So as many of you have noticed, there haven’t been updates in a while. That’s mostly because the current list of things I’m working on involves a lot of backend work. If you’ve seen my previous posts, I’ve talked about re-working the city generation system to allow for more variations, and so that’s what I’ve been doing.

The old city system had about a dozen different ’tiles’ that were used to create the city….a couple building tiles, a few roads, grassy areas, rivers, etc. The new system now has over 100 tiles (60+ of which were shown in previous posts), and the cities generated with them are much more robust.

Now, I haven’t finished updating the city generator yet, and there’s still more work to be done. In the below image you can see some city layouts generated with the new system, and they’re fairly square and uniform. The next step will be getting more variety in the overall shape of the map, as well as more variety in the placements of the various city zones. Regardless, you can still see how huge and detailed the cities will be.

I was very busy with work the last two weeks, so Zombox work was put on the backburner, but I managed to finish texturing the latest city tiles, as well as create a giant new one that will serve a special purpose.

In the following weeks, I’ll be integrating these tiles into the map generator. The map generator itself is getting refurbished, since I’ve decided to try and make map layouts randomized after all (until now, buildings and props and things were randomized, but the overall map layout was not random, so things like roads and rivers were always in the same place). The new randomized layouts will mean each time you start a new game, you’ll have a whole new city to explore.

In the next couple of weeks I also want to render out a Youtube video showing a fly-through animation of the entire city, so you can see all of its different features and areas, as well as its size. So, keep a look out for that!

This week I finished up modeling the new city tiles I’ll be adding to the game. Each square represents a chunk of the map, and the elements on each square (fences, trees, walls, rocks, etc) will be randomized when the map is generated.  For example, if a “farm” zone is being created, it’ll choose one of the farm tiles and then randomly choose whether or not to add the fences, hay bales, ponds and such to that specific tile.

This system has been in place from the beginning, it’s just that now I’m adding a lot more variety to it. Previously, the map consisted of either buildings, roads or grassy areas….now you can see all the new areas that will be added (parks, farms, military bases, quarantine zones, demolished buildings, etc).

Here’s an image of the new models. They haven’t been textured yet so that’s why they’re white.

I also analyzed the visitor traffic this development blog has gotten over the last two years, in response to a thread on reddit where someone asked which marketing avenues they should pursue in order to drum up interest for their game. If you’re a game developer who wants to know which forums or websites it would be best to spread the word about your game on, this information may be useful to you!

To read the post, click here.

 

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve added a whole bunch of stuff to Zombox.

• Health bonuses

In a previous update I showed how getting too low on food, sleep or blood could result in dire consequences for your character. Well now, to even things out, I’ve added health bonuses to the game, which give your character temporary boosts when you get extra food/sleep/medicine. Extra food gives you an attack bonus, which temporarily doubles your attack damage. Getting extra sleep gives you a speed bonus, which temporarily increases your movement speed. Getting extra medicine gives you a defense bonus, which temporarily doubles however many defense points you have at the time (based on your equipment and upgrades).

• Vending machines

NPC sewers now contain vending machines from which food can be purchased. They’re stocked up with many inexpensive items, although they don’t get restocked so you have to use them wisely.

• Slot machines

Near NPC stores you’ll now sometimes find slot machines. Gambling on these machines can earn you large prizes and jackpots if you get a 3-of-a-kind match, or cherries. They also have a tendency to malfunction, and each time a malfunction occurs you get a special bonus (free spin, double your winnings, or 2-of-a-kind prizes). Your winnings are multiplied by the amount that you bet each spin…the larger your bet, the more you can win!

• Lock Picking

Previously, locks could be picked using either a lock pick item, or Pete. You would walk up to a locked item, press the ‘unlock’ icon and wait. Now, if you want to unlock something you have to manually unlock it yourself, in a lock-pick minigame that pops up on screen. In order to complete the minigame, you have to bump the lock’s pins in the correct order. Bump them out of order and the lock resets. This provides quite a challenge when you’re trying to unlock something while zombies are nearby, since you’re still vulnerable to attack while picking locks. Depending on the security of the lock you’re trying to pick, it could have anywhere from 3 to 7 pins.

• More buildings and locations

The next big thing I’ll be adding to Zombox is a more fleshed-out overworld, that first requires many new areas and structures to be made. Here are the first 16 that I’ve created…and there are lots more to come! Places like military outposts, quarantine centers, etc, will all be revealed in future updates.

Smaller update this week because most of what I worked on was just optimizing code…

The ailment system has some new additions:

• When your character is bleeding, he’ll now attract all nearby zombies
• When your character is too sleep deprived, there’s a chance he could pass out. This leaves you vulnerable. Clicking your character repeatedly, however, will slap him back awake
• When your character is too hungry, he’ll clench his stomach to ease the hunger pains. This prevents you from using weapons until you eat again (although you’ll still be able to attack with your fists)
• When you’re suffering from one or more ailments, you’ll slowly become delirious. This will cause the screen to wobble and your character will stumble around, unable to move in straight lines

Special attacks and attack bonus upgrades are also disabled while you’re in the later stages of suffering from any one of the three main ailment types.

Also, all 900 item icons were re-rendered at double resolution to make them look crisper at higher (retina) resolutions.

I’m also thinking about adding some food/sleep/health bonuses, that will give the player extra damage/speed/defense bonuses when you get extra food/sleep/meds. That will help to balance things out so you are inclined to eat/sleep/medicate yourself more often — not just to prevent death.

So, I made a fairly substantial change to the inventory system in Zombox this week…

Now you can stack similar items on top of each other! This will allow you to carry many more items (so long as they are within your carrying weight limit — which I also doubled for each character), and make it a lot easier to quickly craft large numbers of things. Also, single-use items like pipe bombs, molotovs, bear traps, etc, will be easier to carry around in bulk. Each slot has a 99 item limit, which should be more than enough for all of your toting needs. When an item socket contains a stack of items, clicking once will grab the top-most item, and double-clicking will grab the whole stack. This makes it easy to quickly move stacks around.

This new system required a complete rewrite of all the existing inventory UI code, so it’s what I spent the majority of my Zombox development time this week doing…but in the meantime I also added another feature: players who are holding a shield in their passive item slot can now manually switch it from front to back (by pressing on the passive item socket). This will give players a strategic advantage in many situations. For example, if you’re trying to unlock a door but have zombies coming towards you, switching the shield onto your back will give you added protection.

Below are two animation…one showing how stacking works and the other showing how shield switching works!

 

 

So I’ve got all the new zombies integrated into the game now, as well as all of the various different behaviors they can exhibit.

Zombies can now also get their heads crushed and destroyed, their arms ripped off, and their legs removed (forcing them to crawl after you). Depending on the occupation of the zombie, it may also carry a weapon or have extra armor. Zombies that wear helmets have to have their helmet knocked off before they’ll take any bodily damage.

There’s also a new three-tier wellness system I added (which replaces the old hunger system), which keeps track of your hunger, tiredness and blood levels.  Beds that are found (or crafted) can now be slept on, and sleeping can also regain some HP depending on how tired you are when you fall asleep. Explosions and zombie attacks can also cause you to bleed out now, and if you do not find medical attention after the bleeding starts you’ll slowly lose HP and eventually die of blood loss.

Other various tweaks to the UI have been made, like popups showing important information and the amount of HP lost/gained after an injury/heal.

I’ve also optimized a lot of the background functions controlling the AI. The A* pathfinding algorithms now use about 40% less memory and are faster as well.

Here’s a youtube video showing most things mentioned above. Only thing to keep in mind is that the zombies in it are just generic neighborhood zombies, so you won’t see any of the ‘special’ ones like animals, clowns, swat members, etc…but don’t worry! They’re still in there!

So I’m done creating the various zombie types that will appear in the game, and I’m officially sick of painting textures!

Some of these will only be able to spawn in certain areas, but others (the more generic ones) will be able to spawn anywhere.

Next thing on the todo list is to create their various special attacks and behaviors, and incorporate them all into the zombie spawning engine.

(Click the image for a full-size view)

Thanks to everyone for your continued support this year. My New Year’s resolution is to release Zombox sometime in 2013!

Hope you’re all enjoying the holiday break…look for another big Zombox update soon!

(Click the image for a wallpaper sized version)

 

So one of the things I’m currently implementing in Zombox, is a more interesting world and more interesting types of zombies.

Currently, the game features a plain city with a single zombie type of various sizes. I displayed a teaser image of the new zombie animals in the last post, but I’m also adding all kinds of other zombies.

The new city is going to feature more interesting ‘zones’. Farms, shipyards, marshes, graveyards, etc. And each of these zones will feature unique zombies relevant to that specific zone. Some of these zombies will also have special behaviors and attacks to keep things interesting.

Here is a teaser image of some of the new zombie types. I still have about 25 more to make. If you have any suggestions for cool zombie types, post them here and they might make it in the game!