Tag: QBob

QBob Progress Report #2

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My goal for the month of October has been to covert the original MIDI based music from QBob into a more sonically robust modern format. I made a passing attempt to do this in the early 2000s when I thought Amiga tracking programs were the future of music. Madtracker was my go to program for creating sample-based techno songs and I managed to convert the track “Erie” but that was about it.

Cut to 2024 and I have actually expanded beyond the scope of shareware music software. My current DAW of choice is FL Studio. It has all the features necessary to directly convert .MID files into FL Studio’s file format. It actually comes bundled with a fairly good sounding general MIDI patch too. I could have just imported the files, used that patch and called it a day. Instead I took the time to hand craft various synths and samples to better match what I imagined these songs sounded like back in 1996 when they squeaked out of my old Soundblaster 16/Waveblaster card.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I also made lo-fi Waveblaster versions of all the songs too for posterity. That said, the new versions are sounding great. I have more-or-less finished the music ahead of schedule. The only thing left is give them a final mastering pass which is always a challenge since my PC speakers aren’t very accurate.

What is now going to follow is probably the most time-consuming part of this whole project. The goal is to completely redo all the game sprites to make them have smoother animation, alpha channels, and a more consistent style.

QBob UFO character animation

My plan would have been to use Adobe Flash to do all the animations, but then Adobe killed Flash in 2016. What I didn’t realize is that Flash was rebranded as Adobe Animate and now has a more video production focus. I have been (re) learning the software and I feel like this will work nicely. If this wasn’t an option I would probably have to buy Toon Boom Studio or some other program I am completely unfamiliar with.

So far I have completed two character make-overs and the game is already looking more slick and colorful.

QBob Progress Report #1

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I have spent the past three weeks or so going through all the MIDI files we used in the original QBob, importing them into FL Studio, and reworking them to use VSTs and all sorts of modern production effects. This process includes converting the MIDI files to use a Waveblaster soundfont—replicating what I would have heard back in 1996 when I wrote these songs. I got the soundfont from a user named deemster on a the Vogons DOS appreciation Web forum. The soundfont file, as detailed as it is, contains tons of errors and poorly cropped samples so I have been modifying it as I find issues. I’d post a link to it here, but all the links that were originally posted are dead.

After making sure I had a mostly accurate Waveblaster version, I moved on to “remastered” versions. In most cases this involves lots of sound design and plenty of new arrangements. The tracks now have a much more meatier sound and more variety. The original arrangements were very repetitive. In the decades since, I have learned that you have to keep inserting small variations in your EDM compositions or else the music risks becoming a Lowrey Organ backing beat. Any moron can paste together a dance song in GarageBand, and I’m not just any moron!

This week I finished the soundtrack and tonight I have moved on to completing the final big piece of the game mechanics: the final boss level. My first goal is to get the end boss’s basic look and feel mechanics down. The eye now follows the player based on his relative x position. I have also added in the boss’s verbal taunts. It’s going to be better than the original because, using Gamemaker sequences, I can better sync the mouth movements to the samples. Next I will tackle the final enemy on my list, the fireball. More to come.

QBob Will Rise Again!

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If you have ever clicked around this here Web site you will know that I helped create a 90s shareware game called QBob. It was basically a project started by my friend John to help him learn C++ object oriented programming. I created the art, much of the music and he and our professional programmer buddy Craig (he actually got paid to do computers!) programed the game. For about half a decade we were HUGE in South America! I dutifully mailed out 3.5″ floppies of the game and we we rollin’ in the green!

In the subsequent years we tried a few other things and never released anything else. We all got jobs and our lives went on, but we still would get a few orders for QBob every now and again. They were enough that we have maintained MoonRock Software Inc. as a company, and occasionally will have “meetings” regarding finances and whatnot. As the lone board member who didn’t have a cool tech job, I would occasionally suggest that we do an updated version of QBob using some of the animation and music skillz I had acquired over the years. Nothing ever got rolling.

Fast forward a decade or two and I discovered Gamemaker Studio. Now, with the power of paid software, I too can be a nerd programmer guy! As an experiment I took it upon myself to recreate QBob in Gamemaker. Turns out, I just might have unleashed my inner nerd. Gamemaker is awesome and makes it possible for a hack like me to program a respectable arcade game.

So, the big news is that QBob: Remastered (title TBD) is in the works. If I had it together, I would have made this an ongoing developer’s log of the project. Instead, I’m here to tell you that I think I will be able to pull this off and John and Craig are along for the ride. At the moment, I have about 70% of the core game-play in place and working. The game is faster and even more fun to play. My goals are to update all the media assets and possibly introduce some new features (and get rid of some crap ones like the paint gun). At the moment I am reworking all the music. If the project fails I will, at a minimum, release the soundtrack on Bandcamp. Let me tell you, some of these new versions are freakin’ cool as hell.

Anyway, stay tuned. More updates to come!