I''m temporarily putting up an early alpha/tech test demo of Zero Sum''s game Prelude to Darkness at www.zero-sum.com\ZeroSumTest.zip. It''s a hefty download weighing in at 7.2 megs. Showcases a bit of our combat engine and some character creation, although creation is unstable right now. Also has all the editting tools available and integrated, which most likely won''t be the case in the actual release. Requires DirectX 7a and an 8 meg 3d card. We''ve tested on several and it works across the board so far. It might work on some older 4 meg cards, but I doubt it. heh. We''re not publicly announcing anything yet, I''d was hoping for some feedback from the folks on this board first. I''m also stuck out at my fiance''s for thanksgiving so will lots of time to answer any questions and provide programming help and what not for the next 6 days. Unfortunately I can''t release the source code until "well after the game''s release" Please take a look, let me know what you all think. Send me and email, post here, or to our company''s discussion boards at www.zero-sum.com. thanks, mat williams Lead Programmer/Designer Zero Sum Software www.zero-sum.com mat@zero-sum.com Demo: www.zero-sum.com\ZeroSumTest.zip

Damn thats some fine work dude.

Nice, I only get 16-17 fps, but it''s f''n good.

Nice graphics, good GUI, bad mouse control (not too bad).

As stated above I did not like the mouse control as I sometimes wanted the char to defend and he ran, [sadisic mode] in this situation I would like to have a gun to shoot the deserter...[/sadisic mode]

Apart from a small problem with mouse control it''s the best demo I''ve seen for a while, apart from the jeep and land demo (i could get the jeep to fly backwards on it, good easter-egg bugget that!!)

Oh system specs:

333 PII Celeron (o/c to 416)
Win Me (a new computer please)
128Mb Ram
Matrox G400
DX8 Debug drivers

Thanks for the info.

The Input is sync''d with the frame rate right now unfortunately, so when the framerate drops so does control.
I''m working on seperating, but it''s a pain. Also throwing in more options to speed up rendering.

In general it''s almost completely unoptimized right now.

And sadly, DirectX 8.0 seems to run it a bit slower than 7.

One can improve the frame rate the most by zooming in a bit.

1 and 3 on the keypad and -,+ off control zoom.

Also B will toggle off some backface transparency stuff and should bump the frame-rate a bit.

-mat

I forgo to mention that the gui.ini file can be editted to change the screen resolution.

It''s been tested in 640x480 800x600 1024x768 and 1280x1024.

Windowed mode is also available, but only for debugging purposes and has a bizarre memory leak, so is not recommended.

The other parameters in gui.ini are edittable, but I make no promises as to their effects....

-mat