Alright folks, I've just uploaded what I consider to be the last beta test version of starcars before it goes to 1.0 if there is nothing major and if it works on most machines then all I need to do is make a demo version and viola! My first shareware game.

Thanks to everyone who has tested the game and offered feedback I apreciate it. Everyone on this board is entitled to a free copy of the full game and any updates (I have to sort out the website before I can send out the free copies though)

I will be pricing the game at $14.95 USD

All the bugs (I think) reported from the last beta has been fixed. Alt-tab also now functions correctly. There are options for 800x600 and 1024x768 video modes too. I wanted to include a windowed mode also, but I just couldn't get it to work.

I am planning to do an expansion pack in approx 6 months time (This may or may not be an acurate guess as university starts up again next month and I am keen to get working on my next game - after 15months of starcars, It'll be nice to have a change.) The expansion will include a level editor, 60 more levels and hopefully two new obsticles. First on the list is getting the level editor finished at which point I will release it here for testing and if anyone allows me, any levels you create might just go into the expansion pack.

Again thanks for all the support
Joshua Smyth
www.peachysoft.com

Congrats Joshua! Your game has come a long way

I'll check out the new version soon.

G-g-g-gman sad!
Now I have to buy it!

_________________
GMan
Black Ninja Games
Imagine ASCII art here!

I'd be more than willing to do some more testing for you...

Here's the URL:

http://www.peachysoft.com/downloads/Sta ... _Setup.exe

Get testing, y'all!

No, no, no everyone here still gets their free copies

Beat it all the way through! Got stars now works fine, and the stuff that I pointed out before is good n' fixed....
on that note - two new things- thankfully small -
1. moving blocks don't dissappear when you beat a level
2. star counter doesn't reset to 0 when you die

Other than that, 100% gold

Worked perfectly on my machine, Joshua. Great stuff!

You should be proud.

Fixed and Fixed (although not updated on the website) thank you

Posted on www.indiegamer.com looks like I've still got that horrid mx400 bug with that 25% zoomed in thing going on.

Its pretty much the only major bug left (I've found a couple minor ones since then) well, I'm going to buy one of those god-damn video cards and WILL FIX THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL!

The people on indiegamer seem to have trouble only on your menu screens, not in-game.

What is different about the menu, as compared to the gameplay? Answer that, and you may have the solution

Different vertex types. The GUI uses 2d vertices TLVertexes, where the levels use LITVERTEX or 3d pre-lit vertices. Seems to only occur on mx-400 cards, darn it!

Can you change the GUI to use the other vertex type?

It would save you from having to buy an mx-400 card

Making a nifty 3D menu would be fun!

Already procured, just gotta wait for the mail to arrive.

I've just downloaded! Well, I liked the redone levels and no major lags anymore.
Still, I've got some:
1) On 1024 resolution I had some slow-downs along the levels (20 FPS or so).
2) That's why I decided to switch to 800*600 and discovered one more bug: the location of the objects stayed the same as after 1024 (vice versa also - just checked). So the "Play-level" option appeared to be half-under the screen. I'd paste a screenshot if it didn't eat up the page's size. But I think you understood what I meant.
3) The last issue about resolution changes. After I had done the change I needed 10 secs or so to finish the program. So I just clicked Exit and waited for quite a long time. Had no problem with it when not changed screen resolution in-game.

P.S. Nice game, anyway!

Thanks Neolisk - I'm going to make 800 the default starting resolution now. I've found those problems you described and I will test them a little bit more to ensure that it's fixed. (Sometimes things slip through because I haven't tested them properly locally)

Could I just please enquire to what graphics card you have. Debug.txt in the starcars folder should give you the name.

No problem, here's the line you want:

"Graphics Card = NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X"

I've tested the previous version, so if you want more details you may find them here:

Starcars Beta Version Released

My desktop pc which contains a Radeon 8500 runs the menus fine, however when in the game and you get a star the follwong display corruption occurs:


Also, I happened to be alt-tabbed from Starcars while writing this post. When I went back into the game I got an overflow error. the debug.txt may help:

"Star Cars Debug"
"Operating system","Windows XP"
#2005-02-13#

" Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1500MHz"
"CPU Speed",1513,"Mhz"
"Memory","1023.53125"

"Graphics Card = RADEON 8500 SERIES"
"Hardware Rasterizer (HAL) avalible"
"Hardware Transform and lighting avalible"
"Initalise DirectX and DX3D = True"
"Using Polling Method for Direct Input"

"Keyboard Information"
"Product Name : Keyboard"
"Device Type : 1043"
"GUID : GUID_SysKeyboard"

"Initalise DirectInput = True"
"Initalise DirectSound = True"
"Initalise Animated Textures = True"
"CREATED PARTICLE ENGINE = True"
"Created Player Shadow = True"
"Automation error -2005530520"
"Reset failed"
"Buffer Overflow -> Compensating"

I noticed that the music did not play while tabbed out of the game, but on my laptop the music would continue to play when tabbed out

On my laptop which contains a Radeon 7500 the menus do not display well:





Is there some way to make the images smaller? Say [img width=800 height=600]blah[/img]

Thank you Hunter for those screenshots. I hate having to deal with all the different types of video cards! At a quick guess it has something to do with how the cards handle switching rendering types, This is because the level, the gui, and the particles (stars) each use a different rendering vertex fileformat.

Hopefully I will be able to fix it, I think I need to track down someone with those cards, my flatmates radeon 9600xp it plays it fine.