Need testers for Project: Starfighter Beta 1

StephenJSweeney · April 14, 2003, 6:07am

Hi

I’m nearly at the end of my little project… I’m 99% complete on the game,
just got a few bits and pieces to do. What I need now is for some people to
download the beta, compile it and play it and tell me what you think…
oh… and looks for bugs!

The beta can be found at,

http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/releaseCandidates.php

and screenshots from this version at,

http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/starfighter.php

There are no binaries, so the game has to be built from source. There is a
Linux make file, so most people should be able to just untar it, do make,
make install and then starfighter to play. Hopefully The reason I’ve not
included binaries is because I’d rather normal users didn’t download the
beta and find it riddled with bugs…

A gameplay manual (in HTML) is included along with everything else.

Please email me with gameplay issues and bugs as you find them.

And finally, enjoy

Steve

Nicolai_Haehnle · April 14, 2003, 7:18am

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1On Monday 14 April 2003 15:04, Sweeney, Steven (FNB) wrote:

I’m nearly at the end of my little project… I’m 99% complete on the
game, just got a few bits and pieces to do. What I need now is for some
people to download the beta, compile it and play it and tell me what you
think… oh… and looks for bugs!
[snip]

Problems, in order of appearance:

init.cpp, setupUserHomeDirectory. getlogin() apparently didn’t work on my
system. I’ve changed the code to the following after reading the getlogin
manpage:

    char *userHome;

    char *name = getlogin();
    passwd *pass;

    if (name != NULL)
            pass = getpwnam(name);
    else
            pass = getpwuid(geteuid());

    if (pass == NULL)
    {
            printf("Couldn't determine the user home directory.

Exitting.\n");
exit(1);
}

(the rest remains the same)

This seems to work fine.

Also, the source apparently wasn’t setup to read from the .pak file, but
changing defs.h fixed that.

I had some sound problems, but it looks like that was some hiccup my
computer had, and it’s not a problem with the game itself.

Other than that - what can I say? It’s a solid, fun game

cu,
Nicolai
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StephenJSweeney · April 14, 2003, 7:41am

Damn!

Okay… change the line 269 in defs.h to

#define USEPACK 1> -----Original Message-----

From: Nicolai Haehnle [SMTP:prefect_ at gmx.net]
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 3:19 PM
To: sdl at libsdl.org
Subject: Re: [SDL] Need testers for Project: Starfighter Beta 1

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Monday 14 April 2003 15:04, Sweeney, Steven (FNB) wrote:

I’m nearly at the end of my little project… I’m 99% complete on the
game, just got a few bits and pieces to do. What I need now is for some
people to download the beta, compile it and play it and tell me what you
think… oh… and looks for bugs!
[snip]

Problems, in order of appearance:

init.cpp, setupUserHomeDirectory. getlogin() apparently didn’t work on my
system. I’ve changed the code to the following after reading the getlogin
manpage:
    char *userHome;

    char *name = getlogin();
    passwd *pass;

    if (name != NULL)
            pass = getpwnam(name);
    else
            pass = getpwuid(geteuid());

    if (pass == NULL)
    {
            printf("Couldn't determine the user home directory. 
Exitting.\n");
exit(1);
}

(the rest remains the same)

This seems to work fine.

Also, the source apparently wasn’t setup to read from the .pak file, but
changing defs.h fixed that.

I had some sound problems, but it looks like that was some hiccup my
computer had, and it’s not a problem with the game itself.

Other than that - what can I say? It’s a solid, fun game

cu,
Nicolai
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

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+UvccZbK2mhtXknJwFC9mIY=
=8INH
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SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl

.sophos.3.67.04.14.

Patrick_Kooman · April 14, 2003, 12:08pm

The beta can be found at,

http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/releaseCandidates.php

It doesn’t seem to include the graphics. I get the error:

Couldn’t load gfx/alienDevice.png: Couldn’t open gfx/alienDevice.png
BlitSurface error: SDL_UpperBlit: passed a NULL surface
Couldn’t create or write to directory ''
Cleaning Up…
Freeing Graphics
Freeing Background
Freeing Sounds
Resetting Lists
Freeing Font
Removing Mod
Closing Audio
Done Cleaning Up…
Thank You for playing Starfighter
Press any key to continue

I created an MSVC++ project for it, which was setup without too much
trouble.

There are no binaries, so the game has to be built from source. There is a
Linux make file, so most people should be able to just untar it, do make,
make install and then starfighter to play. Hopefully The reason I’ve not
included binaries is because I’d rather normal users didn’t download the
beta and find it riddled with bugs…

I don’t agree with your desicion. Non-programmers are much better testers,
because they
do all kind of things programmers automaticly don’t. But it probably saves
you bugs indeed

Patrick.

Max_Bane · April 14, 2003, 12:51pm

[snip]

I also had to make this change to init.cpp, otherwise the executable just
caused an immediate segmentation fault (no doubt caused by unchecked null
pointer nastiness). I would suggest that Steven make these changes a
permanent part of the source - it doesn’t seem to work otherwise.On Monday 14 April 2003 02:18 pm, Nicolai Haehnle wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

init.cpp, setupUserHomeDirectory. getlogin() apparently didn’t work on my
system. I’ve changed the code to the following after reading the getlogin
manpage:
–
Max Bane
Greener’s Law:
Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.

Santi_Ontanon · April 15, 2003, 6:15am

Never crashed in my machine (running WIN ME), However, I’d recommend to
you to include also the needed DLLs (SDL, SDL_mixer, SDL_image, etc…)
with the binary distribution…

It’s a cool and funny game! (Only played the two first missions for
lacking of time),
But I liked the ship-upgrades in the most pure “retro-game” style!!

Good work!

santi

StephenJSweeney · April 15, 2003, 6:58am

Thanks Santi

Let me know if you experience any problems in the future :)> -----Original Message-----

From: Santi Onta??n [SMTP:santi.ontanon at terra.es]
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 1:17 PM
To: sdl at libsdl.org
Subject: Re: [SDL] Need testers for Project: Starfighter Beta 1

Never crashed in my machine (running WIN ME), However, I’d recommend to
you to include also the needed DLLs (SDL, SDL_mixer, SDL_image, etc…)
with the binary distribution…

It’s a cool and funny game! (Only played the two first missions for
lacking of time),
But I liked the ship-upgrades in the most pure “retro-game” style!!

Good work!

santi

SDL mailing list
SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl

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