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Author Topic: Gimbal: MP space shooter with player-built ships (now on Steam!)  (Read 36734 times)

Anvilfolk

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Gimbal: MP space shooter with player-built ships (now on Steam!)
« on: November 07, 2012, 09:41:17 am »

Website.

Trailer.

GirlInHat's marvelously technical explanation of games mechanics.

Quote
Gimbal is the multiplayer shooter with buildable vehicles. Customize your weaponry, engines, and accessories, and then take to the skies against other pilots in real time.


Top-down 2D Shooter Gameplay
Realistic, cinematic visual style
Hard Sci-fi slant: Strict physics and combat dynamics

Real Time multiplayer for 16+ players over Internet/LAN
Integrated server browser
Player-hosted, highly customizable servers, with bots

Team Based Gameplay
Elimination and objective based game modes
Shared team sensor networks
Randomized map layouts

Rigid Body Physics engine with...
Aerodynamics
Per-Pixel hit detection

Completely customizable vehicles
Choose and mount every part - Down to engines, turrets and fins
Build for power, speed, durability, handling, and awareness
Money system - Win bounties and buy exclusive parts
Share fully functional ship designs as images on the Web

Customizable Controls
Mouse, Keyboard and Gamepad support

Indie Game Bonuses
No DLC. No multiplayer fees. You bought the whole game- you get the whole game.
No corporate gaming network. Zero restrictions and censorship.
Olde style community-run servers.

There's a quick RPS article on the subject.

Spoiler: Some combat (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Your hangar (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Ship editor (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Bay12 ships! (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: November 21, 2013, 09:47:25 am by Anvilfolk »
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Seamas

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Re: Gimbal: multiplayer space shooter with player-built ships
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2012, 11:13:02 am »

I hypothesize that the reason nobody has posted a response yet is because they shared your sense of urgency, downloaded it right away and haven't been able to tear their weary eyes from the screen since!  Must be good...
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Anvilfolk

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Re: Gimbal: multiplayer space shooter with player-built ships
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2012, 12:39:17 pm »

Hahah, I'll try to get something a little better as the first post when I get home. Damn, these have been tough days :)

I also hope that's the reason. Since it's multiplayer only, it won't be too interesting if there is noone online... This seems to scratch quite a few of my itches, and building my own ship that I can then fly with weird physics sounds great.

Flying Dice

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Re: Gimbal: multiplayer space shooter with player-built ships
« Reply #3 on: November 07, 2012, 12:40:12 pm »

Your BBCode is showing.
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Girlinhat

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Despite the horrid OP, this is a good one.

Also entirely significant, when you instal Gimbal it prompts you to instal Direct X 9c, which has the option to instal the Bing Toolbar.  The Gimbal installer says in all caps, "WATCH OUT FOR THE BING BAR OPTION."

Amazing.

Also also, it asks you to enter the product key.  If you request one from IndieGameStand, then copy it to clipboard, the game automatically fills in the boxes from clipboard.  These guys have their shit together.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2012, 01:58:27 pm by Girlinhat »
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Kanil

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What a weird spambot.

Anyway, I gave this a whirl, 'cause 2d spaceships are cool... and the game itself was pretty sweet looking right up until I started flying. The ships fly odd. I'm not sure how to describe it, but they feel sluggish and unagile. Which kinda kills the fun for me. Even my ship that was just engines, m-thrusters and fins still felt twitchy and slow.
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Yah, it sounds like minecraft with content, you have obviously missed the point, people dont like content, they like different coloured blocks.
Seems to work fine with my copy. As soon as I loaded the human caravan came by and the world burst into fire.

Anvilfolk

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GirlInHat, it wasn't that bad - you're being a big bad meanie pants! :'( It had a brief descriptions and the link to RPS, which had a trailer, and a link to the IndieGameStand store... Anyway, I've updated it. Hopefully it's a bit better.


Also, Ms. Rebecca Spam Huff married Mr. Anthony Bot, and changed her last name. So she is now Mrs. Rebecca Spam Bot. True story.


I very briefly played Gimbal yesterday. It seems like the influx of new players has the game a bit shaky, but it was definitely working and looked good. The dev also totally seems to be on it. The graphics are very nice, the controls totally depend on how each engine works and where they are placed, and customisation is probably going to be all sorts of awesome.

I am looking forward to play quite a bit more and build bigger bad-assier ships!


--- edit ---

Kanil, I noticed that too. I think it's that engines don't provide acceleration, just speed. So basically, if you press "left", the ship immediately starts turning left at max speed, instead of accelerating the turn to max speed. Maybe it depends on the engine? Some of those that I tried offline didn't feel that way.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2012, 04:27:49 am by Anvilfolk »
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Intrinsic

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This looks very intruiging, worth an easy $5 minimum. I'll have to try the demo 1st although very reluctant to have to install more crap like XNA.
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Girlinhat

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The game requires Direct X and .NET - chances are you already have both of these if you play any games.

A brief shakedown on equipment, you might want to put this in OP so people know what to expect:
Normal engines work at max thrust all the time.  These provide constant thrust and are used for your forward motion.
Maneuvering engines provide a lot higher power for their size, but after a few seconds they lose a lot of thrust and need a brief period to recharge.  This makes them good at quick keypresses to turn but makes them bad at long duration travel.
The two other types of engines are the jet engine, which is a scramjet and only really "kicks in" at high speed, and a liquid fuel rocket that's more of an afterburner because it has limited charges.

The game takes place in atmosphere, probably.  The server host can determine the atmospheric pressure, from 0% to 300%.  At 0% you have no friction, and your ship will slide off the edge of the map unless you do something.  At 0% control surfaces and airbrakes also become worthless.  At 300% all ships move slower due to drag, and if you've installed control surfaces like fins or rudders they'll become so potent as to make your ship locked.  Default setting is 80%.

You can change your direction on two ways.  The first, and most obvious, is unequal thrust.  If you have an engine on one side but not the other side, then when you thrust it you'll turn.  By default, drive engines are on w/s and maneuvering thrusters are not on any keybinding because you need to rotate them.  You need to put the maneuvering engines on usually the rear of the vehicle, although the sides and front would work, the center would not.  One engine can be placed parallel to the ship - if it's on the front or back then the engine should face left and right.  If it's on either side, it should face up and down.  You then give it keybindings, usually a/d but you could really tell it whatever you wanted.  Now, when you use the engines, they'll apply force and turn your ship!  Most times, I use two maneuvering engines in the rear, canted 45 degrees left and right.

Pretty much everyone uses the Stabilizer software though, available from the beginning.  You place it onto the hull, and then "add" and attach it to your maneuvering thrusters.  Then you set keybinds for left and right, and the software will decide "If this engine fires, then will it rotate the ship?" and will handle it for you.  It also provides compensation.  Normally when you turn, momentum keeps you rotating around and you overshoot, but with the software it'll fire the engines in the reverse direction and try to keep your rotation stopped until you hit a key.  Stabilizers are practically required for sniper platforms, although certain high speed craft could get away with not having one, because they use different ideas for direction.

The second way to change direction (remember there were two?) is control surfaces.  Since the game is in air, you have aerodynamics.  Each item has a drag and mass, and the drag means that it'll add more air resistance.  Control surfaces provide specific air resistance, particularly fins, rudders, and airbrakes are available.  These all work relatively simply.  Fins try to convert any movement into forward movement.  If you're flying sideways, the fins will try to keep you flying forward.  So when a high-speed fighter turns, it won't drift around the curve, the fins will "bite in" and it'll get "friction" that lets it take sharp, concise turns.  Rudders work similar to fins, but can be angled easily.  As you would expect, when you use a rudder it changes your aerodynamics and helps to change your direction, although the specifics rely on how forward or backwards your rudder is.  Airbrakes are much simpler, because when activated they just stop you.

Components may also be mounted on turrets, weapons AND anything else.  An experimental platform of mine had an engine mounted on a turret and it didn't rotate, it only moved around the field by changing the direction of its engine-turret.  Similarly, fins and rudders may be mounted to turrets, which would turn a fin into a rudder and a rudder into something very confusing.  You can mount one fin onto a rudder, or you may put on a platform extension and mount several fins at once.

Because of aerodynamics, it's entirely possible to mount pure drive engines, fins, and rudders, and have no maneuvering thrusters!  However, your functionality will be "I can fly straight" if the server happens to be 0% air pressure.  But no one uses that setting.

Engines are the hard part.  Weapons are much easier.  You mount them onto your ship, and they can be fixed-mounted and fire straight, or attached to a turret.  The weapons are all pretty straightforward, so I won't explain what each do.  However I will explain a little specifics.  Namely, fixed weapons can fire directly, but this doesn't have to be "forward".They can be tilted to fire at an angle.  This can be useful for a flak gun, if you want to make a spread behind you, you can mount 3 flak facing behind, behind-left, and behind-right, allowing you to cover a wider area and shoot down missiles more reliably (or use a flare launcher, but those don't matter to dumb warheads).  I've also seen players use bomb launchers or mine layers on an angle, on very fast ships.  A quick fighter can have bomb launchers mounted sideways - bombs being slow-moving, dumbfire, heavy warheads, good for hitting slow or stationary targets - thus letting the player making literal bombing runs where they fly very past nearby an enemy and toss bombs.

The real thing about weapons, though, is turrets.  Turrets are simple in theory.  You set a turret, set something atop it, and then you set the keybindings or you make it follow the mouse.  You can directly mount a weapon to a turret, letting it pivot quickly so you don't have to use your ship to aim - this is particularly important for sniper platforms, since your mouse is more accurate than your ship's direction.  You can also mount a platform onto a turret, and then equipment onto the platform.  This is significant because turrets and software are expensive, I was able to mount 4 guns on turrets, or was able to mount 10 guns on a platform on turrets.  For 50mm guns, this let me tear through lower enemies and hit higher enemies hard.

Those who have seen the teaser video may also notice the tentacle ship, with several platforms waving around.  These are done with turrets, by putting a turret on the hull, a platform on the turret, a turret on the platform, a platform on the turret, etc...

The rest of the game is pretty easy.  Armor, sensors, hull type, is all pretty straightforward.  It's maneuvering engines and turrets that are the most complicated.  The real complications in the game are more meta though.  The rules are simple, how you exploit them is what matters.  My favorites are the ramming ships, which have no weapons but score kills by speed and armor, and my own directional platform, which has layers of armor in the front and moves at a snail's pace, but is mounted with so much armor and weaponry that anything coming at it from the front is dead.

Anvilfolk

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Aw man, yesterday I didn't have enough time to go into ship customisation, so I really just fought a couple of matches with standard ships. This game is pretty similar to a game I've wanted to do for ages. The only different is that these ships seem to mostly have the same scale. Perhaps they will add controllable capital ships at some point!

GirlInHat, I added a link to that wonderful info on the OP :) How does customisation work? Do you need money to buy parts and make ships? I notice you make money when you kill enemies, but then what is it used for? To buy ships in that game round, or is money actually an account feature and not a server/round-by-round feature (if that makes sense)?

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The game gives you a budget.  You can only build a ship up to your budget limit, or the server's limit.  Some servers will give you a lower budget, for "noob matches".  Your budget permanently rises, there is no cash there is only a rising ceiling of "how expensive your ship can get".  You seem to get kill value relative to your worth and the enemy wealth - if your ship is cheap and you kill an expensive ship, you can get +40, if you're in a top cutter and kill a noob, more like +3.  To that end, cheap ships can help you rank up faster, but you get +20 for winning a match, and +50 for the game, so expensive killers can pay off as well, if you can win matches.

EDIT: Also you get +100 for killing a carrier.  Score for my 20x 50cm cannon barrage.  Thing takes down 2% carrier health per hit.

MOAR EDIT: I maxed my rank already, toying with the big guns.  At top rank, you unlock an auto-aim software, that automatically turns a turret towards a target and compensates for speed, giving you incredible aim.  However it costs $1,000, and your max budget is $5,000 so it's a significant chunk of your money.  In my starting tests with railguns, however...  I've got a tiny ship with a slow turret that packs 5 guided railguns and 2 ammo crates, and it's devastating.  My other design is a large ship with a quick turret, with 3 guided railguns and 4 ammo crates, and it'll last the whole round taking shots at everything.  I'm also going to see "how many guns can I fit on one ship?"  With fixed-mounted 50mm cannons I bet I can load a LOT onto any given design and just one-shot anything.  The trick will be seeing if I can turret any of them.  If so, then infinite pwn everywhere.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2012, 11:04:53 am by Girlinhat »
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Anvilfolk

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Are those the "trilions" you get when you take someone down? I only saw those, but I think I got really high values, like over 130 for one kill. Damn it, I want to play this really bad.

Girlinhat

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Yeah, trillions.  But you never have fractions of trillions, apparently a single laser sight costs you 5 trillion dollars.  But in game it's listed as $5, and if the "trillion" is ever typed out then it's in small font.

Mookzen

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I came, I saw, I bought, I played.
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Girlinhat

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Sadly there's very significant connection issues for the moment, but if you're on the IndieGameStand you can pick it up for 25 cents.  So why the hell not?  The game also lends itself well to clans and coordinated fighting, and will be $15 full price.  I could very easily see Bay12 orchestrating some large scale fights, with the twin-gun dogfighters, railgun artillery platforms, and the Bison A-Bomb haulers to clean up.
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