RetroSphere v2

Yippee! RetroSphere 2 is out!

RetroSphere is a fast, action packed and fun arcade style game inspired by Trailblazer from the early 80's.



Features
· 64 levels of z-plane madness!
· 32 different track tile types!
· 32 cool, original, CD quality tunes!
· 1 and 2 player game modes!
· Practice mode - ability to turn off specific track tile types and allows you to play any track (even your own)! (disabled in the demo version)
· Fully featured custom level editor so you can design and your own tracks!
· Beautiful lush DirectX graphics with amazing special effects including eye candy particle engine!
· Fully configurable video / audio / controls!
· Keyboard only and joystick only support (M.A.M.E cabinet ready!)
· Supports resolutions right up to 1792x1344 in glorious 32 bit colour with anti-aliasing!
· Full screen and windowed mode!
· High score table!
· Non-violent and fun for all ages!
· Install / uninstall support!
· Lifetime technical support!
· Free updates for life!
· Warm satisfaction that you are supporting an independent software developer!

What's New?
· Fade to black routine tweaked to ensure that we are truly fading to black.
· Various additions and updates to documentation.
· Removed the "Boiled Sweets" splash logo image to speed up game start up time.
· Added 8 new track tile types, fake, joker, filler, ghost, slowmo, displace, bullet mine & flip bringing total track tile types to 32!
· Added 12 new original tunes bringing the total to 32!
· Added 32 new tracks bringing the total to 64!
· Added display of 'extra info' to each track for training and education purposes :-)
· Redesigned the initial levels to make them easier.
· Added in game functions keys...
· Finally (at long last – phew) fixed the HORRID tear in the world ‘plasma’ field!
· Now randomly shift the world 'plasma' layer to great effect!
· Particle engine updated, more stable and faster.
· Improved the "loading" transition screens, now has a nice background a gives a little more information on what’s happening in the background.
· Now ensure we never play the same music track twice in a row.
· The animated track textures were not being initialised correctly -- a minor bug but sometimes at the start of the level these textures weren't visible.
· Now no longer reset the balls speed if you hit a qoob tile.
· Added basic validation when loading track data to prevent invalid track types blowing up game!
· Game load time reduced!
· Spinning worlds now at random angles
· Fixed horrid random bug whereby the balls collision detection was not behaving correctly in 2 player mode! Thanks Pat!
· Added sound effect for the turn left and turn right track types.
· Ensure we don’t play more than on jump sound at the same time.
· Added option to allow one to skip the bonus update routine at the end of the track.
· Fixed bug during the bonus update routine to ensure we award extra lives if the trigger is met.
· Limited the 2 player mode in the demo version.
· Track tile types are now animated in practice mode selection and instructions section. This is cool.
· Allow the half and full height blocks to be turned off in practice mode.
· Menu can now be driven by the keyboard (you can still use the mouse but now it is optional). This was added for the MAME community -- thanks to Paul Murphy for the suggestion! ALSO the buttons now light up to show which is selected instead of moving back and forth! This is a MAJOR enhancement and full credit to Pat for the implementation!
· Audio options menu now has square LED’s to show the volumes which changes in real time to allow the user to hear how it will sound after they press the ‘apply’ button.
· Menu load time reduced!
· Practice game track select has been updated and looks more like the rest of the menu – it no longer uses a BCF list box!
· Allow the curfew to be re-activated even if we are during the curfew’s ‘lights up’ cycle.
· Stop the players sphere from falling off the end of the lead out track at the end of a track if they are going VERY fast. This causes the bonus routine to take ages to run.
· General redesign, code tidy and performance increases including…
· Vastly improved the logic when creating new tracks, loading tracks or resizing tracks. We now only keep in memory the minimum number of track entities required (as opposed to always having 5 * 2000 of the buggers). This improves the FPS enormously!
· Improved load time
· Tile search routine dramatically improved
· Changed the editor text font so that the menu shortcut keys now line up!
· Reduced the camera range as tiles beyond 50 cannot be sensibly edited anyway.
· Removed a couple of unnecessary BCF windows
· Replaced the tile buttons for a cleaner, faster list box
· Moved the info text from the status to the main window and has been added to.
· Added splash screen.
· Editor can now also be run in windowed mode – great for designing levels at work!
· Added the new tiles.
· Added option to auto select tiles. This is useful for changing a large number of tiles.
· Added option to highlight current tile. This is useful to ensure you change the correct tile.
· Added option to undo last modified tile.
· Fixed the bug if you cancelled the ‘Goto Position’ dialog.
· "Easy Come, Easy Go" was not possible from the checkpoint restart position - fixed.

What are you waiting for? Go grab a copy here http://www.boiledsweets.com/RetroSphere

Wow, you've been busy. I played the original C64 version and your earlier version so I'll check this out now!

btw your web page says "£15 (€? / $? approx)", so you might want to work out the correct values. You may know this already of course.

So can I ask if you sold many Retrospheres after all the glowing reviews. You must have got tons of downloads. Good Conversion Rate? Excuse my nosiness but I'm always interested in how games do especially decent one.s.

Thanks Grey,

pricing fixed - missed that!

Yeah it's cool. Level one is quite hard tho' call me lame... On the high score table what are the pink ankhs doing in the middle of the the level 5 score? Also maybe you should say in the demo version that you can't enter high scores as I was confused and only realised you couldn't on game exit and reading the full game features.

Hey you can email me any info on sales if you prefer to keep it private. I scratched your back u scratch min type thang ;-)

Excellent game as ever - memories of the C64 , etc
Very nicely done.

Small gripe :-

I get a MAV unless i run it in compatibility mode.
Also get a MAV when leaving the game.

The floor has no 'thickness', i seem to remember the old version had some depth to the tiles, so you could see the edges of holes as they come toward you - does that make sense ?

And a final small thing, the 'loading menu' message seems to be onscreen for ages (probably not, but when there's nothing else to look at!) i notice in your notes you mention that you've removed a splash screen - perhaps you could bring this back and load the menu whilst showing the logo, etc ?

Enjoyed playing it anyhow...

Specs :- P4 3.2, XP Pro, PCI Radeon X300 (64Mb), DX 9.0c

cheers

Funky Frank

is it me or is the second (or third) time we've seen this snag? I hope we find whats causing them!!!!

/me adds another game to try to his list.

No it didn't, Frank - I think your memory is playing tricks on you. :)

Downloading demo now...

[edit] I get "Unable to set graphics mode" in both fullscreen and windowed. :(
The editor works, though.

Specs: Athlon 1Ghz, GeForce 2 GTS 32MB, 256MB RAM, Win98SE

I tried a re-boot but still no joy.

[edit] BTW, my GFX can do 3D in all the usual screen modes - both windowed/fullscreen and 16/32bit, so I can't think what's causing this. DXdiag reports no probs, either.

Hi,

this MAV thing is a worry. We have been developing / testing this (4 testers) for nigh on 6 months now with NO MAVS! Hmm. Has a file called RetroSphere.ini been created in the RetroSphere\sys directory?

If so could you please send to me at info@...

I need to squash this problem ASAP!

BIG10P - You are correct - the old version had a flat track - we have NOT changed this at all.

Boiled Sweets: I have the RetroSphere.ini but it's completely empty! I tried deleting it but still get the same error.

RE: Track thickness : blimey, just goes to show how time affects your memory (or is it my eyesight thats failing...)

RetroSphere.ini e-mail on its way.

cheers

Funky Frank

[edited]

Please unzip this and stick the INI file into \RetroSphere\sys and please report back...

http://www.boiledsweets.com/RetroSphere/bin/RetroSphere.zip
Many thanks!!!!!!!!!!

Replaced .ini file in /sys folder - removed compatibility mode - annnnnnd

no MAV!
Either before (or on exit as previously)

cheers

Funky Frank

Hmm. Seems like we may have a slight problem with our detect an INI file routine...

I will post a new version that installs a dummy ini file. I think this is down to rogue wild file pointers...

Thanks for all your help.

Oh, I thought you were talking to me when you asked for the ini.

Anyway, it's working now with new ini file.

It obviously was saying "unable to set graphics mode" because the blitz file reading command don't give an error when you read passed the end of the file - they just return 0 or empty strings. Thus, trying to read the gfx mode from the empty file would result in Graphics3D 0,0,0,0 - which won't work, obviously. :)

Why was my ini empty in the first place, though?

Looking into that - I think we have an unsafe pieve of code that (weirdly) works here.

We try to open the file and then create the file without closing it but we lose the file handle in the middle.

Including a dummy ini file will fix this for the short term. We will fix the code but once again thanks for all your help. Hopefully this will not hinder your enjoyment of the game...

Great improvements!

One tiny thing you could change for the demo:
Make it possible to "click" away the nag-screen at the end after a certain delay (5 seconds or whatever).

Boiled Sweets: Just an idea but you could add a mode where the ball stays in the centre of the screen and the track moves from side-to-side as you steer. I think this would give a greater feeling of control. It may give a greater feeling of 3D, too.

I know it didn't do this in the original and you probably want to stay as close to that as possible but I think it would be nice to have as a option.

big10p - this is a neat suggestion and works beautifully. I have implemented this as an option (F10 key toggles) and will ship a new version soon. Thanks for your feedback.

Grisu - yes! Can now click away the nag screen - thanks for your feedback.

Big10p: sounds like a cool idea.

Cool. I look forward to giving it a try. :)

Its ready - What are you waiting for? Go grab a copy here www.boiledsweets.com/RetroSphere/bin/RetroSphereDemo.zip

Boilded Sweets: I've tried downloading the new zip twice but WinZip keeps saying it's an invalid archive.

Anyone else getting this?

Hi,

I bought version 1.0, and how do I upgrade, I didn't found the version 1.1 in update section, and it's still 1.0 currently.

I get invalid or corrupt archive too.

OK, as it seems it's not just me getting this, I've emailed Boiled Sweets to let him know.

Sorry don't know how that happened - thanks for warning me.

yoxola - please contact me directly with you original purchase details at info@... as you are eligable for a free upgrade to v2.01. Or you can now download from the secure area.

Thanks Boiled :)

I kept my purchased info so I downloaded with my login information, the v2 is really GREAT.

I tried downloading the demo, but it says that the zip is corrupt or something. Using WinAce.

po - what unarchiver are you using? It was zipped with WINRAR 2.5. Maybe you need a later version. If you are still having trouble let me know here and I'll pack with an earlier version of WinZip...

I'm using the 'demo' version of WinAce Archiver 2.5. I'm actully 150 days past the trial date, but meh.
The error is:

This ZIP file is damaged or incomplete. If it is part of a multi-volume archive, select "Cancel" and insert the
first volume of this set to re-read the archive. If you suspect the archive to be damaged, press "OK" to
read at least the accessible contents of the archive.

Pressing 'cancel' or 'ok' doesn't do anything. I tried both opening(with Zip-Archiv (Default)) it straight from your site and saving to disk.

po - please try again - i have packed this with WinZip this time!

Yep, the zip works for me now.

I really like the new control view. It does work really well and I prefer it, myself, but it's nice to have the option of the original view, too. Nice work.

big10p - hats off to you!

We really ought to have done this in the very beginning, it makes the game sooo much better!

Thanks once again for the input.

Now we have RetroSphere 2 and Vorboils 2 out we can go back to our dear old friend qoob (our first blitz3d project). We want to get this finished as it's been in development on and off for almost 3 years now so we can devote our grey matter to BlitzMAX and a new project.

Glad to be of some service. :)