Hi VB friends!

Who wants to play “Faceball” early? 😉

Ever since Mr. G started that thread, I’ve been secretly working on my own homebrew clone of it, a repro-proto if you will 🙂
It’s solely based on his screenshots/videos and detailed information to recreate as much of the game as possible. I think the time has come to share what I have so far.

All 10 levels described by Mr. G are playable and completable right now. The map and radar is there, as is powerup drops, and the controls should be pretty close to the original.
(My favourite is stage 6, it looks so cool with all those wireframe glass panels)
Currently there’s only two enemy types through all levels, no AI to speak of, and no sound, but I’ll be working on that next.

The plan for the future is to add lots of more levels, and probably some textured walls and 2-player link cable support.

I call it Ballface. Expect more updates soon 🙂

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This seems kind of cool, but a little insulting to the purpose of Eric and Ben getting the rom.

But, you said more levels? I was hoping maybe somebody could make a level editor for the real Faceball. You seem like you could do that. Come vote in the poll I made. 🙂

Heh, insulting? Now I feel insulted.
I’ve been working hard on this for months, because I thought we wouldn’t see a release of that proto for many years still, and I wanted the community to have it.
It was only in mid-december that I found out it would be released so soon, and by then my game was almost done already. What should I have done? Thrown it all away?

You’re welcome…

How would this be insulting? How was he to know they were attempting to spend a bundle on the actual cart? What a ridiculousness statement.

This is an amazing homebrew project. I can’t wait to see where it ends up!! I’m going to pull out my FB+ tonight or tomorrow and give it some play.

Thanks!

Definitely would not even ponder calling this hard work insulting. I don’t thinks it’s very mature..

From the screenshots, it looks like a faithful recreation!
Thank you for putting work into this game when it seemed hopeless the community would ever see it!

I went to flash it to my FlashBoy+, but noticed it wouldn’t flash. Then I realized the file size was 0kb. So I downloaded it a few times on different browsers with the same results. I remember seeing a similar occurrence on the forum’s in the past (might have been the first space pinball upload).

Can you re-upload it for us?

What should I have done?

Waited until we’d released FaceBall first. That would have been the polite thing to do, considering Eric dropped $16K for it.

Waited until we’d released FaceBall first. That would have been the polite thing to do, considering Eric dropped $16K for it.

Fine. I won’t re-upload it then. I apologize if this offended you guys. I’ll kindly ask KR155E to please delete this thread, and we can try to forget all about it.

I understand the situation but I want to congratulate DanB for his work !

compared to pretty much every system i enjoy homebrew on, the virtual boy has very few completed projects. please do not ask to have this thread removed. this project should be completed and released for everyone to enjoy. consider working on it and then holding off on a release until the faceball carts have gone on sale. this compromise would seem to appeal to everyone.

i love my vb and i would hate to see great homebrew project go unreleased.

I have to throw my support in for DanB’s project as well. Just based on the few screenshots that you posted, it looks like you’ve already made a rather fantastically working game. But since you do know that the original Faceball is going to be released in such a way that will help Eric recover his large costs that were necessary to acquire the game, I’m hoping that you can simply modify your plans for your version of Faceball, like by making all new levels and even new enemy types or something. It would be very cool to have a homebrew “sequel” to VB Faceball, and I know you are well capable of making that! 🙂

But as others suggested, I would hope that you decide not to release your game until after Eric’s plan has been followed through to completion. You’ll probably need more time to finish your game than Eric will need to release the original and recover a large part of his costs, so there should be no problem with that, I think.

Please keep up the good work. I have been looking forward to a full game being made by you for a while. Your other demos that you released in the past are absolutely fantastic.

That must have been a lot of hard work. Bad timing perhaps, but still, I think you should be applauded.

This looks like a fantastic homebrew. Obviously this took a long time and a lot of hard work and effort to make. There’s no way he could have known that the actual Faceball would turn up after 16+ years.

I applaud the effort put into making this. From one Dan B to another.

DanB, I’m very sorry about what I said. Your project looks fantastic, but like Protoman85 said, it may have been bad timing. If this came out AFTER the cart release, then I would be much more enthusiastic towards your project.

Still, keep up the great work. I didn’t mean to offend anybody.

-Paul

Sorry for the download being broken, guys, no idea what caused this. It was probably a good thing to happen, though, and I have removed the download link now after talking to DanB.

I have been able to give this version a try, so I am most likely the only person who has played both this and the original Faceball prototype at this moment.

First of all, I have to stand up and applaud DanB for BallFace, which is REALLY a great achievement and comes surprisingly close to the original. And all that just from Mr. G’s descriptions and screenshots!

While it looks and feels great, I also have to mention that it’s still far from the original Faceball in overall completeness and polish. It is the work of only a few months after all, with hopefully many more months of work going into it in the future.

It’s also a completely different thing, psychologically, to play a real unreleased Virtual Boy game than it is to play a homebrew recreation of it. While the latter is fun, the first thing is simply not artificially reproduceable.

After all, I think that BallFace is a great thing to happen and something I look forward to, but it should absolutely no be seen as a danger for the release of Faceball. I agree that BallFace should not be released until after the original Faceball has been funded and released. Then we can all look forward to two great new games coming out this year with no stress involved.

With the original Faceball coming out anyway, maybe changing BallFace into an original first person game would be worth a thought or two. But one thing doesn’t exclude the other, as Dan just said to me on the chat. 🙂

Fishbone, Ballface… the library is growing!

I don’t get this ‘exclusivity’ thing on homebrews/prototypes or whatever.

I don’t want to be obtuse or annoying but I have a simple view. Playing games. Especially games made by members of PVB. I am disappointed that the link was taken down. From my point of view I see this game as something different from the FB proto.

To own/play them is the thing for me. What difference does it make what comes out first really? I want to own/play them all on VB!(The general public all play similar games on different formats anyways and we all pay for them. What percentage of games these days are first person shooters? The general public buy them regardless in droves…) I am not being rhetorical here either. I really would like to know why you need to ‘hold back’ on games to ‘allow’ others to exist. It just makes no sense to me. Also whats insulting about sharing/downloading your work?

What I am saying is. The guy who got the FB proto is a king of kings. The PVB community acknowledge the man’s work/financial commitment. So ‘sales’ are going to be affected because someone else is releasing a game of a similar nature? I don’t believe that if I am being honest. Sorry… *shrugs*

I am always anxious to enjoy new VB content. I especially am grateful to the members that create these great titles. I appreciate that everyone involved in the Faceball proto is wanting to maximize every opportunity to ensure a good release and structure/market/whatever… I don’t see the connection between (And I am not trying to trivialize the hard work of the DanB here…) some homebrew and possibly one of the biggest protos of the last 20 decades…

Is there even the remotest of possibilities of seeing Ballface available ASAP? Can it be hosted elsewhere or given to people via PM/request? Then at least the people that are protective of the Faceball proto can be reasonably happy and the people that wanna play new content get something as well…??

I know its possibly a little late but…. When all has been said and done I would just like to play DanB’s game please…

Otherwise I will be forced to play MIDI Maze on the Atari ST 😀 (The people who know Faceball well will get the last sentence…)

*Gonk*
I can’t believe DanB was able to do this, it’s amazing. He had good intentions, he started programming before the game was bought as Mr. G said the cart was never gonna be sold. What DanB did is an amazing thing, do not be rude to him for attempting a really nice thing.

Also I recommend naming it “MIDI Maze”

I just sent Danb a long pm about this game.

And the short of it is…i support it FULLY and completely. With every bone in my body.

It was a bit of shock when I saw it last night. From the pictures he posted…wow..I couldn’t tell the difference.

And I admit ..I freaked out a bit when I saw it.

I really didn’t think getting faceball would be stressful..but it is.

But, looking at dan’s project. I’m amazed at what he’s been able to do.

Danb and I wanted the same goal..to bring this game to the community..and we went about it different ways.

I’m sure the shock I got at seeing his post..was similar to the shock he felt when he saw mine.

Even thou we were both working to bring the same game to the community. I really feel that our games won’t fight each other for peoples attention.

The game that I plan on releasing will be more complete and have more polish (at least for now). You track down your enemies in a maze..and kill them before they kill you. I will post more about faceball tomorrow.

BUT, danb’s game is totally open to whatever he wants to do. TOTALLY OPEN

He can take it in whatever direction he wants to. Want some ideas ? how about traps ..different enemies..puzzle solving. Friends in the mazes to give you hints towards the end of the maze. Pitfalls that take you to other mazes..warp zones…

more rpg, more survial..hell he could put a female faceball in the center of the maze that you have to find and rescue if you want (before the enemies kill you). He could add 2 player support.

With the engine he is creating..he could make ANYTHING he wants to.

When I say I support this game. I really do. I’ve told danb that if he wants the prototype rom i have ..he can have it at any time. I hoping he takes me up on my offer and uses it to help develop his game. It could give him hints on how enemies behave….he can see how the sounds work..music..whatever he can use…use it.

Danb is an amazing coder. His yeti 3-d engine and the hunter game he’s developed are pretty incredible. I truly hope he doesn’t stop development on this project..it would be a great gift to the community.

-Eric

btw..please bring back the link to what you’ve coded so far..i’d love to try out the game. I’m sure that i’m not the only one.

The link is gone!?

I really hope it’s not my fault the link was down. Great project, just bad timing, considering Eric and Ben paid a lot of money. And yes, maybe it could become a sequel or something. Please bring back the link. I didn’t mean anything bad.

Oh, but for ideas to make the game Faceball AND Ballface better, here is a very interesting remake called “Faceball 3000”. Very difficult, but you have a few lives, lots of power-ups, and strafing! I highly recommend it! 🙂

http://www.andrewjensen.com/faceball3000.html

DanB, good luck with the project and turning it into something really cool. Eric and Ben, good luck with the release, I’m eager for tomorrow.

-Paul 🙂

I can kind of see DanB as our John Carmack, a programming genius but might need a true designer like John Romero to turn out the really awesome -games-. Can someone partner up with him, asap 😛

I’m sure Danb has some great ideas of his own.

-Eric