Marble Game Demo

[Baruch]

Hi
Do you remember “Balance” from “Atari”? It's an old ( very cool) physic marble game.
I was thinking of making a marble game with the new director 11.5 physic engine.
This Is what I came up with..
Baruch
http://www.mygames.co.il/marble/marble.html

[Paul Maguire]

On 26 Jun 2010, at 18:05, Baruch wrote:

http://www.mygames.co.il/marble/marble.html

Hey - this is nice! What makes it work for me is the sense of inertia and scale - the massive moon thing in the background is perfectly matched to the apparent weight and inertia of the ball. It's a 3D game which actually has some sort of atmosphere. Cool.

Super Chunky Ball? :-)

Regards, Paul.

[CC Chamberlin]

Is there an ETA for a 64-bit version of the Shockwave Player on Mac? I see from the Adobe technote on the subject that this has been an issue for at least nine months.

CC

[Nonoche]

Le 28 juin 2010 à 17:36, CC Chamberlin a écrit :

>
> Is there an ETA for a 64-bit version of the Shockwave Player on Mac? I see from the Adobe technote on the subject that this has been an issue for at least nine months.

It has been an issue ever since Apple released Mac OS X 10.6 on Aug 28, 2009 (after a year of beta testing…)

No official word on a fix up to now, but one can reasonably assume (or hope) it is underway.

[peel peel]

nice design

i noticed two bad points

- it takes about 85% of my 3ghz cpu, a such simple game should take about 0%... it shoud'nt be caused by ageia (there's just one single ball), so i think there'es a problem in graphics optimizations (non power2 texture dimensions?, too many polygons? cpu-eater shader effect ?

- sound isn't reactive. i don't know which sound engine you use... with the old qt3mix/directsound of director 10 i got reactive sound by using channel number one for fast sounds, and other channels for slow sounds


good luck

2010/6/28 Paul Maguire <pa...@isodesign.co.uk>

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[Baruch]

Thanks
About cpu
My textures are power2 I but Maybe I'm killing ageia because I use "concave" for the fence?
polygons are minimal :(

Sound: I use the old sound engine and I should try the new one :)
Baruch

[peel peel]

i made ageia tests on concave with one sphere and it was fast

maybe you could try this test: deactivate physic engine and leave display active, and watch what happens hiwth cpu

if the problem comes from physx, maybe there are too many polygons in map models, you shouls use a hidden lower poly collision structure

if it's a display issue you can try to discard effects or have a look at models poly count

2010/6/29 Baruch <bbe...@gmail.com>

[peel peel]

if polygon count is minimal it can be due to a shader effect cpu-eater

if not done, you can fasten polygon computation by exploding the map in small models so you have about a dozen in field of view (this will optimize shockwave's automatic frustum culling)

[peel peel]

forget "dozen"... it's for a rotating camera

for your camera system, let' say about 4 map models in screen

[noisecrime]

----- Original Message -----
From: "peel peel" <peel....@gmail.com>

> i noticed two bad points
>
> - it takes about 85% of my 3ghz cpu, a such simple game should take about
> 0%... it shoud'nt be caused by ageia (there's just one single ball), so i
> think there'es a problem in graphics optimizations (non power2 texture
> dimensions?, too many polygons? cpu-eater shader effect ?

Yet none of those apply what so ever, especially not in terms of cpu usage.

Cleary the game does not use too many polygons (though it still looks good
and is fun to play I might add). Non-power of two is irrelvevant since SW
can't handle them and automatically downsize to nearest when you gereate the
texture and as for shader effects? Hello? this is SW3D we are talking about,
its a decade old 3d engine, it doesn't have shaders or is capable of
anything like it.

> if not done, you can fasten polygon computation by exploding the map in
> small models so you have about a dozen in field of view (this will
> optimize
> shockwave's automatic frustum culling)

Thats likely the worse thing you can do, splitting models means more draw
calls and on any modern gpu that will kill performance faster than anything
else. In fact its generally good practice to do the reverse and combine as
many models with the same shader and spatial locality together to reduce the
number of draw calls.

I'm not sure what you are trying to get at here, you main gripe is cpu
usage, yet everything you mention is far more gpu dependant. Then of course
there is the fact that Director/Shockwave has always been a cpu hog, it will
use as much as it can get, always has always will. Ultimately I suspect
thats why you are seeing such high usage, but you know what, don't worry
about it. ;)

Noisecrime 2010

[Chris Evans]

Yay, game discussion!

Anyway, I have to side with NoiseCrime. SW3D has always been a resource hog.
In a sense though, it has to be. Generally with real-time 3D applications,
you want your computer to run it with the highest frame rate as possible so
of course it's going to push your system. Normally when you play a desktop
3D game, you have a minimal amount of applications open so you can achieve
the best performance. Also those applications are going to be sluggish
anyway while you're playing the game. Yet with Shockwave3D, people still
expect to have 10 browser tabs open, a messenger client, iTunes, and God
knows what else. I always try to have a note on my games that it's "highly
recommended to close all other applications and browser windows while
playing this game."

That said, the Tempo setting in your Shockwave movie does have some effect
on the CPU usage. If you have the frame rate cranked up to 300 fps, then
it's most likely going to cause 100% CPU usage. If you lower it to 30-60
fps, then your CPU usage might be in the 70-80% range depending on the
complexity of the 3D scene.

I wouldn't worry about it too much unless a lot of people start complaining
that they're browser is becoming unresponsive and crashing.

Btw, I love the moon in the Marble Game!

- Chris

[Dean Utian]

I like games like this as they are very simple but addictive. There has been another Shockwave version of this game. The SW version is no longer online but there is a downloadable demo. It's called 3D Slickball:
http://www.takegame.com/arcade/htm/slickball3.htm

 

 

Thing I like about Slickball is that the ramps have columns so they don't look like they are floating. The other thing Slickball does well is the camera changes, level changes and how the ball interacts in different ways with the pathway - through levers, magnets. In Slickball, you can press the spacebar to bring the ball to a stop.

 

I like the 3D moon background and other things in the Marble Game. Colours look very good, like the path is glowing and the marble too. Have you looked at the new supported 3D anti-aliasing capability?

 

Dean

 

 

[Baruch]

Thank you all
You helped me a lot

For the background effect I use sphere within a sphere and translate the shader .

 I tried 3D Stickball but It runs only in software mode :(
I Haven't looked on the 3D anti-aliasing I hope It's just a matter of use It -yes or no
Question:
Does anybody have an idea how to tilt a fixed rigid body (the ground) in order to move the ball on It?

Baruch

 

--

[Nonoche]

Le 30 juin 2010 à 15:07, Baruch a écrit :

> Does anybody have an idea how to tilt a fixed rigid body (the ground) in order to move the ball on It?

I'd just change the gravity and camera direction

[Mal]

>
>> Does anybody have an idea how to tilt a fixed rigid body (the ground) in order to move the ball on It?
>
> I'd just change the gravity and camera direction

I did a search for a game I made several years ago ( using Havok and
Shockwave 3D ), where I just tilted the camera to get that effect.

Here's the link that came up first in Google...
http://www.2flashgames.com/play/f-188.htm

I was thinking of updating this for the iPhone when I get a chance (
using either Shiva or Unity3D - we have pro licenses for both ), but
maybe even recreate it in Shockwave 3D as well ( all 3 technologies
use PhysX ).

Mal

[noisecrime]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mal" <malach...@gmail.com>

> I was thinking of updating this for the iPhone when I get a chance (
> using either Shiva or Unity3D - we have pro licenses for both ), but
> maybe even recreate it in Shockwave 3D as well ( all 3 technologies
> use PhysX ).

I came across Shiva recently, have you used it much, is it any good?
Personally i'm enjoying using Unity at the moment.

Noisecrime 2010

[Mal]

Hi there Noisecrime,

> I came across Shiva recently, have you used it much, is it any good?
> Personally i'm enjoying using Unity at the moment.

Unity is def pretty cool - saying that, Shiva takes a bit more used
to, due to having a specific way of working with it's UI, but the
price can't be beaten ( compiling for iPhone / Android etc is free,
even with the under $200 version ). Saying that, you have to learn
LUA, and the way you set up global variables is done in the UI, rather
than in code ( code is local only vars ).

It's worth keeping an eye on, but Unity would probably pip it at the
post at the moment.
Mal

[noisecrime]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mal" <malach...@gmail.com>

> It's worth keeping an eye on, but Unity would probably pip it at the
> post at the moment.

thanks for the info.

Noisecrime 2010

[Baruch]

Hi Mal
Forgot to tell you
Very cool game...
Game Play is Awesome very similar to Wii "Marble mania"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jrhlTvW1uU

You should do something with it.(export It to "IPHONE" ) Adoebe  help us........:)
Baruch