The Daily Click ::. Forums ::. Klik Coding Help ::. Zombie Apocalypse Game
 

Post Reply  Post Oekaki 
 

Posted By Message

Chris Burrows



Registered
  14/09/2002
Points
  2396

GOTW WINNER OCT. 2011
15th March, 2011 at 16:29:27 -

I am working on a zombie apocalypse game.

Image

The first level is set in a house and you have to look around for weapons and items.

There are a few chests of draws. 4 draws in each. AND! I can't decide the best way for the player to search them.

Here's what I've done so far: http://www.whenthereisnoroominhellthedeadwalktheearth.com/NoRoomInHell.zip (3.2mb)

Hold F1 and it brings up the controls. Press ~ to toggle debug info.

The first set of draws is searched by pressing enter over and over. Searching one draw at a time.
The second set of draws asks you which draw to search but it is slow and boring.
But both these methods seem stupid to me. Another alternative is just having 1 draw searchable per chest of draws.

It is a real problem for me. If anybody can think of a better way please tell me.

Let me know if you find any bugs too! There's lots of stuff to do.
- pick vegetables
- cook food
- shoot guns

No zombies yet sorry. And also just so you know, the Hammer, First Aid Kit and Bottle are all useless at this point.

Any help would be amazing. Thank you!

 
n/a

UrbanMonk

BRING BACK MITCH

Registered
  07/07/2008
Points
  49566

Has Donated, Thank You!Little Pirate!ARGH SignKliktober Special Award TagPicture Me This Round 33 Winner!The Outlaw!VIP MemberHasslevania 2!I am an April FoolKitty
Picture Me This Round 32 Winner!Picture Me This Round 42 Winner!Picture Me This Round 44 Winner!Picture Me This Round 53 Winner!
15th March, 2011 at 19:05:28 -

The screen looks good, but unfortunately I'm on my phone so I can't test yet.

As for searching I think it would be better to have a progress bar that shows the progress of your search and the player holds enter till it's done.

 
n/a

Assault Andy

Administrator
I make other people create vaporware

Registered
  29/07/2002
Points
  5686

Game of the Week WinnerVIP Member360 OwnerGOTM JUNE - 2009 - WINNER!GOTM FEB - 2010 - WINNER!	I donated an open source project
15th March, 2011 at 23:32:54 -

The graphics are awesome! How did you make them? The sounds from CS are a bit dodgey Use some other ones when you get closer to finishing.

Enter is a bit of a clumsy control as you said, perhaps "up" would be better?

Besides that, keep it up, I'm sure this will be a really fun game when it's done!

 
Creator of Faerie Solitaire:
http://www.create-games.com/download.asp?id=7792
Also creator of ZDay20 and Dungeon Dash.
http://www.Jigxor.com
http://twitter.com/JigxorAndy

Chris Burrows



Registered
  14/09/2002
Points
  2396

GOTW WINNER OCT. 2011
15th March, 2011 at 23:59:00 -

Thanks Andy!

I ripped the wall textures from the Sims 1. Then made each room 1 at a time in Photoshop.
I searched Google for items like fridge or couch and just copied them in. It took forever!
Every object is separate and I just applied a bunch of shadows and it turned out pretty well.

As for the character. I filmed myself walking around and pretending to shoot guns.
Then ripped frames from the video and edited them in Photoshop. That also took forever to get it the way I wanted.

So pretty much just a hell of lot of Photoshop.

Hahah are the Counter Strike sounds obvious? Dammit!

You answered a questions I had about the list object a few days ago and I was checking the screens for Faerie Solitaire.
My internet is capped and 61mb would take days! But the screens looks amazing. How did you make the graphics for it?

Thanks for checking out what I've done so far. Peace!


 
n/a

Chris Burrows



Registered
  14/09/2002
Points
  2396

GOTW WINNER OCT. 2011
16th March, 2011 at 02:04:04 -

Fixed the draws problem!

Let me know what you think. Peace!

http://www.whenthereisnoroominhellthedeadwalktheearth.com/NoRoomInHell2.zip (3.2mb)

 
n/a

s-m-r

Slow-Motion Riot

Registered
  04/06/2006
Points
  1078

Candle
16th March, 2011 at 16:11:26 -

The drawers work smoothly. The only snag with this is that now I'm checking every drawer to see if it opens, including the ones by the television, which don't. Would it be too difficult to either allow them to be opened, or indicate that they are stuck?

Best of success on this game...It looks gorgeous!

 
n/a

Chris Burrows



Registered
  14/09/2002
Points
  2396

GOTW WINNER OCT. 2011
16th March, 2011 at 16:40:13 -

Haha oh no! Yeah I've thought about making them all search-able but it will be a lot of work. Especially the ones near the TV cause the bottom ones are cupboard doors and they take ages to animate. I swear I spent 2 full days animating the bathroom cupboard.

I'll sleep on it! Thanks for checking it out.

Did you figure out how to cook food? I can't tell if it's too hard.

Edited by Chris Burrows

 
n/a

s-m-r

Slow-Motion Riot

Registered
  04/06/2006
Points
  1078

Candle
16th March, 2011 at 16:58:52 -

The "combine" action with the inventory definitely threw me off. Do you use that with guns and the relevant ammunition? Do you need to combine anything at all? Perhaps this is for future developments; I understand if you don't have it all done yet.

I was trying to combine the knife with the vegetables with no success. Just Using the food inventory at the stove after using the frying pan on it seems clear enough, but with the amount of detail you'd gone into with other aspects of the game it all feels uneven at the moment. Try to aim for consistency in how things are done within the game. If you need to combine things together, then find all the ways things must be Combined. Either that, or streamline it (as things are now) and eliminate the Combine function.

But let me step back a bit...does cooking actually need to happen in the game, or is it merely one of the little "treats" you've added in just to try things out?

 
n/a

Chris Burrows



Registered
  14/09/2002
Points
  2396

GOTW WINNER OCT. 2011
16th March, 2011 at 17:12:27 -


The combine function doesn't do anything yet. It was going to be for combining the Bottle with Rags to make Molotovs.

And other similar actions. But now I think about it, it will probably just confuse people having it there.

As for cooking, the plan so far is to have each level to be a different last stand situation. Each night you reach a new location and who can go days without food? Nobody! So each level will involve some sort of food preparation. If it seems to ridiculous later on I'll scrap it. But I think it will work well. And will be actually quiet hard when you are also boarding up the house and killing the infected.

Maybe eating cooked food will replenish your health too. I haven't thought too much about it. I'm just adding one thing at a time and trying to make it bad ass and do it the best I can. I'm learning so much and it is very rewarding.

I live in Australia and it's 4:11am and I've got open up at the skateshop I work at tomorrow morning so I've gotta go. PEACE! Thanks again!

 
n/a

s-m-r

Slow-Motion Riot

Registered
  04/06/2006
Points
  1078

Candle
16th March, 2011 at 19:42:28 -

...And I suppose now would be a better time than later to point out that your game has a terribly uncanny likeness to another zombie-apocalypse-survival game released here not long ago. Here's a link:

http://www.create-games.com/download.asp?id=8273

I mean, even the house and woodshed is pretty much exactly the same layout in that game and in yours. I'd say it's a cause for concern if you're planning on having some traction with this title...And it breaks my heart to hear it took so damn long with photoshop too.

 
n/a

Chris Burrows



Registered
  14/09/2002
Points
  2396

GOTW WINNER OCT. 2011
17th March, 2011 at 00:21:41 -

Yeah I was waiting for somebody to say that.

I loved that game. I pretty much started make mine after playing it. I love the zombie Apocalypse, especially the survival aspect and idea of societal collapse. There are no cops, no bosses, just you, your girlfriend and bunch of zombies. Personally, I believe a much better world.

I'd finally got a copy of MMF2 and had used The Games Factory as a kid so I thought I see what it could do.

I am trying to make a dark and fast paced zombie defense game with a heavy focus on building/cooking/eating.
"Survivor: The Living Dead" crossed with "The Last Stand" crossed with "Resident Evil 2" crossed with "The Sims"?

I wasn't planning on really showing anybody but it's coming along well and I have and obviously my house looks a lot like Pyroklastic's house. I'll try flip the stairs and swap the rooms about. Any other ideas?

Have you played "The Last Stand?" http://armorgames.com/play/269/the-last-stand

 
n/a

Assault Andy

Administrator
I make other people create vaporware

Registered
  29/07/2002
Points
  5686

Game of the Week WinnerVIP Member360 OwnerGOTM JUNE - 2009 - WINNER!GOTM FEB - 2010 - WINNER!	I donated an open source project
17th March, 2011 at 00:46:14 -

The graphics in Faerie Solitaire were all drawn on computer in Photoshop by two others who worked on the project, Brian and Jessica. I think they both also used tablets.

And yes there is a bit of a user-interface problem in searching drawers and other objects in your game. Firstly, the controls are awkward. You definitely shouldn't be using "Enter" as your search/interact button and "Space" shouldn't be to open doors when the buttons are so far apart and perform similar actions. Ideally you should combine all the "look/interact/use/open" function into one button, in this case "Space" would be good, since it's natural to use along with Shift/Control (Unless the player has their left hand over the right Shift/Control - which they probably won't).

So use Space for opening doors, searching draws, navigating menus, picking up items, etc.

When the player is overlapping an item that they can interact with, you should display something to indicate that they can. A good way to do this would either be to display text in the top left which says the item you can interact with. Eg. "Open Drawers" or "Pickup Key" and which displays nothing when there is no object to interact with. Alternatively, another good way to do this would be to simply display a "marker" such as a red arrow above the current object that you will interact with when you press space. So when you walk past the drawers, a red arrow appears above them to indicate that you can interact with them - that red arrow then shifts to ontop of the door as you stand next to it.

As for the actual drawer searching, it's okay, but you shouldn't make it reset to the top once you try opening it. Once you open the drawer, it should revert back to the "drawer selection" (with the white selection box) so that it is quick and easy for the player to go through all the drawers. You can then have a "back" button to exit from searching the drawers... OR after the player searches a drawer it can quit "searching" as it does now, but it shouldn't pop back to the very top drawer once you go to search again, it should snap to the last drawer you opened, so that you only have to press down once to check the next drawer.


(And yes I did see the obvious "homage" to The Living Dead!)

 
Creator of Faerie Solitaire:
http://www.create-games.com/download.asp?id=7792
Also creator of ZDay20 and Dungeon Dash.
http://www.Jigxor.com
http://twitter.com/JigxorAndy

s-m-r

Slow-Motion Riot

Registered
  04/06/2006
Points
  1078

Candle
17th March, 2011 at 12:00:15 -

If you want to go for a fast-paced game, follow Andy's advice and combine as many functions as you can into as few buttons as possible (and map them closer to one another). Relying on several and/or multi-tiered menus, freezing the game for anything other than a pause menu, and forcing a player to perform several complex actions in a row to accomplish simple tasks is a way to bog down game pacing for no good reason.

My recommendations from what I've seen (these are opinions only, of course):

streamline your inventory so it's visible on the main game screen instead of having to open a menu (maybe have it displayed along the bottom of the screen, or one item at a time is displayed in a box that can scroll through your inventory)

use three buttons for most actions: attack, activate, jump/evade. In this scheme the activate button does any manner of things, particularly when combined with highlighted scenery objects or directional button presses (ACTIVATE pressed on its own can open doors or search scenery when it's highlighted; UP + ACTIVATE can let a player pick up an item; DOWN + ACTIVATE can let a player drop an item).

in terms of variety of locale...Yeah, this is an interesting question. Changing things around is directly related to the amount of time you want to invest in the location aspect of your game. You can go all "classic" and stick with the abandoned farmhouse you have here. You can add a root cellar and/or basement. You can add a barn. Add a sewer, water tower, power junction box, oil/natural gas well, nearby general store, old-skool train stop...Oh, I don't know. Plumb the depths of the various zombie game/movie resources (even the ones you mentioned above) for more inspiration. And yeah, The Last Stand is cool...They did an excellent job with the sequel.

Additionally, look to designing more areas based upon the challenges you want to bring to the player. If you follow the recommendations to make the game more streamlined, the player can focus more on the action-based aspects of the game: fighting, using items, and to some extent searching. Find ways to make it interesting for a player to do these things.

Brainstorming for locations: Put together a list of 50 different buildings, locations, or areas you would like to see someone fight zombies, no holds barred. Cross off the ones that seem impossible, then pick the five you think are the most interesting. Work on implementing one of those five.

 
n/a

vetmora120



Registered
  07/01/2010
Points
  273
20th March, 2011 at 11:34:10 -

Yes I noticed straight away that it was very similar to Pyroklastic's Survivor: The Living Dead. I'll have to admit though, this has an awesome dark zombie atmosphere to it and is obviously 'less cartoony' than Survivor.

Also agree with the above posts about rearranging the controls and having an indicator for items, etc. I don't know if it was mentioned but the inventory should be toggle based, so you don't need to hold TAB making it easier to equip, etc.

Looking forward to see what you do with this.

 
n/a
   

Post Reply



 



Advertisement

Worth A Click