Dark Bit Factory & Gravity

GENERAL => Challenges & Competitions => Topic started by: Gore Motel on December 20, 2013

Title: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: Gore Motel on December 20, 2013: Here's my entry for the Christmas competition, titled Dasher is Late for Work.

(http://i.imgur.com/7KdaYYJ.png)

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:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKEORgn6bWY[/youtube]

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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptc3FoztSU8)
- font by codeman38: Press Start 2P (http://www.fontspace.com/codeman38/press-start-2p)
- KOL to replace the VCL and make the EXE smaller, also provides PNG and OpenGL support: link (http://kolmck.net/)
- BASS audio library for music playback: link (http://www.un4seen.com/bass.html)
- BTMemoryModule to load bass.dll from memory: link (https://code.google.com/p/memorymodule/)

Check the attached ZIP archive for the demo.
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: ninogenio on December 20, 2013: hi mate looks really cool!,

very festive. and really love the tune well done!!
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: Hotshot on December 20, 2013: Excellent Pixel Xmas :clap:
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: Raizor on December 20, 2013: 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 :D Great stuff, looking forward to more in future (hopefully). K++
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: Punqtured on December 21, 2013: 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 :)
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: combatking0 on December 21, 2013: 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?
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: Rbz on December 21, 2013: Very cute little prod, music fits very well too.
Runs perfect smoothly here! :)
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: nikin on December 21, 2013: Cute.. love the pixel graphics :)
Runs smooth under Wine on linux, both Windowed and Fullscreen on an intel HD4000
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: Gore Motel on December 21, 2013: Quote from: combatking0 on December 21, 2013
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.

Quote from: nikin on December 21, 2013
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).
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: nikin on December 22, 2013: Quote
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.
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: Gore Motel on December 22, 2013: 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.
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: padman on December 23, 2013: Would have also very well fitted into the UDG challenge earlier this year. Really nicely done! Hope to see more from you! :)
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: ttemper on December 24, 2013: Doesn't work for me, all I get is a blank screen, music and a window saying that the proc has stopped working. :/
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: Gore Motel on December 24, 2013: That sucks. What OS and GPU?
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: Kirl on December 31, 2013: So simple, so awesome! Very pleasing style altogether and very well done. I love this! :clap:
Title: Re: [XMAS_2013] Dasher is Late for Work
Post by: hellfire on January 02, 2014: Got the same problem as ttemper: crashes immediately, empty window stays open, music keeps playing (Windows 7, Nvidia GTX 560)
The video is lovely!