New Game - Bounty Arms UDK Standalone Demo and Teaser Trailer now out

[incubate]

Hi Everyone,


We are officially releasing the Bounty Arms Alpha Demo to the public to play. Best played with an Xbox 360 controller.


*Update: This is now the UDK standalone version which does not require UT3 anymore.


Name: Bounty Arms
Version: 0.36
Compatibility: PC
Web: http://www.moddb.com/games/bountyarms
Blog: http://bounty-arms.blogspot.com/



Description:

Bounty Arms is an old-school 3d side-scrolling action game that utilizes modern technology from the Unreal Engine 3.

Over the course of the final game you gather power-ups that hugely alter your character and weapon arsenal, travel across the galaxy to many different worlds, unlock hidden doors to secrets, join with new comrades, fight the multitude of varying enemies that each world will bring, and defeat the bosses that rule them.



Download Game:

Bounty Arms UDK Demo




Manual (Right Click, Save Target As)

http://www.open-reset.com/Bounty_Arms_Manual.pdf



Screenshots:













Videos:


Direct Links (Right Click, Save Target As)

HD: http://www.open-reset.com/ba_teaser_big.avi
SD: http://www.open-reset.com/ba_teaser_small.avi
HD: http://www.open-reset.com/ba_teaser_big.mov
SD: http://www.open-reset.com/ba_teaser_small.mov

Youtube Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIKsYVrr7P8

http://www.youtube.com/user/OpenReset





Hope You Enjoy!

[mrkcr84]

Incredible looking stuff in both the screenshots and video. Really impressive. I can't wait to try it out later.

[incubate]

Hey thanks mrkcr84! I hope you enjoy it.

[Jetfire]

Pretty! Nice work.

[mrkcr84]

Well, I've installed the files to the proper directories, and I've got the correct patch level on my machine, and the Bounty Arms Demo option shows up in the UT menu. But when I select that and proceed through to start the game, I always end up coming back into the main menu again. Any suggestions? I would really like to see how this looks live. I'm really impressed by the videos - you're demonstrating another example of how old-style side scrollers can look relevant in this age of high-end 3D graphics.

[Coreper]

this is genious!
it looks soooooo much fun!
i cant wait to test it out!

[obihb]

Cool, thanks for the good comments.

mrkcr84 I really don't know what could be the problem. All I can think is double check the directory structure. Did you extract it to .../My Games/ or did you extract to your main UT3 directory?. And about the game patch do you have the black menus?. Does UT3 game types and levels work fine?.

I've never had this kind of thing happen from my own testing or other people testing it. I really can't think of anything specific that would cause this directly related to the mod files. Unless possibly something could be corrupted if all stuff is in the right places.

I can also suggest a clean try from scratch, possibly clean install UT3 + patch + extract mod files if all else fails.

Sorry I can't give a direct solution.

[mrkcr84]

I extracted it to My Games folder as per instructions. And yes, all the UT3 game types and levels work fine too. I'll rip it all out and re-install the files. You never know, I may have goofed something up but it's not common for me because I'm pretty precise in these things. Still, user error often accounts for most problems in these cases. Thanks for the reply. I'll get back to you.

[obihb]

I hope you get it working.

I'm repeating myself now but, I have no idea what to suggest. I don't have that much experience with UT3 mods to have any real suggestions what could go wrong. Don't know if other things can interfere since our mod is not separate in it's own dir structure, it is part of UT3 structure and I don't know if you had other custom stuff in there as well if anything could interfere possibly in one way or another.

[Coreper]

when i tried loading the map, it keeps on loading for over 5 minutes [which isnt normal for me...]
any clue what could be the problem?
btw: how many opponents should i choose?

[obihb]

Does it load in the end?. If it does and you replay, does it load quick?.

Usually for me a really slow loading is because of the shader cache files. If they're not there, like on new install or something, it gets created at load time and can take a while. Once that is done, it's quick. In this case, only the SM3 shader cache is included with the download which is the only one that gets generated when I ran it. It's possible another file is generated. I'm not really sure.

That's considering that the level does load in the end. If it does not. I'm sorry I have no idea.

[obihb]

The Combatants you put 1, Score 0 and Time 0.

[mrkcr84]

I pulled out the files and reinstalled and everything runs fine now. I'm sure it was just user error during the install somehow. I've not got time to toy with it much at the moment (what I saw looked great, though), but I'll check it out again more tomorrow. Thanks for your help!

[incubate]

Hi mrkcr84,

Glad you got it working. Hope you enjoy playing it tomorrow.

[euchreplayer23]

Great concept and the delivery is incredible. To bad didn't get released a little sooner could of been a top 5 mod. Maybe top 2. The auto aim works great. The platform form elements are great. Definitely hoping for more from this mod, like more of the gears platform section (with more foreground and background interaction). The precision jumping is a little difficult especially the lava streams section, which took me about 20 tries. This would be great on the PS3. Give me a shout if you guys need some help in that area. Try to do separate levels from each other with out using sublevels. U can always use kismet to link when you end a level to another level like they do in theball. Do a battle royal level. Where there are dozens of those flying robots and switches that activate things that drop health or bombs.

[incubate]

We really wanted to enter the competition but at that stage the game wasn't at a good playable level. Nice of you to think that we could have been in the top 5.

Hey those are some great ideas. We actually wanted to do a battle royal type stage as a mini game separate to the main game, but your idea of a level like that is pretty cool.

There is an easier way to get past the lava streams. You need to find it

With regards to the foreground and background interaction. This stage is sill quite linear in that department and we have a lot more ideas for future levels where the camera shifting into depth is more extreme and also not so locked off.


Thanks for the kind words.

[obihb]

mrkcr84 Glad it works now. Also kind of glad it's not a problem with our mod files!..

euchreplayer23 Thanks for a good feedback like that. Also good game play ideas. We have lots in mind for this game that is not in this little demo.

[Coreper]

With regards to the foreground and background interaction. This stage is sill quite linear in that department and we have a lot more ideas for future levels where the camera shifting into depth is more extreme and also not so locked off.

that is also something which amazed me :P it looks like a regular 2d mod at first, but its much more
great job!
ill try installing the mod again and see if it works

[mrkcr84]

I spent a bit of time with the demo this morning and found it to be really fun and technically very impressive. It's yet another great example of how 3D elements can be brought into the traditional side-scroller platform genre.

I think (like you mentioned earlier) that more can be done with the third dimension aspect of the game, but I suppose you have to consider how much three dimensional interaction you want to create before you lose the framework of a side scroller.

I don't have an XBox style game controller here, so I had to play it with my standard keyboard/mouse setup, which makes it a little difficult in some of the jumping challenges. But it still works, and your instructions recommend the controller, so no complaints.

I absolutely love the detail in the environment, whether it be sparks flying off some cable, or other background detrius, and I love how the character can interact with some of the objects (they're not just static images). I've not played very far into the level yet, so I'm not sure if this level of interaction gets more intensive as you go.

The first level definitely does a good job of naturally letting the player learn the rules of the game without having to explicitly tell them "click here", so that's fantastic. I always like being led to the correct actions in a natural way without taking me out of the experience through tutorial pointers that pop up all the time. So applause there, at least for what I've seen to the point I reached in the first level.

All in all, I'm extremely impressed with what you have done with the game engine from a technical perspective, and I'm also extremely impressed with the level design I've seen up to this point in level one.

I'm curious - are there any indicators to be given to the player as to where the automatic save points are? You may be giving them in a subtle way and I'm missing it, but I only know that I find out after I die a miserable death by gear grinding or electric shock.

[obihb]

mrkcr84 Thanks for the elaborate feedback. I'm glad you liked it.

The fact that you mention how the level will teach you how to play is cool because it is something we took quite serious. I am not a huge fan of arrows and shiny objects and popping up graphics and I'm glad that our approach actually worked for you. It was a bit of discussions over how much is needed there to sell an idea to someone new to the game. But as you find out it's a linear learning.. hhmmm.. curve.. and once you know about something then it's common knowledge. The rules don't change.. so to speak.

About the save points, actually no, there are no indicators. But just to mention that we have in mind a kind of more elaborate death and respawn system and the demo does not show this off at all, obviously. It's just UT style respawn at the moment. I think the fact that when you die and don't have to replay the whole thing at the moment works well enough without having to know when and where you will restart.

Thanks again for your feedback and I'm also glad that you paid some attention to some graphical details. We put quite a lot of work into the graphics which normally platform games do not. It was kind of a focus.. or goal we had to do some decent looking graphics... at least half decent anyway..

[mrkcr84]

Thanks, obihb, for providing your comments about the design considerations. It's interesting to hear the thought processes your team went through in some aspects of creating the product. I'm glad to hear that you're working on a unique and much more elaborate death/re-spawn process too - that's something I look forward to seeing.

Regarding the approach for explicit tutorial versus natural learning, it's one that I know people often take sides on, and I must admit that it's dependent on the nature of the game (or system) itself. I know I've been really frustrated at the lack of instruction and attention given to knowledge transfer in some software products (games included) but this is usually either because the product is unintuitive to begin with, or it's just complex. And yeah, sometimes I'm just lazy and want to get to the "fun" part. Example - any game where I have to pilot a ship or plane and there's more than three or four controls to master.

Anyway, it's interesting to discuss. BTW - I sent an email to the info account listed in the manual, commenting about some other stuff. I can't seem to send private messages in here for some reason (haven't tried before, and I'm apparently doing something wrong). Thanks again for the open discussion. I'm hoping to mess with the demo again later today or perhaps early next week; just have too many things I have to get done right now. Thanks!

[obihb]

Yeah, cool you know the thing about the learning curve as you talk about it I think we probably have very similar thoughts about the subject. Some games makes it way too hard to get into a fluid game play just because of this. Some games just throws it in your face and if I had to choose I'd choose the 2nd but I think there is a way to deal with it in what I call a non intrusive way. Some way that feels like it's part of the game, part of the design of it and not some stuck on thing. And, yeah it does make a difference about the complexity of a game as well. But then a whole other game play dynamic and design choices are used for complex games. In platformers, it's all about the jumping and the shooting. Not much thinking going on and maybe a little bit of searching going on for secrets. And very important in this kind of thing is consistency. So establish a rule and stick to it. Or establish a game play dynamic and stick to it.

It's like in Gears2 when you fight the chainsaw staff wielding guy, don't remember his name. In the making of Gears, they talk about game play and having to either make changes to fight this guy or stick to a consistent style. So sticking to the same style of game play is quite important, proven just by that little piece there.

By the way, we do have a little secret place in this level which nobody that tested it ever found, I wonder if people will find it.. The secret is supposed to hold a weapon upgrade, although currently it doesn't actually upgrade the weapon.

[Gizmoroo]

its good to see the responses for the mod. in the end it did come together. i'm glad i was able to help with my two cents worth. i hope everyone enjoys the mod.

[incubate]

Just an update. We have been moving Bounty Arms to the UDK which will make it a standalone game. We're all looking forward to this

So please look out for it. We want to have it out within the next 2 weeks.

[mrkcr84]

I finally found myself with a little free time last night to give the demo another go, and was able to get quite a bit further into the level. I finally had to stop right about when I was halfway through the rotating gears section. I have no idea how much more there is to the level, but it's definitely entertaining and the platform elements are varied enough to keep my attention. The gears section is a fantastic example of utilizing the three dimensional aspects in the engine despite being a "scroller".

I am still highly impressed with the graphics and the animations (etc), all things I mentioned previously. I do find that fighting off those flying enemies gets really tough, but I think once again that it's because I'm not playing with the proper setup (i.e. missing a controller).

In the full game that you're planning on releasing, do you intend to allow persistence of game progress from one session to the next?

Finally - I think if you were to move your post into the "mods/beta" folder, you might have received a lot more attention to this demo. I could very well be wrong, but I tend to think that a lot more people would be giving you feedback if they were only aware of the demo. Sometimes I think this area of the forum gets overlooked.

Great stuff - I can't wait to get some more free time to finish the level. And maybe find that hiding spot you mentioned - can't find it so far although I thought I was onto something at one point but it didn't pan out.

[Lord_PorkSword]

Screenies look killer!
Downloading now!

[MajHavok]

I down loaded and installed the files as instructed, but it hangs on the map loading screen (for over 15+ min). I have to manually shut my computer off to get out. Not sure the reason...looks amazing though. Wish I could play it.

[incubate]

@ MajHavok, that's strange, we wish you could play it too . 2 of the other guys from this post also had some problems but they eventually got it working. If you don't get it working we will have a UDK standalone version for you to play very soon.

Please check back here again within a week or follow us on ModDb and it will let you know as soon as we release the UDK version.

Thanks

[AdventureMode]

This game demo is nothing short of amazing. Best total conversion mod I've seen and I've seen plenty. I am not going to say what I like about it because that is pretty much everything.

One small thing I would like to note is that changing direction causes a rotation animation, which is nice, but that carries over to aiming in which there is a delay. I'm not sure if this is a design decision or not, but it makes it difficult to take out the flying enemies with any sort of finesse.

That being said, you guys have some serious talent. Especially in the graphical department and manipulation of the Unreal 3 engine. Thank you for letting us play it.

[Rhykker]

I down loaded and installed the files as instructed, but it hangs on the map loading screen (for over 15+ min). I have to manually shut my computer off to get out. Not sure the reason...looks amazing though. Wish I could play it.

Guessing this is a shader issue.

If you have a low-end system, it could take a while to load the shaders the first time around. On my low-end system, it took me about 20 minutes to load the shaders for another mod.

Once you've let the shaders load, then load-up shouldn't ever take that long again. But if you cancel the load each time because it's taking too long, then you'll never get past the loading screen.

Peace
-Rhykker

[obihb]

About the long loading.. Rhykker is right, the shader cache takes long to generate but once that is done it's done. The shader cache included in the download is only what my machine generated at build time so it won't work flawless on every machine. I actually don't know if there's a way to generate every possible cache up front or not. But, just be patient the first load, and you will be able to play and next time the load will be much quicker.

AdventureMode: The aiming system at the moment is like.. "v0.1".. if you will. It needs a lot of work and the problem you mentioned, is one of those things. That was not a design decision. It will eventually be a much more robust system and you'll definitely feel much more in control with the fully implemented system.

As mentioned before we're trying to just finish up the UDK version and although there will be some slight tweaks in the code, it's pretty much gonna be the same system for the time being. It's just one of the many things that needs attention.. as you can expect..

[obihb]

In the full game that you're planning on releasing, do you intend to allow persistence of game progress from one session to the next?

You mean if you can save your progress?. Yeah, of course we'll have a system in place for tracking various things about the game. It's not intended to be like Mario3 for example.. if that's what you mean. Switching off the game won't kill all your progress.

Just about the secret area, here's a tiny clue, if you're already on the big gears and you didn't find it, you... just ...missed it.

[incubate]

@AdventureMode, that's a very high compliment! We're very happy that you like it. Thanks

[coolcat22]

good work download now

[MajHavok]

Got it to work, I guess I was just not patient enough. Awesome work, can't wait to see more.

[incubate]

With the help of Splat and the hard labour of Obi-Wan, we have now got our first UDK version out. The great thing is that it's now a standalone game and it doesn't require UT3 anymore. Get it here: Bounty Arms UDK version

This demo is basically the same as the UT3 mod version, but the UDK has a more updated version of the UE3 engine. So it has real time AO, dynamic lighting on enemies etc.

We've also added a few things, like working turrets, special ability bar, damage material indicator on the player and other small various little addons and tweaks.

I hope you enjoy the UDK demo, and please look forward to future versions. To keep up to date with future versions please visit our blog here: Bounty-arms.blogspot.com

Hope you enjoy!

[mrkcr84]

Congratulations on getting the UDK version out the door. I'll be downloading this weekend to try it out. Can't wait to see the enhancements.

[Extasis]

Good game, really, downloading...

[Kuldeep]

oh my god this is amazing.

[Coreper]

i just played it [forgot to try it on my pc :P]
and it is really awesome!
one that would make it better is a possibility to override the auto aim and use the mouse for aiming purposes
besides that: amazing work! i love how innovative you are with the UT3 engine! [i played the ut3 version, not the UDK standalone one] :P