[speed test] mario-like platform game

hey mates...

maybe some of you remember my platform-adventure game project... well, i just decided to remove all the adventure part and create a typically platformish game (that way the game will be released faster, and when i'll be rich, i'll work on the adventure game again, urm!)(and "only" platformish doesn't mean that the game will be poor ;))

...so i added a scrolling, and i wanted to know if it's fast enough (for me it's terrible, though i worked a lot on it, trying to optimize the most possible). ok well, please post your speed comments (i don't have any fps counter, in fact i just want to know if visually the game slows down a little bit, a lot, nothing etc...) thanks guys.

oh and sorry, this little .swf is waaaaayy to be as complete as the platform adventure game i have on my desktop :)
so tons of things are missing, included the gfx: no background, no enemies, no collision detection with the rings etc... it's just pure speed test.

screenshot:
http://www.marmotte.stimunation.com/_test/jojo.png

playable engine, click here

controls:
arrows = wandering
space = jump
nothing more enabled for that .swf! ;)

i have some other nice little games in the works, but i wanted to finish this one first... thanks for your feedback

i think it runs smoothly seems kind of slow but i think that's just because it reminds me of sonic:)

think theres lots of potential there.. is he supposed 2 "skid" when you turn the other way? and i got stuck above the screen somehow

hey marmotte, is that tilebased or artbased?
if its artbased, do u think you could show me just the scroll function? i've been trying to manipulate a scrolling function from a tilebased game, but i cant get it to work. if its something you dont want to share, thats kool too, but i've been at this for awhile and i really need some help.

Xander99
it will not be sonic-like game, more mario-like, that explains the non full speed walk speed :) thoguh you'll be able to accelerate
yes, he's supposed to skid (slide?), it will be fun in the icy world
thanks for the bug, haha this one was funny. ok, i'll restrict the player to go too above the screen (i'm not very motivated to re-work the map array), or add the corresponding if statment

not too much so
it's tile based, mate... creating a scrolling is not so difficult though, just try to look for "scrolling" with the search feature... i remember there was some good scrolling threads, with example... they were old...

It's very smooth. I didn't notice any slowdown at all.

It is smooth for me too, but i find it wayyyyy too slow : for example, from the "running/walking" animation only, one would expect the guy to go faster (does it make sense ?)
I love the GFXs though !

funny: i'm working on a slightly similar game (but less plateformes, more a la Metal Slug

Very smooth, lovely graphics... I think it could do with being just a touch faster? I also noticed that some of the bigger plants you can see being removed on the left side of the screen, whether that is something you want to sort out im not sure, it doesnt effect gameplay buti saw it so others will :)

whoops, im off the top of the screen too! i was thinking it was a secret area until i read the other posts :)

it runs pretty smoothly. as it was said before, the character animation could do with a speed up, and the movement speed too.

Does the scrolling appear slightly jerky to others? it does for me i think.

still, its nice :)

edit: yes i saw them too random...

pretty smooth here, even on my crappola box (440Mhz)

hi there,

great visuals ... only point:

Quote:

---

Does the scrolling appear slightly jerky to others? it does for me i think.

---

not much, but noticeable

<olli/>

Hey babe, thought I'd best double check it :)

It's silky smooth, just feels like it scrolls at half the speed it should ( For the animation, and for gameplay reasons ).

If your map format is jailbitc'h then grab my scroller class and try that, to see if that's the bottleneck ( Should take about 10 mins to drop it in there ).

Squize.

i doubt this is meant to happen, but check this image out. The dude is sill inbetween the grass and the dirt.

nice graphics :)


edit: you can almost do it with every platform like this...

hey mates, thanks for your answers! ^_^

luxregina
it makes sense, babe... i'll do my best to change the variable value, but it's hard, anyone know how to do that? *urm*
i knew about your platform game... metal slug-like? sounds very cool... (is your avatar involved?)

random10122
well, i love that glitch ;)
i like to see some gfx disappearing abruptly before they are out of screen. i think i'll keep it? (you know, i was also interested in having a NES-ish game, where the tiles that appear seem to be garbled before being displayed correctly... do you see what i mean?

leight
yes, but you are never stucked. and like you sayd, you can be like that in most platform games (even the ultra classic marios). the reason? gameplay. if i restrict it, then jumping on a beggining of a platform will not be as playable, because you'll can "enter" on it only if you are above it... hard to explain with my 8bits only english, but if you already coded a platform tile based game, then ou surley noticed it...

squize
and what about the engine i wrote, mmh? it wasn't done in one clic, you know... *biting* i'll check that certainly

thanks for the feedback people, i'm glad to hear it's not too slow ^_^
oh, and about the jerky scrolling, it's possible, i'll take care of that...

Very nice indeed. It ran smoothly for me, but I agree that the player is moving a bit too slow.

Great work as usual!

Looks really nice

1 more bug to add to the jerky scrolling. When the character slides to a stop the map stops scrolling. its possible for the player to reach the right side of the map without being at the end. To recreate stand in the middle where the map would normally start to scroll. Tap right, wait for the character to stop sliding. Tap right, wait.. ect.

Nugget

thanks strille ^_^
(i'm waiting to see your game with that famous engine, mmmh)

xMCNUGGETx
ssshhtt... i knew that bug, but it's a secret...
the thing is, i don't know why it happens; the movment is using the same function, so i wonder why the scrolling doesn't occur. surley a simple thing, like always.

another bug no one mentionned, if you play a lot then the map begins to be attached with a little delay, and the more you play, the more the delay is big... but it can be fixed easily, it's just that i used a Math.floor with the map's position (to always keep pixel perfect), but not with the distance the character ran... so eventually a very tiny little difference between those values can become bigger the more you play it

nice prototype Marmotte.

About speed: I've tried the demo running the SWF alone, not in the browser, and that's the speed I would like to see... (tested on an Athlon 2.0ghz)

I usually test games using the flash player alone while developing so when I test them in the browser they loose cpu cycles and speed. I would normally add a 10-15% more fps before testing in a browser.

About the scrolling I've noticed one thing: if you move to the right and watch those bushes disappearing on the left side of the screen you'll notice that they're removed a little before they're completely out of the screen.

The weird thing is that it only seems to happen with the bushes that are on a platform, those on the ground seem to work fine.

Sorry for being too fussy :D

Anyway the game is really promising :cool:

Sorry, lapo, I don't understand your comment about increasing the fps for on-line testing.

Do you mean you write a game, at say 30fps, and then bump that up to 35fps to account for browser's being sucky ?

Strange.

Squize.

oops, you already answered to the tile-disappearing glitch. sorry

Squize: maybe it is only me but it happened to me more than once and not only with games.

Say you're creating an animation: you set up the fps so that it accomodates your needs, let's say 40 fps.

If you're dealing with fast paced animations and you test your movie only within the flash IDE( or by double clicking the SWF) then when you'll go back to the browser you'll get a slower feel.

Obviously this is because the cpu priority of the flash player within the browser is lower than the standalone version.

In order to compensate this loss of speed I usually add a 10-15% more fps

I actually don't do this all the time, but with fast paced animations it works fine.

If you try the Marmotte demo in the standalone player it looks like it's running at the "right" speed, while running it in the browser seems a bit "slowed down"

Hope I explained this a little bit better :)

Thanks for the reply mate.

Yeah I'm well aware of browser cpu stealing nastyness ( Selecting streaming in the ide gives a good idea of how the game will play in the browser for example ).
I've just never heard of anyone bumping up the fps to make up for the speed loss, seems a strange way to do it ( I would have thought it would screw up a lot of your timings, handle too fast on an ultra fast machine and may overload the actual Flash player thereby making it run slower overall ).

Squize.

I get it lapo, and i agree that it is slow, but smooth. since im a sucker for high speeds i want you to speed it up :)

Here is a solution to leight's error (the grass tile one). make another tile that looks the same and put it anywhere you have something below. this tile should not let you walk through it. that way you will just slide down. unless you want him to hang from his hands (which would be very cool).

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Squize
Thanks for the reply mate.

Yeah I'm well aware of browser cpu stealing nastyness ( Selecting streaming in the ide gives a good idea of how the game will play in the browser for example ).
I've just never heard of anyone bumping up the fps to make up for the speed loss, seems a strange way to do it ( I would have thought it would screw up a lot of your timings, handle too fast on an ultra fast machine and may overload the actual Flash player thereby making it run slower overall ).

Squize.

---

yep, indeed it must be done between certain ranges, otherwise the risk is to screw up things.
Raising the fps will ask the cpu more power, but the browser eats cpu cycles ... it can lead to a nightmare :p

I happened to do this sometimes when working with an fps between 20 and 30 and without too many calculations involved. Worked just fine for me.

Ihoss: I agree, it is very smooth, and maybe it's just me that I want more speed :D
I've been playing Ut2004demo too much in the past days!!! :D

It seems kinda slow, but that could just be your chooses move speed. Maybe make it faster?

You can sometimes see several objects being removed from screen, add 1 more line on the left side.

The gfx are realy great! But you know that already ;)

SaphuA

It's very smooth, although not as much as I would have liked. Aside from the above the screen problem, has anyone had this happen?
Attached picture.

Great graphics an char motion, and very smooth, but i found it just a bit too slow.

woohoo St. Nick, that's an awesome screenshot ^_^
how did you do that? if you can do it here (that part is surrounded by an invisible limit, thanks my little array) so you are surely able to do it everywhere? i'm very curious to see how you did...

ok, i've just written a new version of the scrolling, and added some speed to the little guy, i think it's really better that way... (it's not online, you are warned). i'm glad to hear it's still smooth after all...

[EDIT] oh, i'm able to reproduce it... it's when you are jumping right, and before your slide value reaches 0 again (you probably notice that the character is sliding a little bit while jumpind and walking, it will be fun in the icy world), you decide to go left... it will be easy to fix, i just need to reset the slide value if you hit a wall, like i did when he's sliding/walking...

thanks for the bug, st nick, very useful!

Glad I could actually help for once :p

I jumped up on a high platform and never came down! It still scrolls OK but the character is gone .. sob .. I'm just not a gamer

Quote:

---

Originally posted by grunt
I jumped up on a high platform and never came down! It still scrolls OK but the character is gone .. sob .. I'm just not a gamer

---

hehe. and i'm just not a coder too ;)

minor issue, but probably unfixable. noticable speed difference when bg is scrolling and when it is not. I guess at higher fps the issue has become so minor that it has no relevancy.

Marmotte, Beautiful graphics! Also got a few bugs, where I was walking on air. Runs perfect on my 500mhz machine... Anyway, can't wait for the finished game, and keep up the good work...

- Mike

Dont have much time to post so ill just make it quick.

Really nice Graphics.
A bit to slow.
And right at the end i jumped off a platform out of the screen and never came back i could still scroll though :)
nice game though good work!

Sorry, response to early posts by lapo and Squize

Stick this paramater in the Flash object in your html page.

wmode="transparent"

Should get your swf running back up to speed.

:)

I like what you have so far. It seems a little jittery for me, but I notice that in my tilebased games, too, so that's probably a flash thing. I think if you increase the character's speed it will be less noticable. Also there's noticable slow down when there are a lot of tiles on screen. I'm just wondering what size tiles you have, because when you use small tiles and screen size like that the engine gets slow. Also that bush disappearing bug is probably due to fact that it's not of a standard tile size, so it covers 2 tiles instead of 1 but is only viewed as 1 tile. Splitting it up into 2 tiles will get rid of the bug.

Nice going so far, though. The graphics are great as usual, too. :)

everything was sweet, until I hit that blank bit at the end, and my computer ground to a halt.. it went from the fps cap, to about 4 or 5 fps..

Then lisa cried.. and then I cried.. and then maggie laughed.. she's such a trooper.

this is cool game.