Minor update…

Posted in GUI, Zombox on August 4th, 2012 by Tyson Ibele

Hey everyone,

Was on vacation last week but this week I’m back at it.

Worked on the layout for the upgrade screen and finished off the 50 upgrade animations. Once these are implemented into the game, it’s just a matter of coding in the actual upgrade abilities and then I’m done with all the character customization systems.

Here’s how the layout is looking. I’ll demonstrate what all the different buttons and things do in the next update!

Upgrade animations…

Posted in GUI, Zombox on July 21st, 2012 by Tyson Ibele

This week I worked on some animations for the leveling system.

Zombox will feature 50 possible character upgrades that can be earned as you gain XP. The upgrades themselves will include weapon/attack enhancements, fitness/stamina boosts, health bonuses, special crafting recipes, etc.

Each upgrade in the menu will be accompanied by an animation showing what it does (or what it applies to)…so those are what I’ve been working on this week. The tricky part is not only that there are 50 of them that need to be made, but also that most of them need to loop seamlessly.

Click the image below to see an animated .gif of a few of the menu animations (keep in mind that these are just rough renders from 3dsmax, and not yet integrated into the actual menus):

Books, crafts and upgrades…

Posted in GUI, Items, Zombox on July 7th, 2012 by Tyson Ibele

This week I worked on a few different things…

  • You can now find dozens of books around the city of Zombox. You can read books by dragging them onto your character in the inventory window. When read, a book will reveal a crafting recipe to the player.
  • When you craft something, or when you read a book’s crafting recipe, the recipe will be added to the new quick-craft panel. The quick craft panel can be opened by pressing an empty slot in the crafting window. In the quick-craft panel, you’ll see all of the recipes that you’ve learned, and if you have the ingredients for a specific recipe in your inventory, its icon in the quick-craft panel will be enabled. If you click an enabled icon, the corresponding recipe ingredients will be added to the crafting panel. This makes it easy and fast to craft things.
  • Some items and weapons can now be ‘upgraded’ in NPC stores. If you find something damaged or broken, you can upgrade it to repair it. You can also upgrade some items past their default condition to special conditions like ‘new’, ‘shiny’, ‘special’ and ‘super’. These upgrades will greatly increase things like damage and/or critical hit values.
  • You can now build storage chests to store your items in.

Click the images below to see animated examples of the above!

XP, medkits, ammo and more…

Posted in GUI, Items, Zombox on December 17th, 2011 by Tyson Ibele

This week I added several new things to Zombox:

  • it now has an XP system, that allows the player to upgrade his/her character. XP is earned by killing zombies.
  • it now has various healing items that can be collected. Pills, medkits, syringes, bandaids, etc.
  • the inventory GUI has been updated to display ammo counters for the five types of collectible ammo in the game.
  • ammo items can be collected from around the world, each containing various amounts of ammo for a particular ammo type
  • swinging doors will now knock clumsy zombies out of the way

Here are some .gif animations showcasing the leveling system and healing abilities, and an image showing the new inventory GUI layout:

More updates…

Posted in GUI, Items, Zombox on September 23rd, 2011 by Tyson Ibele

Lots of Zombox progress this week.

Here’s a video showing it.

  • Implemented the inventory windows into the game. Got icon dragging, active slots, etc and everything working. Note: in the video the weapons that the character uses are being dragged into the inventory from the “object” panel. The “object” panel right now is temporary, but in the final game this will be where objects and items from characters and places you search around town will show up.
  • Implemented the weapon system (animation, scripting, etc). The character’s animation/pose now adapts to the weapon type and each weapon and item has unique properties.
  • Weapons that swipe or slash as their attack leave a subtle motion-blur trail behind them
  • The on screen controls were redesigned after much deliberation, after getting feedback from many people that the old controls were too bulky.
  • The map now includes lakes and rivers

Inventory…

Posted in GUI, Items, Zombox on September 17th, 2011 by Tyson Ibele

Been working on the inventory system for Zombox.

Here’s how the raw inventory window looks.

Here are the inventory icons for all the weapons and some of the items in Zombox.

The inventory window will have expandable sockets based on the player’s XP level, and that space to the left will show how the player looks with whatever items are equipped.

New UI…

Posted in GUI, Zombox on July 27th, 2011 by Tyson Ibele

I got some feedback about the size of the UI controls in Zombox, so I went with a sleeker redesign.

Some people suggested I make them semi-transparent but unfortunately transparent shaders cause the iPhone to chug so I’m keeping them opaque.

It’s worthy to note that the web version of Zombox will not have these visible controls at all, since keyboard shortcuts will control the character, rather than clicks on a screen.