The Day Of The Zombie

Spent some time working on the Zombie situation, and getting custom characters to do a little more in the process. By days's end the little fellows can not only track and follow the player, but animate all their animations and obey collision which means sliding around tables, and not walking through each other.

Here is a video I knocked up last night before I went to bed. I did not release it last night as the blog was already written and the last time I released a video on my blog I was told off.  This time I sought permission before inflicting it on you, but I made it to very quickly show something running. I can assure you the walking has been improved since this was made, and the Zombie sub-system is almost finished now.

The remaining work involves getting the other Zombies in and working, and make sure they all pass the quality test. The scripts need to work well together with other Zombie scripts and they should be able to be dropped into a level as part of a larger game design.

The biggest news today for me is the prototyping of a new music system for FPSC Reloaded, which is what we used to call dynamic music. That is, a series of music chunks that intelligently link together and can be switched back and forth as the mood of the game changes. Only when you hear it do you realize just how powerful intelligent audio is to the feel of a game, and we're very proud to be able to have this early test running in Reloaded. Would like to share a video of this proto, but too many videos in one blog might be too much to bear :)  We also have basic music transitions working as well, so you can fade into a completely different music score if you wish.  It is anticipated that music composers will be able to produce dynamic music scores and upload them to the store to give your game levels real emotion and raise your creation to a new level.  Kudos to Simon who is the mastermind behind this new feature, and we will be showing it off in the not too distant future!!