing this? > > Cos we need to be able to move fractions of pixels. The alternative is to > use ints and divide them by 1000 before plotting to screen, but fixed > point is faster than that and the code looks cleaner. > > > Fixed point math isn't any faster > > than floating point math on most modern processors. I think > > multiplication may be slower using fixed point math than with floating > > point, certainly if the operators aren't written in inline assembly. > > Fixed point is simply bit-shifted integer. I find it very hard to believe > that integer operations are slower than floating point. Maybe a 3D > graphics card has more FP units than Integer, but I doubt an x86 does. > > I dont see how writing inline assembly for (int * int) is going to produce > code that is any faster than the compiler can produce itself. Okay, so > one of the operands will have to be bitshifted before the multiplication, > but that wont slow it down much. Plus, we use a lot of trig functions. > These are implemented using Allegro's fixed point lookup tables, which are > surely faster than the C library's floating point trig. > > Your 'default' variable type should always be int. Only use float when > there is a need for it. And in this case, there isn't. I'm pretty sure that integer and float multiplys will be ~the same speed, but with the addition shift with every multiply operation, fixed point math will be slower. And anyway, its unlikely that the operations on the basic positions etc will be the bottlenecks, so you should be using built in compiler types int and float rather than allegro's fixed type, as then you don't have to use special functions to multiply etc., so making the code simpler. Fixed point vars were useful in the days before decent math processors when people used 486's etc, but these days there isn't much point for them. Your 'default' variable types should always be those built into the compiler. Only use user defined types when there is a need for it. And in this case, there isn't. :) > > > > > Is there any reason why you are drawing the stars using the circle() > > function. > > Mainly that was because Tom thought the single dots were too small! He is > right though, a single pixel at 1280x1024 is not very visible. > > > This seems rather inefficent, the circle drawing algorithm > > isn't particularly fast. Personally i think that plotting single points > > of different colours of grey looks quite nice for stars, or if you want > > larger stars you could draw them to a sprite and blit it for the stars, > > which would be faster than the circle routine. > > If you check the TODO list you will find it on there. We just need > someone to draw the sprites. > > -- > Richard > > "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the > shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and > forgot." > - Neil Gaiman, 'The Sandman' |
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From: Richard S. <rt...@dc...> - 2001-02-21 23:37:00
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On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, nobody wrote: > Everything gets sent to the mailing list twice, sort it out Richard! I only received it once. Are you sure you didnt CC a copy to yourself? I'll check that you aren't subscribed twice. -- Richard |
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From: Richard S. <rt...@dc...> - 2001-02-21 23:36:08
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On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, nobody wrote: > Read and respond to this message at: > http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=113497 > By: aphasiac > > Apparently I'm nobody! That's just cos it's copied from the message forum. > Please add me to the project. ok. -- Richard |
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From: nobody <no...@so...> - 2001-02-21 23:26:45
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Read and respond to this message at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=113498 By: aphasiac Everything gets sent to the mailing list twice, sort it out Richard! ______________________________________________________________________ You are receiving this email because you elected to monitor this forum. To stop monitoring this forum, login to SourceForge and visit: http://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=52475 |
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From: nobody <no...@so...> - 2001-02-21 23:24:58
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Read and respond to this message at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=113497 By: aphasiac Apparently I'm nobody! Please add me to the project. Didn't realise these messages get forwarded to the mailing list, oops ______________________________________________________________________ You are receiving this email because you elected to monitor this forum. To stop monitoring this forum, login to SourceForge and visit: http://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=52475 |
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From: nobody <no...@so...> - 2001-02-21 23:22:33
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Read and respond to this message at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=113495 By: aphasiac Man been a bitch of a day, spent most of it helping first years with their coursework! Still, makes me feel clever so yay! ______________________________________________________________________ You are receiving this email because you elected to monitor this forum. To stop monitoring this forum, login to SourceForge and visit: http://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=52475 |
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From: Richard S. <rt...@dc...> - 2001-02-21 17:32:22
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I hope you don't mind me replying on the list. No-one ever seems to want to post on the list, and I'd like to tempt some lazy second-years into replying. On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Tim Brown wrote: > Hi, I had a look at your project and wouldn't mind joining it. My > sourceforge user name is TKBrown44, if you want to add me to your > project. I'll add you, but don't go changing anything! > Looking at your project, i've done a couple of similar things before, > although mostly i've been working with MS visual c++ in windows with > directx/opengl, and i'm not familiar with the Allegro libary. OK, I'll fill you in on my/our experience. We are Java programmers. I've just started learning C++, this is my first C++ program. Tom and Justin haven't really learnt any C++ but they say they intend to. The main purpose of doing this game is learn C++. Also, it's simply not possible to do decent games in Java. The reason the game is 2D is that 3D is a lot more complicated and not suitable for a first project. I better explain a bit about the philosophy behind my programming. First, I'm a Free Software bigot and I don't like Windows for moral reasons. Second, I think Windows is pretty shit, and I wouldn't use it even it was Free Software. Therefore I decided to make a game for Linux. Now, there are several graphics libraries available for Linux. Most Linux games either use X windows directly, or else via the SDL library. Tom pointed out that most people will only a play if its available for Windows. He is quite right; XShipWars for instance is Linux-only, and hence no-one plays it! X windows code is not portable. SDL and Allegro are both portable. I took a look at both of them and Allegro looked nicer, so that's what I chose. DirectX was never an option, because it's Windows-only. The game *does* use DirectX, but it does it via Allegro, so you only have to learn the Allegro interface. OpenGL is something I would like to learn, but 2D openGL is not very good, and as I said, this isnt a 3D project. You can supposedly use Allegro on MSVC. Rather embarrassingly, I actually paid money for a copy of MSVC 5 back when I was a naive schoolboy who didn't know about the wonders of open source. I did try and see if I could get Allegro to work on it, but I couldn't. So I decided the Windows version would use the same compiler as the Linux version, GCC. The MingW32 port is probably the best, and I have a fully working installation of it in the BitBucket which you can download and use at home. XEmacs a is better IDE than MSVC anyway :) > I looked through the source code and have a couple of questions: > > What is the final game going to be like? Do you have a list of specs or > design doc or something i could look at. When you get into the second-year you will get all the design docs and requirement specifications you can stand. If you get Professor Fenton as a lecturer, you will spend about 15 weeks on nothing BUT design docs. Therefore we are deliberately doing as little planning as possible. The project page contains this summary: "Think of Asteroids. Now add a bit of Thrust. Now imagine the multiplayer aspect of Sub Space. But with high-colour graphics. And finally, imagine there is a game of Scorched Earth going on at the same time. There you have Super Space War." If you have played Thrust, Sub Space and Scorched Tanks then this is pretty clear. If you havent, you might need a little more explanation. > You seem to be using fixed point math for the stars and the body > positions etc, why are you doing this? Cos we need to be able to move fractions of pixels. The alternative is to use ints and divide them by 1000 before plotting to screen, but fixed point is faster than that and the code looks cleaner. > Fixed point math isn't any faster > than floating point math on most modern processors. I think > multiplication may be slower using fixed point math than with floating > point, certainly if the operators aren't written in inline assembly. Fixed point is simply bit-shifted integer. I find it very hard to believe that integer operations are slower than floating point. Maybe a 3D graphics card has more FP units than Integer, but I doubt an x86 does. I dont see how writing inline assembly for (int * int) is going to produce code that is any faster than the compiler can produce itself. Okay, so one of the operands will have to be bitshifted before the multiplication, but that wont slow it down much. Plus, we use a lot of trig functions. These are implemented using Allegro's fixed point lookup tables, which are surely faster than the C library's floating point trig. Your 'default' variable type should always be int. Only use float when there is a need for it. And in this case, there isn't. > > Is there any reason why you are drawing the stars using the circle() > function. Mainly that was because Tom thought the single dots were too small! He is right though, a single pixel at 1280x1024 is not very visible. > This seems rather inefficent, the circle drawing algorithm > isn't particularly fast. Personally i think that plotting single points > of different colours of grey looks quite nice for stars, or if you want > larger stars you could draw them to a sprite and blit it for the stars, > which would be faster than the circle routine. If you check the TODO list you will find it on there. We just need someone to draw the sprites. -- Richard "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." - Neil Gaiman, 'The Sandman' |
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From: Richard S. <ri...@no...> - 2001-02-21 03:58:17
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Okay, I just tested the latest Windows graphical CVS tools, and they really are piss easy to use with Sourceforge, so it looks like we will be moving to CVS based development. First you'll need a sourceforge account, and I'll have to add you to the project (mail me your account name). Then you have to log in to your sourceforge shell account to activate it. Command to do that on Linux is: ssh -l your_sf_name superspace.sourceforge.net On Windows, use TeraTerm. Now, setting up the software is very easy. First, download and install WinCVS: http://download.sourceforge.net/cvsgui/WinCvs11b17.zip Reboot. Then download, unzip and run the sourceforge CVS setup tool: http://download.sourceforge.net/sfsetup/sfsetup-v1.2.zip It will ask for your username, and project name (which is 'superspace'). Reboot, and you are done. The only thing which might confuse you is how to use the WinCVS program itself. It has a couple of odd features. First, to checkout the code you DONT need to select to select 'login'. Instead, you select 'checkout module' on the admin menu. When prompted for the module name, enter 'war'. Second, whenever you do any operation, winCVS will appear to freeze... but if you look at the taskbar, you will find a minimized DOS window has appeared. Maximize it, and you will find it is waiting for your password! Enter your password, and winCVS will continue. This happens all the time, and is quite annoying. The only way to avoid it is to generate a SSH keypair with no password, and upload the public to sourceforge. You can browse the files you have just checked out, edit them, and 'commit' them back to the repository. You can see which files need commiting, because they turn red. If someone else has edited the file in the meantime, you will get an error and you will need to do an 'update' before you 'commit'. To understand how CVS works, you need to read some docs. There is nice book you can print out at: http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/ The manual has a mini-tutorial: http://www.dcs.qmw.ac.uk:8080/manuals/cvs/cvs_1.html#SEC4 There are more all over the web. If any of you would like to use CVS on Linux, you don't have to install anything, you have it all already. Let me know and I will tell you how to configure it. -- Richard "All I want is to be a happy man." - Sparklehorse, 'Happy Man' |
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From: Richard S. <ri...@no...> - 2001-02-20 01:44:53
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I've done box-style collision detection. There is now another ship, and
when you shoot it, the game quits!
The width and height of the boxes needs tightening up, however. I now
think the forumala for calculate the height of a box to enclose the
rotated sprite, which has original dimenions x and y and has been rotated
by angele theta is:
x cos theta + y sin theta
And width:
x sin theta + y cos theta
I'm probably wrong again, however. Only way to see is to test it.
I'm beginning to wish we had CVS simply to synchronize my code between
university and home. Plus it would obviously make it easier for someone
else to do some coding :)
Any feature that any of you would particulary like to do? Take a look at
the TODO file for a list. Some of them are pretty easy (joystick
routines). Of course, since we dont have CVS, I'll have to keep looking
over your shoulder while you do it....
--
Richard
"The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards
rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why
don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the
vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in
more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually *vote* for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong
lizard might get in."
- Douglas Adams, 'So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish'
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From: <no...@so...> - 2001-02-19 21:48:55
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Bug #132951, was updated on 2001-Feb-18 06:33 Here is a current snapshot of the bug. Project: Super Space War Category: None Status: Closed Resolution: Invalid Bug Group: None Priority: 5 Submitted by: nobody Assigned to : nobody Summary: test bug Details: test bug For detailed info, follow this link: http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=132951&group_id=16548 |
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From: Richard S. <ri...@no...> - 2001-02-19 02:47:41
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No-one else is actually on the list yet :) -- Richard "We are John of Peel. Resistance is futile. We will add your collection of early 70s indy band demo discs to our own..." - Terry Pratchett |
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From: nobody <no...@so...> - 2001-02-18 14:44:04
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Read and respond to this message at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=111734 By: nobody trying again ______________________________________________________________________ You are receiving this email because you elected to monitor this forum. To stop monitoring this forum, login to SourceForge and visit: http://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=52475 |
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From: <no...@so...> - 2001-02-18 14:32:23
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Bug #132951, was updated on 2001-Feb-18 06:33 Here is a current snapshot of the bug. Project: Super Space War Category: None Status: Open Resolution: None Bug Group: None Priority: 5 Submitted by: nobody Assigned to : nobody Summary: test bug Details: test bug For detailed info, follow this link: http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=132951&group_id=16548 |
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From: nobody <no...@so...> - 2001-02-18 14:30:38
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Read and respond to this message at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=111733 By: nobody this is a test. should be automatically forwarded to mailing list ______________________________________________________________________ You are receiving this email because you elected to monitor this forum. To stop monitoring this forum, login to SourceForge and visit: http://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=52475 |
