X-Bomber Revival!!!

A forum for discussion of Crash's retro-style arcade game based on Star Fleet
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Crash
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X-Bomber Revival!!!

Post by Crash »

Right, it's time to get this game up and running again. It might be a long way from being finished but for those of you who haven't played it recently - it really is excellent.The project has totally lost focus - I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. Which is why I need everyone to help me figure-out where to go next. This game has been in the works for a long time - it has a lot going for it too. It is based on Star Fleet after-all!What should I concentrate on next? And who can take care of other things in the mean-time? This section of the forum has been underused until now but I really hope to change that... I have free time this year so I can get things done - but I realise I can't do it all so I need your help, from anyone who thinks they can contribute even the slightest thing to the project.Examples might: gathering feedback, publicity, updating websites, posting screenshots, writing documentation... organising who can do what etc. I'm no project leader really, (unlike some people I've seen) but I'm willing to try cos I want this game finished and deep down so do you!these are all boring things but that's how games get written it seems to me. If everyone does a tiny bit according to what they're meant to do - I think it should be dead easy and enjoyable, moreso than my previous experience cos it's ... it's teamwork, (to which I am usually allergic) but here goes...So who's willing to tool-up and give me a hand?
Dream big and bold and daring.
Dr. Ben
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X-Bomber Revival!!!

Post by Dr. Ben »

Dude I'll do whatever I can. I can't program anything but I can do animations, graphic design, websites, copy and paste, screenshots, a little 3D, gathering feedback, publicity, writing documentation, organising, music, sound or whatever else.I can't run the game until I get the PC up and running but I will soon.But just say the word and I'll get it done. I've been known to pull off miracles.
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Crash
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X-Bomber Revival!!!

Post by Crash »

Right!!! Welcome aboard! I did mean to reply before I headed off to work this morning but I was running a little too late.We now have a team of 5 (including you and me). People have been really very quick to come to our rescue. That's a good number because having lots of people with Windows boxes is great for testing things, especially when it comes to X-Bomber's current technical difficulties. I can certainly do with another spriter. I can do it myself but it does take a long time. Plus any experience with sounds and music would be brilliant. - That's been X-Bomber's weak point all-along really. At the moment lots of sounds need editing because they 'pop' at the end when played under MMF2's sound engine. I've had a look at the waveforms and it's caused by spikes at the ends of some of the sound files. If someone could edit those out in the fullness of time that'd be great. Plus any thoughts as to how to improve X-Bomber's music provision would be most appreciated.I seem to remember talk of someone on the forum having a whole library of Star Fleet sound effects. That was a long time ago however, but if we could get our hands on that, that would be amazing. Does anyone else remember hearing about that? I think it was someone over at Star Fleet Project. Unfortunately the forum's not as active as it used to be so getting in touch might be a problem. Anyway we'll have a go at tracking down that library since all my sounds taken from Star Fleet are really badly recorded. So would you be willing to be our sound specialist? Another thing is definitely publicity... I can write a game sort-of-OK-ish. But I haven't a clue how to run a publicity campaign. So if anyone on the team has the scantest idea about that it'd be a big improvement.Before December we're also gonna have to make some decisions about websites, organisation and hosting and I'd also like to release something that passes for a manual sometime before I start drawing my pension. So your opinion on those matters would be very valuable indeed.So, I think we're communicating mostly by email really. It was just the 4 of us: Piers Bell (me, a languages student, taking a year abroad in Germany as it happens) Phil Sims (a friend from school in Newcastle) (emeraldcoast.co.uk) Liam O'Hara (a friend and housemate from University) Steve [surname unknown], who is a freeware game-making programmer from the US. whom I met on MSN.If you fire me an email at xgp [at] btinternet . com (you can just click the link on the X-Bomber site, it's all anti-spam) then that saves you chalking up your email on here for the spiders to come and find. And I'll fire you a reply with everyone else's email addresses in it etc.I think we'll probably use this forum (if anyone else on the team can be bothered to sign-up of course) for any public discussion I suppose. It's only us that's gonna use the thing I'm guessing and the overheads of looking after our own are pretty high - believe me I've tried it.
Dream big and bold and daring.
Dr. Ben
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Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2005 10:48 am

X-Bomber Revival!!!

Post by Dr. Ben »

I'd be happy to do sound fx and music. Brad Smith did a few MIDIs of some of the incidential peices that I still have if he doesn't mind. They'd be good. I can record plenty of sounds. Oh and did I mention I know a musician? He could no doubt compose something groovy or play something from the show. I assume you want all your sounds as WAVs. Or is MP3 OK? I'll shoot you an email with my info in a few days. I could get you plenty of advertising. Banners on sites, podcast advertising. But I claim the title of sound guy. Tell me what to do! My email is indycast [at] gmail.com I'll do what I can.
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Crash
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Post by Crash »

Alright sir! You are on. I do remember those MIDIs... if we could get some of the upbeat action tracks from the show that would be wonderful. I wonder if Bradster would be interested in finishing a full set. Have a chat with your friend, the musician. Anything for the game that is... fast, happy, catchy and upbeat... so basically in line with what the game has at the moment.Unfortunately MMF2 has no native capacity to work with MP3 files. All our sound effects have to be WAVs. The sound effects code is highly decentralised since the programming for any given sound is kept close to the weapon, ship, event etc. to which it is related. It would therefore take forever to sift through and change every one to use an extension for MP3 instead.The WAV files are stored inside the application and compressed, which is why the game isn't 100's of MBs in size.Any format is possible for music, since the music programming occupies its own area, which can be replaced very easily. MP3s, OGGs, MIDI you name and it should work. I have tried to get in touch with Mike, whom I believe had the library of Star Fleet sounds. That may not be possible however since the last I heard he was in China and the email address on this site is ... 3 years old. I don't think I've kept a computer as long as that let alone an email address. I'm uploading tonnes of files to our swanky new unlimited space and bandwidth account that I don't even pay for. Amongst those will be my sound effects archive ripped from all sorts of games that had cool sounds. It's about 800MBs
Dream big and bold and daring.
Dr. Ben
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X-Bomber Revival!!!

Post by Dr. Ben »

So do you have the original sound files? You said they were having problems. If so send em on!
Shane
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X-Bomber Revival!!!

Post by Shane »

Unable to help with the project myself, due to other commitments these days which includes a small record label: www.myspace.com/infintiumIt's something I would have jumped onboard like a shot a few years back. Speaking of which, and not wanting to tread on any toes now that you have got a sound man on the case, but I looked through a lot of my old Star Fleet files and found a little ditty I did a few years ago when I was going to try and recreate the old Starfleet tunes using similar equipment as was used by Paul Bliss. The Starfleet soundtrack was found to have been made using Oberheim and Roland Juno synths, and as I had a Juno myself and other equipment that could emulate the Oberheim sound I embarked on recreating the "Battlefunk" music that is heard a lot in the series.I posted a link to it at the time, and it seemed to go down well with the punters here. It's certainly a bit rough and ready productionwise compared to what I'm doing today, but it did sound very retro starfleetish.Anyway, although I'm unable to help, I'm certainly happy to donate the track in question to do with what you want, you could certainly get a decent sized loop out of it for a level of your game.Just drop me a PM if you're interested Crash, and I'll email you the file. It's an MP3 so it's not a huge file.Coolio.
I like parties, I like fun, I want to live in a hamburger bun!
AndyThomas
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X-Bomber Revival!!!

Post by AndyThomas »

Hi one and all. Are any of these of any use music wise?SoundsUnfortunately I can't commit a lot to this for reasons similar to Shane's, but obviously if I get chance I will try and help where I can and assist with publicity from here. For example, I could link to xbomber.co.uk from every page on SFXB if that would be of any help? Incidentally, if any of your team members aren't already members here, let me know if they need to get on because I'll need to let them on manually, as it's spam city these days and unfortunately this forum won't support those graphics-based code logons a la Facebook.
Andy Thomas - SFXB Webmaster and Forum Moderator
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Crash
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X-Bomber Revival!!!

Post by Crash »

Hi guys, no worries!Does anyone know how to get in touch with Dave Mallory? If I can contact him then I can get through to Mike [surname also unknown] to get this sound archive. I want those files almost as much as I want Transformers on HD-DVD and a 50" plasma to play it on.If that doesn't work, can anyone rip off our own library of sounds from the Star Fleet DVDs? Any weapons, ships, computer sounds etc. would come in handy. (I'm in Germany at the moment and I literally only have... a laptop (pretty cool as it may be), a power supply, a mouse, a Windows XP disc and four games). There's no time pressure to do it either, could take 6 months or more if needs be.If people fire me any MP3s and MIDIs to my email address xgp at btinternet.com, literally anything you've got just send it. I think I've used one of the sounds from SFXB already without asking - the hero theme is used at the end of each mission. It fits really perfectly actually. I'm gonna stick it all up on this server I've just been admitted onto so that people can get at it whenever they want to. The several hundred GBs of space and several TBs of bandwidth should keep us out of trouble for a short while at least. It's quite slow though, that's the only thing.What would be quite nice is a rip of some of the really catchy pop techno tracks from Star Fleet. There was one that was reserved until near the end of the series that was really amazing and upbeat.[ @ Dr.B.: ] - I'll extract the sounds from the X-Bomber source file tomorrow. It might take a little time to do but then we can have a full list of what's in there and we can see what needs refining etc. I was working all morning and early afternoon today but also I managed to totally complete repairs on the training level, which I thought was going to take up-to and part of the weekend to finish. So that's a big improvement. so I haven't had time to get those files to you yet, sorry. Will do it tomorrow at some stage though without fail. It would be lovely to try and kinda pair-up the two sites in a way, SFXB and XGP. We seem to be the only two major ones still on the go. I'll certainly put a link across to here on all my pages. I'm not sure how many hits you'll get out of it though. We get a... decent number of visitors but I'm greedy and I want an OUTRAGEOUS number of visitors so any more radical ideas for making my bandwidth counter go up would be very very welcome. I'm sure there must be a plugin or an add-on for an Ikonboard that stops those buttmonkeys crumping up our forum. I'll look into that myself... Saturday or whatever, either that or I'll delegate. I love this teamwork thing.Well thank you for all your support people - hear from you in a short while. I'll be back tomorrow.
Dream big and bold and daring.
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Crash
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X-Bomber Revival!!!

Post by Crash »

Voila!http://forums.ikonboard.com/cgi-bin/iko ... t=2416This 3.1.5 should meet the requirement well. As long as ImageMagick is around you're sorted. If you're hosts don't have it, get onto them about it cos it's a really basic, fundamental thing. So unless there's something wrong with this particular board that should work OK.If you've still no luck, xbomber.co.uk has it for sure. We could probably host it on there.
Dream big and bold and daring.
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