Dark Bit Factory & Gravity

GENERAL => Challenges & Competitions => Topic started by: taj on October 23, 2007

Title: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 23, 2007

Its Halloween, big bads about.
Come little children everywhere.
Come surf, come play, come find out.
Log on today, if you dare.
Knick-knack paddywhack, give the dog my bones
This old man is coming home.

Creeps was written in 1.5 days and I'm very happy with that. It could be better but I have no more time, mainly I just wanted to show support for the competition. I'm happy with the idea and some of the effects are not bad too. The download is large due to the music which is worth it :-)

WARNING: Your PC will start to act funny - don't panic. It requires directx from later than October 2006 (not included).
WARNING2:   NOT VISTA COMPATIBLE...

http://scener.neostrada.pl/creeps.zip (http://scener.neostrada.pl/creeps.zip)

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: benny! on October 23, 2007

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssooooooooooooommmmmmme e.

Just watched it without sound (at work) ... going to try it with sound again at home.
But the FX looks extremely cool. Especially the desktop distorion fx !!!

/me heading back home

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Shockwave on October 23, 2007

Whew!

That's really, really good.

No, actually it's really, really, really, really good.

Going to watch it again (lights out this time).

Btw, it looks really good with my desktop (a h.p.lovecraft sort of image).

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: slippy on October 23, 2007

Hahahaaaaa ... wooow - I can only second Shocky and benny! ... really really awesome work dude ... !!!

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 23, 2007

Hey, hey, hey! Thanks guys! Great that you like it - made my day, thanks. It was a blast to code too. I would poublish code but its just awful. I'll put some useful stuff on the blog when I get time.

Chris

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: benny! on October 23, 2007

Yeah .. even better with tune ... well chosen, Chris dude !!!

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Shockwave on October 23, 2007

Mel loves your Haunted desktop too :) She says it's much better than what I am working on  >:(

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Shockwave on October 23, 2007

Btw the paperclip in the end is such a nice touch.

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 23, 2007

I hate that thing...I've been convinced for years hes evil.

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Jim on October 23, 2007

That's a shame - the stuff in your screengrab just displays black on Vista, the first FX is the cube with the spider texture :(
I can try it later today on my new work PC...it has XP and some unknown ATI card :)
Jim

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 23, 2007

Oh thats a bugger. Good to know though. Thanks Jim.

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: ninogenio on October 23, 2007

i get the same as jim on an old test xp geforce ti 4600 rig but the rest is awsome.

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Rbz on October 23, 2007

Really nice entry Chris, well done!

It was coded in 1.5 days ?  Ok, I'm in a big trouble now  :skint:

 :clap:

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: JumpMan on October 24, 2007

uhhhhh, with my mouth wide open. Ok, those are really nice effects. I am impressed. 

good one Chris.

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: rain_storm on October 24, 2007

Damn, it runs slow on my pc, But thats one hell of an entry and some freaky music to boot

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 24, 2007

@Nino...thats a shame. I guess its because I use non power of two textures (the screen) and old Nvidia cards wont support this, giving a black screen. Its a shame really as I didn't use shaders so that more people could play "creeps".

@rbraz: Amazingly it really was 1.5 days. I'm quite shocked myself! Probably explains why it doesnt work too well.

@rain_storm: can you give me specs of your PC please? Processor and card. I can think of two reasons it might go slowly and I can fix one of them. I'll add in a new version tonight to see if it helps.

@Mel,Jumpman: :-) Yey! Glad you liked it. Thanks goodness it works on some PCs!

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 24, 2007

rain_storm,

Ive added a "faster.exe" to the archive for you. This might help you but produces lower quality results. I'd be grateful if you try it to let me know if it helps.

Thanks,

Chris
(ps and let me know your system config)

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: rain_storm on October 24, 2007

It is runnin faster, before it was <= 10 fps, now it is almost realtime, (Some slowdown during the tunnel effect but fully realtime during the cube effect) well here are my specs

Celeron D 3.3GHz
  Windows XP SP2
  Latest DirectX installed

nVidia GeForce 7 series (sumthin cant remember exactly maybe 7600)
  256MB
  AGP/PCI (but my motherboard doesnt have an AGP slot so it I have to use it in a old PCI slot)
  supports shaders 3.0

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: combatking0 on October 24, 2007

Hi Chris,

I get a "This application has failed to start because d3dx9_31.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem." error message.

This is the second entry this has happened for - maybe I need to have a look at my computer...

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Jim on October 24, 2007

CK0, you're 9 months behind on your DirectX Update Goodness TM.
Go here
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en)
It will download only the newest bits that you don't have.

Jim

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 24, 2007

Thanks Jim.

Apologies that I didnt include it in the archive but its quite large. Most gamers/sceners will already have it so I took the decision not to include it as I used a DLL from 12 months ago. Sorry for the inconvenience CK.

Chris

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: combatking0 on October 24, 2007

It looks like I'm a victim of circumcise - I mean, circumstance, as my computer at home lacks an internet connection (and so, access to updates), and my manager chooses which updates to apply to the network over here, and he hasn't done this one yet.

I'll go over his head, just for this workstation...

The installation worked, but now I just get a black screen - looks like my graphics hardware isn't up to it :(

I'll try a different work station.

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Paul on October 24, 2007

Quote from: Jim on October 23, 2007

That's a shame - the stuff in your screengrab just displays black on Vista, the first FX is the cube with the spider texture :(

Yeah, the rest is great though, Ill have a go on teh other machine when its turned on :)

Edit:
Ran it on a xp machine and it looks awsome, really awsome no lag o anything, just great

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Jim on October 25, 2007

Got it on the work XP machine and the desktop stuff looks really cool - wonder what bit of the code makes Vista barf?

Jim

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 25, 2007

Quote from: Jim on October 25, 2007

Got it on the work XP machine and the desktop stuff looks really cool - wonder what bit of the code makes Vista barf?

Jim

V.good question. However you've seen my windows programming...so you know,  could be anything. However, I am using a clearly dirty trick which _may_ work differently under vista due to its extra abstraction layer for compositing. Essentially I open a window, fullscreen, and immediately read the front buffer of the window. Now under XP this gets the pixels from the screen. This is odd really but must be something to do with the OS identifying one area of memory as the screen and enabling writes directly to it for speed. Under vista I'm guessing that the "front buffer" is actually another logical area of memory for each application which is then composited at some performance cost. Hence the reason you get black.

To be honest I was amazed it worked at all nuder any OS but I tried and it did (like much of my size coding). Do you know any safe way to grab the "desktop" Jim?

Alternatively my pfd/dmsettings happen to work for XP but arent "legal" enough for Vista. I'm happy to give you code Jim and for you to tinker - I'm no windows programmer as you know.

Chris



 

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Paul on October 25, 2007

The getdesktop on the blitzbasic site works on win 2k and xp i think, but on vista i get quite alot of black.
http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=654

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Jim on October 25, 2007

Yeah, use GetDC(NULL) to get the desktop DC, and then create a compatible DC and BITMAP from that, then BitBlt the desktop DC into your own DC and finally use GetDIBits to get the pixels.

Jim

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Tetra on October 28, 2007

Nice work chris, really like it. Nice idea indeed and I loved the face coming out of the desktop!

 :kewl:

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 28, 2007

Thanks tetra,

I think it might be worth exploring this a bit more adding lighting and shadows to make it really feel like something coming out of the desktop. After thats cracked (and vista fixed), it would be possible to run an entire demo, capture to texture and display in this way each frame.

Chris

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: Jim on October 29, 2007

I've posted some sample code to grab the desktop reliably under XP and Vista
http://dbfinteractive.com/index.php?topic=2565.msg36293#msg36293 (http://dbfinteractive.com/index.php?topic=2565.msg36293#msg36293)

Jim

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on October 29, 2007

I'll update my code after the voting is done (to be fair to everyone). Thanks Jim. Already "karma++ed" you. Very useful snip of code that.

Chris

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: ninogenio on November 06, 2007

hey chris did you ever get round to fixing this up mate,

no presure though id really like to view it in its entirity

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: taj on November 06, 2007

Quote from: ninogenio on November 06, 2007

hey chris did you ever get round to fixing this up mate,

no presure though id really like to view it in its entirity

Sorry not yet, but I will nino...got absorbed by the raytracer for a while.

Title: Re: [Halloween]: Creeps by taj
Post by: ninogenio on November 07, 2007

take your time mate i look forward to it in anticipation!