*** qoob RELEASED ***

The qoob have destroyed your world, now it's your turn to steal it back from them...

qoob is a game of skill, cunning and square bashing! The object of the game is to decrypt the 64 bit qoob galaxy code.

The qoob galaxy consists of 8 qoob systems, each containing 8 qoob worlds. Each qoob world is a 4D maze containing a single digit code which forms part of the 64 bit qoob galaxy code. To obtain the single digit code you need to locate not only the decryption key but also the qoob that holds the code.

Are you up to the task?









After 17 months development qoob v0.8 is finally ready! This is a major update including gas masks, triggered bridges, triggered gas clouds, unstable blocks, more doors, time capsules, redesigned HUD, triggered teleports, improved space environment plus load more!

qoob is still in development but we have released this stable beta so you can enjoy this awesome game.

We genuinely look forward to all your feedback and suggestions.

http://www.boiledsweets.com/qoob/bin/qoobdemo.zip

The full what's new...

General

Added 'time check' code for testing full beta releases.

Brought install scripts up to date with current Boiled Sweets templates.

No longer use the slow 2d BmpFont routines.

Game

Added teleports, teleport triggers, gas clouds, gas masks, gas cloud deactivators, unstable blocks.

Improved the asteroids textures / shapes

Expanded the alien mesh options. Can now choose from 5 different meshes (or none) and set the alpha too!

Expanded the difficulty rating options!

Added bigger stars with their own orbit.

Added beautiful spiral galaxies (red and blue) with their own orbits / rotation.

Now use the awesome Sprite Candy engine for all HUD / text stuff - super fast now!

Now use the latest Particle Candy engine - faster and more stable

Added LOADS of in game messages (can also be turned on / off).

Improved the map data files structure and the way we reference the textures, added sanity check for non existent textures too!

Replaced the "Arrgh" text with Sprite Candy.

Better falling out of the world triggering - player has to be falling at a certain speed and below the bottom block layer. This allows for huge drops within maps without dying.

Added LOADS more textures and removed the 'crap' ones.

Optimised the collision detection routine.

Completely redesigned the HUD

Removed the horrid 'slight drop' when starting a new world - no longer point the player at the welcome map too.

Removed several unrequired entities

Now use a 1.6 camera zoom to ensure the aspect ratio is 'correct'

Added a Reset Game key (F10). This will reset all game objects and reposition you back to the start should you be unfortunate enough to find yourself in a dead end or without a required game object.

Added loads more tunes.

Menu

Change the way the menu goes from system to main -

Now uses a smooth flying camera

Main menu cubes now fade out and in when the camera needs it - Stops horrid clipping

Added a whole new level of menu for player help
Added in super funky LED's as buttons in the options menu

Removed BCF from most of the menu's - Aaaargh it is riddled with the stuff

Implemented change over to Hud for all screen text -

Much nicer and easier to use

Added sanity checks for lines that only need to be done when necessary and not every loop -

Added sanity checks for dev mode to all WIP cubes -
Release versions will now not allow selection of a WIP cube

Stripped out lots of spurious unnecessary and not used code

Modified ini file to read and write an int not floats for the gamma correction stuff

Removed all BMPFont stuff from menu

Fixed the camera zooming into the world incorrectly, it now zooms faster allowing quicker game load

Fixed the camera fade out while zooming into the world, it is now timed to fade fully as the zoom finishes

Implemented a nice looking mouse pointer image

Got the help menu working properly - all options now available (see below about web cube)

Implemented and tested options\controls menu functionality

Removed all the hints code as it's no longer wanted

Changed hints cube into a web page cube

Got the system/world carousel text working again

Editor

Much tweaking in the GUI.

Now use the Blitz 10 font.

Fixed bug when re-entering the editor (having a selected a brick in first session).

No longer ask the amount of fuel when clearing a fuel pod!

Only report unsuccessful map loads just not successful ones too.

Improved the time bomb deployment dialog - now uses a standard interface

This looks interesting.

Interesting, indeed. I'm going to take a look at this later.

Hm exactly what are you supposed to do?

Have you actually tried it?

The object of the game is to decrypt the 64 bit qoob galaxy code.

The qoob galaxy consists of 8 qoob systems, each containing 8 qoob worlds.

Each qoob world is a 4D maze containing a single digit code which forms part of the 64 bit qoob galaxy code.

To obtain the single digit code you need to locate not only the decryption key but also the qoob console that holds the code.

There are many puzzles to solve along the way...

This game seems to be really well done!

I'm just curious about the mazes... how 4d are they?
I've always been interested in computer games that make exceptional use of time/movement in puzzles, so I'm wondering to what extent you have used it here :)


Little error report:
Your "Uninstall qoob demo" shortcut in the start menu is mispelled.

Yes I installed it last night. I still have no idea how to play it.

did you the tutorial?

There are 64 worlds. To complete the game you have to visit each world and obtain the world's code. To obtain the world's code you have to find the decryption console AND the decryption key. Each world is a map with doors, tricks and traps.

It's that simple.

The tutorial tells you how to play and introduces all the game world object, i.e. gas marks are needed to pas through gas clouds, bridges have to be triggered, doors require certian keys etc...

I really like your menus!
I find that going into the options menu is a bit confusing, though :(
Since both the Options menu and the main menu have the same number of blocks, they look identical, so I end up clicking again on what I think is the Options menu block without really looking at it, and I end up confused.
My suggestion is to have the menu change the positions of the blocks so that a menu with 4 options doesn't look identical to the menu with 4 options before it.

Mr. Picklesworth

thans for the feedback. It does tell you what menu element you are in, i.e. it says "options"...

Nope! I never do, I rather hoped it would be more intuitive. I'll have another go tonight, do the tutorial and then I might be able to post something a little more constructive.

Thanks - the tutorial is there for a reason!

Seriously though we would love some constructive criticism...

You know what it's like, as a developer the game is very familiar and thats often mistaken for intuitiveness. We wrote the tutorial so that other people had a fighting chance!

I'm thinking that getting those controls going with the mouse would be helpful...
Perhaps the little icons could be turned into buttons to do stuff such as dropping flares, so that people don't have to remember all the key presses?
(Just one extra key... maybe Alt, to engage mouse movement)

The many different keyboard commands, while completely sensible in terms of which keys do what, may frighten some people.

The demo says it starts in 800x600x16 mode but I get 1024x768 mode. My monitor doesn't support this mode. How can I get it to start in 800x600?

ah! erm...

edit the \sys\qoob.ini file...

make it...

g_gfx_width=800
g_gfx_height=600

Sorry about that.

A sneak preview of the new qoob decryption console coming in the next release (oh yes we are heads down already)...

Cheers!

The game seems quite nicely polished and intriguing. I've only had a quick go on the tutorial level. I'll have another go tomorrow when I'm more... er... sober! :P

So far, these are my opinions:
- It all moves too fast for my liking. I know you're up against the clock, but the movement and jumping just seems too quick for my liking. Can you slow it down and just increase the time allowed for each level?

- I'd like to be able to see a bit further in front of myself. This, combined with the speed of movement, makes it quite easy to fall off ledges, etc.

- I had a quick look at the level editor, but when the FPS dropped to 1(!), I decided it was time to leave. :)

- In the tutorial level, the text fades away too quickly. It may just be me being a slow reader, but I like to study instruction text closely, so I don't miss anything.

That's all for now. I'll have another go tomorrow. I'm liking the overall idea of this game - well done. ;)

How do I steal something thats mine in the first place, and utterely destroyed to boot?

Erm... please don't take this too sersiously - it's a game and work in progress - ok - we see your point One Eyed but please don't get too hung up about the strapline (?) - we'll change it - yes we started a huge project without planning but we like it sooo much we continue to develop it against better judgement - just play the game and hopefully enjoy.

Does anyone like this or are we mistaken?

We think it's fun, enjoyable, an impressively sized project that shows off what non professionals can do with Blitz3d... Ho hum...

NB: In fact 'destroyed' doesn't mean destroyed beyond repair - we think it's 'destroyed' but there is a way to repair it - all we have to do it regain control (steal it back) and it will be ours again and restored...

Good grief...

I liked the game. It has potential...
Couldn't get past the second level though... it's hard. And I hated when the game threw me straight back to level select menu when I died... And the movement could be indeed a little slower. My eye can't follow the speed ;)

And it would be great if you had more stuff on the levels, although I bet there's more happening on the later levels...

Do you have creatures / other lifeforms in the levels? The idea and environment is good. The atmosphere reminded me about Hired Guns on Amiga. Which is good...

Hmmm, it seems fairly straight forward. But you move way too fast, like the movement has been set up on a slower computer. Plus the black fogging looks kinda bad i think.

I found myself, when close to the edge of a block, slowly sliding off. Have you tried doing a linepick downwards, and applying gravity if nothing is picked directly beneath the player?

Interesting idea :o)

Wooo. I'll try this later when I'm not on the crappy laptop!

Firstly thanks for all the feedback - we really do appreciate it!

If you want to keep track of qoob's development specifically a certain request go here...

http://dev.boiledsweets.com/flyspray/index.php?tasks=all&project=5





Originally it had to be dark as we were doing clever culling in the distance to keep the FPS and it makes it look more eerie. However having rewritten the mesh world code we now longer need to cull - we will up the visibility a bit but we like the dark areas as its kinda spooky and that's what we're aiming for.



The player is actually a sphere so thats why you get the sliding - I guess this sliding is wrong. The touble is we have to do sphere to poly collision checking. I don't really see another way to do it - any suggestions? We could do a line pick but then what 'throw' the players sphere of the edge? We would appreciate your thoughts



Do you mean the Schitz world? Well yes that is a very difficult world. It's in there to show how complex these mazes can be.



Where would you prefer to be thrown back to - the beginning of the world again?



Its coming! Don't worry!




That's the plan - we were planning on populating the worlds later on


The world editor is really just for us but you can create your own worlds if you like - we though hell why not include it. It's not the best editor as does require a decent machine to run it a we build the worlds out of cubes - so you could have 32,000 entities to draw etc although we do employ culling in the editor.



Noted - we will improve this. Thanks for the suggestion



We will look into this. Thanks for the suggestion



They are 4d in the sence that they are 3d mazes against the clock. Once the game is fully written the time to complete the worlds will be a major factor and finding the time capsules to give you more time and avoiding the time bombs (and roving timebombs - comming soon) will play a major part.



We're amazed by the number of people with this problem. You start the game in RUN mode, why not switch to walk mode (LEFT SHIFT)? In fact I guess we ought to add this fact into the tutorial and perhaps start you out in walk mode. Regards the mouse speed - there is an option in the menu to adjust for it as we will NEVER get the speed right for everyone! Maybe the mouse sensitivity code isn't working. We find this a lot we put options in (Vorboils for example has 280 odd options) and yet still people complain that it should do this without actually checking whether it does or not

Please read all those people not happy with the speed!

1. In the menu go to options/game - select a lower mouse sensitivity!

2. In the game hit the left shift - this will put you in walk mode.

Does that help? We have added this info to the documentation though who reads the docs?

If everything else fails, read the manual?

Seriously, few people though, especially if a program gives the appearance that you can get by and figure it out without doing so.

If you default to run mode, you may want to consider flashing up a text like 'fast walk activated' or something. If nothing else, it will hint that there are slower methods as well if the default is too fast for them.
('running mode' may be a bit ambigious, people may not make the connection with running fast, but with running a program)

lol, one of the worlds is called "Schitz" (I've got a childish mind)

well it's pretty impressive and atmospheric, but lacks some polish I'd say, perhaps you're going to add some more?

I don't know if anyone else has said these points, but I'll say them anyway:

I miss the letters flying in at the start as my monitor (CRT not TFT) is changing res. The game loads quickly without a pause, you could add one, but that might be lame).

When clicking the mouse on the menus, a negative (you clicked nothing) sound is the same as a positive (you clicked a cube) sound, this is odd. Needs two diff. sounds imho.

Why are the default keys cursor and Ctrl? That's DOOM keys, they should really be WASD and space for jump as that's what most 3D game players are used to. If you are aiming at the casual market and wanted to pick easy kids, the problem is when you hold a mouse as well, your whole body is lopsided with both hands over to your right. This seems odd.

The mouse look is a bit fast by default, also it's rough. You really needs some mouse smoothing in there like the major FPS games.

Couldn't you have a message at the start of the game flash up "Have you played the tutorial yet? It can be found in the help menu" Or better still have the tutorial NOT in any sub menu OR when you start a game have two options Tutorial and Main game.

When I saw the first key and there was space behind it and some floating asteroids(?), one of them looked weird as if it was actually two asteroids on top of each other and one was spinning inside the other.

The tutorial level seems all square and with only one texture, hmm.

OK hope you don't mind the feedback, I'll keep playing for now.

[edit] I left it lookingat the stars where the key was and alt_tabbed to the forums then alt+tabbed back in but it had locked up, well it did nothing then made a funny noise and exited the tutorial. Is this a timer issue going wrong after a long period of time out of the game? I started a new tutorial and tried alt+tab and it was fine.

When I got the the timebombs on the tutorial the text faded away way to quick for me to read.

the text on the bottom of the screen when you start schitz doesn't fit on properly the left and right edges are off-screen.

Someone else said this, it's too dark and you can't see far enough ahead. Is this a game design thing on purpose?

Anyway, this game has lots of potential I'm sure, don't let me feedback bring you down :-)

Grey,

thanks for the feedback, some of it has been mentioned already and noted, some not - so many thanks!

Nah your feedback won't bring us down just give us more idea and inspiration to continue to develop it.

It'll cover your specific points in my next post when I have had time to consider them.

Thanks again.

Grey,



Could you be more specific in terms of polish? We are planning to add more objects etc next release...



Don't see how this could happen - we call Graphics3d then do the display of letters. Is it just that your monitor is slow to switch? How long a pause you need?



Noted will fix, but perhpas no sound would be more appropriate



Noted - will fix.



We have a mouse sensitivity in the menu (options/game/mouse sensitivity). Does that help? Please try...



Noted - will implement a first time message...



Noted will fix.



Well all the worlds are make from cubes hence the name qoob (pronounced qoob). As for the textures we only one texture for the floor, one for the ceiling and one for the walls. On the tutorial they all happen to be the same.



Noted will look into this. I think it's because the timer keeps running down. How the hell do we know that the user has switched tasks? Hmmm....



This has been reported before - we will fix.



Noted - will fix.



This has been reported before - we have adjusted this a little but the dark spookly environment was a design plan.



MANY thanks for taking the time to try the WIP release and report your thoughts. We have been working on qoob for a few years (amongst other projects). It is our first Blitz3d project and we have learnt so much stuff over the course of the development process. Sure we really need to start from scratch with it but hell we are too far in - we figure we'll keep adding and improving and hopefully when we get to version 2.00 it'll be ready for the unsuspecting public. As you can imagine its a monster for a first project noh?

The various taks / development can be monitored here...

http://dev.boiledsweets.com/flyspray/index.php?tasks=all&project=5

i really like this... if you continue this i'll be forced to purchase a license to play :)

a few things i think needs looking at...

1- jump key... you've gotta make it so that if it is pressed and the forward key is pressed, then the jump sequence is activated... having to continuously press it and release it is very awkward, and does not work like walking down stairs, where no keypress has to be repeated...

2- the turn and movement is wayyy to fast...

3- the main cube, sorry... quoob, is textured in a completely different style than the otehr objects (flare, keys, asteroids, etc) they should share the same graphics propertys... same texturing technique...

4- the QUOOB title... should be a lil more menacing... otherworldly... something... right now i thought i was entering a cartoon like game...

otherwise... this is the kinda stuff that i waould spend hours playing... like the original Doom :)

good luck... looks like you've got a winner here...

--Mike

We are dedicated to improving and finishing it. In fact we are likely to setup an option to pre order now. Once purchased you are entitled to free updates for life and will get access to the beta versions of the full GAME. Also pre orders will be 25% cheaper than the final release.



Noted - will fix.



This has been reported before - we are implementing a smoother mouse movement.



Are you hoping for a textured world similar to HL2 for example as that might be beyond what we can do as all walls for example share the same surface. I guess once we hae finished a world we could export it into some other application and paint it - not too sure about this. Any thoughts?



OH! We thought it was menacing - obviously not enough! What do you suggest?



MANY THANKS THATS PRAISE INDEED!

Follow the development here...

http://dev.boiledsweets.com/flyspray/index.php?tasks=all&project=5

re: the polish, sometimes it's the overal feel sometimes it's little things. For example the icons at the top of the on-game screen, the clock's black outline isn't antialiased very well and some of the other icons don't have a "designed by artist" look (no.2 what is it? and no4 the flare flame is dodgy). The menu system is interesting, but somehow it feels cramped and like a tech demo. I think it cos the text is stretched to fill the box instead of being the same pitch on each one, not sure this works. The text on the menus has an inconsistant black outline, it's not that well anti-aliased. Just a small thing, the "S" in "audio Settings" and on "Start Menu" has a funny little two pixel grey strip to the top left of it. The green boxes on the options pages look inconsistant. I know this is because they are cubes viewed from a slightly different perspective, but it looks funny to me anyway :-) In game the pulsing sun and asteroid have dithering around them, how can this be on my video card Redeon 9800XT 256MB RAM, Direct X9.0c?

Some other points I noticed:

It would be better if the demo galaxy flashes or something so you don't have to move the mouse over them all to work out that Craite is one to go to.

With the walls and floors the same on Schitz, it's hard to see what is a wall and not a ceiling, maybe just a different shade would make all the difference.

To reply to previous points:

My monitor is slow to change, it's a 19" Iiyama CRT, so I only see the second O followed by B at the start. Lots of big CRTs have a switching time.

A different click sound for positive would be better than no sound I think.

re mouse, sure I canr educe the sensitivity but perhaps the default should be less. Also reducing it won't stop rough movements/skipping, games like Quake etc have mouse smoothing/ramping that seems to make all the movements really nice. I just think maybe this is worth looking into.

Hey keep on going though. You must have learnt so much over the past 2 years. Anyway my next game will be release as beta on this site in two weeks so you can get your own back ;-)

For all those requesting smoother mouse control please try this and report back your favourite setting

Is this the kinda thing you prefer? It is better - I like about 5.

Cursor keys to move. Mouse to look around, A / Z adjusts mouse dampening.

http://dev.boiledsweets.com/tmp/qoob-mouse.zip

Many thanks!

I'll try tomorrow. Remind me if I forget!

Grey? Nudge, nudge...

Regards the gfx polish. We have no artist on board just me and my programming assistant. I do all the artwork - OK some of it is not great but we are merely amateurs - we do not have a team of gfx artists like the guys at iD had so we're doing the best we can.

If you're expecting a commercial slickness like latest games then I have some bad news for you...

Hmm. Well I seem to be having major problems with this.

The framerate appers to drop so low when moving the mouse around in the menus that I can't even select menu options as mouse cursor jumps so far between updates, and with no apparent Escape key support backing out was a problem too

Did persist and dropped graphics down to minimums, but no improvement was seen.

If I leave the mouse alone then the graphics seem to stabilise and the option cubes etc. rotate smoothly, but start moving the mouse and it grinds to a halt again.

Nothing special running in background just AVG anti virus.

AMD 700Mhz, 512MB, Geforce4 MX 4000, XP SP2

GeeHawk... if you're still running that AMD 700 with the GeForce4MX, that may be part of the cause as to the slowdown... just a thouight, i'm not sure... i just stuck a Radeon 9200 in my 733mHz celery here, and it's like a new computer... the video card seems to be the real determining factor...

Sweets... i got a memory access error on the schlitz level, when i fell in between of the spaces... will try to recreate it later... that smoother mouse code looks good...

--Mike

Maybe, but surely even the crappiest of video cards should handle half a dozen textured rotating cubes without slowdown.

BTW Your OOP demo seems to run fine on my state of the ark setup.

Geehawk,

hit F11 and send me the details.

Many thanks.

GeeH... i think you're right about the half dozen cubes... but it lloks like he has a few sprites popping up now and then, and some other things... but yeah, you're probably right... it should run without slowdown seeing as it ran my lil demo ok... and that has an aw3ful lot going on in it that would cause any weakness in the video card to show up...

and, thx for testing my thing out as well :)

'Sweets... did you catch that Memory Access Error note i posted above... i got it to happen again... while falling through one of the spaces in the schlitz level...

--Mike

Geehawk,

does the game run ok? Once again hitting F11 in the game should show you send stats...

Mr Sweets, or can I call you Boiled.

Couple of screenies winging their way to the address in your profile.

Graham

Graham & Grey Alien

ta - much appreciated - we take each and EVERY specific point mentioned here very seriously and do take action.

Take a look here...


http://dev.boiledsweets.com/flyspray/index.php?tasks=all&project=5

I have not ever managed to get to the game as the menu system slows down so much as I can't navigate to start the game!

Its as though the more the mouse is moved the slower it gets, and it carries over from one menu to another getting worse is it goes.

The slowdown on the select galaxy screen is so severe I can't select anything and have had to resort to Ctrl-Alt-Delete, End Task to get out of it.

Having to do that as we speak in fact. The select galaxy screen has to all intents locked solid. Mouse click still makes the selection noise, but no screen updating taking place. Hit f11 and it took a good 5 seconds for the stats to appear. Hit it again and nothing has happened since. Stats still showing but not updating, no mouse movement but still clicking noise.

Music playing the whole time....god that music is annoying when theres nothing else to do .. LOL

Anything else you want me to try just ask.

Graham

Okay. Just tried again with as little mouse movement as possible.
Navigated through the menus and managed to get a game going.
That behaved fine. Movement was fine. Lots of mouse waggling had no bad effects.
Then I fell off the edge and died AAAAAAaaaaaaaarghh!

Atomatically returned back to select screen and went to selct Schitz again.......

***pause for dramatic effect***

........ Screen went black, PC rebooted itself. No messages, no MAVs ....

:-(

OK, I tested the mouse program and 10 is about right for me, smooth yet still fast.

No don't worry, I'm not expecting anything :-) I just offered you some feedback when you asked about polish. Good luck with this.

Grey,

ta...

Could you please email me a screenie of the dithered sun and dithered asteroid please.

i think it has commercial slickness potential already... don't sell it short...

--Mike

How do I take a screenie. Suppose it's in the read me:-)

F12

I've sent an image. Btw, I noticed that if you rapidly click the mouse as the game loads to skip the titles, the last click falls exactly on the quit in the middle of the menu and the game immediately exits!

Grey,

we have noted this!


I cannot wait to show you to the next version - its is sooooooooo sweet it hurts!

Keep coming with those suggestions - we are BUSY!

What's wrong with using the MeshesIntersect command with just a simple qoob? <-- hehehe

WolRon,

this sounds interesting! Could you elaborate? Do you have some sample code or point me in the right direction? Does anyone know the best way to model a player object in a world? I thought it had to be sphere to poly collision checking...

Meshesintersect is a killer with high polys you can store low poly level models and calc against that

What's the third level? I found the tutorial level and the Schitz level, but can't access any more. There's one called Spoo that looks like it should be playable, but I get a message "not available in demo version."

Edited to correct spelling.

Newbieski in the Krait system.

There has been a great responce from the community and we are busy working on a updated version including as many of the suggestions as we can within a few weeks work.

Please bear with us and we will release a new MUCH improved version soon.

Any suggestions please let us know...

Thanks. It was so tiny, I didn't realize it was a world.
As far as problems, there isn't anything that hasn't already been mentioned except that when I click help in the editor, QOOB gets minimized when the help menu opens and when I close the help menu and go back to QOOB, everything has locked up and I need to use CTRL-ALT-Delete to close it.

TomToad,

Noted - thanks, will fix,