new Zombie game :-)

[`teh1]

man you need to get yourself a screen recorder

http://www.araelium.com/screenflick

[Galavant Garde]

Ok Ryan you're right I should ;-) I kinda liked how bad it looked with a camera and wanted to make some sort of filter so it looks like that when you play...here's a recording using QuickTime:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46335427/ZombieDemo6lowres.mov

[Galavant Garde]

Working on the foggy grubby visuals a bit, plus made a test background for the menu screen representing the infection the prisoner was injected with:

[Imon]

love the menu screen

[Galavant Garde]

Thanks Imon  I'll have a workable demo out shortly for you to have a play with - have just added the ability for the zombie (let's just call him Derrick for now) to fight back.  He's pretty slow but has a powerful king hit which, other than for self defence, you'll use to bash down doors

[Galavant Garde]

So here's a video of Derrick slamming down a door:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46335427/ZombieDoorSmash.mov



There are obviously lighting and shadow issues I need to overcome but I just wanted to show you the mechanics of opening doors in the game

[Galavant Garde]

Another way you'll be able to interact with the game is destroying fuse boxes/electrical stuff to help create a dark path for you to sneak past. Here's the prison yard again except when you break the fuse box a few lights go off giving you a safe route

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46335427/ZombieLightingDemo.mov

[Galavant Garde]

Hey guys here's a very rough demo to start playing with:

< LINK REMOVED - A MORE RECENT ONE HAS BEEN POSTED BELOW >

Objective is to try to get inside without dying (even though you're already kinda dead) - if you're noticed you'll die pretty quickly so the trick is stealth and patience

Here's another shot that I think makes it look pretty cool:



This is literally the test ground with no intro or instructions - basic proof of concept map for trying out the physics of gameplay.  The enemy models are bad old ones I took from Ronja - will make some better enemy models soon.

Too hard?  Too easy?  Enemies clever enough?  Dark and hazy enough or is it too much?  Tell me what you think so far 

PS I know there are a few issues with the enemy AI - tell me what you notice anyway as it might not be on my list of things to address

[c^5]

Neat! Some feedback on the AI--on my first try I was spotted about halfway from my start position to the door, but I made it anyway without losing the enemies because they kept shooting just behind me. I think they either need to anticipate your motion when they aim, or the bullets need to move faster. If they're not supposed to be able to hit you from far away, then they should probably know to get closer when they're trying to shoot you--they can run faster than you so they can always back off if you start going after them.

[Galavant Garde]

Hey thanks C^5 yuh the bullets are pretty slow, I'll speed them up.  I like your idea for them to back off when you start lurching towards them - I might pinch that if you don't mind!

EDIT: Speeding up enemy bullets make a big difference - if you wanna check it out change the projectile speed of Slug.js to 500.  This change will be baked in when I add a few more things and update the download link

[Galavant Garde]

Update:

- Enemy bullets travel faster so they are more accurate from a distance
- Enemies will recalculate their node paths if another enemy is walking to the same destination node (avoids them getting stuck when side-stepping each other endlessly around the same end node)
- When an alert enemy notices you getting closer to them they'll run back as if scared (unless you're within melee distance in which case they'll swing at you)
- Enemies definitely die when you kill them (they had a scripting issue which sometimes brought them back to life)

What's next:

- Being able to pick up rocks (or whatever) to throw them - this'll make noise attracting/distracting enemies
- Sound effects for the enemies so they scream and say stuff like "OMG" and "There he is!" etc

Once that stuff is done I'll make new enemy models and start building some maps.  I also want to make water that becomes electrified when you damage nearby electrical stuff so you can make traps for enemies.  Oh and I've started thinking more about the actual story now:

OutBreak

It centres around a death row inmate who is being experimented on with a new lyssavirus strand. Lyssaviruses cause swelling of the brain which causes primal aggressive behaviour & paralysis in hosts before they die. However this strand was artificially developed to keep the host alive with the goal of reducing brain function making the infected primitive & compliant. Imagine a virus that kills critical thinking! Nobody would be intelligent or aware enough to stand up against the establishment! But the virus mutates unpredictably (as RNA viruses do) & the inmate becomes extremely strong & aggressive then breaks out! (Get it? OutBreak? Break out?)  You play as a lone zombie trying to escape from humans who want to hunt you down & terminate you. This begs the question; who is the real monster........

[Galavant Garde]

Ok here's an update for outbreak:

< LINK REMOVED - SEE NEWER POSTS FOR A NEWER LINK >

All those improvements I mentioned in my last post you can now play around with for yourself.  Still got to make the enemies better at dodging each other but they're otherwise doing pretty good.  Basically, when one spots you, it gets messy and you'll probably die

Objective for this demo map is still the same - get inside alive

[`teh1]

Hmm, they can't shoot you if you're in the prone position right in front of them, just out of range of melee. Their downward angle isn't enough. Also, if you go dark in the middle of them shooting you out of flashlight range, they don't try to find you. They resume previous business.

[Galavant Garde]

Thanks Ryan, my bad!  I've now added the ability for baddies to remember where they last saw you so that if you become obscured or it's too dark for them to see you anymore, they'll run to where they last spotted you to check.  It's a bit more natural that way, thanks for spotting that!

As for the downward angle thing when shooting at you on the ground, still trying to get that one right...   I've been using obj.look.setLookAt(playerID); and making sure obj.look.effectWeapons is true, so the engine has been calculating the angle for itself.

When the player starts crawling, I decrease the player's Y size so that enemies will aim downward, however bullets seem to fly just over the player's head.  If I make it any lower, enemies don't seem to notice the player even when he's out in the open.  I can't just add an offset when firing because the look function overrides it anyway, and when I set obj.look.effectWeapons to false and calculate the angle myself using trigonometry it ignores my angle and does the dim3 calculated angle anyway.  I'll keep fiddling - it's probably something I'm doing wrong.

Anyway I'll update the link once I've patched in fixes to those two things and started a new map  thanks again for playing around with it.  This is the critical part of developing it because once the physics and logic are solid it's just content and polish

[Galavant Garde]

I got it now  having stopped using setLookAt(id); and started using my own trig calculation based on the player distance and height of the gun, enemies can shoot you when you're crawling no matter how close or far.

I'll update the map and start a new one then post a new link.  Thanks again for that Ryan