Yo Frankie! DVD Experience

[venomgfx]

Hi all,

I'm creating this thread to complete the comments we got in the Yo Frankie! blog, now that the DVDs are arriving to those who bought it in advance, and for when we'll put it online (after 1-2 weeks of shipping, should be somewhere early december).
Lot of nice and bad experiences already told, would like to get them all together here.

Some things to point out:
We all know that the Apricot project didn't met the initial goals (make a full game with Crystal Space), but in exchange we got Apricot to also help the development in the Blender Game Engine, something that wasn't expected (and got the Blender community more excited and the project to be "successful" after all).

So, could sound like excuses, i know, but here are some facts:

• The BGE version of Yo Frankie!, was developed by mainly 3 people, Campbell Barton, Christopher Plush, and me. Not to forget we got lot of help from the community as well.
• The BGE version of Yo Frankie!, was made during mid June, July, August. and tested/fixed during September/October. So that is about 3-4 months of work.

Some people also compared Apricot with projects like Orange and Peach, which were made by 6 people 6 months, compared to Apricot 3 people 3 months. And well..comparing a game against a movie is not always fair, a game have SO many things to take care of, while a movie is not easy at all, once it is rendered it can play everywhere, for a game is a bit more difficult.
edit: what I mean with this, is that you have to invest a lot of time to make the game work on different computers, imagine if brecht worked on improving the graphics instead of making the BGE work well on different computer setups, a cryengine in blender! that only works in a few computers..

And the results are:
First Yo Frankie! demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXZVNslp2JA (June 2008)
Latest Yo Frankie! demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Canbxj0RBTk (October 2008)

I would also like to leave the comments for the Crystal Space version of Yo Frankie! for another thread.

So please express yourself in a way it could help us/others for future Game projects, and further improvement on the BGE!

[Richard Marklew]

A copy of my post from the blog.

"Not much of a success running it.
Running on an iMac OSX 10.5.5 there is no sound, either at the start up screen or during the game. Also at the starting area when you walk into a sign to go to the level, walking into the ‘Game’ sign, it crashes me out of the game. Tried one of the extra maps, think it was called Rat Pack. Just when you reach the rats I jumped onto a grassy rock and dissappeared straight into it, unable to walk or jump out of it. Pressing Esc hoping to get back to the main menu but just exited straight out of the game. One more moan, tried with Vista running bootcamp and it wouldn’t start up the game at all from the Play menu, just had a constant rotating blue ring."


If you have a Mac I couldn't reccommend anyone buy the DVD with the sound issue and bugs. Wait for the download then see if its worth the price.



Richard

[venomgfx]

Originally Posted by Richard Marklew A copy of my post from the blog. "Not much of a success running it. Running on an iMac OSX 10.5.5 there is no sound, either at the start up screen or during the game. Also at the starting area when you walk into a sign to go to the level, walking into the ‘Game’ sign, it crashes me out of the game. Tried one of the extra maps, think it was called Rat Pack. Just when you reach the rats I jumped onto a grassy rock and dissappeared straight into it, unable to walk or jump out of it. Pressing Esc hoping to get back to the main menu but just exited straight out of the game. One more moan, tried with Vista running bootcamp and it wouldn’t start up the game at all from the Play menu, just had a constant rotating blue ring." If you have a Mac I couldn't reccommend anyone buy the DVD with the sound issue and bugs. Wait for the download then see if its worth the price. Richard

Hi Richard, thanks for answering.

But I wouldn't recommend someone to buy the DVD or not, and "worth the price" is a bit general, i think that the BGE development done for this project totally worths the price, but we know there is people that will be expecting a full game, full as fully tested, working in every computer and OS, lotsa levels and stuff, sadly we didn't met the goals as we said in earlier blogposts.

I think (and hope) that the only people that will get a bit dissapointed are those who expected a full lotsa-hours of game with story and all, BUT! if these people read the documents and tutorials included on the DVD, they will know how to extend it very easily!

[rogper]

I've received it yesterday and started by the videos and documentation, so I still only tested one level and didn't explored it fully yet, so I wont make a critic to game play and such.
What is safe to say is that the graphics look awesome and everything graphics sound and controls related seems to work at 100% in my PC (windows XP x64, Pentium D 3.0Ghz, 2Gb ram and Nividia Quadro FX 3450 256mb).
Awesome work everyone

Edit: The tings you guys made in so litle time is really impressive. As for me goes you beat my expectations

[Richard Marklew]

venomgfx,
If I put up money for a game, I at least expect it to have at a minimum some sound, not to crash if you choose the wrong option at starting point, or at least load (it didn't when I tried vista on bootcamp).

Yes its great to have the other extras but I see the main point of the project is a game that at least works for me.

The majority of the posts on the blog had the game playing ok so if on windows or linux it may not be a problem.

As I said, if you're on a Mac, wait for the download and try it out before deciding whether it is worth the price.

Richard

[Lamoot]

There is a slight bug in the html file on the dvd used to navigate the DVD content. On the "Low poly tree modeling, part 2" page, the flash video is exactly the same as on the "part 1" page of the same tutorial. The right video can still be found at production_data/tutorials/blender/treePart2.avi, so it's not critical.

Edit: actually all 5 of the tree tutorial pages display the same video, while the videos in the tutorial folder are fine.

[(jay)]

I think that the most important aspects of the Open Projects are:
Blender is improved dramatically
Learning material is provided for the user base in the form of files/tutorials

To me, the actual final projects are third. We already know that Blender got some cool new features from this project and the files will be released, so in this respect the project was a big success (as were the previous two). I have yet to get my copy so I can't comment on the learning materials.
But...Just seeing the 2.48 features list made it worth my money! Thanks to everyone involved for the fine effort!

[kay_Eva]

Originally Posted by Richard Marklew venomgfx, If I put up money for a game, I at least expect it to have at a minimum some sound, not to crash if you choose the wrong option at starting point, or at least load (it didn't when I tried vista on bootcamp). Yes its great to have the other extras but I see the main point of the project is a game that at least works for me. The majority of the posts on the blog had the game playing ok so if on windows or linux it may not be a problem. As I said, if you're on a Mac, wait for the download and try it out before deciding whether it is worth the price. Richard

I see your point and I respect your position as a watchdog for mac users out there, but the reason for buying the DVD isn't to play the game or get the tutorials, as you will already get access to these things for free, as my understanding

the real reason to buy the DVD is to support further blender dev

that said it's still up to your own critiera as to whether you want to do that or not

Now as far as the DVD is concerned, as a Crysis modder (I say that a lot on here =) )

it is absolutly astounding that you could do this in 3-4 months time.

[blenderman345]

Is the Apricot game available in a SVN branch already?

[kakapo]

here a copy of my blog posts:

when i start the exe the desktop resolution changes, a console window appears and then nothing happens. what could be the reason for this? anyone else with that problem?

[...] in blender i can start the levels without problem. only the exe version of the game doesn’t work. i use a geforce 8600gt which should support all used GLSL i think?

...but i am happy about all the work that went into the game engine so i don't regret preordering the DVD!

[TweakingKnobs]

I was expecting more tutorials on how to do a game from scratch, that was basically why i bought it, i dont regret buying it because i helped the blender foundation but i was told it was going to be a dvd where i could learn how to do a game from scrach, acctually what i really wanted was something like the blender game kit.

Any way im also buying it, its just that i though there where going to be more tutorials on how to make a game from scratch.

But of course great job !

[venomgfx]

Thanks to all for your answers.

@blenderman345: yep the Apricot game is still available through SVN, at least AFAIK, will be downloadable soon anyways!

@kakapo: your card should totally support it, is actually the same card we used at the Blender Institute, sad to hear about the exe though =/, but when you run it inside Blender, are you sure you enabled GLSL from the Game menu?

@TweakingKnobs: Thats a *huge* task, "making a game from scratch", the tutorials in the DVD go through the game making but now from scratch actually, but yeah they cover how we build up a level, for example. But the topic "making a game from scratch" is too big for a project like this (3-4 months of work making the game+documentation), luckily the new Blender Gamekit is here! and it is updated using Yo Frankie! as reference too, so it would be a nice combo to have both (I'm not telling you to buy it, just to consider, or download it after since i think its CC like the Blender Essential).

[kakapo]

argh... i found the reason! the game somehow messes up the desktop resolution before going fullscreen and the notification window of the comodo firewall got placed on the second monitor - my TV which is switched off most of the time. i have checked what the TV displays earlier but didn't notice the firewall window because it was almost completely off screen. only a tiny part of the title bar was visible.

the game looks very nice!

[Richard Marklew]

Using the OSX Intel version there is no sound but I am getting sound with the PPC version. However it looks like there is no GLSL texures unlike the Intel version.

Richard

[TABASCO]

As I already wrote on the Apricot blog, I have much trouble with my Apricot DVD.
I tried it on three computers and not one gave me the results that I expected fromt the videos.

A: Desktop pc, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB RAM, Ubuntu 8.04.1, self-compiled blender 2.48a from SVN.
B: laptop Dell Inspiron 1525n, Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960, Intel Dual Core, Ubuntu 8.10
C: EeePC 701 4G with Ubuntu Eee 8.10

First to the Game Engine version:
computer A: With GLSL enabled, I can forget the game totally. Nothing is shown correctly. With GLSL disbled, it workes a bit, although there are everywhere graphic errors (textures flashing and so on). And, of course, everything looks ugly and miserable, the textures have a very low resolution, water looks bad...

computer B: With GLSL enabled, it crashes. With GLSL disabled, it looks also as miserable as on computer A and I have in game approximately 5 frames per second. I loaded up a screenshot:
http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/6...frankiepi4.png
I don't think that this is everything, that YoFrankie! has to offer

computer C: everything is unplayable slow and entering level 1 does not really work (not even with minimum level in graphic details). Although I already made nice things with Blender on the EeePC!

Crystal Space:

computer A: It takes veeeery long to load and once it's finished I only see grey and something that looks similar like parts of a river.. I don't know, it's very strange. I try to repdroduce it and upload a screenshot.

computer B: it also takes very long and when it's ready I hear for a second or so some birds and then it crashes with

...
Offset:09134800, Size:00000040, ..
Offset:09134840, Size:00001000, ..
Offset:09135840, Size:0005e7c0, F.

Free list:
FREE Offset:09135840, Size:0005e7c0, F.
End of memory blocks
celstart: ../common/dri_bufmgr_fake.c:1127: dri_fake_process_relocs: Assertion `ret == 0' failed.
(0) : fatal error C9999: *** exception during compilation ***
Cg compiler terminated due to fatal errorAL lib: ALc.c:1307: exit(): closing 1 Device
AL lib: ALc.c:1284: alcCloseDevice(): destroying 1 Context
AL lib: alSource.c:2295: alcDestroyContext(): deleting 7 Source(s)
AL lib: alBuffer.c:1122: exit(): deleting 28 Buffer(s)

computer C: well.. it crashes already before it's started with
AL lib: alBuffer.c:1122: exit() deleting 16 Buffer(s)

I don't want to annoy you, but it would great to enjoy the game one day

Thanks,


TABASCO

[bupla]

I had the same issues with 0SX 10.5.5 (Intel) than Richard: no sound, very slow and when I want to quit the game, my desktop is so messy that I have to reset my computer. I'm a bit deceived, even if I don't blame the Yo-Franky team. They did a huge amount of work in a very short time, and that will benefit to the blender community.
If I decided to pay for the DVD, though, instead of download it, it was to help the Blender Foundation, like most of people here I guess.

[blenderman345]

WHICH BRANCH?!!?!?!?!?!?!? ?I so want to checkout but, nope, got no clue which branch......

Any link to the branch?
Is it branch? Or trunk? Or libs?

[kirado]

@Bupla and Richard.. What are the specs of your computers.?. eg. gfx cards,CPU and ram etc..

[(jay)]

I received the dvd in the mail today and want to say the tutorials are fantastic- I keep shaking my head at what Blender can do. The making of pics are cool too, it seems like the Blender Institute has a sort of college dorm attitude going on, looks like good times.
PS Ton I'm a decent cook, so when considering for Durian....

[Richard Marklew]

Spec of my machine.
iMac OS X 10.5.5
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB RAM
Graphics - ATI Radeon HD2600

Reading other posts on the forum there are other sound issues with the Intel Mac build of Blender. I am getting sound with the PPC version but the graphics are much poorer.

Richard