VoxelNoid

VoxelNoid
The 3D voxel break-out with that extra twist!

1st rank at the Gerp 2014 demo-party's Wild competition.

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New in this version:

v8:
- workaround for the R200 driver's guard band bug that caused the right door
of the transitions to be clipped although it should be drawn.
For the same reason the ingame-panel to the right was not drawn if the game's
resolution was just high enough.
Thanks to lionstorm for reporting!
- 2p up/down should have been the other way around.

v7:
- screen blanker is disabled through Application library
- game-mode is enabled through Application library
- new tooltype CLASSIC (refer to Tooltypes section below)
- auto-detection of old GPUs (CLASSIC mode turned on automatically)

v6:
- Minor fix, floating scores fading sometimes incorrect.

v5:
- Fix, symptom: tooltype parameter SHOW_FPS was not interpreted correctly
- internal Voxel-chunk-size optimized
- 2p: same extras for both players
- code size reduced (no-RTTI compiler flag added)
- disk-size reduced by about 1.5 MB

v4:
- Fix: rare physics calculation error
- ball shadow
- brick voxel-explosions look better
- debris that doesn't fall on ground jumps around for a while...
- ...leading to more debris overall
- adjusted energy-loading accordingly
- 1p: floating brick-hit-scores
- 1p: level complete tune (and new game finish tune)
- 2p: loser's playfield tinted / blinking red depending on how critical the
situation gets
- 2p: 2nd player's bat colored differently
- new main font
- swedish localization (thanks to Yasu)
- some minor improvements (like floating extras vanishing nicely when losing a
life; better joystick controls)
- some code optimizations
- some internal framework enhancements (like F11 for fullscreen toggle)
- Fix: a malfunctioning joystick could cause the game to not respond to any
input
- added a "said to be pretty good" WaZp3D config file to this package

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Description:

In its core VoxelNoid is a break-out-variant with 3D voxels:
the bricks, balls, extras, even the bat, all voxels.
The voxels ain't just eye-candy though. They are an essential game-play element:

If a brick is destroyed then it explodes into the tiny voxels it is built of,
filling the playfield with voxel-debris.
As soon as the ball approaches such debris it starts to swirl around
and flies to the bat, where it is converted into energy to charge the laser.

And guess what:
with that laser you can blast away those bricks in rows!
Even those harder blinking bricks the ball cannot destroy cannot withstand
a well aimed laser-blast for too long.
Besides that the laser can be your last resort in critical situations since
the ball is slowed down while firing.

And real high scores can only be achieved by true laser-masters.
When you destroyed all normal bricks the next level is entered - and there are
30.

And then there is that 2-player-simultan-splitscreen-mode...
Clean up your playfield first to win.
And if you know how to handle your laser:
use it to beam penalty-bricks to your opponent's playfield,
one for each two bricks you shoot. Harhar :-)

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Requirements:
AmigaOS 4, Warp3D (probably it even runs on classics with those specs, we
couldn't test that)

Installation:
Just un-LHA, preserving folder structure and put the result wherever you want.

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Controls:

Go to the options menu to change keyboard or joystick-mappings.
Default controls:

Player 1:
  Movement: cursor keys
  Laser   : right ALT (keep it holding!)
  
  (or mouse - only in fullscreen mode
  unless "mouse in window" is checked
  in the options-dialog)
  
Player 2:
  Movement: WASD
  Laser   : left ALT (keep it holding!)

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Tooltypes:

FULLSCREENNAME=VoxelNoidScreen
where VoxelNoidScreen is the name of the screen you defined for playing the
game.
If fullscreen is activated through the game's options it will use that screen
instead of showing a screen-mode-requester.

VSYNC=1
If that is set the game will use vertical-sync when played in fullscreen.

SHOWFPS=1
If that is set the game will display the current frames per second and other
stats
on the bottom of the screen while in-game.

CLOSEWB=1
If that is set then the game will try to close the Workbench if playing in
fullscreen-mode.

CLASSIC=1
If that is set then the game will automatically switch to a resource-saving
mode. That is: most textures are scaled down, dynamic shadows are disabled,
etc. In this mode it should even run on Classics with PPC and 3D card.
It has been reported to work well on an A4000 / CyberstormPPC / CyberVisionPPC
in 640x480x16.
Probably you also want to disable VSYNC on classics for some extra fps.
Note that you can also use that CLASSIC tooltype on NG Amigas as
a turbo-switch in case you find it to be too slow.
Also note that usually you don't need to set this. The game should auto-detect
such a classic setup and switch to CLASSIC mode by itself. But since we cannot
really test that we decided to add that tooltype.

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Known issues:

If you find the game crashing with a Guru right on startup then check,
whether there is a file named
 ENV:alsoft.conf
on your system.
If so, delete it. Or even better: mail it to info()cherry-darling.net
before you delete it.
Apparently there is a severe bug in OpenAL's config-file-loader that
under (yet unknown) circumstances causes a double-free on some memory
buffer which in turn causes the crash.
OpenAL is the audio library the game is still using.

Another technical issue at least on Permedia2 hardware (like CyberVisionPPC):
looks like there is a bug inside that driver that causes the voxel colors
to be wrong (red and blue channels swapped).
Maybe other drivers for older GPUs are also affected.
You'll have to live with that until the driver gets fixed, sorry.

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Technical notes:

As always when it comes to AmigaOS 4 at its current stage and 3D
it's probably not such a smooth experience as on MorphOS or other OSes...

The only reason the game is playable at all is because we got rid of MiniGL
in favor of direct Warp3D. MiniGL eats that much performance,
it's really unbelievable (by the way: there's a VoxelBird-update
available at Cherry-Darling.net that also doesn't use MiniGL anymore and as
a result is up to 2x faster and comes without funny wrong coloured triangles at
the edges).

Nevertheless the performance is still significantly lower compared to
even the slowest MorphOS-machine.
And a well-known, reported but still not fixed R200 driver-bug is the reason
why at certain camera-angles in combination with high resolutions some polygons
are simply not drawn. It should happen in uncritical situations only but anyway:

if you spot something like that (or some funny blueish texture-artefacts):
don't blame us... :-)

Because of that bug one graphical effect had to be trimmed down on AOS4
compared to MorphOS and other OSes.
It is not game-play-relevant though and is only noticable on direct comparism. 

Oh, and if somebody wants to try the game using RadeonHD and WaZp3D:
If you can live without a z-buffer and the gfx-errors that will result in, here
is what you're looking for:

http://www.os4depot.net/index.php?function=comments&file=library/graphics/wazp3d
.lha&showform=1413358351

The Wazp3D configuration the Wazp3D author recommends for VoxelNoid has been
added
to this archive for convenience.
If you're not too picky it works quite well with that configuration.
Mainly because the resting voxel meshs are optimized and rendered in such a way
that the missing z-buffer is not obvious most of the time. Actually to some
point
pure coincidence - and a lucky coincidence for those who don't have working 3D
hardware.
The voxel-shadows are probably not visible though.

Alain Thellier did a great job with WaZp3D - although it's a shame that there is
need
for this type of hack in 2014.

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Credits:

Code: Daytona675x
Gfx/Levels: H2o
Music/Sfx: TRiACE  
NFO-ASCII-Art: sk!n

Special thanks to:
AmigaGuru, Bruno, BSzili, David, deez, Epsilon, Flori, Georg, Irata, Link,
Melli, Ria, tommysammy, whose, Yasu

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Notes:

This game is free and we do all this in our free time.
If you like this game and want us to produce more, please consider donating:
http://cherry-darling.net/voxelnoid/index.html#downloads

If you want to spread the news / the game, please don't link to the archives
directly!
And please don't put it into any (online) software collection without asking
first.
Instead link to the game's homepage or Cherry-Darling's main page (links below).

In case you hit a bug please send a report including crash-log, screenshot,
whatever appropriate and possible, to the following mail-adress:

info()cherry-darling.net

If possible also attach an LHA of the game's settings, located here:
ENVARC:Cherry_Darling/VoxelNoid

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Links:

Game's Homepage:
http://cherry-darling.net/voxelnoid/index.html

Cherry-Darling Homepage:
http://cherry-darling.net

The game's soundtrack EP:
https://triacemusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-voxelnoid-ep-2

VoxelNoid on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/voxelnoid

Cherry-Darling on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/cherrydarling2013

VoxelNoid for Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cherrydarling.voxelnoid

Contact / Bug reports:
info()cherry-darling.net

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Have fun!
Your Cherry-Darling-Team