Wednesday, 3. December 2008, 01:34:33
I think it's about time for an update for the Mac Beta, and some comments on my last post. I will go through each of my
Pointed games, describing what doesn't work. Most of the bugs I found had already been reported by the time I got the time to start reporting them, so it's good to know that it's not just me (or is it...).
I haven't actually managed to give the UI a decent try. I will probably never test the D&D, as I find it too confusing to use, but I will eventually get around to using the rest of it. One thing I noticed is that the code editor is not at all pleasant to use. The text is too small for me to read, and there is no highlighting of functions. Also, the cursor starts from where you click with regards to horizontal axis, but from the bottom most used line. So if I click in the middle of a blank code box, the cursor will jump to the middle of the top line. IMO it should jump to the start of the line. The cursor is also not visible, and you only know where it is when you start typing. Here is a screen shot:
And that thing I said about the sprite editor working while zoomed out? Forget it, it's got almost all the same problems as when it is zoomed in, minus a couple such as the extra line.
Now onto the games. Note: A common, yet expected, problem is that the link to Pointed doesn't work. The method used to open the browser is Windows only.
Beshaped: A bejeweled type game.
The mouse events don't seem to register correctly. I haven't pinpointed the problem, but when I try to select a shape, it gets selected, then unselects itself. This is to do with the alarm, and appears to be the game checking for a mouse press rather than the mouse being held down (ie mouse press event instead of the intended mouse event).
The game uses draw_set_alpha() along with draw_rectangle() to draw a alpha'ed rectangle over the selected shape. This shows up as being a green (as in default new sprite coloured), solid, rectangle. The rectangle appears to change to the colour of the transparent colour of the sprite.
Besides those two things, this game runs fine.
Blobber: A frogger clone.
This game appears to work fine, besides a little bit of a gap seen between the tiled objects.
Breakish: A breakout kind of clone, but a little different.
The game appears to run fine. Some of the drawing colours aren't right, but could probably easily be fixed (though it worked fine in Windows). Probably due to drawing order.
Also, the balls right hand side collision is about 32px off, probably due to the sprite being incorrectly drawn.
Fullscreen does not work, and the game is incorrectly proportioned without it (although it is the same in windows).
CarRace: A clone of the police-avoiding car game included with GM.
Game runs fine except for some keys sticking, which happens very frequently. There appears to be bugs in the keyboard and mouse event handling.
Climb: Climb up as the screen moves, don't fall off the bottom of the screen.
The game runs fine except for the keys sticking, and a very minor problem with the scaled graphics, making the lines appear to pulse as the screen moves.
Dong: A pong style clone.
Works fine except for the keys sticking.
Galaxy Attackers: A space invaders clone.
Works fine except for keys sticking.
Missile In A Cave: A Helicopter/Jet Man type game.
Works just dandy.
Rocket Control: A missile command type game.
Mouse presses are sometimes not recognised. Text in message boxes is drawn past the end of the message box, and in the currently set drawing colour. Explosions are not drawn in the correct colour, often they are drawn black.
And one last game is an InkBall type game that I made, yet never released. It works exactly like the Windows game, and runs fine in Windows. It uses surfaces to create sprites to assign to objects to draw the lines you draw with your mouse, and allow the balls to collide with them. The surfaces don't appear to work at all, drawing with the mouse does nothing.
And for those not part of the beta, I will give you some examples of errors others have found (allegedly, I haven't tested any of these):
Game info:
1. Game Information has lots of formatting tags around the actual info, for example:
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Comic Sans MS;}{\f1\fnil Arial;}}
{\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\qc\cf1\i\f0\fs60 Cheat Commandos: The game!
\par \fs24 Sworn to protect the world from the evil forces of Blue Lazer!
\par (Demo version 3.4)
Error reported by Paniel25
2. Game info can be edited in-game.
Error reported by Paniel25
3. No scrolling while editing game info.
Error reported by Paniel25
General Game:
1. The games do not appear to work on PowerPC Macs, with most crashing on startup.
Many people have reported problems on PowerPCs.
2. Custom game icons are not used, even when set in editor.
Error reported by infinitegames.
3. Apparently Ctrl + MB doesn't register as a right click, and the reporter needed to use "start + mouse" to register a right click. My Mac doesn't have a start button, maybe they mean Command, since that is the button used with the Windows key when running windows.
Error reported by sharprm.
General Editor:
1. Unable to change order of any resources.
Error reported by sharprm.
That's enough for now. As of yet no update has been released, lets hope YoYo are hard at work on fixing up the bugs.
-Dave
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WIDGETIZE