Pingus X-Fi2 v0.9

[Habhome]

jbob, nice to get feedback from the project like this, but I think you should refrain from saying stuff like "Might release in a day or two" for a bit, don't you think? It's done when it's done, don't try to rush it and throw out promises you can't keep. Some people might feel disappointed, and we don't want that, right?

[CrowdAds]

[jbob182]

jbob, nice to get feedback from the project like this, but I think you should refrain from saying stuff like "Might release in a day or two" for a bit, don't you think? It's done when it's done, don't try to rush it and throw out promises you can't keep. Some people might feel disappointed, and we don't want that, right?

Yes, you are right, after the realization of the lag cause and the amount of problems we are finding with some of our core functions, we wont be announcing a beta release for a bit, however saying we had a beta release actually helped us, the amount of bug fixing and coding we have done in the past weak has surpassed any amount we have done for a long while. However, if the three point code does actually work we should have the core engine fixed without having to change anything that is based off of it. The next announcement about a beta will actually be a download link

[jbob182]

Can anyone see why this code would cause a lag:

if p.lr == "left" then
      Collisionmap_x:seek("set",(p.x)*(gamemaxy+1)); -- seek to the     proper position in the collision map
      Collisionmap_x:seek("cur",p.y);
else
      Collisionmap_x:seek("set",(p.x+p.maxx)*(gamemaxy+1));-- seek to the proper position in the collision map
      Collisionmap_x:seek("cur",p.y);
end

and this could would not?

if p.lr == "left" then
      Collisionmap_x:seek("set",(p.x)*(gamemaxx+1)); -- seek to the proper position in the collision map
       Collisionmap_x:seek("cur",p.y);
else
       Collisionmap_x:seek("set",(p.x+p.maxx)*(gamemaxx+1));-- seek to the proper position in the collision map
       Collisionmap_x:seek("cur",p.y);
end

gamemaxy is around 700 and gamemaxx is around 1400 (if i swap gamemaxy with gamemaxx no lag is present..)

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We found out it was because of how the player handles multiplication. We are going to use the discovery in our favor. We will make these lines ( the only source of lag in our game) use multiplication with extremely large numbers, which should greatly optimize the whole project

[delirius]

Maybe, rounding problem. Data type Number can be float or int.
I had a lot of those when i made 2D array map in hypogeum.

[jbob182]

The could be the case, but all of our numbers we pass into our collision engine are whole numbers. However, after contacting a friend of mine he said this:

Okay. I've got a little more information, now. It depends on the processor, but most processors, I believe, use a combination of bitwise << shifting and addition. It is conceivable, though I doubt it, that lookup tables are also involved. This is for the hand-held, right? What are the details of the processor?

The problem is implementing you own multiplication. The efficiency depends upon the specifics. To be more specific... Anything you write will probably be slower than what the processor already implements. Why? Because you'd have to right a little bit of "extra" control code, such as a for loop.

However, you could implement a faster algorithm if; the processor's is fairly inefficient and/or you know exactly what kind of numbers you'll be dealing with (multiples of ten, number of digits, odd or even...) So can you give me some more specifics?

P.S. If you come upon a better algorithm, you'll probably want to implement it as a macro. It'll make for larger but faster code. Memory you probably have enough of; speed, it would seem not

[jbob182]

Visit our Sourceforge page at : https://sourceforge.net/projects/pingus/ to download Pingus X-Fi2 BETA

The BETA does not include the following features:

Unused abilities ( Bomber, Climber, Builder, Miner)
Levels 7-21
Custom Level support
Level generator
Fast forward
Commented code ( most code is not commented yet, besides most of the engine.lua and some of main.lua)


The BETA can only handle 5 penguins on the screen of the zen before the lag becomes bad. Expect a 3 minute collision map generation delay for loading if you battery is low. If you battery is charged, expect a 1.5 minute delay. We do have a percent bar for the generation, so you know it is not frozen.

We are working on optimizations to the engine to improve the number of penguins in future releases.


WARNING!!!!!!! DO NOT RUN THIS GAME ON THE PLAYER WITH LESS THEN 25% BATTERY LEFT! IT WILL MOST LIKELY CAUSE SEVERE CRASHING OF YOUR PLAYER!

[jbob182]

Make sure you run the updater once you download the game, there has been some changes to the level and maximum number of penguins. We will hopefully be including a change log into the updater so you can see what has changed.

[datallboy]

i keep getting a crash after the level is loading. my battery is definetly above 25% tho. anyone else having this problem?

[jbob182]

i keep getting a crash after the level is loading. my battery is definetly above 25% tho. anyone else having this problem?

Hmm, this should not happen, i have tested it on my devices and no crash for me. Are you playing music or anything? Also, Do not run other apps before Pingus, most apps leave some of the memory used. Also, if anyone is trying to update the game, and it fails, there will be a manual download on this thread for a new updater coming soon. The problem is that the updater will not update itself.

[jbob182]

The new updater is out, get it at: https://sourceforge.net/projects/pin...r.zip/download Make sure you extract both PingusUpdater.exe and PingusUpdater Update.exe to the folder Tools

Oh an P.S. I will not be updating the Pingus zip file on sourceforge for a while, my internet's upload speed is too slow for sourceforge without data errors on files around 5mb.


Does anyone know why the updater would retrieve old versions of files/directories while the current src folder is up to date? I rember this has happend before, where when we upload files via ftp or sftp of version will still randomly replace the current one.

[jbob182]

After searching through the code, i found the cause of the problems of the updater, it appears i checked the wrong value to see if the file was the new updater( i checked if a string.find returned 0 not -1)

https://sourceforge.net/projects/pin...1.zip/download

Make sure both tools are in the Tools directory

[TexMex]

Hey! I have some problem to find the game i have downloaded 35MG, but you said it well take 150 MG. can you plz poste a direct link to the download?

[jbob182]

It was 150 MG but then we had to remove the music which moved it down drasticly and then we converted alot of the PNG's to jpg's and that also shrank the space taken up by Pingus, amounting to around 35 MG

[TexMex]

Ok, but i have another problem. I started the game on my device and the first map lodes to 22% before the device turnes off. Can you help me plz?

[jbob182]

Ok, but i have another problem. I started the game on my device and the first map lodes to 22% before the device turnes off. Can you help me plz?

This problem is caused because Pingus X-Fi2 is so demanding of the player. If you have ran any other applications previously, it may experience a ram overload. If you are playing music it will also crash. The last possible cause is that your battery is to low. Charge it to full then retry.

If anyone is wondering why it takes so long to load, it is because it has to be able to edit the collision map for abilities like a digger, without making changes to the original. So we copy the original to a new file. If anyone knows how to edit a file and discard changes, then the loading time would me drastically reduced.

[Habhome]

Originally Posted by jbob182

This problem is caused because Pingus X-Fi2 is so demanding of the player. If you have ran any other applications previously, it may experience a ram overload. If you are playing music it will also crash. The last possible cause is that your battery is to low. Charge it to full then retry.

If anyone is wondering why it takes so long to load, it is because it has to be able to edit the collision map for abilities like a digger, without making changes to the original. So we copy the original to a new file. If anyone knows how to edit a file and discard changes, then the loading time would me drastically reduced.

One possible way would perhaps be to keep a "log" of which changes has been done, and then revert it upon closing.
So say you dig, then you save which coordinates were dug at, and what the key-change was in the collision map, so it can be put back later.
Problem with this considering the unstable nature of the game is that if it crashed mid-game, the map will be modified UNLESS you keep the log file and check against it during startup as well, in which case the damage should be able to be repaired.

I have no idea how efficient this would really be, but it was something which came to mind.

[jbob182]

One possible way would perhaps be to keep a "log" of which changes has been done, and then revert it upon closing.
So say you dig, then you save which coordinates were dug at, and what the key-change was in the collision map, so it can be put back later.
Problem with this considering the unstable nature of the game is that if it crashed mid-game, the map will be modified UNLESS you keep the log file and check against it during startup as well, in which case the damage should be able to be repaired.

I have no idea how efficient this would really be, but it was something which came to mind.

I would have never have thought of that, and believe it our not we actually do have a table with all the changes, it is called moddedarea. It looks something like this:

moddedarea[1].type = "rectange"
moddedarea[1].x= 0
moddedarea[1].y= 0
moddedarea[1].maxx= 20
moddedarea[1].maxy= 20

So that could work but there is one problem. What if the game crashes? Theoretically we could implement a crash check and if it is true, then recover the previous collision file via the updater. I will begin trying to implement this. Thanks for the suggestion, I hope it works.

There is One final problem though, how do we keep the previous data, the only way i can think of would be to create many files that look like edit1, edit2,edit3 that record the overwritten data.

P.S. Pingus is only unstable when loading, not during gameplay.



One final note, the recording to the log would not slow down gameplay at all because of one critical piece of code we implemented. Actions such as digger and miner act every other frame, meaning we have an open frame to do work without causing a lag.


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I ran a quick test with the digger and it worked perfect, as soon as I add the basher, a quick check for any blockers, and a crash log I should be done.

[Habhome]

How I meant it could withstand crashes would be if you saved the changes to a file on the player, which would take a little bit more time than just save it in a table. Then the file should always be there to check against on startup in case it crashed before.

[jbob182]

How I meant it could withstand crashes would be if you saved the changes to a file on the player, which would take a little bit more time than just save it in a table. Then the file should always be there to check against on startup in case it crashed before.

Currently, i use the table for a refernce for the position and a file for the old data. The problem is that the file must be closed to finalize the writing, and if it were to crash in the middle of an ability then it would contain no data. So far the digger and blocker are done, its just the basher giving me trouble now.

[TexMex]

Hey i tryide to load the battery on my device to 100% and did just like you said but my zen do still turn it self of. plz help