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SilverballZ [RELEASE]  "Frst-person platformer"

User is offline   Sanek 

#1


SilverballZ is a standalone first-person platformer powered by Build Engine. While it features the same technology as the first-person shooters, SBZ is actually a complete antipode of it.The visual style is utterly minimalistic, violence and is minimal, and the actual gameplay is №1 priority here.
Your character is a anthropomorphic ball named Silver, and you're one of the silver balls. The evil shapes is your enemies, and your job is to free your friends from them,
i.e. you must collect all balls to finish each level.
The gameplay is nothing but platforming and evasion.
Difficulty will gradually grow from level to level.

Features:

-12 levels of jumping mayhem!
-3D-rendered sprites!
-PC Speaker sounds, for pure retro!
-OST by Brandon Blume, aka MusicallyInspired! 8 tracks!



Standalone OST by Brandon Blume is here!

https://manicware.itch.io/sbzost

While the game itself is free, the soundtrack is a separate product so if you want to support the me and the composer, you can buy it for just $3.50!

All 8 tracks from the game is here + monster 9-minute bonus track! In MP3!

Loseless FLAC version is coming soon too, it'll be released by MusicallyInspired later.



Credits:

Sanek - Lead Developer/Designer
Mblackwell - Programmer
Brandon Blume (MusicallyInspired) - Composer
Zykov Eddy - Tester

SBZ was a very troubled production, but it's finally here. Thanks to all who supported me, and also gave me a fair criticism over the last year.
And very big thanks to MusicallyInspired, he's AMAZING composer, you should play the game for it's music alone.
Made with software renderer in mind, but you can use opengl too. However, there's a lot of strange flickering here and there, I don't know to resolve it yet...

Download: https://manicware.itch.io/silverballz

This post has been edited by Mblackwell: 06 March 2019 - 09:41 AM

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User is offline   Jblade 

#2

nice work, I'll check this out ASAP!
2

User is offline   Radar 

  • King of SOVL

#3

Is there a way to resume from where I last left off after exiting the game?
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User is offline   Sanek 

#4

View PostRadar, on 24 February 2019 - 02:00 PM, said:

Is there a way to resume from where I last left off after exiting the game?

Yes. F3 works.
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User is offline   Sanek 

#5

Updated the game, since springsound sound was not working. :)
Please download it again if you want to hear it :D

This post has been edited by Sanek: 25 February 2019 - 01:45 AM

1

User is offline   Paul B 

#6

Sanek you are a genius! Nice work the trailer looks awesome!
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User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#7

The game is actually really fun. I didn't start playing it until most of the music was done. But man. Addictive. I like how the save system is not quite checkpoint based but also totally not manual either. Earning your save point and also being able to choose when you save in some levels but saving them until later is an awesome gameplay feature.
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User is offline   Sanek 

#8

View PostMusicallyInspired, on 25 February 2019 - 03:54 PM, said:

I like how the save system is not quite checkpoint based but also totally not manual either. Earning your save point and also being able to choose when you save in some levels but saving them until later is an awesome gameplay feature.


Do you multiple saves in one location? What I tried to do is to have some sort of a hub for each map, where you have at least 2 routes to go. I guess it don't make much sense in some of the smaller maps, but at least I tried.

And yeah, the music was the very last thing added to the game, as it was finished on the day of release. The last days before release was a very wild ride, you won't beelive how much stuff was fixed and added during the last 48 hours.

This post has been edited by Sanek: 26 February 2019 - 07:50 AM

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User is offline   Mark 

#9

Last days before release is almost always a hectic time.
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User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#10

Yeah, the system makes sense. I really liked that "hub" aspect!
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User is offline   Sanek 

#11

Standalone OST by Brandon Blume is here!

https://manicware.itch.io/sbzost

While the game itself is free, the soundtrack is a separate product so if you want to support the me and the composer, you can buy it for just $3.50!

All 8 tracks from the game is here + monster 9-minute bonus track! In MP3!

Loseless FLAC version is coming soon too, it'll be released by MusicallyInspired later.


P.S. If any of the moderators see this post...can you replace the OST "coming soon" in the first post with that link?
2

User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#12

The 9-minute instrumental bonus track is a new 2019 remix of my piece "Uncontrolled Reentry". Seemed to fit well with the style of the soundtrack.

This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 26 February 2019 - 01:18 PM

0

User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#13

The OST is on my Bandcamp store now where you can get it in lossless format. The profits, like the MP3 OST above on itch.io, go to supporting myself and Sanek as well!

https://music.brandonblume.com/album/silverballz-game-soundtrack
Posted Image

4

User is offline   Sanek 

#14

View PostMusicallyInspired, on 01 March 2019 - 08:21 AM, said:

The OST is on my Bandcamp store now where you can get it in lossless format. The profits, like the MP3 OST above on itch.io, go to supporting myself and Sanek as well!

The price of the OST is actually varies on a different platforms, and the reason for it is a huge tax percentages (at least on itch).
Nevertheless, the OST is awesome. I found myself listeting to these tracks on a repeat ever since the release. Especially the BONUS track, which is not part of the game, but a fantastic song anyway.
I know I don't have anything to do with the the music creation, but the simple fact that SBZ have OST like this is such a good feeling. :)
1

User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#15

It was a pleasure to help out!

This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 03 March 2019 - 09:20 AM

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User is offline   Sanek 

#16

MSDN review: https://msdn.duke4.n...silverballz.php

Some stats: Itch.io's records shows that 7 days since the release, the game have 90 downloads against 174 views, so approx. every second visitor decided to download the game.

I must say that I'm worried about complete lack of reviews here. All of you who downloaded/upvoted the game, do you actually played it? I know this post will not make you write about the game right now if you don't want to, but after all the trouble it went through, having zero reviews is extremely disappointing. Like WTF is happening. :)
0

User is offline   Mark 

#17

Thats normal. I had to go "fishing" for comments on some of my projects too. Good or bad. There has never been a full review of any of them AFAIK. I'll admit I'm one of the lazy ones that will try a map or mod, upvote but not comment.
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User is offline   Hank 

#18

View PostSanek, on 03 March 2019 - 01:14 PM, said:

Like WTF is happening. :)

Mikko is very good making reviews. Mine is half-baked; open spoiler at your own risk.
Spoiler

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User is offline   Sanek 

#19

@Hank You can change controls if you want to. I didn't expect that left-handed people'll play the mod tbh. :)
Thank you for trying anyway.


View PostMark, on 04 March 2019 - 06:11 AM, said:

Thats normal. I had to go "fishing" for comments on some of my projects too. Good or bad. There has never been a full review of any of them AFAIK. I'll admit I'm one of the lazy ones that will try a map or mod, upvote but not comment.


I don't think it's normal, as there's always at least some comments for EVERY map or TC released on this forum. I'm so disappointed tbh, after spending so much time on this mod only to find out that nobody's willing to comment about it.

Everybody's who upvoted the first post - they'll write millions of comments for AMC TC and AA I have no doubt about this.
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User is offline   Mark 

#20

My Quest Town project received 7 comments from 5 people IIRC. I spent a hell of a lot of time on code, mapping, models, textures and voice acting over the course of at least a year. Don't feel like you are being singled out. This stuff happens. I'm used to it by now. I do modding mostly for fun. I'm not expecting AMC TC or WGR2 success.

You already have twice the amount of upvotes I received. See, you've succeeded. :)

Oh, my comment for the game is I didn't try it because I suck at keyboard movement control. I upvoted because its different and cool looking.

This post has been edited by Mark: 06 March 2019 - 05:53 AM

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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#21

I just spent the last 4 or 5 months editing maps and playtesting AA for hours on end, then went directly into playtesting AMC TC 3 for hours on end over a few weeks time. I cherry-picked one ck3d map to play when I had a minute to myself between these obligations and real life chores.
I'm, burnt the fuck out.

Would you like your download back? You can keep the upvote.
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User is offline   Radar 

  • King of SOVL

#22

Duke is dead, welcome to 2010. It's amazing that guys like MRCK will produce probably his best map yet (Poison Heart) and realistically that thread won't get more than 2 pages. I figured everyone here that was still modding did it purely out of love for it. Even AA and AMC won't get much traction in the grand scheme of things. If you're looking for high download numbers, GZDoom might be a better option.

This post has been edited by Radar: 06 March 2019 - 06:38 AM

2

User is offline   Jblade 

#23

What Radar said; stop making stuff and then getting crushed when nobody checks it out. It's clear you stopped having fun making this a while back so don't torture yourself. Start something you actually REALLY like, or hang up your cap and ride into the sunset. You've at least released things which is much more of an accomplishment than a lot of other people will achieve.

The mod is alright and the music is great, but there's not much to talk about beyond that. Sorry the development took it's toll on you.
1

User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#24

My point was that people have lives and other things going on (I can only use myself as an example, I won't put other people's business out there).

People's time is limited.

They have to judge how big the project is and how much time they can dedicate to playing a game.

If you bother to look, Alien Armageddon 2, a larger project with more substance, really didn't get that much feedback. Most of it is from the same people spending their time finding and posting about exploits.Very few posts about enjoying the game or how they liked/disliked the content. The new trend is to see who can break the game the most; like they get bragging rights, or something.
3

User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#25

Yeah, you can't be doing something creative and looking for lots of feedback. I've learned that a long time ago. I've been doing music for years and I almost never get feedback, let alone sales. It's especially not a wise move to start complaining about that because then you just turn people off which is even worse than not getting feedback. You turn the number of fans down rather than up, accomplishing the opposite of what you want. This is a very niche community.

Heck, Mage's Initiation was very well known and highly anticipated by a lot of people in the indie/Kickstarter/point&click adventure community for years and people loved it when it finally came out (despite some criticism about the combat, cutscenes, and some of the voice acting). Then when I released the soundtrack I got more sales than I've ever had for anything else I've ever worked on.....but even that was only a handful. As in, less than ten. This is just the way things are until you really make it. Making it is not something you can force either. The best you can do is keep working on stuff and not stopping and trying to show as many people as possible (without being aggressive) until the right people come along and notice what you're doing and word of mouth gets around and it starts growing and your name becomes known. This can take years. Years and years. Or you might get lucky and explode overnight. Usually not, though.

So don't lose heart. Having no feedback is honestly better than negative feedback when you look at the big picture. Just keep at it as long as you love it. Because if you're doing it for feedback and positive comments, you'll be sorely disappointing and discouraged into not wanting to ever work on anything again. Just do it for the love and fun of doing it and keep hoping people notice. It's a lot better (not to mention, more genuine) when they feel the need to comment all on their own. It means your work was extra special. If you're not getting feedback, don't lash out. Instead refine your craft and do something even more special and polished the next time. Going after trends that people really like and enjoy isn't bad either. Keep working harder until your work starts to turn some heads all on its own without you having to ask for it. That's the ultimate goal of an artist of any medium. :)

This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 06 March 2019 - 08:52 AM

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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#26

Don't know if it would help get the game exposure, but you could put this and the Candy game on ModDB, or IndieDB
(if you haven't already)

This post has been edited by Forge: 06 March 2019 - 08:54 AM

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User is offline   Sanek 

#27

I'm sorry guys. It's just very strange, confusing and dissapointing that there's no comments on a forum, when literally every release gets a at least a couple of reviews. No matter what year it is and how big the community are. I won't be as sad as if it's just a user map, but I spent a year with this thing. The correlation of dev time and feedback drives me nuts. At least there's 100 downloads on itch.io, which is nice. I still hope that some people'll write something here if they played it.

Anyway, I learned a lot while making this game, which is all hard lessons on how to plan things and all the do and don'ts of game development. And after being so close to just giving up on it, finally releasing it is a huge win for me.
2

User is online   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#28

There probably will be more people playing this and giving you feedback, but it won't be a ton, and it won't help to complain about how few there are. Some of us remember the finger pointing you engaged in leading up to the release, which doesn't make us eager to play it either.

If you want an audience, you have to treat them like you would treat a potential girlfriend. Do you think a girl would want to go out with some guy who is complaining to her about how she ignores him? Hell, no. How hard he has worked to get her attention or for whatever reason isn't really relevant either. It's no use trying to argue that you are deserving -- you have to show that you have something they want.

Even a really impressive game can fail to make people care about it or want to play it. Timing matters, too. There are lots of variables. When I am working on a mod, there's three questions I ask myself:

1) Is this a game that I want to play?
2) Does this game have a unique selling point?
3) Do I have access to the resources needed to finish the game within a reasonable span of time?

Unless you are being paid to make the game, all three answers should be "YES".
1) If it's not a game that you want to play, then your motivation to work on it will die, and all you will have to show for your efforts even if you finish it is some scattered internet comments from people you will never meet.
2) Your game or mod exists in a world chalk full of games, many of them free or nearly free. If your game doesn't stand out and have something uniquely attractive about it, then there's no reason people will choose to play it over other similar games that may be better executed than yours. If your game is just an "also ran", then it can still have great execution, or marketing, but how likely is it to have those things and gain a big audience from them if you are just a single modder or part of a tiny unpaid team?

Just the other day I had to rethink what I was working on because of this problem. I have been trying to create a kind of Unreal Tournament with player versus bots in Duke 3D. From a technical standpoint, that could be pretty cool, but when I asked myself why people would play it I came up blank. I wouldn't even want to play it myself, honestly. Now, I already knew that it would need story elements and other stuff to make it more interesting, but realizing that I wouldn't even want to play it myself without major additions made me realize just how much great additional content it needs. I'm pretty sure if I released something that was just "hey play all these gametypes versus bots and enemies in Duke Nukem!" people would acknowledge that I worked hard on it and it was technically impressive to do that in Build, but I doubt that many people would really want to spend much time with it, because they could play better games like that which already exist.

3) Always come up with a plan for finishing that takes into account the resources you have access to (expertise, time, etc.) If you don't have the resources to do it the way you want, make a plan B which you can execute. Or, in some cases, just pick a different project.
5

User is offline   Hank 

#29

View PostSanek, on 07 March 2019 - 01:20 AM, said:

Anyway, I learned a lot while making this game, which is all hard lessons on how to plan things and all the do and don'ts of game development. And after being so close to just giving up on it, finally releasing it is a huge win for me.

Good. Never give up!
And as peeps wrote, look at other groups, as in ModDB and IndieDB, and see how they are promoting games. It's tough. But if it were easy, everyone could win, and that ain't not no fun then. :)
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User is offline   Mark 

#30

TD said: "3) Always come up with a plan for finishing that takes into account the resources you have access to (expertise, time, etc.) If you don't have the resources to do it the way you want, make a plan B which you can execute."

Not following that advice has been my problem from day 1 back in 2009 and continues right up to today. I get an idea but never flesh it out very far and rarely ever write it down as a plan. I mod as I go along. I wish I was more organized.

This post has been edited by Mark: 07 March 2019 - 06:19 AM

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