[Beta Release] 3D Speedpool

I published a work in progress a while ago showing some work on my papervision3D pool game. Ive finally got it to a nice beta stage....

http://markfennell.com/flash/pool/index.php

The aim is to sink all the balls before the time runs out.
Click and drag anywhere to aim, then click and drag from the whiteball to set power.

The 3D view can be changed with the slider to the right or by using the icons at the top and bottom of the slider.

If any of you are digg members I'd love for you to give it a heads up... and that might be something we as flash game developers could perhaps create is our own little social networking site support posse.... food for thought.

feedback, praise, bugs all welcome.

I wish it would remember some of my settings. Like when starting new game, it resets my view. Or when submitting score it could save last name/country in shared object. Also wish it would point out next ball on the table that gives bonus time.

Really good speed for 3D+physics for Flash.

Managed to hit the ball through the hole into floor (or something, at least it went away).

i think it's a really impressive accomplishment on a number of fronts. sorry that i don't have too much more to offer than that, but wanted to say so anyway!

hey tonypa... its a good idea to highlight the next ball... Ill put that into the next update :D

Good idea on the shared object stuff too, I used to have that in my as2 score engine but didnt quite get around to the as3 one.... I think its time!

looks good. i think there might be an issue with the edge of the table. it looks like the balls are up on top of the edge of the table.

You really should try to fix that bug about balls going off the table, I have now lost 3 games because of that. Cant do much when your white ball is on the floor...

I also suggest you hide the right-click menu. Bad things happen when people get access to commands like Play and Rewind.

Couple more issues:
*I found placement of the cue on the white ball totally useless. In time-based game wasting valuable seconds to rotate around the table every time is annoying
*Once your time runs up, dont let player start another shot, but please dont cut off the moving balls.
*after playing it many times over 30 minutes I started to have serious perfomance problems. I think you have memory leak in the game as it become slower and slower, eating more memory.

Why is it SO hard to rotate the view around the table? It says click and drag mouse, right? I try that and it keeps flickering between +/- 15 degrees from the start point.

Ack. Unplayable in Safari. I'm getting 9 fps even when idle. Firefox, on the other hand, gets 19-20 fps, standalone player gets 22 fps.

Specs:

iMac 24"
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz
2 GB RAM
256 MB Radeon HD2600Pro

Flash Players:
Safari 3.0.4 - 9,0,77,0
Firefox 3.0b3pre - 9,0,78,0
Standalone - 9,0,60,235

Don't know if this is just an issue of which player Safari has. I don't know why Firefox isn't using the same player. I installed what I'm pretty sure is the fastest (not the latest) beta player Adobe made. And based on the reports I've heard, I don't want to upgrade to the latest version of the browser player (although I will test it out on the other iMac downstairs which has the same specs... see if it's just the Windows version of that Flash Player that has speed issues).

haha, i see someone there really liked pow pool ;)
nice work :)

thanks for the bug bashing.
Stupid balls flying of the table :D thought Id got that one.

By the way, have you considered using object pooling to speed it up?

Sorry, couldn't resist. :D

ImprisonedPride: Ive updated the wording on the instructions thanks for pointing it out, you click and rotate around the whiteball to aim.

Tony I think Ive removed the balls flying Ive increased the iterations and on my machine I havent had a ball go awol, Id be keen to know if it still happens to you.

Vengence... What do you mean by object pooling in this context? The speed limitations come from using the papervision engine... it only increases 2fps if I remove all calculations from the render loops....

Tom: I did like pow pool :D but Im also waaay too lazy to think up a computer AI :D

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Originally Posted by Flashkit

Tom: I did like pow pool :D but Im also waaay too lazy to think up a computer AI :D

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haha, yeah, totally understandable, as i told you it was the same with me :)

Really nice game overall as usual.

My only complaints are that the aiming/ camera movement control was such a pain in the ass for me, and that the edges of the table look abnormally small/low (at least, comparing the ball size to the table edge height it looks awkward). The game was unplayable from birds-eye view due to the camera only moving a couple of degrees in the wrong direction. Playing down low was much better but it was still very twitchy when trying to only move a few pixels. I suppose it's just me, and I'm a total n00b when it comes to controlling the mouse, but if that's the case could you add the option of keyboard control for idiots like me. :)

Viza.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Viza

Really nice game overall as usual.

My only complaints are that the aiming/ camera movement control was such a pain in the ass for me, and that the edges of the table look abnormally small/low (at least, comparing the ball size to the table edge height it looks awkward). The game was unplayable from birds-eye view due to the camera only moving a couple of degrees in the wrong direction. Playing down low was much better but it was still very twitchy when trying to only move a few pixels. I suppose it's just me, and I'm a total n00b when it comes to controlling the mouse, but if that's the case could you add the option of keyboard control for idiots like me. :)

Viza.

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^ What he said. ^

Wow, I didn't know you could catch mouse-behaviour in full screen.

Awesome job, finally someone that left all the tech-demos and silly viral half-games with papervision, and just made a real game with it. Respect!

Wouldn't problems with mouse-aiming be solved when you catch _y-movement as well with dragging around? I mean instead of the slider at the side? Otherwise maybe a key or middle mousebutton to adjust per degree? Allthough I'm quite sure it's more of a mental thingie.

the slider at the side is to just change the camera view.
I play it from the top down view. To aim I click somewhere in front of the whiteball and then drag that point around the whiteball.... perhaps having a fixed "target" as a drag handle might be more user friendly?

I am also going to take you suggestion VIZA and look towards using the keys... then limitation there for me though is the fullscreen mode....

its cool and all but the power isnt that powerful.... its nice though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Flashkit

Vengence... What do you mean by object pooling in this context? The speed limitations come from using the papervision engine... it only increases 2fps if I remove all calculations from the render loops....

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It was a very bad pun, not a suggestion. :)

Glad to see this is still being worked on and yes, a proper game rather than just a tech demo.

Could do with more power on 100% and perhaps a fine adjustment control with the keyboard.

Excellent stuff there :) I only wish I had the time to update my game to as3 but I guess I'm happy enough just getting bitmap data working today :)

maybe some better sounds might help a bit. Like some music or something..

Im using safari, and it works fine. also the rotating looks fine too..

other then that, it looks great.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Flashkit

Tony I think Ive removed the balls flying Ive increased the iterations and on my machine I havent had a ball go awol, Id be keen to know if it still happens to you.

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Nope, not fixed, I just had the ball going off the table again. It usually happens near the corner top-right hole. Or maybe I am just trying to hit them in that hole alot.

Even more rare bug (only had this twice) is when 2 balls kind of get into endless cycle of bounces. You can hear the ball-2-ball hitting noise looping. I cant be sure when this happens as it is rare, but I suspect the balls are moving at very slow speed on same direction.

Absolutely freaking awesome! This is a great use of Papervision, and quite a massive achievement in Flash game design and programming!

In light of suggestions here I've changed the rotation system to be simple drag left right, along with a display hint to that effect. I'd be interested in feedback on it.

Tonypa I can't believe you bet my top score!!! You must like it :D Ill look further into the top right corner there might be a tiny vector gap.... Thanks too for the rock solid bug testing, really appreciated

Quote:

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Originally Posted by yeps

Im using safari, and it works fine.

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Thanks for that. Just verified and it appears I was running Safari through the Rosetta emulation layer (could've sworn I changed it back, apparently not). Now got it running as a native Intel app and I'm getting a good 22 fps, plus everything else about my browsing experience has improved, too. :)

I couldn't get the game started. It showed a bomb animation, and then a red spherical gradient. Stayed there doing nothing. I right-clicked and clicked "Play" to try to advance it. That showed a "Click here to play 3D Pool" image which when clicking opens a pop up window and re-opens same page in another browser window.

I think rotation control is much better now.

Pretty much only thing still missing is the fact that balls still stop at the moment when time runs out (you cant believe how many games I have lost because the ball with timer bonus is going just toward the hole but game ends fraction before it reaching the hole and giving me more time). That is frustrating and not fair. Once time runs out, let all the balls stop, then end the game. If ball with more time has gone into hole, let the player continue.

Plus of course remembering my view setting in next game too, why would I want to change the view every time I break?

And there is surely memory leak, if you go through couple of games it all starts to slow down. Must reload the page after 2-3 games.

About perfomance: I played it in full-screen (IE), worked great. Slightly slower on full-screen using Opera. Luckily I could play it in Opera without html page, linking straight to swf. For some weird reason loading swf directly failed in IE, giving error messages.

I must admit that the improvement in movement is a lot better than what it was. Sadly, even with those improvements, I still find it nearly impossible to aim efficiently without wasting a ton of time.

Really nice achievement, it's the kind of things we are not used in flash.
Despite I think flash is not yet ready for this kind of game, I'm impressed.
My remark is about the collision sounds, I think they should be lower for light impacts.
And I also have a problem with the edges, sometimes I have the feeling that the ball is inside the border, and when change the view, I see it's not the case.
Good job indeed!