Hi! My game, Robokiller: Special Edition, has just been released on itch.io here. It's a unique twist on a retro FPS, free for Windows, Mac and Linux. To celebrate, I thought I'd do a little giveaway of related games:

Catacombs pack - 1 GOG code - The Catacomb trilogy has a lot of similarities to Robokiller in that it is very creative, has a lot of different environments, and uses a Wolfenstein-like 2.5D engine to render the environments (though Robokiller's engine is quite a bit more advanced). This is a really fun (and often overlooked) trilogy.

Duke Nukem 3D - 1 GOG code - This is a really fun 2.5D style game. At the time one of the things people loved about it was that 3d Realms put a lot of effort into trying to portray real-life locations, instead of the more "abstract" level design in games like Doom. Robokiller takes some inspiration from this, you'll see offices, factory floors, etc. instead of just a generic-looking level.

Realms of the Haunting - 1 GOG code - One of my favorite games on here, I loved the way it blends adventure-style puzzle-solving with FPS action. You'll also find puzzles throughout Robokiller.

Kilgazar - 2 itch.io codes - Also made by a GOGer (Adam Biser) who is famous for his great free game "Orb of Dilaaria", which is a 2.5D shooter like Robokiller.

Music Machine - 2 itch.io codes (also gives you a Steam code) - Another game by a fellow GOGer (jefequeso). Jefequeso has also made a great free 2.5D shooter called "The Pit" which you should definitely check out if you haven't already.

RULES

Must have at least 10 rep (I reserve the right to also disqualify known scammers). To enter, give me your first impression of Robokiller (it's free, but you don't even have to download it, just looking at the game page is enough), and let me know which game(s) you're interested in. I'll pick the winners from the eligible entries using random.org in three days. You are not more likely to win if you give positive feedback. :-)

NOT IN but I will play and give some feedback on Robokiller, congrats on getting something out there!

Awesome, thanks!

Robokiller looks like the old school shooters I love. It reminds me a lot of Wolfenstein 3D, a really good game. It appears that I'll end up downloading. Heh, I'm even wondering if it'll have the typical surprise corners that Wolf3D uses against the players for a challenge.

In for Realms of the Haunting. Thanks!

Thanks for the first impression. Hope the game lives up to your expectations!

Downloading now and will test and let you know opinion of the Mac version. First impressions based on screenshots are positive. Takes me right back to the shooters I loved :)

I would like to enter for Catacombs 3D, to relive my memories of shooters in times gone :)

** edit **
So far it seems pretty good. The music is awesome.
The font however is sometimes a little hard to read. The mouse control has a bit of a learning curve as well, but I did have a lot of fun playing it. I'd be interested in learning more about how it was developed :)

Hi there. Congratulations on your release.
Just looking at those screenshots does bring back memories. :-)

Would you mind talking a bit more about Robokiller? What was your motivation to building it? Was it a technical challenge? A long lasting dream you have always wished to fulfil? Why did you decide to create your own engine?

When I see a game with "rogue" robots, I always think of Paradroid. I would love to see a 3D version of that kind of gameplay. :-)

I have not tried the game, due to my self-imposing "no game installations until I finish my current business" rule. So it needs to wait.

In for the Music Machine if possible.

Looks aimilar to Blake Stone but with updated graphics. Not bad.

In for Catacombs Pack

NOT IN

Congrats on your game release.

And +1 for the giveaway.

Looks like you're the first person to download and play it! Thanks so much for taking the time to do that and give feedback! I'm very glad to hear it worked well on your Mac and you were able to make some progress in it!

Where in particular is the font hard to read? The menu, instructions screen or in-game? It's remarkably hard to make good-looking text at what is essentially 320x240 resolution, especially since, for the in-game text, I needed to use a font with a permissive license to make the text consistent across OSes. Fun Fact: The font currently used for rendering in-game text was originally developed for use on Android phones. :-)

If you don't like the controls, under the options menu you can also try out the "classic" controls, which are similar to old games like Wolfenstein in that the keyboard is used to turn. However, the "modern" controls are much more similar to modern mouselook, and should be a lot more intuitive to FPS players. Hmm, that enemy is unique to Robokiller (all assets were made by me or my team, with the exception of some free 3rd party sound effects) so I'm not sure where you saw it before. Never heard of paradroid before. Looks like a very cool and innovative game.

And I totally understand your rule. Hopefully at some point in the future you will be able to give Robokiller a try. Sure, I'm happy to ramble on, though there's a bit in the readme file about this. Basically it's called the "special edition" because I released the original version of the game 7 years ago, in 2008. When I was an undergraduate student I was part of a club which tried to create games by forming small teams who worked on them in their spare time, with the goal to have a oomplete game by the end of the semester. This was an excellent opportunity to learn how to work with a team of other artists, musicians, and level designers in addition to programmers. Unfortunately, due to the short timeframe and the fact that the courses at my school were known to be exceptionally challenging, most project leaders did not come anywhere close to achieving their original vision; typically the games came out looking like half-finished prototypes. I'm proud to say that when my turn came to be project leader, we were the exception to the rule. We got pretty much every major feature we wanted in Robokiller, which was also notable for being the first FPS the club ever produced. Of course, since I did all the programming in addition to leading the project, doing the sound, and helping out with art and level design, my grades did suffer a bit that semester. :-)

Basically, the idea for the project came about because I've always been totally obsessed with 2.5D shooters ("Doom clones") and wanted to make one of my own. I wanted to build my own engine so I could learn how these games were made as well as have full control over the limitations, bugs, and new features. I also think making a 2.5D game in a 3D engine doesn't feel quite as authentic as building a real old-school raycaster. Early on I was looking for something to make the game fun and unique, and due to the way I had built the engine, the drawing mechanic was really easy to implement and was something I had never seen done in an FPS before (and TBH I still haven't).

However, the problem with the original version is that virtually no one played it. This was largely due to technical reasons: it was deployed as a web-based Applet (which was an outdated tech even then and required you to click through approximately 500 alarming "security exception" screens), the loading times were enormous, the controls were poor, and the game was filled with bugs and glitches. Further, the game had external dependencies, and when those were updated the game ceased functioning. I fixed it a few times, but I eventually gave up, and the game has not been playable for several years.

So for quite some time now I've been working on the "special edition" in my spare time, fixing all the problems the original game had, making it into a standalone download, and adding quite a bit of new content as well. Now the game is (hopefully) finally ready to stand the test of time and be played and enjoyed by a wider audience. :-)

I also wander about the tools you used to write the game, like the language and libraries used. Would you talk a little bit about that? And do you have plans for the future?

We still have two copies of Kilgazar, one copy of Duke3D and one copy of the Music Machine totally unclaimed in the giveaway, so don't hesitate to enter!

I'm more than happy to, but I'm curious, are you interested because you are working on a game as well?

The game is written in Java, because it was a language I was familiar with and it was built from the ground up to be platform independent. From the beginning it was always a major goal of mine to have this work on all three major OSes (Windows, Mac, Linux), which was pretty rare back in 2008, but is more common today given the popularity of Unity. In hindsight, one downside in going with Java is that a lot is hidden behind the scenes: The garbage collector and the just in time compiler are not totally ideal for a CPU-heavy game like Robokiller, because in practice this often means that the first time a new section of code is run, it will be quite slow, but as after being run several times it will run much faster. So unfortunately, when you enter a new area of Robokiller on a slower system, sometimes the framerate may briefly drop. I tried a few tricks to mitigate this but it's a fairly fundamental limitation of Java's JVM.

Robokiller's graphics engine is built from scratch, the screen is drawn pixel-by-pixel in software just like the old days. So I don't use any graphics libraries except the standard java awt stuff.

For the music I use the NativeFmodEx library, which allows use of FMOD in Java. FMOD has many advantages and the musician I was working with insisted I use it. One major advantage is the tiny file size: all the music in the game fits in 845 KB, when stored at the same quality in a normal way it would probably be at least dozens of megabytes. As an aside, the size of all the game's assets and code is just over 4 MB uncompressed. Most of the download size is due to the fact that I have bundled the libraries and a (stripped-down) copy of Java so that there are no external dependencies.

I wasn't using any library for the sound effects beyond the standard Java sound libraries until I recently discovered that there are were minor issues with the sound on Mac and Linux systems. So I switched over to TinySound and now things sound the same across platforms.

Beyond small updates to fix any problems that arise, Robokiller is done, I don't have plans to extend it or make a sequel as I think it is great the way it is. I do have some cool ideas for future games, but having enough time to work on them is always an issue. My next projects will likely require a more complex engine, so I'll probably bite the bullet and try out Unity. Whatever's next will likely still be 2.5D, as I'm still pretty obsessed with that style of game. :-)

Now, normally, I hate shooters. Yeah, I know, it's one of the most popular genres, but I'm a pacifist who, as per my tagline, enjoys puzzles rather than violence. However, this game looks so unique, I'd actually play it. Only reason I haven't downloaded it is because I have a trackpad and not an actual mouse, but it's so tempting, I might just do it anyways. Here's my thoughts before playing, I'll make a new post after at least trying it for a bit:

+1 for having a beginning and an end, none of this open-world/sandbox/episode/early access crap.
+1 for coding it all from scratch.
+1 for having an entirely unique idea, actually welding the robots rather than firing at them.
+1 for having a map.
+1 for having secrets.
+1 for making sure people with epilepsy are warned.
+1 for making it free.

+0 for the mechanic of each enemy having a weakness since I don't know how it works yet.
+0 for having puzzles since I don't know if they're any good yet.
+0 for having retro soundtrack since I haven't heard it yet.

-1 for short length.
-1 for trackpad compatibility.
-1 for graphics, although really, who cares about those?

First impression before playing: 7/10

As much as I love giveaways, as I stated already, I hate shooters and I'm also not a big fan of horror. I would try to grab The Music Machine, but, to be honest, all I'd do is trade it off, so count me as not in.

Wow, thanks! That's actually a really positive impression for someone who isn't into shooters! The game has more puzzles than the average shooter but I doubt it has enough for "the Puzzlemaster", so it'll be interesting to hear your take.

Sorry about the trackpad thing. Do you play normal first person games with a trackpad? It's definitely possible with a trackpad but it is certainly harder.

Sorry that nothing in the giveaway sparked your interest, but thanks again for your comments regardless.