NOTE: Operation: tell everyone about Gang Garrison is go! I repeat Operation: tell everyone you know about Gang Garrison is go!So I think the general feeling is that GG v2.0 is now stable enough to start telling the world about it. I know a lot of you have been really excited to tell everyone you know about Gang Garrison, and now the time for that has finally arrived. It is now everybody's mission to make sure anyone who would possibly be interested in our game becomes aware of it's existence. Post on any other gaming forums you visit, try to get us on gaming blogs or other news sites, send the game to reviewers to see if we can get some good reviews, or try any other idea you have that will get Gang Garrison 2.0 some good publicity.
If you must subject us to a new influx of 4chan users, please be careful about your timing, we want to be fully prepared for a swarm of disrespectful new users and wouldn't want them to scare away gamers of the more mature variety. Try and do it when we have many servers up and admins/devs around to deal with them.
We've wrote up a press release to send to reviewers, news outlets etc. your more than welcome to use any or all of it as a tool for getting Gang Garrison exposure.
oh, but first, I call dibs on TIGSource and rockpapershotgun, no posting announcements there! They belong to me! RAWR!
On to the press release:Originally conceived for the 2008 TIGSource.com 'Bootleg Demake' competition, Gang Garrison 2.0 is a free multiplayer 'demake' of Valve's Team Fortress 2 by mrfredman, MedO, and Synnah. With all 9 classes, many different TF2-inspired environments, and fast-paced, team-based, multiplayer gameplay represented, GG2.0 is the premier TF2 tribute/parody/alternative.
Gang Garrison 2 presents the player with 9 unique classes to use in frenetic, cooperative multiplayer action in a stylish and unique 8-bit style. Battle with your friends or others you encounter online through a whole range of vibrant maps; TF2 maps reimagined in 2D as well as a multitude of maps in all sorts of different looks and settings, all of which have been dreamed up and constructed by members of our community. We've made a huge effort to provide simple, bugfree custom map support, so that anyone with a paint application can put together a map and test it themselves with our Garrison Builder utility. We also gladly encourage Gang Garrison modifications; many successful mods have been incorporated into the game as new features.
During the first development cycle and the judging of the Bootleg Demake contest, interest in the game began to grow, and as the game's fanbase grew, we became flooded with complaints that we weren't adding new features fast enough and things began to get a bit out of hand. We woke up one morning to find that someone had decompiled the game and was modifying it and releasing new versions without our knowledge and permission. We concluded that the best course of action was to release the game as Open Source so that those interested could step forward without consequence and aid us in development. Since then we've moved to our own site, acquired some incredibly talented and devoted new developers who have worked hard over the past few months to turn our original bootleg demake prototype into the polished, balanced, and bugfree game that it is today.
Changes from Gang Garrison 1.0 to 2.0 include:
- 9 Fully Functional, Unique, and Balanced Classes with Improved Sprites
- Unique Taunts
- New Music
- New Menus
- New HUD
- New Options
- New Explosions and Effects
- Tons of New Maps
- Custom Map Support and a Level Editing Utility
- Kill Notifications
- In-game Communication
- Team Autobalancer
- Spectator Mode
While this game has come a long way, it is still a work in progress. Many impressive new features are currently being planned and developed, like new gametypes and alternate weapons. Because this game continues to grow only because of the devotion and hard work of our community, we invite you to come and participate in the future of this game. We are always looking for talented people to join the forum, contribute art, content, ideas, and modifications, and maybe even help us behind the scenes on new official versions. We hope you'll stop by and have a look at our game; it is the imagination and spirit of our players that makes it so fun.
And here are some images and screenshots that may be useful:I encourage you to take your own screenshots, especially of maps other than truefort (although truefort is pretty awesome).
We don't quite have a trailer that I think should officially represent the game yet, but I encourage you to distribute any videos you make anyways, and continue trying to come up with official trailers for us. Once that we have one that we feel matches the professional quality/look of v2.0 we may take it on as the official trailer, but until then we'll mostly stick with screenshots for large-scale advertising.
Also, if things go as planned, we should have a whole bunch of new users over the next few days. The same few requests as always apply, if you can host (and all the servers up are full) please host your own server! Also, be nice to the new people unless they really deserve to be abused... blah blah blah, I think you guys know whats acceptable by now.
Good luck advertising everyone! We're counting on you! Make Gang Garrison look good, and if you need any help or run into any trouble please come to us, we're more than happy to solve disputes, talk to bigwigs, or get you out of any messes you may get yourself into.
Lastly, as I said in the dev planning thread, if any dev has a good reason to put this off another day or two, please speak up, we don't want to do this before we are 100% prepared.