ZombieSmash! - Chris Huelsbeck produces music and sfx

cocos2d for iPhone » cocos2d games

ZombieSmash! - Chris Huelsbeck produces music and sfx

(202 posts) (53 voices)

Started 2 years ago by zombie
Latest reply from Dragyn

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zombie
Member

There was almost no customization for the cocos2d framework. We did that put riq is catching up too quickly. I would strongly recommend to post any enhancements in the forum and get the functionality into cocos2d. Otherwise its really hard to update cocos2d. We were basically on the trunk version all the time.

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot: There is one bigger change to Cocos and thats the Particle System. We added different features to it (like stopping the particles at a given y-coordinate for the blood on the ground) and implemented a particlemanager so that all particles are drawn in one batch. This gives a very noticeable performance improvement. We would share the code, but it is very far from perfect. I do not really like how I implemented it and its very specific.

We did more customization for Chipmunk. This is because it is meant to be general but we wanted it to be specific for our case to squeeze out all performance.

@all If you can leave a ranking/review on itunes, we really appreciate it.

Posted 1 year ago #
friken
Member

added a well deserved 5 star to itunes! Thanks for sharing info on PR/Dev etc. You have been very helpful to other developers in the community. Congrats on getting all the pieces right for an excellent launch. I'm amazed how on launch day you shot into the top 20!

Posted 1 year ago #
bradparks
Member

@zombie.... nice stuff! I bought it and 5/5 review in the appstore.... so congrats!

@friken - how's "Fatty Saves the Princess" - is it on the shelf? I thought it looked super cool ;-)

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

Thank you for the reviews. Really appreciated.

Sure. We are happy to share our experience since we also got very good advice and help from the community here.

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

forgot: Joystiq made an indie pitch interview with us.

Here is the link:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/16/the-joystiq-indie-pitch-gamedoctors/

Posted 1 year ago #
renderplace
Member

I finally got some time to play it a little bit longer and I'm really impressed on details you have put in - this is just crazy how smooth the physics work == superb! Slow motion rocks, cant' think of any iPhone game that has that kind of feature, very original.

Posted 1 year ago #
ddeaco
Member

Nice interview,

"using all of our Ph.D know-how for something meaningful"

So this is where the coding genius came from, No wounder your game runs so well!

:)

Posted 1 year ago #
friken
Member

@zombie, played it a bit more... this is a REALLY fun game, I can see why it is doing so well. How big is your dev team?

@bradparks, I'll be getting back to Fatty shortly I hope. Before Fatty, I was working on a Unity game (I know... I know... cocos2d RULES). We finished that up and it is now on the app store, PandaMania, can see it at http://www.fizzpow.com. Our launch was a bit screwed up as we went with a publisher that didn't work out and found ourselves without PR at the 11th hour... then tried to release to canada only as a testbed market to finish getting press lined up. Apple screwed that one up and itunes connect didn't save the country selection and it released everywhere when we were not ready. We've been trying to clean up the botched launch since.

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

@friken: We are 5 people. 2 programmers, 1 gfx, 1 music&sfx, 1 media design

uff, I feel sorry for the bad start. You are right good press coverage at release is very, very important. Try to work with a PR form next time.

Posted 1 year ago #
ddeaco
Member

@friken: I'm interested in which publisher you were working with?

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

We do not work with a publisher. Ok, we worked with Chillingo to integrate Crystal. I have to admit they are really nice and competent.

Posted 1 year ago #
riq
Key Master

Hey,

I finally finished all the nights (both normal and hard)... well, I almost finished them... I couldn't finish night 22 (hard mode), but I could finish the rest of the hard nights. I think night 22 (hard mode) is impossible.

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

@riq Wow. You spend some time with it :) Thx. Well, there are people who finished 22 in hard mode. I will look at 22 and maybe make it easier in the update on hard.

How does the difficulty feel anyway?

Posted 1 year ago #
DonomaGames
Member

Great game, very easy to pick up and play. My GF plays it more than I do!

Posted 1 year ago #
riq
Key Master

@zombie: Finally I made it. I completed hard night 22 :) The problem with hard night 22 is that you have to kill 5 Brunos at the very beginning with a shotgun, and that task was impossible for me... well, impossible until 1 dead bruno spawned a meteor.

The difficulty was OK, and I also like games that are not easy to complete.
Regarding the difficulty in the last normal night, I would increase the difficulty a little bit... But perhaps I was lucky with the spawned weapons.

I few minor things:
- Sometimes I got confused with the low and high gravity items. I was thinking that perhaps the low gravity item could be y-flipped
- When the wrecking ball is Max Upgraded I have the feeling that it is not sweeping all the enemies. A few enemies remain in its places after I use the wrecking ball. Perhaps it has to do with the continue collision detection.
- I think that the "played for the 1st time" bonus is not working as expected... I received that bonus in levels that took me more than 3 times to finish them.

But apart from that, the game is awesome! It is very well polished: music, graphics, gameplay, animations, visual effects, it's funny! Congratulations!!

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

Congrats that you completed the campaign. New content will come :)

AND NOW GET BACK TO COCOS DEVELOPMENT!!!! :)

-The wreckingball problem is fixed in the coming update.
-the played 1st time bonus you get always for completing a level the 1st time. it does not matter how often you tried.

Posted 1 year ago #
Steve Oldmeadow
Administrator

Its right at the top of the featured list in the Australian store! Well done.

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

Wow, thanks for the note!

Is there a way to see in which country your app is features by apple?

Posted 1 year ago #
MikeSz
Member

hey zombie, Im still struggling with the campaign (or just having too much fun playing with my coworker in StarCraft 2 Beta ;) ), but a few things I noticed that I think should be changed:

1) I keep having tons of problems with greanades and liquid nitro. I try to pull them from the rope and they either bounce back, bounce off the floor or explode. but I never know which one it will be, they're very very hard to control. so hard in fact, that I don't even collect them no more as they are more of a hinderance than of advantage. dunno, maybe it's a problem with me ;)

2) sometimes when the camera is moved from one place to another, you suddenly have your house surrounded by zombies. and I mean surrounded - they don't run to the house but just "happen" to be there. so no chances to take care of them before house loses some energy. and since you can get bonus if your house is at 100% health - this is not very fair ;)

overall - the game is freakin' hard !

are you going to share some range of sales at various postions in the rankings ?

Posted 1 year ago #
Steve Oldmeadow
Administrator

@zombie - some of the app monitoring services offer that but I guess they just keep scraping all the stores to see what is featured.

Posted 1 year ago #
jptsetung
Member

Looks like this is the hot topic right now on cocos forums (I was away for a long time). Congrats for the game, you deserve a big success.

Posted 1 year ago #
gaminghorror
Member

@zombie: i've played it for a few nights and i agree with everyone else, the game is absolutely stunning in all aspects and great fun!

Looking forward to a postmortem from you guys!

Posted 1 year ago #
websta
Member

@zombie: After playing it for a few days now, I left a well earned 5 star review on the Aussie App Store.
Well done!!

I haven't heard my wife laugh so much for ages. She was cracking up while killing the zombies. :-)

I must comment that one day (about day 7) I finished all the zombies and I was left with nothing to kill and just had the music playing looking at the house... was quite weird. I could still use my rocks etc. I left it for about a minute, and then just exited back to the menu, replayed the level and it finished the second time. No harm done!

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

@MikeSz: Its all about physics. You have to move the grenade away from the slot it dangles to until the chain breaks. As soon as the rope is cut the grenade will explode after a few seconds. If you throw it on the ground, it depends on the energy of the impact if it explodes or not.
We will take a look at the problem with zombies spawning too close at the house. Thought we fixed that.
We will make a post about what we learned from the release of ZS when we have some more data. Possibly we share some sales data, too.

@Steve: Do you know a service that does that? We are using AppFigures, which I really like. Any better recommendations?

@websta: Thx for the review. Cool that your girlfriend likes it :) Its not the typical game for women, but my wife likes it, too. :)

We are working on an update that will include an easy mode. The main complaint is the difficulty. The iPhone is not a hardcore gamer platform :) We made it much easier during our beta phase, but honestly I hate it to do that. Games should be a challenge ;)

Posted 1 year ago #
Steve Oldmeadow
Administrator

@zombie - AppAnnie has info on features but they don't seem to have picked up the Australian store's feature yet, I guess it depends what time they do their scraping.

http://www.appannie.com/zombiesmash/ranking/#view=ranks

Posted 1 year ago #
abitofcode
Moderator

@Steve: Thanks for the link, not seen this one :)

Posted 1 year ago #
Knighty
Member

Congrats in being #1 in Featured and Popularity in US under hot new games!

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

Cool link, thx Steve.

Posted 1 year ago #
zombie
Member

Thx Knighty. Unfortunately in most countries we are only features in the games section. Does not seem to have a high impact, as it is not visible on the iPhone as far as I know. I Hope Apple will fix the "mistake" soon and put us on the main page :)

In Australia we are on the main page under "New and Noteworthy" and that does have a very high impact. We are now on rank 8 overall. Before that we where not in the top100 at all.

Posted 1 year ago #
Steve Oldmeadow
Administrator

In Australia we are on the main page under "New and Noteworthy" and that does have a very high impact.

Not only that - it is right at the top. Basically on a device as soon as you click on Featured in the App Store Zombie Smash is staring you right in the face. Can't get better advertising than that.

Posted 1 year ago #

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