The china gunbound experience.

[creedo]

My buddy told me china gunbound was a bit different from normal gunbound, so I decided to try it.  To some readers this is old news but to an angmoh like me it was neat.
It was a real pain in the ass to make my account, which you can do here: http://www.8bao.com/login.asp?form_submit=8bao

They ask for real name, real address, real phone number... CELL PHONE number is required information.  They want ID card number or passport number.  They want so much information zzzzzz.  All for a free game without use of credit card or anything else.  Also when you login it wants you to type in a manual confirmation code that consists of a number that is shown with images on the right, I guess it prevents automatic login scripts or tools that can scam your password somehow.

Using http://world.altavista.com/tr, I was able to figure out the questions, and using google.com searches I was able to find good enough fake answers, like a random passport number, some real chinese phone numbers, etc etc.  

I was quite surprised when it succeeded, I have tried things like this before and gotten rejected because I cannot fake the information well enough.  Anyway, you don't need to confirm anything by email (but of coz they want your email address)... within 10-15 seconds you are ready to join.

DIFFERENCES:  You have the old gunbound buddy program.  It's like AIM/MSN, you run it and it can sit in your system tray.  You can find gunbound buddies as usual, but you can also click a button to just join their game automatically from the buddy list (something I couldn't use since I am buddyless).  You can also do traditional buddy mode things like set yourself as away/do not disturb.  
A boring little screenshot:
http://media.virtuafighter.com/media/gb/china_buddy.jpg

Once you're in the game, the buddy tray icon keeps running but you don't deal with it anymore, you have the usual gunbound buddy system in the game.

There's slightly different art/logos for the entrance screen, and some other company's name flashes before you begin.  Kinda zzz.  
http://www.tankbb.com/ad_images/gamepic01_1.jpg
Their wallpaper section is hella nice though:
http://www.tankbb.com/pic/wallpaper.htm

The servers:
Zone 1 and 2 aren't noob servers as I expected, I saw a red wand float by.  I guess they're free zones.

Zone 5 and 6 are 0 wind zones!  The wind starts at 0 and never changes because the wind change weather effects are removed.   Screenshot:
http://media.virtuafighter.com/media/gb/china0wind.jpg

Also, your default boy avatar is a bit different, I don't recognize it, but it looks a bit like the red devil suit but with black and gray and red.  

Because of my lack of chinese, I joined and readied with boomer in an all aduka room.  It took me a second to realize it.  About 3/4ths through the game the adukas were doing 700 damage duals, and everyone was ???ing at my english (and my noob boomer shots).  I made a nice dual hook for a piddly 500 and one of the chinese girls said "PIG".  LOL!
Random screenshot from that game:
http://media.virtuafighter.com/media/gb/chinalol.jpg

I am sad that I didn't screencap much.  Other major differences:

They haven't updated major parts of the game yet!  The game plays like it did over a month ago.  Aduka has his old shot 2 (2 bullets) and old SS (3).  Boomer and grub SS do weaker damage.  Cake has his full angle range still.  The cave B and nirvana B maps aren't there.  But strangely some other things ARE updated, for example you can read a lot of all the chat in the ready room... but instead of the orange box that we have, the text just floats in front of the mobile selection window.  Also some of the maps are completely different
(Scroll down)
http://www.tankbb.com/introduce/map_introduce.htm
larger:
http://www.tankbb.com/ad_images/actionpic02_1.jpg
Notice the different power/shot graphics.  I had the usual graphics, not these.  I guess
they're old.

Their page is a bit nicer, notice pix of the shots, you can see aduka's unchanged yet:
http://www.tankbb.com/introduce/introduce.htm

Also, check out this guild page:
http://www.tankbb.com/zdlb/zdlb.php

See those big numbers like 497, 500, etc?  That's how many people are in these guilds
A buddy told me about this, so I was expecting really massive, full servers.  Surprisingly they were quite empty.  None of them were in the orange or red "fullness level", and several of them were literally empty, 0 players.  I don't have any idea where all these people are playing.

Ranks are the same, but their white dragon has 212,000 GP, 60,000 more than our white dragon.  To give you an idea of how sick that is, our #1 would need to make a second account, bring it up red wand, then go 17,000 GP beyond that point to equal the GP of China's white dragon.  They also keep track of guild total GP.  KNAT is up there with
2 blue dragons, but is still a bit over half of the GP of the leading guild.

I think that about covers the big ones.  Avatars are the same except for the boy default I had.  They don't have panda gear and some other new items yet.

If anyone wants more info on how to get on chinese gunbound, I'll be glad to help.
However keep in mind that you need to completely uninstall other versions of gunbound to make it work.  You cannot keep both on the same PC.  You can't even just choose to install china gunbound in a different folder, the game checks something in your registry and gives an error if you try to run it.  I had to redownload gunbound all over again to get back onto gwai-lo gunbound

[mauvecow]

I remember bluemagi talking about the Chinese GB back on the old GBHQ forums. He stated some other tidbits like Raon being considered the cheese bot and frowned upon.

But.. what. A zero wind zone? man. I would seek out the person who thought that was a good idea and strangle him. It's not bad enough that the game is shallow as it is, no, it has to be made even worse. Sigh. Although looking at the screenshot a bit more makes it look a bit like a newbie zone. *shrug*

[00Sniper]

I agree with mauve, zero wind = total mindlessness, bots like trico and others would then take no skill o.0 and the boomer high anglers would be crazy

[eVoW4rl0rD]

Communists need to know everything before they let you play a game.

0 wind=UHA for every money whore and non money whore too

[Strifel]

Very different.  

[darkmagnolia]

The 0 wind thing is stupid, but I like the fact that China gb's avatars cost a lot of gold but gives very less stats.

[cr0nik]

well, it's good practice if you want to test out your normal shots before shooting  with wind.  i think it's a good idea, maybe if you didn't earn gold or gp from the zone.

[ROY4L]

This was interesting information. Thanks. Does anyone remember when our version of gunbound had zero wind servers a long time ago in the beginning? I used to play on them as a chick/hammy and I remember the first week they added wind, it was awesomely glitchy and wind wasn't capped at ~25, but you could get up to 75 wind and 80 wind. As soon as your shot was released it would travel 1mm and then rocket off the screen. Memories...

[Shere]

This was interesting information. Thanks. Does anyone remember when our version of gunbound had zero wind servers a long time ago in the beginning? I used to play on them as a chick/hammy and I remember the first week they added wind, it was awesomely glitchy and wind wasn't capped at ~25, but you could get up to 75 wind and 80 wind. As soon as your shot was released it would travel 1mm and then rocket off the screen. Memories...

 

[Drknecro]

This was interesting information. Thanks. Does anyone remember when our version of gunbound had zero wind servers a long time ago in the beginning? I used to play on them as a chick/hammy and I remember the first week they added wind, it was awesomely glitchy and wind wasn't capped at ~25, but you could get up to 75 wind and 80 wind. As soon as your shot was released it would travel 1mm and then rocket off the screen. Memories...

i remember that  :lol:
how did you do that? 1 wind... :S

[Shere]

If you read what Royal wrote, it makes sense.

[creedo]

That picture is pure LOL.  Does anyone out there have an archive of really old gunbound pictures that show off stuff that isn't in the game anymore?  I'd love to see old turtle's large angle range, or the old stats that boosted movement/climb/angle, or pre-corrected damages, 70 wind, etc etc.

[Shere]

I might, but I was literally a newb back then. I had very little idea about what the hell was going on but I did tend to mash F11 a whole lot. I will see what I can find.  

[stmpynode]

I had two copies of Gunbound installed on my pc a while ago. I just exported the registry settings to a file for each install. Depending on which GB I wanted to run, I would just import the registry settings by running the .reg file. I'm going to try this out with the Chinese version as soon as the site is working again.

You can't even just choose to install china gunbound in a different folder, the game checks something in your registry and gives an error if you try to run it. I had to redownload gunbound all over again to get back onto gwai-lo gunbound

[SmellyBeans]

I had two copies of Gunbound installed on my pc a while ago. I just exported the registry settings to a file for each install. Depending on which GB I wanted to run, I would just import the registry settings by running the .reg file. I'm going to try this out with the Chinese version as soon as the site is working again.

You can't even just choose to install china gunbound in a different folder, the game checks something in your registry and gives an error if you try to run it. I had to redownload gunbound all over again to get back onto gwai-lo gunbound

Could u liek....simplify the steps? i don't get what u mean