Wednesday 6 August 2014

Tougher Zombies

My dogged attachment to recreating the slow and meandering zombies from the old B-movies did not sit well with the internal alpha testers.  A stack of feedback post-it notes awaited me today, so apart from some critical engine fixes, that is what I have been working on.



The new zombie (still designed as a low zombie) is now three times faster, more responsive, animates at different speeds from each other, plays sound at different speed and volumes, and uses more groan sound effects by default. Adding these together created a much more interesting zombie scene and I think a benefit to everyone who tries out the Zombie Pack when it is released. Going to include a new Zombie test to the testing team and see what the reaction will be.

I did get a few odd requests like Zombies should have pistols and they should navigate around complex obstacles, but in my universe zombies are quite stupid and will keep clawing towards you until they find brains, and they certainly don't lock and load!  Perhaps a new pack in the future which blends the world of zombies with the world of mutants. As we all know, mutants, enhanced humans and alien hybrids can certainly operate simple equipment!


In other news, the latest build fixes the issue with disappearing textures on Legacy Pack models and the RPG now has a proper zoom mode for those occasions you want super accuracy on your rockets!  The importer has undergone another round of small tests to ensure it's solid for the release, and we are seeing our first of the new segment pieces in the Construction Kit which will hopefully be met with approval when we make it part of a future beta.

3 comments:

  1. I would love to see a mutant/enhanced humans/alien pack!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like I am going to get my backside kicked with the updated Zombies!

    The screen shots attached look good with you though in the Zombie one in particular one can see that characters (entities) have very dark areas and the detail is not visible. Yes I know perhaps their original textures maybe dark, dark skins, dark clothes and so on - not look but this is general since the intro of the B/C control with many entities. Even weapons are much darker on the shaded side where detail is lost in the shadows. It probably still exists but is just much darker in those areas than would be ideal to me. Same for the bright areas like part of the wall to the left. That may be correct in very strong sunlight naturally though I personally have a preference for at least some image detail in all areas throughout the whole brightness range - dark to highlights.

    As they are Zombies I guess it don't matter too much in this instance as they may just have got up out of the ground/grave and be very dirty - some open graves then would look good if the Zombies or player don't look where they are going and fall into them of course. Now there's and idea I shall have to remember :-)

    Not sue why some entities like the gates look normal and others like the characters seem to be so dark. I guess its different shaders affecting or something else. Presumably all objects in the same world lit by the same light sources should be lit the same way and they don't look like they are and belong together quite, though granted different materials would reflect light differently.

    The gun scene environment looks good with you too but again the gun is very dark by and large.

    Looking forward to next update and the con kit too very much.

    :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like the sound of different animations speeds for the different zombies particularly, simply because most zombie games don't reuse the same animation set over and over again, and the different speeds should help to make that less noticeable.

    ReplyDelete