Hi,

Finally I have a test demo to show people and find out what they think of my game so far.  It's not finished yet - still a lot of work to do ;) and the demo only really shows basic game play for one level, but still I figured I'd share it.

Quick overview of the game can be found at our website:

http://probe.tech-hobbyist.com/

You can find a demo video here:

http://probe.tech-hobbyist.com/Movies/Level01Prototype.wmv

If you like the demo video then you can download the actuall demo here:

http://probe.tech-hobbyist.com/Demo/TheProbeVersionTwo-Windows.ccgame

Currently I only have a PC version of the game online - however you'll need to plug in an XBox 360 controller to your PC in order to play the game. 

Any feedback on the game is appreciated - you can either post it here, or send it to gene.foxwell [-at]gmail.com

Thanks for your time guys.

not sure if anyone is bothering to download the demo or not, but I found a few bugs that I missed, so I'm uploading a newer version.  If you were going to try the game out, you won't be able to download it correctly until about 7 eastern time.  Don't worry, the fixes were worth it.

Hmmm, am I writing these wrong, or is there really no one interested in trying my game yet :(
 

I downloaded it, but I instantly get a "TheProbeVersionTwo has stopped working" message. Is this a 1.0 game by chance?

yeah, it's 1.1 refresh.  That could be causing some issues - when 2.0 came out of beta I put off moving my code base up to 2.0. 

I am going to try moving it over to the newer version over the next couple of days. Hopefully things should work better and for more people once I've updated it.

Yeah, I don't have the 1.0 or 1.1 redists installed so that explains the crashing. I'll give it a go once you have a 2.0 version going. Shouldn't take long. They have a project updater that does most of the work for you. Then you just tweak the code changes. Shouldn't take too long.

Well I installed the 1.0 Refresh redist and it started fine, but after I chose the difficulty it crashed again. Maybe a file path issue or something? I'd say next time you make a .ccgame, make sure to install it on your box and test. But yeah, wouldn't run for me.

That's wierd, because the original version does run on my box (the .ccgame version) does it just crash horribly, or does it give an error message? Not sure if a file path issue makes sense, since all of the level data is loaded before you reach that screen (unless something bizzare happened - anything on the disk it needed to load has already been loaded). The only thing it's going to do on the next screen is display the mission data text...is it possible it's an issue with the SpriteFont being loaded not supporting a character on your machine and on mine or something of that nature? Can that happen?

Anyway - thanks for the input.  I've converted to XNA 2.0 - hopefully that will fix the issue, but we'll see.

The XNA 2.0 version of the game is uploaded and has superceeded the orginal copy I uploaded (so it's the same link).  I tried the .ccgame on my machine (making sure to delete the original release directory data so it wouldn't be looking there) and it does work.  If someone could try it on their machine and let me know if they are getting the same issue Nick/Sim Reality are getting they would be my hero :)

In the event other peoples computers are doing the same thing, then I'm at a loss for what's going on and I'll probably just port the thing to the XBox where if there is an issue that the configuration of the machine isn't a factor...(please tell me that's actually a true statement :P ).

Got the latest version of the demo running fine. Love the concept.

I find that it runs fine first time through, but every time I tried to play a second game after the first, it would crash. Tried to debug, but no luck, I assume because I don't have the code. No real error message, would just freeze. Trying to run it again to see if I can get a better description of the error... Nope. Can't seem to find where it installed to. Hrm. Ah, there it is... (Sorry for the flow of conciousness)

 The error:

'TheProbeVersionTwo.exe' (Managed): Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_32\mscorlib\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\mscorlib.dll', No symbols loaded.
'TheProbeVersionTwo.exe' (Managed): Loaded 'C:\Documents and Settings\portersr\Local Settings\Application Data\XNA Creators Club Games\TheProbeVersionTwo\TheProbeVersionTwo.exe', No symbols loaded.
'TheProbeVersionTwo.exe' (Managed): Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game\2.0.0.0__6d5c3888ef60e27d\Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.dll', No symbols loaded.
'TheProbeVersionTwo.exe' (Managed): Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_32\Microsoft.Xna.Framework\2.0.0.0__6d5c3888ef60e27d\Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll', No symbols loaded.
'TheProbeVersionTwo.exe' (Managed): Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.762_x-ww_6b128700\msvcm80.dll', Symbols loaded.
'TheProbeVersionTwo.exe' (Managed): Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Drawing\2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\System.Drawing.dll', No symbols loaded.
'TheProbeVersionTwo.exe' (Managed): Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.dll', No symbols loaded.
'TheProbeVersionTwo.exe' (Managed): Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Windows.Forms\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.Windows.Forms.dll', No symbols loaded.
'TheProbeVersionTwo.exe' (Managed): Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Xml\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.Xml.dll', No symbols loaded.
An unhandled exception of type 'System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException' occurred in mscorlib.dll

Additional information: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.

The program '[752] TheProbeVersionTwo.exe: Managed' has exited with code 1073807364 (0x40010004).

 
Obviously the game is only a demo, but you seem to need a bit more gravity. The factory bot seems to get really knocked about quite easily. I also found the low turn speed of the factory bot frustrating when trying to chase down the green cubes. But well done. =)

Thanks for the feedback!  Lately I haven't had much time to work on the game due to being busy with work, but I do intend to finish it once things settle down a bit.  (I'll probably pick up the pace again once Dream Build Play's due date is annouced).    The error message helps a lot in figuring out what could be going wrong with the game on other peoples machines :).

I'll see what I can do about finding a better balance between gravity the world, along with fixing up that turn speed :)

 

Again - thanks for checking the game out - I appreciate it!