ExBiEn - Movie Game Contest

[Qube]

ExBiEn

OK people, listen up... Take your elite squad of mercenaries and save the space station from destruction of an unknown EBE threat. You will have to work together and alone in this top down shooter in order to complete your mission.



Downloads
Windows
Mac
Linux

The Windows version may need the DirectX9 End User Runtime : https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=8109
The Linux version was only been tested in Ubuntu and requires the OpenAL library to be installed. Terminal > sudo apt-get install libopenal1

Controls :

Key W to move towards the cross hairs
Key S to move away from the cross hairs
Keys A / D to strafe left and right around the cross hairs

Keys 1, 2, 3, 4 to select individual players
Key 5 to select all players

Key G to select grenades
Key B to select bullets

Key M] to turn motion tracker on / off

Media info :

Graphics, coding and music done by me. The Alien and Face Hugger models are fan created but animated by me. The characters are Daz3D models. Sound effects are a mixture of modified / unmodified AGK sound library sounds and modified fan made Aliens sound effects found on YouTube.

Intro Video :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azMLUJa7mV4

General Notes :

If you're wondering...

Level 1 = Face Huggers
Level 2 = Aliens
Level 3 = Face Hugger, Aliens and Sentry guns

[Naughty Alien]

..this is very nice...ill play later a bit more..reminds me of alien shooter..

..by the way, how to exit game...ESC doesnt help but pause, while in game..

[Qube]

..by the way, how to exit game...ESC doesnt help but pause, while in game..

Yeah, I simply ran out of time to implement quitting a game after pausing. This will be addressed in an update but for now, get your dudes killed and then quit ( exit ) from the title screen. Oddly enough, on my Mac I can Command + Q and it'll quit any time but couldn't figure out the brute force Windows way which should be alt + f4.

[Derron]

With wine on Linux you can also Alt+F4. Maybe a "bugfix solution" would be to add a key to switch between fullscreen and windowed (so you can click the "{x}" - "[" creates an odd sign ;-)). Or maybe add a "ctrl + Q" to quit. Am not sure if that is a "feature thing" (might annoy people - so might influence there vote).


Did you write/use a level editor? You once wrote you layed out some ground layer "by hand" ? Do you mean "for x... for y ... placeground(x,y)" ? I Hope so ;-). Level editors feature basic setups. Hope you did not click thousand times.


bye
Ron 

[Qube]

I wrote a simple tile map for The last ginger ninja and adapted it for this game. It's incredibly basic but works. I wrote a script to do the floor tiles but as with randomness you get repeated chunks which require manual work to fix. But yes, many many clicks to build each level. Level 2 took the longest to make as that is a full 100x100 map of 20x20 tiles ( a 10,000 tile map ) then on top it's three layers + effects + testing. Level building is a time sucker.

I aim to build a better map / level maker but for this game it required a lot of manual work.

[Matty]

I like it - I made something similar in probably 2004 or 2005 in blitz3d but completely mouse driven (left click to move, right click to shoot)...the control scheme is easy enough to get used to that you have here, although I was a little surprised when I pressed back with the mouse in the middle of the party - they all scattered away and it was tricky to bring them all back together (yes - I could have chosen just a single character instead of the whole party)

Comments/Criticisms:

Nice graphics and sound effects, moody, atmospheric

The profile pics on the left with the health etc - I didn't even notice these most of the time - too busy looking at the main screen, health bars above the actual characters heads would have been easier to spot than looking left at the side bar.

Good game.

Have to play the others next.

[Qube]

"ctrl + Q" to quit. Am not sure if that is a "feature thing" (might annoy people - so might influence there vote).

Yeah, I would consider that adding a feature

I like it - I made something similar in probably 2004 or 2005 in blitz3d but completely mouse driven (left click to move, right click to shoot)

That was my first option but as in level 2 there you have to do a lot more sneaky small movements I thought the constant clicking could get annoying.

Ideally what I'll do is build in another control system and have an settings option on the title screen so players can choose a control method to suit them.

The profile pics on the left with the health etc - I didn't even notice these most of the time - too busy looking at the main screen

Half into the game I was toying with the idea of removing the side panel and have some sort of popup information instead when you click on a player and have the health bar over the player. But that gremlin called time didn't allow for trying things out and so I had to go with what I had.

[Derron]

You seem to hassle a lot with the timeframe. I think you should still try to have "fun" doing it. I toyed a bit too much but I tried things here and there, changed things to allow "staying potentially in the timeframe" ...

@ Control
Hmm, not much matured yet as an idea but: maybe use the mousewheel (or key + mousebutton down) to change size of the "radius of attraction". This radius defines how near the members of the team will try to come to the crosshair. This could allow for even more "tactical" input as you see the radius (alpha 0.2; drawcircle; ...). For you you are able to do something "similar" with keypresses.


bye
Ron

[Qube]

You seem to hassle a lot with the timeframe. I think you should still try to have "fun" doing it.

I did have a load of fun doing it and will improve it. By timeframe I mean I had very little time to keep trying different things and I just needed to get on with it

@ Control
Hmm, not much matured yet as an idea but: maybe use the mousewheel (or key + mousebutton down) to change size of the "radius of attraction". This radius defines how near the members of the team will try to come to the crosshair. This could allow for even more "tactical" input as you see the radius (alpha 0.2; drawcircle; ...). For you you are able to do something "similar" with keypresses.

Yeah, I'll be trying out a few methods and have at least two options for members in the settings menu.

[Steve Elliott]

You seem to hassle a lot with the timeframe.

Coming from a person that didn't finish his game in time I find that a strange comment.

[Derron]

I meant it is not worth having the time in mind all the time. Do the stuff you like...and time is then running out you at least have had fun learning something.

Of course you will have to make decisions here and there but it sounded as if Qube followed some strict diet plan...


I did not finish mine as I fighted some little, maybe unimportant bugs (once you know about them you will tackle them). But way more important I had way less time at the and as I preferred to do things with family and buddies. Not to talk about other projects eating time too. But no worries here. It is a fun-based competition which I try to use as learn-something reason, not finish-something.


Bye
Ron

[Qube]

I meant it is not worth having the time in mind all the time. Do the stuff you like...and time is then running out you at least have had fun learning something.

I had loads of fun doing this game - I thoroughly enjoyed doing it and couldn't wait until I created the function "CreateAlien". Being a 10 week comp of course I had to plan what could be achievable or not. My main goal was to do an ambitious game but a game that is a complete and playable one.

Of course you will have to make decisions here and there but it sounded as if Qube followed some strict diet plan...

No diet plan . I planed the game I wanted to do and I knew it would require a lot of coding, a whole heap of graphics, music, sound, etc etc. Between the media and the coding required I had little time to ponder over and try out different things. So I just had to go for it and revisit it later. If the comp had been another month longer then it would of been a different game and more polished in areas.

Lets not forget that it's a 10 week comp to which most of us can only give a few hours a week. It amazes me what people can come up with in such a short space of time. The creativity side alone is quite inspiring. I'd never judge any short time based comp as I would a commercial game.

I did not finish mine as I fighted some little, maybe unimportant bugs (once you know about them you will tackle them). But way more important I had way less time at the and as I preferred to do things with family and buddies. Not to talk about other projects eating time too. But no worries here. It is a fun-based competition which I try to use as learn-something reason, not finish-something.

See, we all have time issues - Time was not a hassle for me. Time was a motivator in what could be done or not. Sure, my game is rough in places and those will be fixed but I'm damn proud with what I came up with in 10 weeks.

[Derron]

So your plan was to finish something - my plan was to create something "improveable". All the code I wrote was "extendable" or it already contains a big pile of stuff not visible in the game. If I needed to cut features here and there, then I would need to rewrite all this stuff once I think the game deserves getting "improved" or "extended". So eg. the placement of the items (desks/devices) could be done with the mouse - including rotation and all the stuff. But the interaction/GUI stuff for it would have taken a lot more time so I had created the "transportation boxes" as placeholders for building spots. This was done in ~1-2hrs (including "remove/add" of decoration items). While it now was possible to "place" items, it changes the gameplay by a lot - as you no longer have to care on your own if the "required paths" (from start to device seat) are optimal or not. The whole game was about "micromechanics" (you need to care for a lot of things instead of having assistants doing it for you).

All the characters are planned to have individual favors on where they work and you could assign workers to devices etc. - all this stuff needs a lot of GUI interaction (and GUI layout...) which eats so many time. Time I normally would have had if nobody would disturb me ;-) But hey. No worries, for the next game I now have some base 3d models, some isometric tile engine ... The stuff I liked coding the most (exctept for bug squashing which took the most time and is far away from the "creative job's" fun).

On the other hand the next compo will force me to learn something new - something which might not work well with isometric views, or casual game elements like in the last compo...


Think next compo should be prepared a bit better, so people could post in _advance_ on other coding forums. Eg. keep theme and exact timeframe a secret and only announce that it will happen in XYZ of month ABC.


bye
Ron

[Qube]

So your plan was to finish something - my plan was to create something "improveable".

No, my plan was to create, make and finish to a good standard an ambitious game based on the timeframe ( gotta push yourself )

All the code I wrote was "extendable" or it already contains a big pile of stuff not visible in the game.

Unfortunately, no one cares about what they can't see. They want to play the game, not fill in the blanks - I hope you finish off Creature Corp as it look really promising.

Think next compo should be prepared a bit better, so people could post in _advance_ on other coding forums. Eg. keep theme and exact timeframe a secret and only announce that it will happen in XYZ of month ABC.

That sounds like a good idea

[Qube]

Finally got around to fixing my Linux VM \o/

Here is the Linux version of ExBiEn ( 1st post updated too ). Note, there is nothing new / fixed in this version, it's just the exact same as the comp version.

The Linux version was only been tested in Ubuntu 16.04 and requires the OpenAL library to be installed. Terminal > sudo apt-get install libopenal1