Z is for Zombie - Coming soon to the App Store!

jonmulcahy

I'm very happy to announce, and demo my first Game Salad game, Z is for Zombie. I'll be submitting it to the App Store tonight, but I wanted to post a quick demo I made from it. It's only the first level but you'll get the idea. It's been a lot of fun to make it, especially designing and drawing all the artwork. Every single piece of artwork in the game I made, it's basic but I'm proud of it. Now that the core game is complete, I'm working on actually animating some of the actors to give it a little more appeal.

Anyways, give it a play and let me know what you think!

http://gamesalad.com/game/play/24408

Corella

Very cool!

Animations would be great, indeed.

Suggestions: Ability to fire projectiles to the left as well as right, and maybe make the projectiles a little more visible.

A definite submission for the "Scary Challenge of the Month" I'd say
http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=756

jonmulcahy

Thanks for the challenge suggestion!

I originally gave you the ability to shoot both forwards and backwards, but I ran into a bug so I pulled it out. If you had a projectile shooting right, and hit left, the first projectile would change course. I'm sure it was just some sloppy rules on my end

Good idea on making them more visible too, I'm going to do that now before I submit it.

jonmulcahy

Projectiles updated, I want to keep them small so its kinda in scale, but it's a lot easier to see I think now.

superNES

Very nice indeed! I really like the hand drawn comic book style, it's very unique and novel. The pacing and the audio also greatly added to the mood.

I think the boss fight needs some hit sounds - I didn't know I was damaging him until he disappeared. Also during that fight, you could avoid all of the zombie slugs by just hanging out towards the bottom of the screen.

Aside from running/walking animations, you should definitely add some gruesome (yet hand drawn) death animations - the best part of zombie games is all the meaty gibs without the remorse!

Can't wait to see more!

jonmulcahy

hey superNES

Thanks for the suggestions - I forgot about the boss hit sounds, I just kept hearing it in my head

I'm working on some 'Popping' effects when the zombies die, but it took so long to draw everything else I didn't want to delay the game any further. I want it to be very gruesome though.

I'm going to address that safe zone now, it shouldn't be there.

jonmulcahy

That safe zone should be gone, and the boss now screams every so often.

Cobra

Brilliant! Love the art style, and the atmosphere you're creating with that spooky background sound and slow scroll...

I'd also like to see some animations, but very sparingly, in keeping with the art style.

More development of the boss fight -- a few animations, feedback when the boss gets hit, maybe an even darker atmosphere as you approach the boss -- would really take this to the next level! (In my humble opinion.)

Good luck, look forward to seeing this on the app store!

SDMG

Very good looking, nice atmosphere, very good sound.
In my opinion the characters needs to be animated... at the beginning it took me some time to find the start button (the buttons simply don't look very much like buttons... maybee its only me ... and i think when a zombie hits me he definitly shouldn't simply run through me...

I really wouldn't hesitate to animate your actors even when you think you are not an animator... you have this nice handdrawn style in your game so noone is expecting a professional "disneylike" animation...

cheers

SDMG

jonmulcahy

Animations are on their way, it's not as difficult as I thought it would be, just a huge tedious pain. I've got the player walking, and one of the 5 zombie types moves too. Now onto the rest!

jonmulcahy

I've just uploaded a huge update. All zombie types are animated, the player is animated. Still working on animating the boss.

I've also uploaded the full game, all 3 levels plus the survival mode.

Let me know what you think!

superNES

Nice work with the animations!

In the 3rd level, there's a section where zombies are able to come across the top area of the screen, however the player cannot reach that high up, so accuracy is forced down. Also in the last zombie boss fight, the zombie dogs only appear in the lower half of the screen. Lastly, I hear the bosses groan, but I still think you should play a sound everytime you hit them.

I'm very excited to see the final version on the iPhone!

jonmulcahy

do you remember which section in the 3rd level is off? is it in the forest, field or parkinglot?

superNES

I believe it was the forest, just before the parking lot. I remember that the parking lot opened up and I was able to then kill zombies that were higher than a certain point on the vertical axis.

jonmulcahy

yep, I found the area, a wall is too low.

As a side note, I uploaded the iPhone version, so you have to click with your mouse to fire, spacebar doesn't work. I went to fix it and my VPN back home died

Cobra

Looking better and better!

Quick question: "Toutch"?

jonmulcahy

Cobra, where did you see that?

I just uploaded a fixed version, spacebar works to fire now

jonmulcahy

ahh crap, it's everywhere.
I wish spellcheck worked when I wrote.

jonmulcahy

and spelling mistake fixed

jonmulcahy

Just fixed two bugs, the level 3 bug, and another bug that didn't reset your life when you moved from one level to the next. If you died, you would instantly die every time you opened a level unless you restarted the game.

quantumsheep

Harrio has a great title for part of his post-mortem - I won't spoil it, but this is a prime example of it!

BTW - great game - really enjoyed it

SDMG

nice animation... much better!

SDMG

nice animation... much better!

jonmulcahy

ok, uploading a new build with some more bug fixes

- level 1 boss is animated
- all three bosses show a visual cue when hit
- fixed a bug in level 3 where bad guys were too high too early so they ran though the forest
- fixed a bug in the ending where it showed a white block (maybe iphone only)
- adjusted some spawning rules so there wasn't such a large gap between the last bad guy and the boss

All that's left is to animate the last 3 actors, and do a little more balance testing

jonmulcahy

ok, another big update, fixed a bunch of bugs, added some visual clues of where to go when the level ends, and animated a few more characters.

Working on the last two now

jonmulcahy

and it's done for now. I think I got all the bugs worked out.

Now it's time for some new features

ktfright

hehe...he looks like he is moonwalking when walking backwards.

jonmulcahy

just uploaded a new build, I had left the level 1 boss right at the beginning of level 1

jonmulcahy

I swear. Every time I submit I find another bug

jonmulcahy

Just made a trailer for the game and posted it over on youtube. Check it out:

jonmulcahy

double post