Nuncabola (Page 1 of 12)

Nuncabola uses the following libraries:

• LWJGL, the Lightweight Java Game Library (three-clause BSD license)

• JInput, used by LWJGL (three-clause BSD license)

• JOrbis (LGPL)

• CodeLibF, a small subset of a general-purpose library I use in my projects (LGPL)

Changes between Neverball r2856 and Nuncabola 0.1:

General:

• Nuncabola uses some simple interpolation between game states to fix the problem of stuttering graphics. As discussed in Glenn Fiedler's article, this is actually a crucial part of a fixed-timestep design. With this code in place, graphics are now again as smooth as those of 1.4.0 (1).

• It's worth mentioning that there was (and is) a second problem source contributing to the judder in Neverball. On some systems with NVIDIA drivers, calls to SDL_PollEvent may take unreasonably long when the driver setting "threaded optimization" is set to "on" (its default value). The delay is on the order of the screen refresh interval, disrupting the timing of the main loop. I would advise anyone who is affected to turn off threaded optimization.

Directory structure:

• With Nuncabola, there are separate directories for score files, replays and screenshots. The structure now looks like this:
  =
  Nuncabola
    |
    |_ Replays
    |   |_ easy-01_01.nbr
    |   |_ ...
    |
    |_ Scores
    |   |_ scores-easy.txt
    |   |_ scores-easy-cheat.txt
    |   |_ ...
    |
    |_ Screenshots
    |   |_ easy
    |   |   |_ bumper.png
    |   |   |_ ...
    |   |
    |   |_ screen00001.png
    |   |_ ...
    |
    |_ error_log.txt
    |_ preferences.txt
  =
  

• As indicated above, there is a separate set of highscore files for cheat mode results; testing no longer affects your legitimate scores

• When taking screen shots for an entire set, an appropriate subdirectory is automatically created in Screenshots. (I could never remember the setup needed for Neverball to save F12 set shots...)

• The file error_log.txt records stack traces of errors of which there hopefully will be few.

Simulation:

• The ball can now pick up any number of items during an update, not just one

• First update now includes initial view information so it does not have to be regenerated at playback time (as st_demo.c does)

• Limited amplitude of bounce sounds to 1.0f

Graphics:

• Doubled the number of halo sides (1)

• Fixed the "crazy reflection" problem by reinitializing the video configuration upon stencil changes (1)

Playing:

• Returned the effective default rates for manual camera rotation to what they were in 1.4.0 (based on Chase rather than Manual) (1, 2, 3)

• The current level and its textures are cached; restarting is near instantaneous even for large maps

• Renamed "Normal mode" to "Standard mode"; noun instead of an adjective (1)

• Rotating left using the Z-axis actually rotates the camera left instead of right (and vice versa)

• Using (either Left or) Right Shift for fast rotation works again (as it did before the patch)

• The middle mouse button now toggles the camera by default

• Changed default key binding for camera toggling to "x"; "e" is too easy to press accidentally while reaching for the "r" restart key

• In the play end screens, buttons such as "Next Level" or "Save Replay" are now disabled instead of removed when not applicable, giving the user a consistent place to click on for retrying a level; this is the way it was before the progress branch was merged

• Renamed "Exit" to "Quit" in the fall-out/time-out screens; "Exit" should be reserved for exiting the application

• No HUD while pausing during the Ready/Set stage

• Made it possible to leave pose mode by hitting F12 a second time

• Added ability to have an empty replay name pattern

• Correct highscore time for levels with "unlimited" time (e.g., map-misc/bounce.sol)

Replays:

• Replays recorded with UPS != 90 are played back at the right speed

• Replay warning message: "map" -> "level"; level is more of an end-user term

• Replay warning message: "you're" -> "you are"

• One-second "Replay" intro can be clicked away; especially useful after clicking away the warning for an incompatible replay

• When pausing a replay, the music pauses instead of continuing silently

Scoreboards:

• Unified layout for all record categories: time left, coins right

• Enabled cycling through record categories using the mouse wheel (1)

• Categories containing a new record are now highlighted in green (1)

• "Best Times" -> "Best Time"; using the plural is too awkward given the other categories: "Most Coinses"? "Fast Unlocks"?

• For the price of some padding in the coin column, the scoreboard title and player names are now equally centered (looks much better)

Screens:

• Time spent while switching screens is no longer counted against the destination screen; unless requested otherwise, each screen starts with a clean slate: for example, the fade animation will no longer be "swallowed" if a level takes a long time to load

• Joystick recentering requirements no longer affect the arrow keys

• Automatic and accurate truncation of long label texts, either at the end (like thi...) or at the beginning (...ike this); for an example, see the name field in the replay list screen

• Title screen: Disabled sound effects for replays (1)

• Title screen: Turning off cheat mode clears wireframe mode (if set)

• Level set list screen: "No Level Sets" message if sets.txt does not contain any level sets

• Level set list screen: Increased page size to 6 (for visual consistency with the corresponding six lines on the level set screen)

• Level set list screen: Proper display of set descriptions with fewer than five lines; you no longer have to pad the text with trailing "\" characters

• Level set screen: "No Levels" message if there are no levels

• Replay list screen: Improved loading time by reading replay headers on demand; the downside is that invalid files will appear as (unselectable) entries in the list. However, with the new dedicated replay directory this shouldn't be a problem

• Options screen: Swapped resolution and fullscreen rows

• Options screen: Fullscreen buttons are now disabled if fullscreen mode is not available for the chosen resolution

• Resolution screen: Left (instead of right) alignment for buttons in incomplete rows

• Resolution screen: Added menu sounds

• Player name screen: Disabled OK button when name is empty

• Replay name screen: Disabled OK button when name is empty

• Layout and spacing tweaks in several screens

Application window and OS integration:

• Support for window positioning (window_x, window_y preferences); note that these values have to be specified manually (default is -1 for automatic positioning) (1)

• The initial window size of 800x600 (plus trimmings) is used only if the desktop resolution is bigger than 800x600 to prevent the window from opening partially off-screen

• Thanks to LWJGL not interfering, Alt+F4 closes the window on Windows (1)

• On-screen keyboard: Support for the Alt+Numpad input method on Windows

Preferences:

• Removed d-pad preferences; in Nuncabola, the directional pad is handled along with the axes

• Boolean values are saved as "true"/"false" to better distinguish them from integer values; specifying them as 1/0 remains possible

• Mouse wheel bindings are saved as "Wheel Up"/"Wheel Down" for consistency with key naming (e.g., "Page Up"); specifying them as "wheelup"/"wheeldown" remains possible

Level sets:

• Nevermania level shots are included as 24-bit PNGs (1)

Not implemented:

• nice, stats and uniform options

• -i command line argument

• SOL name display in cheat mode (made the layout look bad - not worth it)

• 'c' function in cheat mode

• Use of key combinations for configurable keys (i.e., no Ctrl+F3, Alt+R, etc.)

• Tilt sensor support

• Internationalization

• Installer

• mapc port

• ...and no Nuncaputt

Known issues:

• Window/Taskbar icon does not have proper alpha (apparent limitation in LWJGL)

• "menu.ogg" and "coin.ogg" had to be reencoded because the decoder would not read them

Last edited by Elviz (2011-02-23 15:39:33)

Hey, you could not have been more specific if you just used "parasti is a failure" as the name...

Do you know why I released 1.5.0 the way it was?  After 4 years of waiting for someone to release a successor to 1.4.0, I realised it won't happen because there was no-one but me.  In fact, I noticed that a lot of things didn't happen, bugs weren't fixed, and features weren't added, unless I did it.  I found myself in a position I never asked for and was never qualified for, basically maintaining a piece of code in which to this day I struggle to find my way around.  It was anything but fun.  After rewriting the replay mechanism (the patch was a piece of crap, by the way, because that was the only way I could ever finish it, but I doubt anyone noticed) it was clear to me that I could not address all the issues scheduled for 1.5.0 and nobody else would do it.  So I made a decision between letting go of the time and effort I had invested in the game and moving on to something else, or taking matters into my own hands and releasing 1.5.0 in a desperate attempt to attract some long deserved attention and (if I'm lucky) contributors.  Perhaps I made the wrong decision.

Of course, the paradox here is that if instead of standing by and contemplating a fork+rewrite of the game, you would have invested that knowledge, skills and effort of yours in Neverball, 1.5.0 would not have been such a disappointment.  Or maybe you did, and I failed to notice or acknowledge, but I'd prefer that any social/communication problems be discussed up front rather than being a secondary topic in the announcement thread of a fork.

Last edited by parasti (2009-05-18 10:09:34)

OK that's one surprise. Well - I've got a few questions, just out of interest, and I am not making any comment about quality or something because honestly I have no idea.

If I understand correctly, the Nuncabola version is based on a recent trunk version, ie for example the new(est) replay mechanism is already implemented?

What exactly is the advantage over NB except for the timestep, are the libraries that you use now faster or do they have more features, or differently asked, why didn't you just change the timestep and leave the rest as it was?

And, what were the reasons that you decided to release a "personal version" (whatever that is) instead of, for example, proposing a patch that changed the behavior to your liking and asking for opinions?

From reading the web page you linked to, it appears that their discussion is about exposing LWJGL's icon functionality in their LWJGL-based game engine, not about getting alpha transparency to work right in LWJGL itself. Actually, I'm already providing the right alpha data to the right method, the library just seems to reduce it to on/off transparency when passing the icons to Windows. I'm sure it will be fixed eventually. It's not a big deal.

Thanks, macmeister.

I think if you read some comments from further down the page, alpha transparency issue is solved, and code provided... ?!

I could also be mistaken... ?!

Last edited by themacmeister (2009-05-19 01:47:23)

After getting over the initial surprise, I was worried that my comment would provoke an aggressive-defensive sort of reaction;  I'm happy to see it didn't.    Thanks for the calm and reasoned response.

I actually don't have much to add.  I admit that in a strange way I feel both inspired to work more on Neverball to catch up with those bug fixes and features, and relieved, because I don't really have to since there's already another "Neverball implementation" (which for me is an eye-opening concept in itself) that has all that.  And it's maintained by someone who is an active Neverball player and mapper, one of which I haven't been for a very long time (though, like you, I started as a player, and only became involved in development out of desire to see a new release) and the other I never was.

Let's see what happens.

Last edited by parasti (2009-05-19 19:53:57)

These warnings come from JInput, the library that's used for access to game controllers. Not sure if they are simply caused by the missing joystick or if your user account does not have permission to read those device files. On Windows I have so far only seen similar warnings when unplugging my gamepad while the program is running.

While these messages are harmless, I cannot prevent JInput from printing them without making changes to the library itself. However, what I can do is temporarily redirect the output for certain calls so it does not reach stdout.

Indeed, that's probably a good point to add to your presentation.

No native LWJGL libs for non-Windows systems?

I don't think it would be so odd to mix linux / windows / Mac OS X libraries. Those libs are not very big files...

One of the advantage of java is to provide one package which work everywhere. Here Nuncabola is using one native lib, LWJGL, and providing all versions is not a big deal so take it easy in my opinion.

You mean it doesn't run on a cell phone? Worthless.

Yes, that's about right. Normally, native binaries need to be on the java.library.path (which cannot be set from within the code) but they can also be loaded from a given filename. Luckily, both LWJGL and JInput let the caller specify the path used to construct that name. (Actually, I'm already making use of this to allow the program to be started from outside the game directory without additional configuration.)

From what I've read, most parts of the OpenJDK come from (and thus are identical to) the code Sun uses in its "official" JREs so general compatibility should be pretty good. Apparently, they have replaced the proprietary font engine with FreeType so I'd expect the rendered text to look rather similar to Neverball's.

JVM startup and class loading do add a bit of overhead, no doubt about that. Would you say it's in the realm of the acceptable, taking into account Neverball's performance on the same system? (It certainly is on the machines I've tested Nuncabola on.)

That's all part of my evil scheme to prevent players from ever completing Nevermania...

Nuncabola 0.3

• Downloadable archives now include native libraries for Linux and Mac OS X

• Code and packaging tweaks