Please note that I don't update this web site anymore. You can visit my new personal blog at www.williamwilling.com.
Trichromix Demo
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Well, it's the end of the week and I do believe I said I would provide you with a demo. Since I'm a
man of my word, you can now download the Trichromix Demo
(.exe, 8.15MB).
This is intended to be as close to the final release version of the demo as possible. I'll probably add
all the puzzles that come with the full version of Trichromix when I officially release it. You won't be able
to play them in the demo of course, but at least you'll be able to see what you will get for your
money.
Final thing for me to point out is that, since the web site isn't up and running yet, the Buy buttons
lead to a non-existing page. That will, of course, change before release. As always, I'd be very thankful
for any feedback you provide.
Back to blog index
mahlzeit says:
Nice. Some small remarks:
- Maybe allow the player to click through the splash screen?
- The text on the Buy and More Info buttons text is vague/blurred/out of focus (on the "You Can't Play This Puzzle In The Demo" screen). It looks like the text was rendered "inbetween" pixels.
- The labyrinth puzzle in the tutorial was slow on my machine when dragging a piece. I suppose you are repainting the screen every time? Maybe you can optimize this in a future build.
- When you restart a level, the level's message appears again. This gets annoying very fast. It makes sense in the tutorial, but I'd remove that in the other levels. Actually, this seems to be an issue only for the first level from the pack: the others appear to only show text after you finish them.
(Although the story is nice, and an incentive for playing, it is odd when you don't play for a few days and suddenly enter somewhere in the middle of the story.)
That's it for this time. :-)
Sunday, May 22, 2005 7:12 PM
Joost Ronkes Agerbeek says:
"Maybe allow the player to click through the splash screen?"
That would be less annoying, wouldn't it. ;-)
"The text on the Buy and More Info buttons text is vague/blurred/out of focus."
I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get away with that. I upgraded from Paint Shop Pro 8 to Paint Shop Pro 9 and they changed the text anti-aliasing algorithm. Not for the better as you can see. I'm downloading a PSP8 evaluation copy right now, so I can make the new buttons properly.
"The labyrinth puzzle in the tutorial was slow on my machine when dragging a piece."
I took a quick look at my code and realized that moving a single function call would make things run faster. I still have to optimize the rendering code and will do so in the near future, but this will do for now.
"When you restart a level, the level's message appears again."
For now, I just won't use introduction texts on puzzles except for the tutorials and the first puzzle in a puzzle pack.
"Although the story is nice, and an incentive for playing, it is odd when you don't play for a few days and suddenly enter somewhere in the middle of the story."
Why wouldn't you play Trichromix for several days? :-) I have an idea to make this less of a problem in the future. Again, for now, it'll have to do.
Many thanks for your feedback. Again. :-)
Monday, May 23, 2005 6:06 PM
Jan Middelkoop says:
Well, I'm sorry to say this, but there are a few problems...
Firstly, my installation of Windows 2000 SP2 complains it cannot find "msvcp71.dll".
My installation of Windows 2000 without SP2 does not do this, but since I use that installation for every day use it wouldn't surprise me if I installed something that put the file there already.
Secondly, on a machine where I had previously installed the first version (the release before this beta) I couldn't get Trichromix to run. I keep running into this error: "Fatal error: Cannot load user settings." I should also mention that this is the same machine that complained about the missing "msvcp71.dll". Either of those two facts might be related to this problem, but you figure it out - you're the programmer. ;)
Lastly, I hope these error reports are useful to you. If you need more information to troubleshoot the second error, just ask.
Finally, I'm willing to test this game on Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 98, but of course that means I want a free copy. *grin* ;)
Regards,
Jan.
Thursday, June 2, 2005 7:58 PM
Joost Ronkes Agerbeek says:
Thanks for the error reports, they are certainly useful. I will distribute msvcp71.dll with Trichromix from now on to prevent that problem. About the user settings: the file layout changed between the beta and the demo. Just delete progress.save from the Trichromix folder and you are good to go.
With regards to the free copy, I think we can work something out. :-)
Friday, June 3, 2005 10:16 AM
Tell me what you think
Since I'm not updating this site anymore, I disabled comments. You can visit me at my new site: www.williamwilling.com.