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View Full Version : [ANN]: Gibbage Demo -- finally available for Download

DanMarshall
02-27-2006, 02:41 AM
Many, many thanks to digriz, who has very kindly offered to host the Gibbage Demo for me over at PsychoToad.

Gibbage is a two-player cartoon Deathmatch game, set over 27 varied arenas, including zombie-infested hospitals, atop speeding trains and inside alien beasts.

The ethos behind Gibbage has been to recreate that sweaty 'huddled over a keyboard' feeling of games of yore, like Worms or Bomberman. It's fantastic fun and an incredibly simple concept that will keep you hooked.

Please note, this is a tech demo released with PCZone magazine (UK), and as such there have been several improvements made since it was written back in November (see 'Known Issues', below). The full game is very nearly complete, and I'm hoping to have the full game and an enhanced demo (which'll be much more representative of the final product) available April 2006.

The CPU-controlled baddy is very difficult in this version, but Gibbage was always designed as a two-player game. Find a friend and play against them -- it's worth it, I promise you...


http://www.psychotoad.com

Direct Link: http://www.psychotoad.com/demos/gibbageDemo.zip

Screenshot1 (http://jemarshall.net/dan/HuisClos.jpg)
Screenshot2 (http://jemarshall.net/dan/SpaceOff.jpg)
Screenshot3 (http://jemarshall.net/dan/Volcano.jpg)
Screenshot4 (http://jemarshall.net/dan/ZWard.jpg)

There's a bit more info about Gibbage over at IndieGameInfo.com (http://www.indiegameinfo.com)(direct link (http://www.indiegameinfo.com/index.php?title=Gibbage))

Please direct any feedback to dan@gibbage.co.uk

Known Issues:


The AI is notoriously difficult. The full game has scalable AI.
The Game crashes on exit. This too has been fixed.
You can change the keys via 'options' by clicking the text (eg "Left:"); this is better signposted in the main game.
You can 'die' in the tutorial (although not 'lose'...!); this was deemed annoying and has been changed for the final build.
Capital Punishment graphics have been tidied up. It now looks less 'gaargh'.
Title Screen/ Menus have had a complete overhaul. As such, they now look nice.
This version only supports 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 resolution. The full game supports 800x600, too.
Full version has a 'Team Setup' option, to track your scores.
Nexic
02-27-2006, 07:18 AM
When I run the Gibbage exe (after extracting it to it's own folder) it appears on the taskbar for about 5 seconds then disappears and nothing happens.

Windows XP Pro
DanMarshall
02-27-2006, 07:59 AM
Hmmm... I've had this problem reported on laptops. Are you running it on a laptop?!

It needs a relatively high-end machine, as my coding skills are 'sub-par'. It also only supports 1280x1024 resolution, so that might be a problem.

On first bootup, it tries to create gibSetup.cfg in the Gibbage directory. If you've got some sort of, I don't know, anti-file-creation software running, it'll have a benny.

Alternatively, if the weather conditions and moon's orbit aren't in complete tandem, it may not run. Or if it's a monday, you might have problems there. In short: meh, I dunno. Sorry!
Nexic
02-27-2006, 08:04 AM
I'm not using a laptop, and this is a pretty high spec PC with a Radeon 9600 graphics card. And I'm pretty sure my PC can handle 1280x1024, though why didn't you use 1024x768? That is a much more common and safer resolution to use if you want a lot of people to be able to play it ^.^

And no I don't have an anti file creation thingy, but the CFG file is not being created.
digriz
02-27-2006, 08:09 AM
have you tried unzipping it to the root of c: ?

When i got it, it unzipped and played it without any problems; my pc spec is about average; actually it's probably below average these days. :rolleyes:
DanMarshall
02-27-2006, 08:16 AM
I'm not using a laptop, and this is a pretty high spec PC with a Radeon 9600 graphics card. And I'm pretty sure my PC can handle 1280x1024, though why didn't you use 1024x768? That is a much more common and safer resolution to use if you want a lot of people to be able to play it ^.^

And no I don't have an anti file creation thingy, but the CFG file is not being created.


Nexic: Hmmmmmm..... are you using Linux? Do you mind if I email you the .cfg (pm me with your email address) and see if that works?

d
Surrealix
02-27-2006, 05:24 PM
I love it :D

Worked fine one my machine (1.8GHz, 256 GFX, 512RAM). Although there are a couple of in-game problems I had.

In the menu, the mouse was almost unusable, as it was far too jerky and unpredictable. Clicking on the options was next to impossible.

Once I got the game started, I couldn't pick up anything. Turns out you have to pick things up while you're running (fine in game, but got me during the tutorial). If you're stopped and press down, it doesn't seem to pick anything up, but if you're running it's fine.

Everything else worked really nicely, I thought. Well done

nb. I'd agree that the resolution is a bit odd though
princec
02-28-2006, 02:01 AM
Holy crapola, the controls are hard! What was wrong with defaulting to WASD for movement! And why a different button for "climb" and "jump"?

Cas :)
DanMarshall
02-28-2006, 02:13 AM
You can change the keys in the options menu! You don't hear me, as a left hander, complaining about the default WASD being unusable whenever I buy a game! I just change the keys! Why is everyone picking up on the default keys being annoying?! Fine. I'll change them...! ;)

If you prefer, you can bind 'climb' and 'jump' to the same key. There's nothing stopping you...!

And you should be able pick stuff up when you're not running. I have no idea why that's happening. So if you stand directly above a cube and press 'down', it does nothing?! Have you accidentally bound two keys to 'down' or something?! This is most odd...!
princec
02-28-2006, 02:15 AM
The trick is to fix all this stuff up so that it's all like this from the beginning :D Why should you not automatically pick up when you run over something? And who needs 2 keys for climb and up when 1 normally does the trick? etc.

Cas :)
DanMarshall
02-28-2006, 02:20 AM
I played with picking things up automatically, and it breaks the game. It's less fun, as it removes an element of skill, and kills the scrabbling moments of desperation when you're fiddling to pick up a cube amid the barrage of bullets heading your way.

I'll change the default keys, though, as it's something people have picked up on. Even though I think it's silly -- besides, my setup is based on the classic 'Snapper Keys' from the days of the BBC Micro, and therefore are bestest. But I'll change them...
PeterM
02-28-2006, 02:25 AM
Hello,

The screenshots look very good (neat style) and it's a nice concept (good for people blasting each other in the office at lunchtime etc).

However I never managed to play the game properly since the game put me off in various ways before I got that far:

The download is quite large. But I'm sure you mean to compress it a bit more before a proper release.
The graphical effect in the menu is rather offputting. I thought my monitor was on the fritz because it couldn't sync to the ridiculously high resolution.
I could only see the mouse cursor while moving it.
The mouse seemed unresponsive.
I started the tutorial, and couldn't move. All the commonly used game keys seemed to do nothing.I got fed up, quit and deleted the game.

Obviously it's great if people can redefine the keys, but by causing WASD and so on to do nothing, you're making it mandatory. I believe for most players trying out the demo, this will cause an immediate uninstall.

But these things are certainly possible to fix, possibly making it a really nice game.

Pete
princec
02-28-2006, 02:53 AM
WRT to the download size... take a look what's actually in there! Whoops :)

Cas :)
DanMarshall
02-28-2006, 03:02 AM
Eh? What's up with what's in my download?!
PeterM
02-28-2006, 03:02 AM
A few large OGGs, I guess they can be compressed by lowering quality or switching to a smaller format.

But gib.dat is 15MB - not sure what kind of file this is - custom pack file, or renamed archive?

Edit: Also, some silly things:
Both debug and release versions of DLLs - which ones do you really use?
The dat.exe app which allows people to extract data from your dat file.
princec
02-28-2006, 03:09 AM
Eh? What's up with what's in my download?!
ogg_d.dll
vorbis_d.dll
vorbisenc_d.dll
vorbisfile_d.dll
Thumbs.db (!!!!)
tutorial.BAK

Cas :)
DanMarshall
02-28-2006, 03:14 AM
Yeah, alright. You got me. I'll sort it for the next demo. ;)
Nexic
02-28-2006, 04:02 AM
Pesky thumbs.db, I always put that one in by mistake...