It's only a "Work in Progress" but was hoping people could try it out and let me know what their FPS Frames per Second are. [and system specs too]

You can check out some screenshots and demo here:

Infinity Void Website (http://www.lasthalfofdarkness.com/darkgalaxy)

Any feedback is much appreciated - I still have alot more I want to add but need to know if all computers can run this game.

Thanks
Bill

Hi,

I'm having 27-32 fps usually 30-31.

Specs:
Windows XP
AMD Athlon XP2100+ (windows says 1.74Ghz)
ATI RADEON 9200SE
Lots of RAM

About the game:
When I put something somewhere, I can't find it again and gets destroyed.

I tried three times, once the music was left in the backgroung after game exit.

Fèlix
www.nurium.com

Thanks for taking a look and giving your FPS and system specs - it really helps me out alot!

Yes - I know what you mean - its hard to find facilities youve placed... that will change with a mini map and also the ability to click on the facility list box and instantly go to any particluar building.

Thanks
Bill

Ive uploaded a new version... (see link in above post)

Its almost a real game now - but still needs some more stuff.
I need to implement the base, employees, etc. - not sure how these features will fit into the game (anyone have any suggestions?)

ALSO... has anyone with a 32 meg (or less) graphics card had a chance to play the game? Just wondering if its playable on a 32 meg card?

Thanks
Bill

Pentium 4 3Ghz
512MB RAM
Integerated Intel 82865G Graphics Card (64 MB Shared)
DirectX 9.0b installed

The thing ran at 20-23 FPS, so it was slightly jerky. Integrated graphics really sucks so it is always interesting to see if things run on it (if at all).

sorry to say i couldn't seem to download it. I tried a few times... each time the download was going fast (50k per second or so) then locked up after 3 or 4 megs. One time I left it for a long period (3-4 mins) and it managed to continue to 13 megs, but it's been locked on that with nothing else coming down for 15 minutes so i have to stop the download. :(

ok, i tried again after rebooting and firebird managed to resume the download (yey!!) and eventually it was all downloaded.

1) The intro was very good... very polished.

2) Music was very good, and sound generally.

3) I was running on p3 800 with 128 megs ram, and a geforce 1 (32 megs). Wasn't sure how to get an fps readout, but i'd guesstimate it was around 20/25, quite playable.

4) Overall I found it quite difficult to control, both in space and on the planets, that definitely needs tweaking. Is the degree of view change frame rate dependent at all? It seemed a bit glitchy. For me it would benefit from being less sensitive I guess, with some smoothing on the mouse (i.e. keep previous values and interpolate towards desired view direction).

5) It was difficult to place units on the ground... That might be easier with a fixed camera location, and just dragging the unit.

6) It was very easy to get lost, both on the planets and in space (sounds like you are aware of this) .. needs a mini map or a 'take me to area blah' feature.

7) The collision detection of the camera against the ground on the planets was a bit dodgy, and maybe not necessary (at least until further in development). You could just limit the camera height to a certain distance above the ground, that should work fine.

8) The planet surfaces looked a bit bland... i know everyone and their uncle is doing terrain engines now lol but it might be worth trying to get that to look nicer (although I can understand you are concentrating on gameplay to start with, that I totally agree with).

Presuming you're algorithmically generating the heights that could be tweaked a bit, and put in some more water / lava areas (or maybe i just landed where there wasn't much water!). The algorithm for generating heightfields could be one that makes it a bit smoother generally.

A few trees or something like that wouldn't go amiss either.

Also the terrain could get levelled in the area where you place a unit, at the moment it just cuts through the unit.

9) After I'd placed some units they started getting attacked, and I wasn't clear how to defend them, but having said that I didn't pay much attention to the instructions (i never do hehe!) and i'm sure that would be easy to add info / tips for.

Anyway even though mostly these points might sound as though they are negatives, on the whole I think you are doing a great job, you are obviously concentrating on getting the whole thing up to a good standard rather than getting bogged down with perfecting one bit, which is very laudable. I look forward to seeing how you progress! :D