Feedback : Betty's Beer Bar 3D

[ggambett]

No, it's not what you're thinking - it's the same old Betty's Beer Bar, but using a Direct3D 7 backend and a slightly modified SDL_mixer (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=4433).

I just need a very quick test - download (only 3.5 MB!) from http://www.mysterystudio.com/demos/bbb3d.zip, double click and see if it works. At this point everything should work correctly (no glitches), so if you see anything strange, please let me know. If you feel so inclined, try to break it - alt-tab, toggle fullscreen <-> windowed (ALT-ENTER, F12 or Options), toggle the bit depth, and so on.

If the game crashes, it should take you to our website. There's no need to enter any feedback, I get a stack trace automatically - but additional comments always help. If the game crashes but DOESN'T open a browser window, I need to know it too!

The only problem I'm aware of is that the game eats a lot of memory (I still keep all the images in video AND system memory - working on that) and for some reason it seems to eat more memory when toggling fullscreen <-> windowed, not sure why yet.

Thanks a lot, guys!

[Savant]

Worked great for me (GeForce 4 Go in my old laptop) ... although I was expecting 3D models and things based on your thread topic. :)

[ChilledOut]

It worked fine for me too. I gotta admit I was a little disappointed after reading the topic as well!

[soniCron]

Ditto on the disappointment... :)

[James C. Smith]

Works for me

[Gnatinator]

False advertising :(

Works fine over here (geforce 4 mx)

[ggambett]

False advertising :( Sorry :( It has more appeal than "please test my 3D renderer" though. I can say I'm practising my copy writing skills ;) Besides the first thing I said was "No, it's not what you're thinking - it's the same old Betty's Beer Bar" to avoid feeling so guilty...

Thanks for giving it a try, guys, keep 'em coming. And I'd like to know who sent the crash report :)

[arcadetown]

Worked here. Not sure what the difference is. Perhaps Gabriel you could explain? Think I get it but translation could easily be "true 3D rendered version of Betty". Guess you mean better support for your 2D game on advanced 3D hardware?

[soniCron]

I can't speak for Gabriel, but if I'm not mistaken, BBB used to be software only, and now he's testing a 3D accellerated rendering pipeline using Direct3D 7. And while that is probably a more accurate description than "Betty's Beer Bar 3D," it did get me to look at this thread! (As well as a few others!) :)

[Robert Cummings]

Works fine here.

[ggambett]

I can't speak for Gabriel, but if I'm not mistaken, BBB used to be software only, and now he's testing a 3D accellerated rendering pipeline using Direct3D 7.Yes, exactly. BBB was and will continue to be software only for the time being. However I've recently written OpenGL and D3D renderers for our next couple of games, which will benefit from hardware acceleration. This was just a compatibility test to see how well the D3D renderer is working.

Once we release the new games and hardware acceleration doesn't cause any problem, I'll probably enable it by default in Betty and add some nice effects that can only be done efficently with hardware acceleration.
Worked here. Not sure what the difference is.That's the best outcome I could hope for :)

[Ricardo C]

On my Win98 system, it crashed on startup the first time. The second time, it ran fine, but had no audio (most likely the unholy coupling of a VIA sound chip and Windows 98 is to blame, I've had trouble with it in the past), and crashed when I tried to Alt-Enter.

On my XP system, Alt-Enter and Alt-Tab worked fine, although Alt-tabbing back into the game was an ordeal. First I got a black screen and sound, so I Alt-tabbed again. I kept getting sound even though I was on my desktop. It finally brought me back to the game when I hit ALt-F4. It hasn't worked the second time.

PS-- Take the hint already and make BBB 3D! :D You could make it play the same, but with a look reminiscent of The Sims, I'm willing to bet the portals would love it ;)

[Sharkbait]

I did some specific tests related to hardware rendering:

Alt-Enter works ok - the game switches from windowed to fullscreen without problems.

Hitting the Windows key in fullscreen mode messes up the display when switching back to the application. You can switch back to the application but the display goes blank although the application seems to be still running. The work-around is to hit alt-enter twice to force the renderer to reload the textures.

I had a similar problem myself and I solved it by switching to windowed mode when the application loses focus while in fullscreen mode.

Hope that helps.

Not sure if it's of any use but here are my specs:
Pentium IV 3.2Ghz
2Gb Ram
Radeon X600 Series gfx card

[HairyTroll]

No, it's not what you're thinking - it's the same old Betty's Beer Bar, but using a Direct3D 7 backend and a slightly modified SDL_mixer (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=4433).

Thank goodness. Flashbacks of Trespasser where you could look down and see the tattoo (http://www.gamesfirst.com/reviews/Neal/Trespasser/trespasser.htm) you never knew you had.


The game worked fine up until I alt-tabbed to the desktop and then tried to alt-tab back. At this point all I got was a blank screen.

ATI Radeon 9500.
AMD 1900.
1.25GB RAM

-Luke

[illume]

Once we release the new games and hardware acceleration doesn't cause any problem, I'll probably enable it by default in Betty and add some nice effects that can only be done efficently with hardware acceleration.

What are these effects that can only be done efficiently with hardware acceleration?

[ggambett]

Hitting the Windows key in fullscreen mode messes up the display when switching back to the application. You can switch back to the application but the display goes blank although the application seems to be still running. The work-around is to hit alt-enter twice to force the renderer to reload the textures.Is that deterministic? I mean, losing focus on fullscreen ALWAYS causes Direct3D to lose the surfaces?

What are these effects that can only be done efficiently with hardware acceleration?For the customer fade in/outs I calculate 10 images with different alpha levels on load and blit them at runtime. With SDL at least you can't have per-pixel and per-surface alpha, so this is the way I found to do it. With the 3D backends I can specify per-surface alpha which is essentially free when I'm already doing alpha blending, so it would take less memory, be faster, and be smoother. That's just an example. Anything that requires a big portion of the screen to be updated each frame, such as particle systems, and with parallax background scrolling being the extreme case, generally benefits from hardware acceleration.

[Sharkbait]

Is that deterministic? I mean, losing focus on fullscreen ALWAYS causes Direct3D to lose the surfaces?

Yes, it happens every time. Here are the steps in more detail:
1) Boot up the application (in fullscreen mode)
2) Hit the Window key (the desktop appears, the application is no longer in focus - the music stops).
3) Click on the iconified application (a blank screen appears, the music resumes)
4) Hit Alt-Enter (the desktop reappears, the application is iconified but still selected, the music is still playing)
5) Hit Alt-Enter (the game reappears correctly in fullscreen mode and working condition with music playing)
6) Hit Alt-Enter (the desktop reappears and the application doesn't go into windowed mode despite the music still playing - as if iconified but in focus)
7) Go to (5).. ad infinitum

[Pogacha]

For the customer fade in/outs I calculate 10 images with different alpha levels on load and blit them at runtime. With SDL at least you can't have per-pixel and per-surface alpha, so this is the way I found to do it.
It's a crime ... you have flicking, interlaced holes and pixel dissapearing ...
Anyway, does you reload all the images from disk?
I think you can map the packed-data file in memory to accelerate this proccess ...

[ggambett]

It's a crime ... you have flicking, interlaced holes and pixel dissapearing ... Sorry... what? Are you describing a bug? Sorry, I didn't understand:(

Anyway, does you reload all the images from disk?
I think you can map the packed-data file in memory to accelerate this proccess ...Not yet. The version I uploaded is very naïve in a couple of aspects (no texture cutting, no paging out). I finished cutting last night and now I'm about to implement paging out (for some kind of images, this is just reloading from disk)

[Pogacha]

Sorry... what? Are you describing a bug? Sorry, I didn't understand:(
My English is crap, zorry, I hope it will change.
I meant use that instead of using the ten alpha leveled images technique ... anyway I'm thiking now that if you use SDL you may also have access to de alpha channel as a separated array, so you can do it in realtime ( since using mmx you can multiply 8 bytes in a round ) with a double alpha buffer you solve this problem in realtime ( don't know if SDL give permisions to modify the alpha buffer ).

Not yet. The version I uploaded is very naïve in a couple of aspects (no texture cutting, no paging out). I finished cutting last night and now I'm about to implement paging out (for some kind of images, this is just reloading from disk)
I found a five to ten seconds delay before restoring the game in a device-lost/fullscreen toggle.

I thought that your problem maybe was the number of surfaces you have to restore in a device-lost case.

[Daniel]

It crashed on my computer at home in certain situations. :(

The game launches fine, the music and graphics are there.

But if I go to options and switch display mode I'm experiencing the following:
32-bit full screen - OK
24-bit full screen - crashed
16-bit full screen - OK
32-bit windowed - OK
24-bit windowed - OK
16-bit windowed - OK

Alt-tab or Windows key in full screen mode (regardless of # bits) - crashed
Alt-tab or Windows key in windowed mode - OK

Nvidia Geforce 6600 w/ 256MB, DirectX9.0c - (WindowsXP SP2 English)
One thing I noticed when checking my display settings in the control panel for Windows, is that this card doesn't show 24-bit screen depth as an alternative. Only 16 and 32-bit!

Feel free to send me a PM if you need more details!

// Daniel