Looking for help testing my game

[cybertron]

This is a project that I've been working on for a few years now, and I think it's at a point where some playtesting would be beneficial. You can read all about it at the game's website (http://www.coldestgame.com). If there's interest (and everyone isn't too busy with HoN;)) I'll schedule a test sometime in the near future so we can all get together.

Screenshots (slightly old, but you get the idea):
http://www.coldestgame.com/site/sites/default/files/images/onewaytrees.preview.jpg (http://www.coldestgame.com/site/image/view/28/_original)

http://www.coldestgame.com/site/sites/default/files/images/riversidetrees.preview.jpg (http://www.coldestgame.com/site/image/view/27/_original)

http://www.coldestgame.com/site/sites/default/files/images/flowers.preview.jpg (http://www.coldestgame.com/site/image/view/21/_original)

More can be found here: http://www.coldestgame.com/site/image

[Michael]

Any benchmarking mode for this game? :D

[cybertron]

Not yet, but it's on my to do list. Would be useful for me when I'm tweaking performance too. :)

[L33F3R]

hey not half bad ma man. props ;)

EDIT

Good lord sir im running through a dependency tree XD.

[storma]

Good lord sir im running through a dependency tree XD.

mhmm. Though you get that from time to time running debian stable. ;)

[Kano]

Why do you need 3 downloads with 99% of the same files? Just add all binaries to one zip like all others do (look at nexuiz for example).

[Michael]

Not yet, but it's on my to do list. Would be useful for me when I'm tweaking performance too. :)

Let me know when there is, then I am interested

[Setlec]

I'm downloading right now from the screen shots it seems pretty good.

[cybertron]

Why do you need 3 downloads with 99% of the same files? Just add all binaries to one zip like all others do (look at nexuiz for example).
I thought about it, but for some reason that has always rubbed me the wrong way, probably because I never install a game in Windows if it runs on Linux, so having to download two files is just one of those minor, niggling annoyances. Maybe I'm unusual that way though. I suppose I could continue providing the full downloads, and also provide a binaries-only version for people who want to reuse the downloaded files though. That way people like me have only one file to download and people who want to reuse the files can. Will keep that in mind in the future.

[Kano]

The reason is simple, if you have got multi boot systems with 32 and 64 bit and maybe even Win, you only need to download 1 file. And that's not really a rare case.

[djack]

The argument swings both ways though. I only run 64bit Linux - forcing me to dwnload Windows, Mac, 32bit binaries is a waste of everyone's bandwidth and time.

You are never going to please everybody all of the time. As long as it is obvious what you need to download and what you need to do after that, the file packaging is relatively unimportant. Just do whatever you are most comfortable with and concentrate on making the game great.

[Kano]

The diff can be only 1 or 2 mb.

[whizse]

I get this error when I start the game:

Could not open catalog:
XercesMessages_en_US.cat
or XercesMessages_en_US.cat
Cannot load message domain

[cybertron]

The reason is simple, if you have got multi boot systems with 32 and 64 bit and maybe even Win, you only need to download 1 file. And that's not really a rare case.
Yeah, I understand that. I'll probably provide binary-only downloads in the future. It should be a simple change to the packaging script to generate them. I'll probably keep the split full downloads too though since I have plenty of disk space and bandwidth usage will be unaffected, and that way if you're only planning to use it in one place there's only one file to download. Everybody's happy.:)

I get this error when I start the game:

Could not open catalog:
XercesMessages_en_US.cat
or XercesMessages_en_US.cat
Cannot load message domain

Hmm, my preliminary investigation suggests that has to do with iconv support in Xerces. Hopefully the fix is just to recompile the Xerces library without iconv support, but I won't be able to try that until tonight.

Are you running 32 or 64-bit (so I know which one to give you)?

[cybertron]

Okay, Xerces error should be fixed in the downloads available on the site. While creating those I added some executable-only downloads so it's not necessary to download the entire package for each platform.

I'll schedule some playtesting next week for anyone who is interested.

[whizse]

Thanks for fixing the Xerces issue.

I now get this error:
program: Shader program link failed. Exiting
Unresolved symbols


It happens both with the i965 driver and in software mode, so I guess Mesa is to blame.

[Kano]

When you try it with lenny + fglrx installed you get this:

Fragment shader(s) were not successfully compiled before glLinkProgram() was called. Link failed.

*** glibc detected *** ./coldest.bin: corrupted double-linked list: 0x09f0b488 ***
...

[cybertron]

This is the bad thing about developing on NVidia - their GLSL compiler is more forgiving of mistakes. I was testing on my ATI laptop, but that recently got moved to web server duty so now it's running headless.

Which shader does it say it's loading right before the error happens? That should be getting printed before the error message and I should be able to run the offending one(s) through the shader validator to figure out what I screwed up.

[whizse]

Oh, right!

Loading shader shaders/standard
program: Shader program link failed. Exiting
Unresolved symbols

[cybertron]

Whoops, sure enough there's a bug in that fragment shader. I'll have to double-check all of them because it may show up elsewhere too.

[cybertron]

I've posted a patch that should fix all of the shader problems (at least the ones that GLSL Validate could find). Also wrote a script to automatically run the validator on all of the shaders so I should be able to catch these problems easily enough in the future.

Patches are available on the download page (http://www.coldestgame.com/site/content/download).

[Zhick]

Hmm... game doesn't start here... this is what the console says (only the last few lines):
Console Warning: Key not found reflectionres
Console Warning: Key not found cloudres
Console Warning: Key not found shadowres
Could not open catalog:
XercesMessages_en_US.cat
or XercesMessages_en_US.cat
Cannot load message domain

[benmoran]

It fails on my system due to EXT_framebuffer_object. No doubt this is a missing feature in the opensource drivers, but I figured i'd post it anyhow. I'm looking forward to playing this in the future. It looks good so far.

ben@dellubuntu:~/Desktop/Coldest543$ ./coldest
Initializing Coldest
Built on: Aug 27 2009 at 19:15:31
GCC version: 4.3.2
Linked SDL version: 1.2.13
Compiled SDL version: 1.2.13
Main 15021
set aa 0
set af 1
set bots 0
set cache 1
set camdist 100
set consoletrans 128
set detailmapsize 600
set endgametime 10
set fly 0
set fov 60
set fullscreen 0
set ghost 0
set grassdensity 1
set grassdrawdist 1000
set hitindtime 1000
set impdistmulti 5
set keyback 115
set keyforward 119
set keyleft 97
set keyloadout 108
set keyright 100
set keyuseitem 117
set limitserverrate 1
set map riverside
set master www.coldestgame.com
set maxanimdelay 25
set maxplayers 32
set mousefire 1
set mousenextweap 5
set mouseprevweap 4
set mousespeed 400
set mouseuse 2
set mousezoom 3
set movestep 100
set musicvol 40
set name Nooblet
set numthreads 2
set overheat 1
set partupdateinterval 0
set quiet 1
set reflection 1
set respawntime 15000
set screenheight 600
set screenwidth 800
set serveraddr localhost
set servername @none@
set serverport 12010
set serverpwd password
set serversync 1
set shadows 1
set showfps 0
set showkdtree 0
set softshadows 0
set splashlevels 3
set startsalvage 100
set syncgrace 15
set syncmax 50
set terrainmulti 3
set thirdperson 0
set tickrate 30
set timeout 10
set turnsmooth 20
set viewdist 3000
set viewoffset 0
set weaponfocus 1000
set zoomfactor 2
# restartgl must be included to initialize OpenGL
restartgl
Glew init successful, using version: 1.5.1
We don't have EXT_framebuffer_object. This is fatal.

[whizse]

Well, some progress is made, but I still run into an error:

Loading shader shaders/bump
program: Shader program link failed. Exiting
Unresolved symbols

[Kano]

Well it starts now, but no idea what to do then. Also how to change the view?

[cybertron]

Hmm... game doesn't start here... this is what the console says (only the last few lines):
When did you download (or what is the name of the file you downloaded since it changed slightly)? That problem should be fixed in the versions that are currently available. Try downloading the appropriate executable only version again and use those files to overwrite the ones you have.

It fails on my system due to EXT_framebuffer_object. No doubt this is a missing feature in the opensource drivers, but I figured i'd post it anyhow. I'm looking forward to playing this in the future. It looks good so far.
Yeah, I'm afraid there isn't much in the way of fallback rendering paths, so it requires all of the extensions that it uses.

Well, some progress is made, but I still run into an error:

Loading shader shaders/bump
program: Shader program link failed. Exiting
Unresolved symbols

Hmm, troubling. That shader definitely passed the validation and apparently it works on ATI now so I'm not sure what would be wrong. And of course they wouldn't want to give me a line number or anything to work with.:)

I'm going to have to think about this one for a while most likely.

Well it starts now, but no idea what to do then. Also how to change the view?
To just mess around locally you can Host, but there's really not much to do other than run around and look at stuff. There are some bots available for load testing, but they're not good for much other than target practice because they're completely random and they don't shoot back (yet).

Somebody was hosting a server for me for a while but it doesn't appear to be up anymore. I'll see if I can get that back up, but in the meantime I'll start a server on my machine so there will be a place for group testing with real players.

Also, there are three maps that I would consider usable right now. You can use the console (~ key to access) to get to them. Just type "set map [riverside|oneway|tears]". For example "set map oneway" loads the oneway map. Riverside is the default map for now.

I'm not sure what you mean by "view" - you can change graphics settings in the settings screen, and the view in-game should be controlled by the mouse. Walking is with the wasd keys, but they can be rebound in the settings screen if you prefer something different.

[Kano]

In other games you can change 3rd person to 1st person like GTA or so.

[Ant P.]

EXT_framebuffer_object was added in radeon mesa git recently IIRC.

[whizse]

Hmm, troubling. That shader definitely passed the validation and apparently it works on ATI now so I'm not sure what would be wrong. And of course they wouldn't want to give me a line number or anything to work with.:)

I'm going to have to think about this one for a while most likely.


If it passes both Nvidia and ATI:s implementations, it suggests a bug in Mesa, so do file a bug report. (Hopefully it will be fixed, saving you from doing the work ;) )

[cybertron]

In other games you can change 3rd person to 1st person like GTA or so.
Ah, I see. I haven't implemented third person in any meaningful way yet. There's a way to pull the camera straight back but it's intended for debugging and I don't think you could realistically play that way. As it stands right now, I'm not sure how well third person would work anyway, but I have some things to try with the first person view that may also make third person a better option.

If it passes both Nvidia and ATI:s implementations, it suggests a bug in Mesa, so do file a bug report. (Hopefully it will be fixed, saving you from doing the work ;) )
Good point. And if it turns out that it's not a bug in Mesa they can probably tell me why it's not working.:)

Can you post your Mesa version, distro, and hardware? I expect that they'll want to know that.

[Zhick]

When did you download (or what is the name of the file you downloaded since it changed slightly)? That problem should be fixed in the versions that are currently available. Try downloading the appropriate executable only version again and use those files to overwrite the ones you have.
I downloaded Coldest543-64.tar.bz2. Just to be sure I've also just downloaded the binary-only tar as well and extracted it in the game-folder, but the game still doesn't start. A window appears but only stays for a moment and then dissapears again. It still gives the same error-message, I've pastebined the complete console-output here (http://de.pastebin.ca/1548145).

[cybertron]

I downloaded Coldest543-64.tar.bz2. Just to be sure I've also just downloaded the binary-only tar as well and extracted it in the game-folder, but the game still doesn't start. A window appears but only stays for a moment and then dissapears again. It still gives the same error-message, I've pastebined the complete console-output here (http://de.pastebin.ca/1548145).
Hmm, the first part explains why you were having a problem (that was the pre-fix file), but not why you still are. However, in your output the build date doesn't match what I'm seeing here when I run the fixed version so I'm wondering if the new files didn't overwrite the old ones properly. There's actually a Coldest543 directory in the binary-only download too, so if you extracted it in the game directory you'll probably find you have another Coldest543 directory inside the game directory. If you copy the files from there into the game directory I think it will fix the problem.

I think I'm going to change the way the binary-only package is created so that extra directory isn't there anymore since in retrospect it doesn't really make sense.

[Kano]

You can use an autoupdate tool that checks for new binary and downloads em automatically.

[cybertron]

I'm planning to be on the beta server tomorrow (Thursday) night around 6 PM central time (7 eastern, 5 mountain, 4 pacific if my math is correct) if anyone is interested in some actual gameplay. My night is clear so if later works better I can do that too.

I suppose I should ask if everyone can see and connect to that server. It should show up in the server browser when you click the Join button (although I see that the master server wasn't running - oops). I apologize in advance if the ping sucks - my internet leaves something to be desired in this area.

You can use an autoupdate tool that checks for new binary and downloads em automatically.
That would certainly be nice, but I think it would be non-trivial to implement so it will probably be at least a little while before it happens. If anyone is aware of a simple way to do this I'm all ears though.

[Kano]

That's not that hard. You would just add a file with all md5sums of the current files on your server, then a wrapper would download that first, check all local checksums and download those which are different.

[storma]

Testing still on or has it passed? I'm gmt +10 here, hope my calculations aren't off. ;)

I could connect to your server in fullscreen without problems. In windowed mode though, after it went through loading the map, the screen would disappear though the music kept running. Had to kill -9 xxxx to stop it. Didn't happen on joining localhost.

A couple of things I noticed, (I use to play the battletech boardgame as a kid, so I might be a bit to critical. ;) Feel free to ignore.)

*not all weapons gave off heat.
*standing in the water didn't lesson heat buildup.
*changing mechs, the weight from the prior one would carry through.
*no ability to run.

The way you have set up the movement feels right. Very nice. :)

On an AMD/ATI w/ 9.8. Debian Lenny 64bit.

Add me to your happy list. :D

EDIT: just came from testing with you. I couldn't respawn because of -ve salvage. rejoining still gave me -ve salvage.

[cybertron]

EDIT: just came from testing with you. I couldn't respawn because of -ve salvage. rejoining still gave me -ve salvage.
Hmm, weird. I'll restart the server if you still want to get back in.

Edit: I figured out the crash on join bug. Should be easy to fix, but since it appears you couldn't get reconnected I guess we're done for tonight. Should have a patch that takes care of it out by next time. Sorry for all the trouble.

[whizse]

I filed a bug for you about the shader problem in Mesa:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23960

[cybertron]

Much appreciated. I'll link it from my bug tracker so people can find it both ways.

As far as testing goes, if anyone is available I was thinking Thursday night again, and then I'm going to try to round up a few more people for the following Wednesday to hopefully do a little larger scale testing. And just to make sure there's no possible confusion, here's the time in every conceivable time zone (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=9&day=17&year=2009&hour=18&min=0&sec=0&p1=159).:)

Linux patches for the latest build are already available. Full builds and a Windows build will be along in the near future.

[whizse]

The bug in Mesa has been fixed.

I can start the game now, but it doesn't render correctly in-game, and performance is pretty much nil. Guess there's still one or two bugs to be filed against Mesa.

[dacresbu]

I would comment about mac support but the wiki is locked. What is your build method/environment?

[cybertron]

The bug in Mesa has been fixed.

I can start the game now, but it doesn't render correctly in-game, and performance is pretty much nil. Guess there's still one or two bugs to be filed against Mesa.
Glad to hear that the shader bug is fixed. I'm not surprised that there are problems with performance in Mesa, unfortunately. It was barely playable on my old X300 with fglrx, so it doesn't scale down all that all (although in my defense the X300 is a pretty old card these days).

I would comment about mac support but the wiki is locked. What is your build method/environment?
You will need to have a SourceForge account to edit the wiki.

The build on Linux is just a custom makefile with dependencies handled by makedepend. It's not perfect, but it works. The Windows build is just a Visual Studio project with all of the source files added, so I would expect any other IDE to be pretty easy to setup too.

Full details on building on Linux and Windows can be found on the source code page of the wiki (http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/coldestgame/wiki/SourceCode).

[whizse]

It seems the bug is specific to Intel cards. The software rasterizer render the game fine. Filed a new bug about that:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23978

[dacresbu]

You will need to have a SourceForge account to view edit the wiki.

there fixed that for ya. I really don't want to have to maintain a Sourceforge account just to look at a wiki. (its like maintaining a windows distro just to play games)



The build on Linux is just a custom makefile with dependencies handled by makedepend.


seems duplicable on the mac. I'll see if I can't provide a universal binary. you aren't directly addressing X are you?

[cybertron]

there fixed that for ya. I really don't want to have to maintain a Sourceforge account just to look at a wiki. (its like maintaining a windows distro just to play games)
Hmm, it shouldn't be that way, although now that you mention it I always wondered about the fact that it always prompts for a password. There must be something weird about the way SF has it setup because the Trac settings should allow anyone to view.

Ah, found it. If you use the HTTPS link it will always ask for authentication. I need to change my links to regular HTTP.

seems duplicable on the mac. I'll see if I can't provide a universal binary. you aren't directly addressing X are you?
Good heavens, no!:)

About the only thing I've really had problems with as far as cross-platform goes is that the Visual C++ STL still sucks performance-wise, so I use STLPort on Windows which has caused other problems. Since I think you'll be using some variant of gcc you shouldn't have that problem. I use quite a few libraries, but they should all be available on Mac too. They're listed here (http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/coldestgame/wiki/SourceCode) (this link should work).