Demo 2 comments

[cybersphinx]

I just finished it, and have some comments:

First, I think it's a nice demo, it shows many aspects of the game, but the real game was more difficult (still pretty easy, but enjoyable) and... diverse. But I don't know what I'd have said if I played Demo2 before the whole game.

* The game dies horribly and with a very confusing error message if there is no available sound device:

.
SDL Version: Compiled against 1.2.8, running with 1.2.8
Initialising SDL Audio
Failed to read a valid object file image from memory.
Error while mapping shared library sections:
./lib/libSDL-1.2.so.0: No such file or directory.
Error while mapping shared library sections:
./lib/libvorbisfile.so.3: No such file or directory.
Error while mapping shared library sections:
./lib/libgcc_s.so.1: No such file or directory.
Error while reading shared library symbols:
./lib/libSDL-1.2.so.0: No such file or directory.
Error while reading shared library symbols:
./lib/libvorbisfile.so.3: No such file or directory.
Error while reading shared library symbols:
./lib/libgcc_s.so.1: No such file or directory.
Previous frame inner to this frame (corrupt stack?)


Darwinia has unexpectedly encountered a fatal error.
A full description of the error can be found in the file
blackbox.txt in the current working directory

./darwinia: line 39: 31961 Segmentation fault $here/lib/darwinia.bin.x86

Running "lib/darwinia.bin.x86" (I guess removing the libraries in lib/ is the same) gives the following, which is much more obvious:

SDL Version: Compiled against 1.2.8, running with 1.2.8
Initialising SDL Audio
Failed to open audio output device: "No available audio device"
Failed to read a valid object file image from memory.

* New control mode? It's horrible. I'm just used to the old system. Disabled it at once (well, maybe after the pixel shaders).

* I noticed the engineers blocking themselves pretty often (three around an incubator, and all trying to reach the same point or something), and I don't think it was like this in the game (version 1.2).

* The one time I wanted to align a radar dish, I could quit the aiming mode only after selecting an already existing unit (pity I didn't have one on the first try...). I tried to create a unit, but that left me in the aiming camera mode and disconnected the dishes.
EDIT: Oh, it was SPACE that ended this...

* Sometimes, when you tell one unit to go somewhere, and then click on another one to select it, the first unit goes to the position of the second. I noticed this only with officers in the game, in the demo, it happened twice with other units (or I can't click properly...)

* The FPS counter is missing. Performance seemed good, though (Radeon 8500 & Athlon XP 2500+, even 1600x1200 is playable, if barely).

* On the positive side, I didn't experience any hangs playing the demo. I had that during the game, it would just hang sometime, after minutes or hours, with no apparent reason. Only the graphics, the power button still shut down the machine, but there was no way to get the game to disappear from the screen. Perhaps because it's cooler now, I don't know.
EDIT: Spoken too early, I had one right now. I guess it's a thermal problem, though.

I think that's all, perhaps I'll have time to play the whole game with the patch.
EDIT: Though the lack of a convenient saving mechanism might deter me...

[Dave2]

On the subject of your hangs... what motherboard are you using?

[xander]

* New control mode? It's horrible. I'm just used to the old system. Disabled it at once (well, maybe after the pixel shaders).

That is why you have a choice. There are a great number of people that hated the original mechanism, so a new mechanism was added to appease those people. It is enabled by default because of complaints. Let me ask you this: assume that you have created Darwinia. You think it is a groovy game, but folk are complaining about a difficult interface. So, you create a new interface to quiet those complaints. Now, in the demo, which is meant to display the game in its best possible light, which system do you enable by default? The (pardon the expression) avant garde gesture system, or the more traditional system? One of them has to be enabled by default... which should it be? I don't mean to be confrontational -- I am curious as to how you would solve the problem.

* I noticed the engineers blocking themselves pretty often (three around an incubator, and all trying to reach the same point or something), and I don't think it was like this in the game (version 1.2).

Were the engineers cutting eachother off? or were they trying to get to, say, a soul that was in the middle of the incubator? Occationally, enemies will be killed by blasts and leave souls in the middle of buildings. This is a known bug, and can lead to engineers going after souls that they can't reach. Additionally, once an engineer has decided that it is going for a soul, it won't give up until the soul floats off. It can be frustrating. As far as I know, you are just going to have to deal with it. The same goes if they are somehow cutting eachother off, though you could deal with that by selecting them, and ordering them to go somewhere else. Neither case is ideal, but these are minor AI bugs, and are likely low on the priority list (if at all).

* The one time I wanted to align a radar dish, I could quit the aiming mode only after selecting an already existing unit (pity I didn't have one on the first try...). I tried to create a unit, but that left me in the aiming camera mode and disconnected the dishes.
EDIT: Oh, it was SPACE that ended this...

This is proper behavior. When you select the dish, you can aim it. Once you have aimed it, though, it is still possible to aim it somewhere else. You have to deselect the dish in order to select another unit (I am mildly suprised that you could select a unit with the radar selected, actually). The space bar is used to deselect units, including the radar dishes, and battle cannons. I am sure that was stated somewhere in the tutorial...

* Sometimes, when you tell one unit to go somewhere, and then click on another one to select it, the first unit goes to the position of the second. I noticed this only with officers in the game, in the demo, it happened twice with other units (or I can't click properly...)

Again, a known bug. Armour do it, too, in a very annoying fashion.

EDIT: Though the lack of a convenient saving mechanism might deter me...

I believe that the current system is meant to create a more immersive game. If you stopped every few minutes to save, it would kind of destroy the immersion. And levels are automatically saved when you exit them, so you could drop back to the world map every once in a while if you are truely worried about saving progress. On the other hand, I don't think that there is a single level that takes more than 30 or 45 minutes -- that really isn't that much time to go between saves, is it? On the other hand, I tend to play games in one or two hour blocks when I get home from work, which may be different from others -- if I only have a few minutes, I will play Tetris or Aperion for a while, rather than try to make progress in a longer, more involved game.

xander

[John]

Are there any differences in settings between the ~/.darwinia/full/preferences.txt and ~/.darwinia/demo2/preferences.txt that might be causing the problem?

[cybersphinx]

* New control mode? It's horrible. I'm just used to the old system. Disabled it at once (well, maybe after the pixel shaders).

That is why you have a choice. There are a great number of people that hated the original mechanism, so a new mechanism was added to appease those people. It is enabled by default because of complaints. Let me ask you this: assume that you have created Darwinia. You think it is a groovy game, but folk are complaining about a difficult interface. So, you create a new interface to quiet those complaints. Now, in the demo, which is meant to display the game in its best possible light, which system do you enable by default? The (pardon the expression) avant garde gesture system, or the more traditional system? One of them has to be enabled by default... which should it be? I don't mean to be confrontational -- I am curious as to how you would solve the problem.

This wasn't meant as a complaint, just to explain why I'm not using the new one. And I have to weaken my previous statement, it was too harsh. It just that I don't want to bother learning the new controls when I'm already using the old ones without problems.

* I noticed the engineers blocking themselves pretty often (three around an incubator, and all trying to reach the same point or something), and I don't think it was like this in the game (version 1.2).

Were the engineers cutting eachother off? or were they trying to get to, say, a soul that was in the middle of the incubator? Occationally, enemies will be killed by blasts and leave souls in the middle of buildings. This is a known bug, and can lead to engineers going after souls that they can't reach. Additionally, once an engineer has decided that it is going for a soul, it won't give up until the soul floats off. It can be frustrating. As far as I know, you are just going to have to deal with it. The same goes if they are somehow cutting eachother off, though you could deal with that by selecting them, and ordering them to go somewhere else. Neither case is ideal, but these are minor AI bugs, and are likely low on the priority list (if at all).

I think one time three engineers were trying to get around an inqubator (or possibly through it to a soul inside), and another time all three seemed to try to reach the same soul on free terrain. In both cases, they would always get in each others way - I got annoyed, destroyed them and created new ones. Not a big problem, I just think this didn't happen when I played the game (but perhaps I can't remember...)

* The one time I wanted to align a radar dish, I could quit the aiming mode only after selecting an already existing unit (pity I didn't have one on the first try...). I tried to create a unit, but that left me in the aiming camera mode and disconnected the dishes.
EDIT: Oh, it was SPACE that ended this...

This is proper behavior. When you select the dish, you can aim it. Once you have aimed it, though, it is still possible to aim it somewhere else. You have to deselect the dish in order to select another unit (I am mildly suprised that you could select a unit with the radar selected, actually). The space bar is used to deselect units, including the radar dishes, and battle cannons. I am sure that was stated somewhere in the tutorial...

I know, I saw it in the tutorial right after I posted this, thus the edit. But I just continued a game I started some time ago, and didn't remember the space key, just right click to deselect units, and that didn't work.

EDIT: Though the lack of a convenient saving mechanism might deter me...

I believe that the current system is meant to create a more immersive game. If you stopped every few minutes to save, it would kind of destroy the immersion. And levels are automatically saved when you exit them, so you could drop back to the world map every once in a while if you are truely worried about saving progress. On the other hand, I don't think that there is a single level that takes more than 30 or 45 minutes -- that really isn't that much time to go between saves, is it?

Not if you have a working system, but this was solely related to the hangs I get (I'm just too terse sometimes). If the game hangs after an indefinite time, it's just annoying that there is no quick-save key I can press every few seconds, and have to replay the last hour or so (because exiting the level doesn't save units etc.).

Are there any differences in settings between the ~/.darwinia/full/preferences.txt and ~/.darwinia/demo2/preferences.txt that might be causing the problem?

Which problem? The hangs? I had those in both demo and full game. I haven't noticed this in other apps, but I don't really use other OpenGL apps that often (or that long). It might be a thermal problem with my graphics card (Radeon 8500LE modded with a passive cooler); if it's the mainboard (some Asrock Socket A), I'll know in a few weeks, I plan on getting a new one soon.

[ghostDancer]

hi ,
i finished the new demo, and now playing the full game, the new demo at least for me it's good but shows too many things of the game like the red darwinians, better keep the secret, the new control system is easier and i think it should work for new players though i love the original one. i think that the new system makes the game a little bit easier also, maybe that's cause i know the tricks of the game, don't know.
I've seen some of the things someone pointed out here,not big problems, at least IMHO:
1.when you deselect a unit the cross goes to the "horizon" like looking for something.
2.the old "problem" that when you select a unit the one you have selected before goes where the second one is, in older versions i had it only with officers, now i found that it happens with engineers also.

as i continue with the full game i write new impressions

Keep up the good work IV.