friking shark microfreezes

Dear all,

I had time to test the newly released games for W3DNova by Kas1e and co (thanks you all to make this happen) and thought about sharing my feedback.

- Prototype works fine over 200fps and with joypad.

- Friking Shark is working good too BUT there is no joypad support, which is a shame for a schmup IMHO and I am also experiencing microfreezes, in fact each time I destroy a new type of enemy, and only the 1st time. Afterwards the game is smooth.

Anyone else having this kind of behavior ?

config is X-5000, 2Go RAM, RadeonR7-250, SFS2

Lio : indeed, I did not translate into French what Kas1e said about that (but you could have asked on Amiga-NG).

So, it's normal because of shaders loadings. If you play a second time, it won't happen.

@K-L

ah ok did not know since there was no subject on the forums about that !

would be good to put that in the readme then, as well as the lack of joypad support...

@Lio

Yeah, K-L right : you have those pauses only when you load game from disk, and first time fly a bit and kill few enimies. To have it all smooth at current stage you just start a game, play a minute, collect those "pauses" and then exit from level and start it again : and no more pauses.

Reassons for pauses are this: gl4es wrapper works that way: when gl states changes, it generate internal gl4es shader, which need to compile, load, execute or whatever and that take that "micro pause".

To avoid that issue, we wait for one or another thing to happens:

1). gl4es will have "precompiled shaders". That mean, that you play any game/app one time, gl4es made all the internal shaders it needs, save them to disk, and then , they always just used from disk. But when ptitSeb will do so, no one know. Month, or year(s) - dunno. Its in his TODO.

2). fricking shark have support of real shaders, not internal gl4es ones used to make it all works, but real ones which come with fricking shark. At moment they disabled, because Warp3Dnova have bug in it. It is in the BZ already, and Hans aware , there is:

http://www.amiga.org/developer/bugreports/view.php?id=377

Once Hans deal with it, and assuming there will be no visual errors with fricking shark's shaders which need more fixes in warp3dnova, i can enable them, and as they calculates at the begining of the levels, there also will be no pauses.


As for Joystick : i do not have one, so can't test it, but we can add support of it for friking shark, if, any of you with joystick have interest to test it.

@kas1e

I have a Joystick / pad on my A1, if you need a tester.

@benny
Ok thanks, ptitSeb have some general joystik code using the SDL2 Gamecontroler interface, which we can test with another simple game firstly, and if all will working well, it can be possible to add the same kind of code to fricking shark as well. So soon will upload something for tests (not today probabaly)

@kas1e

thanks for your detailed explanations (and hard work obviously).

I could also betatest the addition of joypad support.

@Lio, Benny

So, there is port of some game called "Hydra Castle Labyrinth" (i don't test it much, so its not time for os4depot upload), but, what is important : in that port, ptitSeb add joystick support via "SDL2 Gamecontroler interface", and so, test plz that game, if joystick work. If it works, we can then the same way add it to fricking shark without too much work.

There is test game:
http://kas1e.mikendezign.com/aos4/hydracastlelabyrinth.lha

Run it from shell, do "stack 1000000" before just in case, and if you need fullscreen mode, you can run it like "hcl --fullscreen". If you need window mode, then it runs in 640x480 by default, so to make it bigger you can do "hcl -x3" or "hcl -x4".

Let us know if joystik work. Thanks !

@kas1e

I tested the game with Competition Pro USB. The game character moves left, right, up and down with the joystick. But pressing fire buttons 1 and 2 nothing happens. Pressing buttons 3 and 4 the character moves left and right. The joystick was recognized automatically.

@TSK
Thanks for test

@Lio, benny
Is it same for you ?

@TSK
Ok it was issue on our side, plz, check new build:

https://www.sendspace.com/file/hht74v

I have a Thrustmaster dual analog 3.2 :
- left/right up/down from the joystick are working
- button 1 is mapped as up
- button 2 is mapped as down
- button 3 is mapped as left
- button 4 is mapped as right
- button 5 is mapped as ? (Inventory)
- button 6 is mapped as ESC (menu)
- button 11 is mapped as Jump
- button 12 is mapped as Attack

@kas1e

Now fire buttons 1 and 2 are jump and attack but I can't move the character any more with the new build.

@Lio
What version you check, from post #8 or post #11 ?

@TSK
Strange.. How that controller looks like? The character movement, is this done using analog stick or dpad?

I only tested your latest version (version 11)

@Lio
So we can say that it works for you ?

well not really since the buttons are mapped to the x/y direction...

@Lio
It looks like if you test version from post #8.. (there was buttons mappet as directions). Can you recheck it to be sure that its version from post #11. Because i not sure if GameController's API should work with your joystick.

@TSK
Is your Competition pro have analog stick ? I mean is it joystick which looks like one from the past for those zx-spectrums with one big analogue stick for direction, and 2 red buttons ?

@kas1e

yes I am sure it is the version from post#11
I checked again just a few minutes ago.
unfortunately hcl -v does not return the revision.

@kas1e

No, it's digital stick. 4 red buttons. link