Qbix Demo

Community Forums/Showcase/Qbix Demo

Arowx(Posted 2008) [#1]
Hi here is the Demo (Release Candidate 1) for my new Block puzzler Qbix!



You can download the installable version here...


or as just a zip file here



Have fun and let me know what you think!

There is a help/about page on the menu!

Hint: move 3+ blocks so that they are all the same colour and adjacent and they are removed, remove all the blocks to clear the level.


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2008) [#2]
Didn't play, but the screenshot is looking great. BTW probably more people would test it if you offer it as a zip file that hasn't to be installed. Setup installation usually leave back some remains in registry and app folders, a thing people avoid. Additionally, when in XP user mode, a person first has to log in as admin, only to test your beta game.

So I'd say: development demos (well, demos adressed to other gamesdesigners) should only be zipped, releases for end customers should be a setup exe.


degac(Posted 2008) [#3]
Tried but I have not understand what I need to do...


Arowx(Posted 2008) [#4]
I've added a hint to the initial post hope this helps?

Added zip version as well, let me know what you think?

Cheers

Merx


Arowx(Posted 2008) [#5]
Hello Blitz World... anyone want to give Qbix a go and let me know what they think, please ;o)?


jhans0n(Posted 2008) [#6]
I'll give it a whirl tonight. You wouldn't happen to have a Mac version, would you?


Arowx(Posted 2008) [#7]
Sorry only PC, don't own a mac!


jhans0n(Posted 2008) [#8]
No problem. My wife has a PC that I can use. It's an old 1GHz Athlon, so it might help you determine low-end performance.


Arowx(Posted 2008) [#9]
Any and all feedback is good feedback! Cheers! ;o)


Arowx(Posted 2008) [#10]
Hi jhanson, anyone, go on you know you want to give it a go, if nothing else just to critically evaluate my first indie game?

Please?


markcw(Posted 2008) [#11]
Hi,

1. The window was too big. You need to let the user choose a resolution. See The Squad for example.
2. The framerate in the menu screens were incredibly slow. I don't know how you manage to get a 2D game to run that slow. Edit: oh, it's 3D isn't it, well that might explain it.
3. The game runs okay but after a while it crashed my pc (using ME).
4. gameplay seems fine.


Arowx(Posted 2008) [#12]
Cheers markcw,

1. The resolution is only 800x600 about the minimum most games run at?

2. It's 2D but uses a lot of texture memory for the rolling cubes, the framerate should pickup once the initial textures have been passed over the Video ram, do you see a speedup after a couple of seconds?

3. How long before it crashed, which level did you get to?

4. Excellent.

Thank you!


markcw(Posted 2008) [#13]
Hi Merx,

1. Sorry yes, I am in 800x600 mode but because the window is opened about 10 pixels from the top and 30 from the left I didn't know how big the window was.

2. On 2nd try the menu was still very slow and I had Firefox and Windows Media Player minimized, the pc crashed after a few seconds and I got the blue screen of death followed by a black screen. On 3rd try after a restart with nothing else running the menu was not slow any more but when I clicked on start the pc froze.

3. On 1st try the menu was slow but when I started the game it normalized. After about a minute I moved a cube and before it landed the pc froze. I was on the first level.

4. It would be easier if you had a colored arrow pointing to the center of the square you're moving to which tells you what color you end up with there.


jhans0n(Posted 2008) [#14]
Sorry about the delay. I took a look at it tonight on my wife's PC, but couldn't seem to get it running correctly. Like I said earlier, this is a low end PC (1 ghz Athlon, maybe even Duron) without much of a video card.

Basically, I could see everything on the title/menu screen (though it ran slow), but once I started the game, all I got was a black screen. If I held down a mouse button, I could get it to occasionally draw some of the colored blocks from your screenshot above, but not much at all.

My personal technical issues aside, the menus and stuff looked cool and I like what I see in the screenshot. The one suggestion I'd make is that you get someone else to read through the help/about section, as a few of the instructions seemed a little unclear (at least to me).


Arowx(Posted 2008) [#15]
Thanks jhanson and markcw, sounds like I need to test it on a couple of different video cards and probably reduce it's memory footprint.

Can I ask what video cards you have and how much memory they have?

Regards Merx


markcw(Posted 2008) [#16]
Sure, ATI Radeon VE/7000 with 32Mb.


markcw(Posted 2008) [#17]
the window is opened about 10 pixels from the top and 30 from the left


I just noticed this happens with any BlitzMax app I compile. No idea why.


Arowx(Posted 2008) [#18]
You can get BlitzMax to set the opening position of the window but it involves an update to the module files, there are a few posts on it somewhere.

I'm going to run some tests on an old pc and see about getting these issues resolved back soon (fingers crossed) ;o)