Details of my first game (lots of zombies, and plenty of blood)

charlieaf92

I've been working on this game concept for over a year, and last summer I started from scratch with GS. Everything was moving along quickly, but the big 'announcement' about revenue sharing took the wind out of my sails and I put it on hold. Since then, it looks like GS has changed their mind and I think I'm ready to make one more push and finally deliver this game to the world. The screenshots are of actual gameplay (which is hard to do while you're playing) - but you should be able to get the idea. There are also quite a few debugging related artifacts in the frame (such as numbers and white blocks) that won't be there in the final version.





More details to come (I hope!)
Charlie

quantumsheep

It looks interesting, certainly - nice one! And good to see a radar there as well!

About the perspective (top down car, not so top down building):

My first reaction was 'that just looks wrong'. However, thinking about it further, I can cite at least one (very) old game that did the same thing.

The difference was that the objects in the game in question weren't as huge as that house, so the issue didn't seem as obvious.

Additionally, with regard to controls (and I know some people have disagreed with me about this in the past) but take a look at nearly every gamepad ever made for any console.

Those with more than two action buttons (so not the old Atari one button joysticks!) have those buttons on the right hand side, with the d-pad on the left.

There's a very interesting article about it here:

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=7961739&publicUserId=5844801

I'd strongly suggest, if you prefer the controls in your game as they are, to offer a choice of button/steering placement. If you need help, I can tell you how to do it in this thread.

Otherwise, it looks like it could be fun! Best of luck with it, andI look forward to further details!

QS

charlieaf92

quantumsheep said:
It looks interesting, certainly - nice one! And good to see a radar there as well!

About the perspective (top down car, not so top down building):

My first reaction was 'that just looks wrong'. However, thinking about it further, I can cite at least one (very) old game that did the same thing.

The difference was that the objects in the game in question weren't as huge as that house, so the issue didn't seem as obvious.

Additionally, with regard to controls (and I know some people have disagreed with me about this in the past) but take a look at nearly every gamepad ever made for any console.

Those with more than two action buttons (so not the old Atari one button joysticks!) have those buttons on the right hand side, with the d-pad on the left.

There's a very interesting article about it here:

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=7961739&publicUserId=5844801

I'd strongly suggest, if you prefer the controls in your game as they are, to offer a choice of button/steering placement. If you need help, I can tell you how to do it in this thread.

Otherwise, it looks like it could be fun! Best of luck with it, andI look forward to further details!

QS

Wow - great feedback, thank you. The inconsistency is perspective is intentional, but the jury is still out about whether or not it will work out. The enemy character elements have 8 different animations, so they appear in the same perspective as the house regardless of their direction. The only flat, top down elements are the player vehicle and some environmental assets. I have been toying with the idea of shrinking everything because at the moment players need to rely heavily on the radar to navigate properly.

The control comment is spot on - I am not sure why I put steering on the right, but it makes more sense to have it on the left as you mentioned. Right now I am finalizing the programatic elements of the game - then I will do some serious play testing and try tweaking sizes and moving controls around.

Right now I have to get a few bugs worked out, get the sound working properly, make a proper health bar, and get the difficulty settings dialed in. After that I am going to release it. If it is received well, I have another player vehicle about 70% complete and ready to implement as an unlockable - as well as artwork and plans for a third.

The biggest challenge that I've had with this is random spawning. I've tried several ways to do it and/or fake it without the results that I want. I really feel like it is a significant loss. Has anyone made progress on a good way to do this in GS yet?

Charlie