ZombieSmash! - Chris Huelsbeck produces music and sfx

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ZombieSmash! - Chris Huelsbeck produces music and sfx

(62 posts) (20 voices)

Started 7 months ago by zombie
Latest reply from riq

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jd
Member

I agree with Natan - it looks amazing. The only very very minor thing I see is it's a tad overreactive. The heads seem to get extra velocity and movement. In the game though it's probably more fun to have stuff acting in a slightly exaggerated fashion.

And the part with the zombie crawling back up is pure genius. I can't wait to get a free pro....I mean buy the game when it comes out. Are you going to get it out by Halloween? You would have to submit very soon though with the 2 week review times.

Posted 4 months ago #
ob1
Member

Really impressive. Can't wait.

Posted 4 months ago #
zombie
Member

Thanks guys!

@jd Yes, this would certainly fit very well for Halloween. However, we cannot meet this timeframe. Hoping for a November release though..But quality first.

Also, thanks for critical comments. This is very welcome. So don't be too kind and say also what you dislike or things we should consider.

Posted 4 months ago #
riq
Key Master

Congratulations! It looks very nice!

Posted 4 months ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

splatterengine ftw! gimme.

Posted 4 months ago #
zombie
Member

@Natanavra: The blood are made with particle effects. We added some stuff to the Cocos code for this.

@jd: Things do not get extra velocity. The iron thing, which is falling down, is compressing the zombie (but we do not have deformations). When the parts get released a huge amount of energy is added to them. The effect is stronger to the head as this is round.

- zombie

Posted 4 months ago #
natanavra
Member

@Zombie, I read about the particle effect about the changes added, and I use it myself (thanks by the way!)... The question is how do you make the particles collide with the floor and have them deform when they hit the floor?

When parts get released, you add huge amount of kinetic energy? So the zombies fly, Simulating an explosion?
btw, chipmunk has energy properties?

~ Natanavra.

Posted 4 months ago #
zombie
Member

You took a close look at the video as you saw that the blood on the ground is different to the one in the air :) And I thought we are working on to much details, which nobody will ever notice :)

We added a constraint checking if a particles is lower than a predefined y value. If so, we spawn another particle at that position which looks deformed. There are some more things happening behind the scene, but this is the basic idea.

I do not understand your second question. When parts get ripped off we do not add any force. We add force when simulation explosions. Parts get ripped off if the force to the joint is big enough.

Chipmunk does not have explicit energy values, but mass and velocity.

- zombie

Posted 4 months ago #
natanavra
Member

Understood, so iterating through paritcles array and checking for every particle's position and if under a certain y then do stuff...
Don't mind my second question, I got it.

Thanks zombie!

~ Natanavra.

Posted 4 months ago #
Mitch Lindgren
Member

This looks awesome. I hope it does well for you...

Posted 4 months ago #
Joao Caxaria
Member

Uau.. pure amazing in the video!

Posted 4 months ago #
leftright
Member

The SplatterEngine looks awesome. I noticed that there is a trademark for it, are you planning to sell the engine or open source it soon? Great work!

Posted 4 months ago #
yohann
Member

+1 @leftright question

Posted 4 months ago #
zombie
Member

@leftright: SplatterEngine is a quality trademark that we use. It is a combination of different techniques including ragdoll, physics, skeleton animation, particle effects,.. It is intended to be reusable for future projects (not strictly limited to our own) but this is something that has to wait until ZombieSmash! is out. Of course, I am happy to answer any question about how we do stuff in this forum.

The last video was a little short. I guess we will post another one that explains the different elements of the SplatterEngine soon.

Posted 4 months ago #
zombie
Member

I am happy to announce that we put a first real video of the game-play online. It's all based on cocos2d, Chipmunk, and an insane amount of work :) Give me your thoughts.

Posted 2 months ago #
zombie
Member

Posted 2 months ago #
kikekun
Member

You are doing an awesome job, guys!

Can I please ask how you do and animate the characters? Are they done completely in Flash and animated there? Is it a 3D program like 3D Max or equivalent you use? Just curious, as a more traditional Artist I´m seeing this technique on various games like OMG Pirates, Zombieville and this one, but I´m clueless about how you achieve that kind of result and I love it.

Thank you very much in advance!

Posted 2 months ago #
riq
Key Master

@zombie: wow, your game looks pretty polished! Do you have any ETA ?

Posted 2 months ago #
zombie
Member

@kikekun:

We are using a skeletal animation system to animate the zombies. We have several keyframes defining the position/rotation of each bone and interpolate between them to get a fluid animation. I do not know if this is the technique used in the other games you mentioned. You can get similar results by doing the same in an external program and export the sprite sheets. But as we do this inside our game engine we are far more flexible, especially when combined with our ragdoll engine. We can remove single bones from the animation system and add them to the ragdoll system. You see this in the video when we shoot on the arms of one of the zombies. You can disable every body part. The zombie will choose an animation where those parts are not needed. Shooting at both arms will make the zombie attack the house with his head, shooting at his legs will make him crawl :)

This technique requires also MUCH less memory. all of our zombies are in a 512x256 atlas. We can add hundreds of animations to each zombie type without increasing it.

I hope this answers your question.

@riq:
The release date was several month ago :) We are now aiming for a late January submission.

- zombie

Posted 2 months ago #
mhussa
Member

It seems you've spent a lot of time making the zombie's destructible and from the looks of it the time was well spent. Especially since the zombie game market seems saturated. Will definitely be trying this on gameplay and technical merit.

Will there be lots of different weapons to stretch the ragdolls to their limits?

Does the house decay over time when the zombies reach it?

I like the windmill because its oval in shape and still rotates smoothly. Is it rotated into Z for perspective?

Posted 2 months ago #
kikekun
Member

Thanks a lot for the reply, zombie!

Posted 2 months ago #
zombie
Member

@mhussa: There will be around 20 specials. You can buy barricades for the house, but it will not decay.

The windmill is rotated on the z axis. In our old video you see that the windmill is not rotating so smoothly. Back then it was a sprite-sheet animation. But we were not happy with it.

- zombie

Posted 2 months ago #
mhussa
Member

Figured as much about the windmill, I guess its typical of a developer to spot details like that but it does look nice. Pity about the house not decaying over time, it would be a nice touch to have the zombies break the windows (for example) when they're sprawled over the house.

One teeny-tiny point. "HELP IS ON THE WAY! STAND!", the "STAND" doesn't make sense. do you mean "make a stand?" or what?

On a positive note, Its fantastically smooth and like the visuals of pro-zombie soccer the details will differentiate it from the other zombie games.

Here's an interesting post regarding first-to-market and differentiating:

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2008-the-first-to-market-myth

Posted 2 months ago #
zombie
Member

@mhussa: I agree, house decay would be cool :) I guess we have to push this back and may consider it for an upgrade though. But let's see.

Thank you for the language note. Of course, we will get the final texts proofed and revised by native speakers.

And yep, prozombiesoccer looks really good. We definitely admire their nice artwork and fun ideas.

Posted 2 months ago #
kikekun
Member

Haha, thanks man. I have to say the admiration is mutual here :) Although Zombie Smash is far more technologically advanced than our Pro Zombie Soccer.
I really hope both games sell quite well and we can continue doing great projects on the iPhone. We´ll find out very soon, I guess.

Posted 2 months ago #
zombie
Member

We will start a new beta testing round soon. If anybody is interested please use this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HQJLHT2

Thank you!

Posted 1 month ago #
zombie
Member

We will take more beta tester for the next round...

... if you want to support the latest in indie development. Just have a few slots though...

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HQJLHT2

Posted 1 month ago #
abitofcode
Member

Wow! somehow missed the last video in the post Christmas stressfest.

Amazing level of polish.

Posted 1 month ago #
zombie
Member

The Official ZombieSmash! trailer just went live on IGN. More to come :)

http://uk.media.wireless.ign.com/articles/107/1071760/vids_1.html

Posted 2 weeks ago #
zombie
Member

+ IGN wireless cover story for this cocos2d game :)

Posted 2 weeks ago #

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