[XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work

[Gore Motel]

Here's my entry for the Christmas competition, titled Dasher is Late for Work.




Dasher, one of Santa Claus's reindeers, is running late for work this year, so he's sprinting to reach Santa.


I made this in Delphi using OpenGL. You need a video card with at least OpenGL 1.2 support to run it. I tested it on Windows 7 x64 and Windows XP (running on a VM) using an ATI 5570 video card with the latest drivers installed. I also tried it on a system with an integrated Intel HD 3000, which couldn't run it in fullscreen (crashes with an error which I have no idea how to solve).


I did a video capture of the demo, but it's kind of choppy:

Below I give credits and list all the stuff which I haven't made:
- music by greenRiverThriller: Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - Christmas in 8 bit
- font by codeman38: Press Start 2P
- KOL to replace the VCL and make the EXE smaller, also provides PNG and OpenGL support: link
- BASS audio library for music playback: link
- BTMemoryModule to load bass.dll from memory: link


Check the attached ZIP archive for the demo.

[ninogenio]

hi mate looks really cool!,

very festive. and really love the tune well done!!

[Hotshot]

Excellent Pixel Xmas 

[Raizor]

Very festive Gore Motel, and nice to see Delphi being used again (I really loved making stuff with Delphi). The music and nice relaxing feel made me feel really Christmassy Great stuff, looking forward to more in future (hopefully). K++

[Punqtured]

Marvelous little prod you've made there! Fantastic funky tune - really love the groovy feel and the improvisation over the old classic. I'm not into the tech stuff, but from a purely entertainment point of view, it rocks! Congratulations

[combatking0]

I like the choice of colours - very festive.
The music also rocks and the pixelated trees look great - were they generated procedurally or drawn from fixed patterns?

[Rbz]

Very cute little prod, music fits very well too.
Runs perfect smoothly here!

[nikin]

Cute.. love the pixel graphics
Runs smooth under Wine on linux, both Windowed and Fullscreen on an intel HD4000

[Gore Motel]

I like the choice of colours - very festive.
The music also rocks and the pixelated trees look great - were they generated procedurally or drawn from fixed patterns?

I made the trees in a graphics application and just loaded them as textures. I've never dabbed in procedural generation, but that sounds like a good idea - a constantly changing background made of unique looking trees, instead of just repeating the same ones. I'll have to read up on procedural generation.

Cute.. love the pixel graphics
Runs smooth under Wine on linux, both Windowed and Fullscreen on an intel HD4000

Well that's good to hear. On my system with an HD 3000 I always get an error message concerning ig4icd32.dll in fullscreen (latest drivers installed).

[nikin]

Well that's good to hear. On my system with an HD 3000 I always get an error message concerning ig4icd32.dll in fullscreen (latest drivers installed).

It sounds to me a lot like:
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?topic=22021.0
maybe reordering your calls, putting the full-screen switch as far up, as possible might help
It looks like that HD4500 is also affected.

[Gore Motel]

Ok, so I fiddled with it some more and I made it work. The crash has something to do with the window. When running in fullscreen, if I set the window to be maximized, then it crashes on the HD 3000. If instead I set the window dimensions to the screen's dimensions, then it works fine. VSync doesn't kick in though, and I can see a lot of tearing.

[padman]

Would have also very well fitted into the UDG challenge earlier this year. Really nicely done! Hope to see more from you! 

[ttemper]

Doesn't work for me, all I get is a blank screen, music and a window saying that the proc has stopped working. :/

[Gore Motel]

That sucks. What OS and GPU?

[Kirl]

So simple, so awesome! Very pleasing style altogether and very well done. I love this! 

[hellfire]

Got the same problem as ttemper: crashes immediately, empty window stays open, music keeps playing (Windows 7, Nvidia GTX 560)
The video is lovely!