Hidden Cosmos: A Four Player Space Shooter Game

[EnigmaticCoder]

I finished the Dreamcast game I've been working on for the past month called, Hidden Cosmos. It's similar to Galaga but with a story and four player multiplayer. And by the way, it's open source:

You can get the game and the code here: http://sites.google.com/site/enigmaticcoder/games

Just to be sure, I'm not some random shcmo plugging his game (well I am plugging my game, but I've been around a while). I used to go by anothrguitarist and LuciDreamTheater. Cheers!

[Falco Girgis]

Holy shit! We have other indie Dreamcast developers around here? I remember you posting a question at the dcemulation.org boards, but I didn't realize you had been working on your own homebrew.

I'll be sure to try it out when I get some CD-Rs. Is there any chance that you have a .elf uploaded somewhere? I have two coder's cables and a broadband adapter. Or actually, as long as you didn't do anything freaky, I could just compile from source.

[combatant936]

Is there any chance that you have a .elf uploaded somewhere?

There's one with the source code xD

[EnigmaticCoder]

Yep, there's an .elf file in the tarball, but it won't work unless you change globals.cpp (I don't use the romdisk exclusively). Change this line:

const std::string DIR = "/pc/home/john/Desktop/Link to Programming/Hidden Cosmos";

to

const std::string DIR = *INSERT PATH TO THE UNZIPPED FILES*

Let me know if you need any more help running it.

[Falco Girgis]

Yep, there's an .elf file in the tarball, but it won't work unless you change globals.cpp (I don't use the romdisk exclusively). Change this line:

const std::string DIR = "/pc/home/john/Desktop/Link to Programming/Hidden Cosmos";

to

const std::string DIR = *INSERT PATH TO THE UNZIPPED FILES*

Let me know if you need any more help running it.

Haha, that's basically how ES is done currently.

Are you also using /cd/ (without mounting the romdisk) for your self-booting image? I'll let you know how it goes once I bust out my BBA and stuff.

edit: I notice you don't have any screenshots. KOS has a built-in function for dumping the framebuffer to a .ppm.

[EnigmaticCoder]

> Are you also using /cd/ (without mounting the romdisk) for your self-booting image?

I'm mounting the romdisk and using /cd/ with the CDRom.

> I notice you don't have any screenshots. KOS has a built-in function for dumping the framebuffer to a .ppm.

Really? I'll have to look into that.

[Falco Girgis]

So I'm looking through your source code (because I think it's fun). It looks extremely well written. Your coding style is pretty.

I had a look at your PVR rendering stuff (because I'm a DC nerd), and I thought that I would point a few things out.

FIRST PORTION REMOVED (SEE NEXT POST), BECAUSE I WAS BEING A MORON.

Your PVR code looks really nice (drawImage()). I don't know if you're aware, but there's actually a third type of polygon on Dreamcast (other than transparent and opaque), and it's called "punchthru." I saw that your sprites are all being rendered with

Code: Select all

    vert.argb = PVR_PACK_COLOR(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f);    

which makes me guess that your only use for transparency is for masking the outsides of sprites. Punchthru polygons allow a single alpha channel for this purpose. It's either completely transparent or not at all, basically the same cost as an opaque polygon plus a full transparent color.

On the PVR, TR polygons are actually pretty slow, so you might want to look into enabling the PT list (which is disabled by default) for another performance increase.

edit: Oh, I see that you were originally rendering with the punchtru list, but it's commented out:

Code: Select all

    //pvr_poly_cxt_txr(&cxt, PVR_LIST_PT_POLY, PVR_TXRFMT_ARGB1555, size, size2, image, PVR_FILTER_NONE);

[Falco Girgis]

Wow, I feel like a moron. I just looked at the source for another minute, and realized that you had only split your menu screens into separate scenes, which I'm assuming are the only things being rendered.

[EnigmaticCoder]

>On the PVR, TR polygons are actually pretty slow, so you might want to look into enabling the PT list (which is disabled by default) for another performance increase.

First of all, thanks for looking through my code, it's flattering. Secondly, I uncommented that line in drawImage, but the game didn't render. What else would I have to do to enable PT?

[EnigmaticCoder]

Did you get a chance to play it yet?