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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Protoman85 wrote:
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 😛

More people on a project doesn’t necessarily make it easier or more fun.

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

-Eric

Hrms i wasn’t trying to be a smart ass here 🙂 I was just trying to say..i’m sure he has enough project ideas and not enough time :).

-Eric

Thank you everyone for your support (and especially Eric for being such a cool guy about this). With his consent (and actual request of it) I’m now putting my rom back up for download.

I’m now thinking of going the Donkey Kong ’94 (awesome GB game) route with this, that is starting with the original levels, and then when the game “ends” a new game breaks out with lots of added levels and new features to the gameplay.

This will take lots of time, and I may or may not post updated roms as I go along. I’ll probably document my progress here though. In the meantime, enjoy Ballface in it’s current form. 🙂

Attachments:

1. ballface-1.zip

Just as a side note: After Mr. G posted his pictures I thought about reprogramming Faceball as well. The Fishbone Level-Menu looks allot like the Faceball level menu for that reason. Luckily I told Eric about my plans and he said something like: Ähhhhh geez… you might not want to do this.

Also: Great demo!!

Luckily I told Eric about my plans and he said something like: Ähhhhh geez… you might not want to do this.

D’oh! I never got that memo! 😛

Great to finally try this out, it’s quite an accomplishment. Thanks for posting this!

DanB, if you’re going the DK 94 Route(awesome game, as well 🙂 ), you should definitely play this online remake.

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

It has strafing, and some other things. Use this game to inspire Ballface. 🙂

I’ve just finished the demo and now, I’ve a happy face !

Really nice work.

I hope that you will continue to work on it.

I liked moving into the maze to find an issue to kick the enemies.

It was (one of) my best homebrew experience.

DanB wrote:
Thank you everyone for your support (and especially Eric for being such a cool guy about this). With his consent (and actual request of it) I’m now putting my rom back up for download.

I’m now thinking of going the Donkey Kong ’94 (awesome GB game) route with this, that is starting with the original levels, and then when the game “ends” a new game breaks out with lots of added levels and new features to the gameplay.

This will take lots of time, and I may or may not post updated roms as I go along. I’ll probably document my progress here though. In the meantime, enjoy Ballface in it’s current form. 🙂

I am also one who has a copy of the original prototype ROM, since it was necessary for me to have it in order to be able to make the full instruction booklet that will be used in Eric’s release, and when I compare it to your version, I am completely blown away at the similarities! As I was running through your version, I just kept thinking to myself, “I can’t believe this is the work of just 1 person!”

I also love how they did it with Donkey Kong ’94, so taking that route sounds totally awesome to me. I also like your title “Ballface,” since it makes me laugh. It sounds a bit silly, but so does the title “Faceball” when one thinks about it, so it’s very appropriate.

Great work here Dan, this is why I love the VB community. Ballface looks so good, thanks for all your time and effort.

Got to agree with Ben about DK94, this would be a great route to go down, I loved the mix of old and new. I think it would work really well with this project.

Thanks again Dan.

Superb!

Much appreciation to everyone who allowed this.

Huge admiration and respect to DanB.

See Gloom on the Amiga for an example of a small but very playable engine for first person play.

Is there any chance of a level editor for this? Reason I ask is that people could make their own levels to go into your game. Maybe a competition…??? (Best design goes into the game etc) That could tie in nicely (and provide some much needed attention) to the actual Faceball game…

I am very grateful to the VB community and, of course, to DanB! Much respect!

At the risk of getting “segagamer99” overexcited, I notice you can strafe in Ballface.
Anyway fantastic work on this. Obviously I haven’t played the game it is remade from, but I felt like it gave me a good idea of what to expect when it turns up.

I think I’m actually more excited to see where Ballface ends up, than for VB Faceball. I’m a fan of the MIDIMaze/Faceball series, but the VB entry sounds like a (at best) average sort of game.

Dave_ wrote:
At the risk of getting “segagamer99” overexcited, I notice you can strafe in Ballface.
Anyway fantastic work on this. Obviously I haven’t played the game it is remade from, but I felt like it gave me a good idea of what to expect when it turns up.

I think I’m actually more excited to see where Ballface ends up, than for VB Faceball. I’m a fan of the MIDIMaze/Faceball series, but the VB entry sounds like a (at best) average sort of game.

Well, it is one of the long lost VB games. 🙂

I heard that you can turn off the lights in the Faceball proto. Can you do this in Ballface?

Also, despite it being unfinished, it is a lot smoother and faster than the Gameboy and SNES versions. We’ll see when we get to play it.

segagamer99 wrote:

I heard that you can turn off the lights in the Faceball proto. Can you do this in Ballface?

Also, despite it being unfinished, it is a lot smoother and faster than the Gameboy and SNES versions. We’ll see when we get to play it.

Well, it’s more like you can adjust the brightness from the default brightness to a darker brightness. Thus, changing the brightness doesn’t have any effect on the rest of the gameplay, other than the fact that it makes it harder for the player to see things. I personally would never use the darker brightness setting.

You are very right when you say that the Virtual Boy version is a lot smoother and faster than the Game Boy and SNES versions. I think everyone will be blown away at seeing such graphics and movement on a Virtual Boy. It seems to me that Bullet-Proof Software was really pushing the Virtual Boy to its limits with this one. Thankfully, both DanB and thunderstuck will be giving us a great feel of what Bullet-Proof Software’s completed version of Faceball could have been like.

Dave_ wrote:
At the risk of getting “segagamer99” overexcited, I notice you can strafe in Ballface.

You can also strafe in Faceball if you hit the the “left” or “right” on both D-Pads at the same time. It is kind of tricky though.

thunderstruck wrote:

Dave_ wrote:
At the risk of getting “segagamer99” overexcited, I notice you can strafe in Ballface.

You can also strafe in Faceball if you hit the the “left” or “right” on both D-Pads at the same time. It is kind of tricky though.

Oh, that’s nice. Can you strafe in other versions?

segagamer99 wrote:
Oh, that’s nice. Can you strafe in other versions?

Nope.

Just played it on hardware and it works perfect but as a game it is sadly dissapointing
You go around finding enemies that from what I could see dont attack back and then you got a timer

I was hoping more like golden eye 007 N64 where enemies attack back, you have missions and so on

Still very good made

akumie wrote:
Just played it on hardware and it works perfect but as a game it is sadly dissapointing
You go around finding enemies that from what I could see dont attack back and then you got a timer

I was hoping more like golden eye 007 N64 where enemies attack back, you have missions and so on

Still very good made

akumie,

Do you understand what a “work-in-progress” is? It is whenever only a small portion of a much larger work has been completed so far. DanB simply released a very early version of his work-in-progress and mentioned that he has hardly put any AI into the game. Thus, you never should have played this work-in-progress with an expectation that there would be enemies that fight back.