Right here's the deal. Today I decided to remake the Zombies Now engine from scratch. The original was a mess, too much going on all over the place because I started the engine in TGF, then kept just adding shit on top of that in MMF. I couldn't do anything with it, it was too messy and eventually MMF kept screwing up new things I added. So today I started rebuilding the engine only, I still kept all the old graphics.
I'm actually doing pretty well, I worked on it all night tonight for about 9 hours straight (there was nothing on TV and all my mates were working) and tidied things up, using MMF's fastloops and event groups (which are actually creating their own annoying inexplicable bugs) and I nearly have the engine as playable as it was before, just need to clear a few things up and find out why the hell some of the stuff isn't working when it certainly should be. All the weapons and relevent zombie deaths are there, dynamite, molotovs (which don't always work for some reason), it's pretty much finishing the level backgrounds and sound effects.
Anyway, here's some more screenshots. You might notice the colours are a lot duller than before, this is because I wanted to give the game more of a dark, gritty atmosphere.
The screenshots look darker cos they're surrounded by white at the moment. In-game when it's fullscreen it's much easier to see what's going on.
I forgot to mention some of the new stuff I've added.
I altered the scrolling, before it was a simple 'Centre playfied on player,' but now it scrolls to let you see a great deal infront of you, better for shooting enemies, and also gives you less chance to notice them sneaking up on you. I changed the bullets to nice (nearly instant hit) fastloop ones rather than 100 speed projectiles. All of the effects have been optimised so they don't cause slow-down. The shotgun causes damage depending on distance, shoot close enough and you will burst a zombie open, but far away will just hurt them a bit. The magnum has an aiming meter, if you pause for a couple of seconds before firing you will guarantee a headshot. The minigun has a wide spread on it, causing a lot of mayhem, and the chainsaw is good, old fashioned, gory fun.
When the first level is finished, I'll post it under the old download and let you all know.
Still lookin fuckin awesome Trev.
I gotta ask though, with all of this increased darkness, have you made some kickarse lighting effects to go along with it? Like streetlights and stuff like that where you can take refuge from the dark.
MUGGUS
Come and annoy me more at
www.muggus69.tk STOUT ANGER!!!
Hell yeah Muggus. The darkness is actually caused by a dark blue filter (with noise for added grainyness) which can be turned off anyway. Not all levels will be that dark anyway, there'll be indoor ones and stuff. I'm actually amazed how much this new engine is improved over the old one, everything seems so much smoother.
Well as soon as the engine resembles a proper level, I'll put it back on under the old download. I'll let you all know when it's there, watch this space. Shouldn't be too long.
EDIT: I'm at work and I looked at the screenshot on the LCD monitors and it looks hella dark. It doesn't look as dark as that on my monitor at home. Like I said anyway, you can turn off the darkness filter, but it compromises my vision for the game. Not all levels will be set in the dark anyway.
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