UberTube

Latest Version: Alpha 0.4
Changelog:

Code:

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Initial to Alpha 0.3
  * Now shows version number (huge change, I know)
  * You now get an extra life every two levels
  * The big change: Some segments now rotate
Alpha 0.3 to Alpha 0.4
 *  A bug with level size was fixed.
* Fixed missing faces, so that all the tiles are actually cubes. Although I thought it wouldn't make a huge difference, everything looks way way better now.
  * Warp Tiles have been added, really cool
  *  Now shows a warning if your graphics card is too slow (or you are running software GL)
  * Turning speed is now limited, so that fixes one of BMJ's problems
  * The Window title is now UberTube
  * Thanks to Bubba (your z-buffer suggestion was indeed correct), the background now displays.

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I made a game called ubertube, which I consider pretty cool. You basically fly down a tunnel, which you spin and try to bounce your way along. Its OpenGL/SDL based, and I include an EXE with required DLL's, along with the sourcecode, a Dev-Cpp project, and a script which builds it under Linux. It runs on Linux and Windows. Anyway, I'm just wondering if I can get some C&C on the game itself, or the code within it?

Download the Game (Alpha 0.4)

A screenshot is attached to this post.

The screenshot is out of date, and things have improved since, such as the missing polys.

NOTE: The post was edited by a moderator as requested by the poster.

My top score: 85796
That's possibly the hardest arcade game I've played this year. Tis awesome.

Ya, it is challenging.
Also, if there are any OpenGL experts out there? I'm having trouble figuring out why the background doesn't seem to show up on Windows boxes (works under Linux tho). If any of you guys are running windows and could help me figure it out, it would be great.

Yeah no background here. Good game.

I managed to get over 70,000 points just by holding down the right arrow and not trying.

It looks good overall otherwise though.

230,176 is my high

After 100,000 it gets really hard

You awesome jokes signature doesn't seem to work

Thanks for pointing that out. I'll fix my signature. It is fairly easy to get to 100,000. My record is like 206 thousand something. I've got some improvements I'll put up in a minute.

OK, Version Alpha 0.3 is now up. It includes a pretty big change: Some sections of the cylinder rotate relative to others.
Anyway, two things:
A. Hopefully, I'll be able to fix the background bug. Can anyone help me figure out what I'm doing wrong? If it helps, when I run the executable under Linux using wine, the background shows up. Am I doing something OpenGL 2.0 specific or something?

B. I'm thinking of adding an online high score board. Does anyone have any idea how to go about this securely, or am I just stuck with using the honor system?

Glad people are having fun w/ my game.

I don't know if you know, but your signature still doesn't work.

OK, I finally fixed it. Anyway, tommorow I'll put up a few more updates. So far, I've got the following working (but not access to a Windows box to compile until tommorow..)

Code:

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* Limited turning rate to 360 deg/sec
One Medium One:
 * I found a bug.  Originally, each level was supposed to last for the same amount of time, which obviously wasn't happening.  I fixed this, so each level is 15 seconds flat.  Of course, you get going faster, and you will get to a higher level, but your score might be lower.
Two Big Ones:
  * Fixed missing faces, so that all the tiles are actually cubes.  Although I thought it wouldn't make a huge difference, everything looks way way better now.
  * Added a warp tile, the warp effect is wicked awesome.  I think you guys will enjoy this

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Cool game. What causes you to get owned though?

Thx, The pink tiles do. If your not looking for them, they might blend in.

I hit 300 000 :)
It's realy cool, but I'd add more tiles and faster speeds, so that you can reahc higher and higher speeds. also, you should rename the window in WIN cause right now it says "SDL_app"

My 2 cents

Perhaps the background is not showing due to zbuffer. NVidia's are on by default. Depending on how you are rendering the background this might cause some issues. Render the background with no Z and then render the tube.

Or use a skybox for the background, but this is overkill since you only move in one direction throughout the game.

OK, my 2¢:

If you hold down an arrow key for long enough the game crashes.
This would be more fun if you could use a mouse instead of a keyboard.
Don't say "You got OWNED!" :(

OK, version Alpha 0.4 is out. Quite a few changes, with a quick summary

Code:

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* Limited turning
 * Warp tiles
 * Change in level system so it works as intended
 * The background now displays (thanks Bubba, z-buffer indeed!)
 * The window title bar now says "UberTube" instead of SDL_App

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BMJ, I'll think about the mouse control. I'm not sure how it would work out, so I'll play with it. For now, OWNED is going to stay.

My ideas

*Slow down the opening screen by alot, it makes me dissy in the time it takes to hit spacebar
*Add options for gravity, rate of speed increase, rate of block density decrease
*Those rotating things are cool, but they seem to happen at fixed intervals. It'd be cool if that was random
*Other ideas for events:
-Block color changes
-Counterclockwise rotating segments
-Changes in tunnel diameter
-Block location shifts

Little bug in windows

This is the bug referenced by the red warning at the top of the first post. I made a quick fix, compiled, and didn't have a computer with 3d acceleration on to test before I uploaded, and blamed it on the integrated. I'm working on fixing it now.
Also, it seems I can nolonger edit the first post of this thread. Any ideas?

Latest version, fixed
OK, I've got that bug killed. If you download from the above you'll have the latest version.
I sent a PM to Sean to have the top post edited soon.

Anyway, enjoy the new version. Lots of improvements, and now without the nastyness.

Warp tiles make it alot easier. My first score got up to 475000 with them.

Anyway, I have another game version you can add to this. Have a looping tube that deletes squares as you hit them. As you play there are less and less squares to land on.

Anyway, really good job with this. It's a fun game.

Why is the background included twice? It should probably be a PNG anyways, which are easy to load using SDL image

Hey, glad to know you guys like it. Some upcoming definites before I release an official 1.0 or whatever you want to call it:

Code:

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* Music
* Skill/probability adjustments
* High Score board

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Regarding MadCow and SlyMaelstrom's ideas:
Anyways, I'm going to play with all of your ideas and see what I like. There are so many of them, and I want to keep it simple and not have multiple modes. I'll see which of your ideas fit best into the game. Thanks for the C&C

Regarding the BMP:
Its included twice, along with lots of other junk that isn't needed in that archive, such as the source code, VIM temp files, compiled .o files, a bkp and data folder. I'm going to clean this all up before the first 1.0 release, and have seperate source/exe/windows/linux packages. Originally I went with a BMP so that I wouldn't need to include SDL_image. Of course, that was pointless, because SDL_image is smaller than the BMP - the PNG, (or even a JPG would work), so I will switch it to SDL_image soon enough.

On a final note, does anyone have any good recommendations for a program which allows me to make a single exe which extracts itself into a temp folder and runs itself? (You have no idea how many of my friends cannot comprehend the "SDL.dll missing" error they get when trying to run without extracting)

What's the deal with OpenGL and tubes? This is the second
OpenGL game I've seen that involves falling down a tube.

I like it, though.

http://www.chilkatsoft.com/ChilkatSfx.asp for the exe thing

Thanks, that seems to be just what I was looking for.
Also, ethic, what is the other game? I wouldn't mind taking a look.

Tube games just generally look cool and aren't extremely challenging to create graphically, or atleast that is my explanation as to why there are a few.

Glad the Zbuffer suggestion worked. Not sure why NVidia has theirs ON by default and ATI has theirs off. Encountered this bug myself and it 'bugged' the hell out of me till I figured it out.

Might I suggest perhaps texturing the tube geometry a bit? This would definitely separate the individual tile pieces much better. It is hard to differentiate between certain tiles. A common texture could be used for 'edges' of tiles/cubes. Since you are not drawing the back faces you really only need to texture 2 surfaces - the top surface or inside of the tube and the front edge of the cubes, but only when they are visible and not hidden.
Since you are dynamically creating cubes you could at run-time determine which cubes/tiles need edge textures by determining whether or not it had a tile in front of it. If not, you texture the edge, if so - don't texture the edge. Occlusional testing would be far too expensive on every cube. You would have to do a camera to cube surface ray intersection test. The simpler algo should work just fine.

And I must say throwing you off the map for hitting one wrong tile is a bit harsh. Perhaps a gameplay change is needed here that would hurt the player, but not throw them out of the tube.
Perhaps bouncing them backwards would work. As they go backwards decrement the score instead of increment, but don't cause them to lose a life. Moving backwards would have to use a buffer that stored the most recent 50 segments or so - but this number would be relative to the highest amount of backwards 'push' a pink tile could give you. You could not just randomly create pieces because the attentive gamer would realize that the tube portion they just passed through, is not the same when they get pushed backwards. I don't know how you are creating the sections but I assume you are starting at the top and using values to represent each cube. One entire ring of the tube could be represented in a 9 or 10 element array depending on how resolute the tube curvature is. Since all cubes are the same geometry but in different orientations, I would assume you could easily do a number to cube translation very fast. I have not looked at your source as of yet. IMO it is yours and I have no business in doing so. Thank you for providing the source, but in no certain terms do you have to. You worked hard on this and it is evident and therefore you deserve to control the source code.

Also it needs some fast-paced music or music that is paced to the speed of the tube and also some sound effects.
If you need sound support I'll be glad to help.

Thank you for all the input and ideas Bubba. I will definitely implement your idea for the "ownage" tile. I thought of a relatively simple way to update it with probably five minutes worth of code changes. Basically, I can just have it render everything a certain number of segments ahead, and adjust Z proportinetly for collision detection. The way I designed the tube allows for this easily.

Maybe, to seperate the tiles, I'll just shrink them all a little bit, so that they are seperate, and then I'll add textures to improve looks depending on how things go.

As far as sound goes, I've got permission to use some trance/techno from an author, which should work pretty well. My friend is going to record some sound effects (he is incredible). If I'm having difficulty getting SDL_mixer to work, I'll let you know. Thanks for all the contributions.

Also, you can look at the source for now. Eventually, I'll probably go GPL with it, although that is yet to be determined.

I just noticed that on version alpha 0.4 I can't get over level 3 :O

Bug wise, or skill wise? I find it somewhat easier

It's alot easier, as I said. I get to 600,000 points easily.

Personally, I like the ownage tiles. They are quite easy to avoid as there aren't that many of them. What I would do is lower the amount of warp tiles because it's too easy. I end up chaining 4 or 5 of them in a row. Secondly, you appear to give bonus lives early on, but then you just stop. I'd keep that up. I agree with Bubba, it needs some texturing and some sound before you release 1.0. Good job so far.

bug wise, I got to 400 000 and still on level 3

Now contains online high scores table, so if Norton is asking, that is why
Ultra Secret Release:
Super Secret Development Release with High Scores

Its now self extracting and running, but stick it in its own directory, cause it does extract around itself.

Anyway, this is a supersecret development release (which is why there is no logo).
There are a few bugs, including the updating level ones, now fixed, but not for Windows.
Everything will not be super smooth, but if you find something weird, plesae report.
Ownage tiles simply bounce you really low, soon to be fixed.
Anyway, the big thing for all of you out there is that it now contains an online high scores table.

If you want the full source and all (I understand suddenly using the network and not having source cuold seem suspicious), its at http://www.tevlog.com:4761/utbuilds/ut_a05.zip

I just thought the extractor was more conveniant

OK, new release, fixes the level bug, and has a level progress meter. Same link as before, but high scores have been reset.

OK, sorry about any confusion you have experienced. There was a five minut period over which you couldn't have seen high scores.

Anyway, I made some changes, so if you downloaded "the fixed version" like 5 seconds after it was posted, just do it again, cause you clicked to quick for me.

Yep I had a couple of problems. Just about to download it again :)

ya, sorry, I didn't expect anyone to be that quick. Anyway, you should be stable now.

Just to warn you, until there is atleast one high score, it will say "Error getting high scores." Don't worry, just play.

This is pretty addictive even though I suck at it. Everyone is right, with some nice texturing and sound this'll be quite good. Maybe even some nice effects like some blending... somewhere.

Ya, all that is on its way.

BTW, aare high scores working for you now?

Yup.

Fun game, no bugs seen.. though I kinda suck at it :D

Found a glitch. Hit a warp pad, froze for a second, then went into constant warp speed. Not until I fell, until the game was over. Hard to show on a screenshot, so I'll just show my score. I know I was nowhere near this score without the glitch, and I wouldn't think many of you were either. Also, there really is no need to store the score in a floating point variable, as far as I see.

Yeah I noticed the highscore table is full of those. It hasn't happened to me yet though.

You may want to try some sort of validity checking on the highscores before they're posted online, aswell.

Those versed with memory editing and packet editing could blitz any more public releases with public highscore tables.

That'll be one of your backburner challenges mind you. It's not important, doesn't effect playability and such, but it's nice to implement.

Or just plain ol' SQL injection. :p

/* No More Link */

:)

Also, some guy named Paul Haberman has been playing alot, so you might want to get an addicition warning label on this thing.

Being an open source game, its impossible to have a secure high score board. I was hoping that anyone smart enough to use a packet sniffer to find the url would be mature enough not to post fake scores. Anyway, maybe I will make the high scores closed source, and add encryption, but for now, can you please remove that link?

Removed, but looking at the scores before I posted it, I'm not the only one to use it.

Actually, the top scores are all real. Scores go exponential (I will change this), so once you are going really fast, make it a few more seconds, and hundreds of millions are not out of the question. My friend got #1

http://ubertube.tevlog.com

Website w/ download, now has encrypted high scores. I'l put up source (w/o high score module of course) soon

Quote:

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I'l put up source (w/o high score module of course) soon

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Good idea :). I'd love to port it to Mac OS X. ;)

Hehe, If you can help with the endianness issues, I'd have no problem with that. If your porting it, I'll give you the high score module, so you we can have a full binary. Before you port it though, you should probably wait for 1.0 release (few days or weeks)

Thanks for the offer, and I'll be sure to take you up on it.

Quote:

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High scores are cleared with every gameplay changing release, because scores would be incomparable.
On the event of such a release, your client will notify you, and tell you where to download the latest version.

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While I like this idea, you should archive the other versions highscores and make them available for viewing.

ok, will do. I've got some stuff in place (mainly version storage) so that I'll be able to do that soon.

>Hehe, If you can help with the endianness issues


ahem... my intel mac heard you say that and she's a little offended. Anywho, I'd try running it here (intel OS X) if you need to test the platform.

my bad. Either way, testing on a G5 mac would be useful (if anyone owns one), because endianess bugs are signs of bugs or poor code anyway. I've got a source code link on the site now, and if anyone gets a Mac compile working, I'll help them get encrypted high scores working so we can release a binary.

I've got an iMac G5 :)

Can you pm me with an e-mail address to which I can send you the full source?

OK, I hope this isn't counted as post bumping, but I just wanted to say that I've managed to compile the thing for Mac OS X. All I have to do now is pull out all the runtime errors that occur :).

Hehe, how many runtime errors are there? Are the endianness based, or did I mess up somewhere else, or is it just differences which cannot be worked around with good platform-independent code?

OK, everything is working now except for the fonts, because I can't find the SDL font header for Mac OS X :rolleyes:, so I think I'm going to use my own font routine, because I'm too lazy to search for the SDL font header file :D

As for endianess problems? None.

I think I can get the game posted by tonight. :)

Sweet. Also, will the font thing you write be cross platform, or mac specific, just out of interest?

It'll be using GLUT, so, yes it will be cross platform.

Here's the application, and the source code: Ubertube 0.7 Mac OS X (universal binary)

However, there are several things to note:

#1: My code is baaad!!! The stuff I added it completely helter-skelter, so don't get your hopes high
#2: You need SDL installed, or else the program will not work
#3: The program and the source code do not have the highscores, because when I tried to download curl libraries, the server went down
#4: The fonts are pretty crappy, too. I positioned them on the screen, using my own math and coordinates, because I couldn't use the existing matrix transformations, because my font drawing technique uses the orthographic matrix, and positions text with glRasterPosition().
#5: I couldn't figure out how to kick Xcode out of debug build configuration, so although it works, it's definitley not optimized

Have fun!!!

Please don't get mad at me for this sloppy port :)

Thanks, any port is better than no port. I'll see what I can do about finding you an SDL_ttf for Mac OSX (so that we can have a unified codebase), but this is great. Is it alright if I post it on the website?

I found the SDL_ttf (I had to download it seperatly, of course), so hopefuly I can get fonts and highscores working in the next version. And, yeah that would be fine if you posted the game on the website.