Omnimaga

General Discussion => Technology and Development => Computer Projects and Ideas => Topic started by: Quigibo on June 21, 2010, 08:16:11 pm

Title: Experimental Game
Post by: Quigibo on June 21, 2010, 08:16:11 pm
I just found this on my computer, it was a project I started a long time ago to test this really neat idea I had.

Basically, when you're not playing online, a 2 player FPS games on a console has to split the screen into separate regions for each player (splitscreen).  That reduces the overall room you have to look around in on the screen.  Another think that happens, is that its very easy to glance at your opponent's screen which gives away hiding positions and other location information that generally makes some games hardly as fun and much less strategic.  So I thought up a method that would solve both of these problems at the same time!

I call this new invention of mine Chromatic Multiplexing.  The way it works is that both player's screens are drawn on top of each other filling up the entire screen.  One player's screen is drawn in red monochrome while the other player's screen is drawn in blue monochrome.  Then, each player wears special filtering glasses to only see their screen and block out the other one.  I have included instructions on how to make filter glasses if you have any of those useless Red-Blue glasses laying around since those are pretty obsolete these days.  The colors seem to filter best on a CRT monitor I think, there is a little bit of ghosting on my LCD, but both should work fine and are certainly playable.

I made a 3D Tank game to test this and its surprisingly fun if you have a buddy you can play with.  The controls are the arrow keys for the right player with the right Ctrl to shoot.  ASDW keys for the left player with left Ctrl to shoot.  The game is for Windows and should work on XP and above.  It requires DirectX9 but I think it might install the dependencies for you if you're missing any, I'm not sure.

Anyway, Enjoy!

Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: calcdude84se on June 21, 2010, 08:51:03 pm
That looks cool (Nice concept, too). If only I had two pairs of 3D glasses and a friend to play with. :P
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: SirCmpwn on June 21, 2010, 08:53:33 pm
Nice concept!  This is pretty cool, I should try it out sometime.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: Raylin on June 21, 2010, 09:17:05 pm
Patent this.
Now.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: SirCmpwn on June 21, 2010, 09:17:39 pm
Agreed.  Do it now.  It is an awesome idea.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: Quigibo on June 21, 2010, 09:24:36 pm
Well, the main thing I didn't mention is the downsides to this.  First of all, wearing the color filters uninterrupted for long periods of time is not good for your eyes.  Second of all, it does not allow games to be in color, only grayscale.  Lastly, you can't have any audience watching you (unless they have their own glasses) because otherwise, you can't tell whats going on.  Its not as practical as you might think, its just a fun experiment to show that its possible.

Has anyone been able to install it and run the game?  Just want to confirm if it works or not.  You can always uninstall it from the programs list.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: calcdude84se on June 21, 2010, 09:24:49 pm
I third it! Just make sure nobody has done it yet. Also, if you're sticking to monochrome, you can add a 3rd person with green glasses.
Edit: That's too bad, but you can still use green :P
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: SirCmpwn on June 21, 2010, 09:25:23 pm
Stop making excuses, go patent this.  If it can be perfected, it will work extremely well.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: Quigibo on June 21, 2010, 09:31:25 pm
Actually, you can do this with a 3D TV now that I think about it if the shutter glasses are modified to flash on and off at different phases... and you can get full color with that and its not bad for your eyes.  THAT would be cool.  Don't have any hardware to make tests for it though and I'm pretty sure the glasses are only able to alternate the shutter and not have both on or both off.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: SirCmpwn on June 21, 2010, 09:32:24 pm
Go patent it or I will.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: {AP} on June 21, 2010, 09:34:02 pm
Right, like you have the several thousand dollars it takes to patent something. =P

Or the investors lined up.

It takes more than 'I invented this, give me full rights to it now'. ^_~
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: SirCmpwn on June 21, 2010, 09:35:27 pm
I know how to market an idea, but I won't steal it from Quigibo.  I'm just trying to give him a kick in the butt to make this happen.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 22, 2010, 01:03:14 am
I can't run it it seems. :( Here are my specs btw:

Intel Core i7 860 @ 2.80 GHz
8 GB of RAM
1 TB diskspace (3 including my external one)
NVIDIA GeForce 230 GT with 1.5 GB of video memory
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit edition

That said, I do not know where to find 3D glasses in real life so I wouldn't be able to enjoy it much anyway. I guess I'll need to ask a clerk at a Zellers or Wal-Mart store, go watch Toy Story 3D or check Ebay.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: Quigibo on June 22, 2010, 01:03:36 am
{AP} is right.  You can't just take an idea and then profit from it, that's a gross simplification.  There is a lot of work that has to go into setting up patents, getting investors, starting a business, etc.  You pretty much have to make it your full time or part time career and it really is a lot of effort.  Not to mention the risk becasue you are paying all these legal fees to setup the patent and maintain it, and if no one buys it you've just wasted a lot of money.  And I doubt that this is a completely original idea, I'm sure someone's thought of it already.

EDIT: DJ, what does it say under "Details"?

EDIT2: Oh wait, I think I know what the problem is.  The screen resolution is constant and the exact size of my monitor.  I forgot to change it to adapt to any screen size.  So if your monitor doesn't support that resolution, then it will crash.  I'll try to fix that.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 22, 2010, 01:05:01 am
True, not to mention to start up it takes a whole lot of money in the first place, without a guarantee you'll make profits later.

Nice idea anyway, though.

Quigibo, could you look at my post just above yours?

EDIT: nvm, done. Here are the crash details:

Quote
Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:   APPCRASH
  Application Name:   game.exe
  Application Version:   0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp:   4c1ff5d2
  Fault Module Name:   game.exe
  Fault Module Version:   0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:   4c1ff5d2
  Exception Code:   c0000005
  Exception Offset:   00001455
  OS Version:   6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
  Locale ID:   3084
  Additional Information 1:   0a9e
  Additional Information 2:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3:   0a9e
  Additional Information 4:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Read our privacy statement online:
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409

If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
  C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: Quigibo on June 22, 2010, 01:46:14 am
I updated the file.  You can try it again if it failed before.  I don't know if this will fix it, but I'm hoping it does.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 22, 2010, 01:56:00 am
nope, still same issue, except that this time, the entire desktop area got black instead of just part of it

Quote
Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:   APPCRASH
  Application Name:   game.exe
  Application Version:   0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp:   4c204c4a
  Fault Module Name:   game.exe
  Fault Module Version:   0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:   4c204c4a
  Exception Code:   c0000005
  Exception Offset:   00001489
  OS Version:   6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
  Locale ID:   3084
  Additional Information 1:   0a9e
  Additional Information 2:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3:   0a9e
  Additional Information 4:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Read our privacy statement online:
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409

If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
  C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: souvik1997 on June 22, 2010, 07:48:29 am
Did you try running it as an administrator?
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 22, 2010, 12:15:32 pm
Nope this didn't solve it. My guess is that it's probably not compatible with my video card or something (which is weird considering it's a very recent card and I can run many recent games at good speed maxed out on 1920x1080)
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: ztrumpet on June 22, 2010, 12:20:10 pm
This is a neat idea.  I think it would work, but as you mentioned there are downsides. :)

Cool. ;D
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: SirCmpwn on June 22, 2010, 01:38:25 pm
You really should look into patenting this.  It is quite cool.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on July 11, 2010, 10:16:41 pm
Question: Do you know if the version of Windows 7, other than the bits, could have an impact on being able to get this to run? For example, I am running Windows 7 Home Premium. Could the program have something making it work in Professional and Ultimate or something, or maybe a different combination of bit+version?
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: Quigibo on July 11, 2010, 10:51:23 pm
No, most likely I was just sloppy about my DirectX coding.  Its probably relying on some dll file that I had to manually download, but I have no idea what it would be.  Either that or its relying on some VS files or something.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on July 11, 2010, 10:57:51 pm
Aaah ok. Sometimes, dependencies can be hard to track during development. For my VB games, I discovered years later that one (Illusiat 5 PC) was dependent on anigif.ocx, which requires the user to purchase a serial to get it to work, and that one of my other game (The Reign of Legends 0) was dependent on a few other OCX files, which are free, but I have no clue in which location they need to be put.

As for my RPG Maker games, their font dependency is generally not a problem, but it could be if ran on a computer that, for some reasons, misses a lot of the system fonts. Also, I believe I got some errors while trying to run the game on certain Vista machines. It runs fine on XP and 64-bit 7. I haven't tried in others. I do know, though, that I had to search online back in 2007 to figure out how to make my two RM2K3 games not dependent on the RTPs. It involved changing a value in the ini file.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: Tribal on July 12, 2010, 02:22:42 am
This kinda reminds me of something I was following on BenRyves's site awhile back.
(http://www.benryves.com/images/lcd_shutter_glasses/line-blanker-left-right.jpg) (http://www.benryves.com/journal/3604324)
*Image serving as a reference and a link to what I'm referring to
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on July 12, 2010, 02:54:19 am
Yeah that's what I thought, kinda
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: dman2073 on November 02, 2010, 03:44:40 pm
Patent this Quigibo or you'll wake up to find a bricked calculator! JK lol, though you really should get a patent.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: JustCause on November 02, 2010, 04:10:17 pm
Hella cool. I'm on a Mac atm and can't try it but I will at the first opportunity.
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on November 02, 2010, 04:26:53 pm
I really wish I could get this to run on my 64 bit 7 install...
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: Deep Toaster on November 02, 2010, 05:27:39 pm
Patent it!

Also, I wish it would work on a TI-83 Plus :P

Also, /me loses the game
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: fb39ca4 on November 02, 2010, 09:12:29 pm
We could do this with the casio prizm!
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on November 02, 2010, 09:41:19 pm
Now that you mention it, it would actually be cool if 3D was done. I wonder if it would work well on a tiny screen, though. Doesn't 3D effects work better on giant screen?
Title: Re: Experimental Game
Post by: MRide on November 02, 2010, 09:49:02 pm
The Game is now experimental? uh oh...
But seriously, this is great.  Nice job!