CSP Latest Demo

i'd really luv to run it... but the demo seems to crash on startup, with a screen telling me that i don't have the proper codec to run the opening movie, and a telephone ringing witha young lady's voice on one end...

... what da flussshhhh!!!

... is dis some sorta promo tease.... a new advertising gimmick... :)

seriously though... wouldn't it have been a bit better to have the logic not assume that the machine running the demo had everything necessary to run it, and bypass stuff like the opening movie, and other non essaentials by trapping the error and moving past it... or at the very least, gracefully exit the app...

--Mike

Crappy Shooting Pants?

> i'd really luv to run it...

I'd really luv to know what you're on about...

Actually thinking about it some more, I'm not in the slightest bit curious. :)

.

Computer generated ladys voice I would say ;)

But I played the Demo to finish, not bad at all.
A little slow with everything maxed+bloom
But otherwise it ran decent.


Sam

what codec do i need to get past the startup movie...

--Mike

I ran it - a decent effort and it ran ok on my Athlon64 + Geforce6600GT. However the issue with FPS engines is that the bar's been raised so high - even for indie efforts.

Things I did notice;

Enemy AI (when attacking) appears to be of the 'stand in one place and shoot' variety. Else the AI appeared to like to run about frenetically.

Windows are bullet proof.

Wire mesh fences are bullet proof.

I located a building's entrance (and I got a message telling me the doors were locked permanently). As I had explosive charges in my armoury, I thought it only logical that I could blow the doors. Not so, apparently the doors are made of some super-duper anti-explosive material. Hmm.

Elsewise, all the requisite functions required in a FPS seem to be demonstrated sucessfully.

MadJack - I concur with the good stuff - except that climbing the plant life felt a bit odd. I think plants should be ignored by the collision system.

I too could not get inside the strange locked doors, explosives and trying to negociate into the building via the underground grid and tunnels.

IPete2.

"what codec do i need to get past the startup movie..."

Im not sure what codec it is Mike, probably mediaplayer 10 or Divx


Sam

I agree with MadJack's assessment. The bar for FPS games has been raised considerably, not just in the graphics department but also in level interactivity. It's slowly becoming expected that the environment should react to the player's actions. Glass needs to break when it's shot at, barrels and crates need to move when running into them, etc.

Essentially useless additions (unless there's room for emergent gameplay by doing them - i.e. shooting out a window and moving a barrel over to the window allows the player to reach new areas, etc.) but in a genre that's driven by graphical improvements, little tidbits like these go a long way in suspending disbelief.

Performance wasn't bad although the "Gloom FX" did cause a noticable slowdown. Ultimately I turned them off not so much due to low framerate but because I thought the bloom was a bit over the top.

On my first run through, I managed to fall through the elevator near the beginning of the level. This wouldn't have been a problem but the 'down' switch for the elevator didn't work for me. The elevator was stuck at the top and I was stuck at the bottom. Ultimately I restarted the level and made sure to be extra careful on lifts from then on.

so what is CSP exactly?

Cybers Skunk Productions I think ...

Anyway, I was going to say the same as the above but I didn't before to be nice ... I guess that's silly.

Anyway, the CSP demos from 2+ years ago were radical for the time. They were up till then the best things done in Blitz but now the CSP engine is looking really long in the tooth and just doesn't feel that great. A lot of the nitpicks I had before still stand as well. The enemy characters don't react to fire ... you need a damage animation so you know when you've hit someone and the level of interaction while it used to be great just doesn't cut it anymore. This is the first one I didn't even complete.

Er...gentlemen (and ladies) - I think what you are saying is correct - if you are developing a cutting edge title.

CSP Engine is for people who - like many here - just want to play with ideas, and develop a game idea quickly - to whatever level they are happy with. I think there is little intention to develop a triple A title with any B3D product.

We shouldn't criticise as though csp engine or indeed any other B3D product is going head to head against Half Life 2 or Unreal 3 or whatever other engine leading teams of developers are using.

Although there is some very good work shown on these forums, little could compare to Mustang's professional work and so you wouldn't normally compare demos done in B3d with '3D Marks' stuff - would you?

I think we should give the author a break.

This is good solid stuff and far beyond what many people here (present company accepted) could ever hope to achieve.

We should be fair and realistic when looking at stuff offered up for critique.

IPete2.

Hey, thanks everybody. Of course, you're right, this engine is kind of 90ies, probably also because it's still Blitz3D compiled and therefor a DX7 thing (well that's no excuse for a number of weak points). I also agree, Enemy AI, Glass damage etc. are things that are top ranking on my priority list for updates.

I only released a new version with some new features, of course it's not complete. For the fence I have to say maybe I forgot to make some of them unpickable so they wouldn't be bulletproof. The same goes for windows. Also, the elevator still needs some debugging. But what count's is the fact that some feature requests of users have been implemented.


Now back to Reds initial Question: The very first movie (CSP Logo with chrome sphinx) is a Mpeg1 file. If that one plays ok, then it must be the second Movie (level intro). I think it's surprising that your machine doesn't support the codec since I thought this time I have chosen a codec that is installed on all windows, from 3.10 to windows 2020: Cinepak Radius!

Again it seems, you can never be sure when it comes to codecs. Of course, the choice of movies and their codecs is up to the level designer, so basicly it's not a problem of the engine (while I agree the game shold not abort when the codec is unknown, gotta fix this, thanks). Futhermore there is the concept of a game installer that would try to open a dummy movie and if it fails, it will offer to install the required codec.

yeah, hurry and fix that... i wanna to see this game in action!!!!

:) ya know i'm just kidding don't ya...

without a doubt, trying to anticipate the myriad configurations that your game will have to run in, is definitely one of the more daunting propositions of the development cycle...

good luck with your development JF... in the meantime, i'll see if i can get the codec and get this running...


**** added *****

funny... i got the thing to run on my Win2K server...
go figure...
why is my XP (SP1) machines not running it...

... waaaaaaa... waaaaaaaaahhhh



**** more added comments ****

the menus and flow are smooth... a good testiment to the engine... and the graphics look good, so far ( i just started, haven't gotten anywhere yet)...

an artistic comment, if i may...

i like the idea of the starting sequence screens... but all along, i kept thinking, you might consider having em fade in and out to black while the phone dialog is playing... more forboding and dramatic...

:)

good luck with your game engine...

--Mike

I would buy it, but i need Physic :)

I agree totally with IPete2 - This is still the best FPS engine written in Blitz3d. Great work as always jfk !

What about the Tecno demo by Eurythmia (if he ever decides he'll do anymore work on it...)?

Thank you very much. I'd love to see more fps demo releases from this community. Red - the level intro movie was reduced to about 5 still frames, only to get a small filesize. Of course imagine a very nice cutscene avi there :)

BTW. I added support for an optional soundtrack file that is played parallely to the movie, so it's possible to use eg. cinepak radius for the video (thought it's installed on all windows versions, but lacks of audio compressen) and Ogg for its seperate soundtrack.