Stealth Assault release

[Dunk]

I have been trying to finish off the 48 hour game Stealth Assault, and have got a release for you guys to test.

You can download it here:
http://www.whohooo.warwickcompsoc.co.uk/files/Stealth%20Assault.zip

I seem to have a problem with the first key press at the start of the game - you have to press the enter key twice to get in-game, which may be something to do with JInput in lwjgl, if someone could shed some light on that, I would be grateful!

So yeah, get playtesting people!

[Brodders]

Looking Good - I don't get any problems starting or with pressing return etc.

Nice to see you've actually designed some decent levels too!

[Dunk]

Levels are randomly generated
Getting harder each time of course, with enemy missiles getting harder to dodge too.
There are 6 levels, and it is possible to win, though you can try for a higher score. The only way to get a perfect score is to destroy all targets and never be detected - pretty much impossible, so there should be some degree of replayability.

[Brodders]

ah. Well, it works!

[Bryan]

Good fun. Couple of things though.

The non-power of two texture at the start takes about a second to draw. This is fixed for me by resizing the image to 1024x1024, but that would probably upset some people's graphics cards.

If a texture is too big for the graphics card the game freezes on a black screen, but the music continues to play. After getting out with Ctrl-Alt-Del, eclipse has the following error:

Exception in thread "main" org.lwjgl.opengl.OpenGLException: Invalid value (1281)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Util.checkGLError(Util.java:56)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.swapBuffers(Display.java:567)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.update(Display.java:583)
at uk.co.warwickgamedesign.Graphics.LWJGL.TiledBackgroundWindow.updateDisplay(TiledBackgroundWindow.java:79)
at uk.co.warwickgamedesign.Game.Game.updateScreen(Game.java:69)
at uk.co.warwickgamedesign.Game.Main.step(Main.java:279)
at uk.co.warwickgamedesign.Game.Main.main(Main.java:94)

Could you intead do something similar to Bunnies - shutdown the graphics system and the window, and have an apologetic error message pop up?

[Bryan]

Also.

I think there should be a gap of about half a screen at the end of each level that doesn't contain any enemies. Otherwise you can be fired at, or reach a target just a the game is fading to black.

The radar is sometimes drawn below enemy sprites, which looks a bit odd.

[Bob]

I'm also having the black screen on startup problem, and resizing the texture doesn't work for me. I'll try to get it to build in Eclipse tomorrow and have a poke around.

[Dunk]

This is why you release games for beta testing
Keep going guys, we need your feedback - doesn't necessarily have to be bugs, could be simple gameplay changes you think would make it more fun.

[Bryan]

My only other gripe is that dying looks pretty much the same as completing a level. The first time I played it I thought maybe I'd completed it, but just been careless enough with the radar to get the 'bad' ending.

Having a big exposion centred on your plane would probably do it, though having it crash towards the ground would look quite cool.

[Dunk]

I'm going to assume a big explosion followed by an "ARGH MY SPLEEN!" sound effect would be sufficient
Seriously though, you would have a big explosion, some kind of crashing sound effect and then have the plane disappear (after getting smaller to signify falling?).

[ne-waller]

cool music, but I only get a black screen at a really dodgy resolution hope you can fix this problem.

I'm delighted to hear you're working on this game, I 'm starting to have the confidence this stuff might all be ready for the cd:D

[Dunk]

I 'm starting to have the confidence this stuff might all be ready for the cd:D

Well you always were an optimist.

Stealth Assault is finished, if it wern't for those damn dirty bugs, like it randomly not working :/

I will release a version later that will use split up textures, and maybe the new version of lwjgl, so I will be poking you lot later to see if that works.

[Dunk]

I have now uploaded a new version which has a few changes - mainly the ones Bryan has mentioned, the plane now crashes \o, the radar is always drawn on top, and the end level gap works properly now.
Unfortunately, some people are really having problems with lwjgl it seems - either the inital key press is broken, or the game doesn't even display at all! I have no idea why this is happening, but all I can do is switch to the latest version of lwjgl and hope for the best.
I've also made sure that all textures are power of 2 (I think ), and that none are bigger than 512x512.

If this doesn't work, then I might have to put in some excuse...
"It's Stealth Assault look - you're a black bomber flying at night!
What did you expect?!"

The file location is the same as the one I originally posted.

[Bryan]

Good work. I've got a coouple of bugs though.

One that's probably very simple to fix - setting highscore.txt to 'Read Only' causes the game to lock if you end with a high score.

One that may be a bit trickier - it looks like the menu graphics are being drawn in a lower colour depth than before. Where in the earlier version it was a smooth gradient, there is now very obvious banding.

[Dunk]

I've changed the download again - it should be fixing those bugs. You can also move with the arrow keys, and small stuff like that.
Feedback would be nice!