Who wants another Cocos2d Game? ZombieSim, promo codes coming soon

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Who wants another Cocos2d Game? ZombieSim, promo codes coming soon

(12 posts) (5 voices)

Started 2 years ago by AbyssNOLF
Latest reply from AbyssNOLF

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AbyssNOLF
Member

Not to sound too proud, but I'm pretty excited about the pending release of ZombieSim, my zombie simulator turned game prepared especially for the iPhone using Cocos2d. Thanks for all the hard work the members of the Cocos2d project have done in order to help the rest of us get a start on a project of our own. Without Cocos2d, who knows where the world would be. Certainly not learning about zombie invasions through a mobile simulator, that's for sure.

We (my co-developer and I) made this little trailer just for fun. If you watch it, let us know what you think here or there.

Get the Flash Video

When the game comes out, we're definitely posting a batch of promo codes here.

Posted 2 years ago #
coolman
Member

Hi AbyssNOLF

I don't understand the game concept.

Posted 2 years ago #
AbyssNOLF
Member

I know, the trailer is kind of 100% vague, but hopefully it's interesting or humorous on some levels...

As far as the game goes, it's a zombie invasion simulation like you might have seen some places around the internet. Basically, a city is randomly generated (the gray blocks), and the little dots are either people or zombies. When people turn yellow, they have seen something that frightens them, and they panic and run almost blindly. When people turn green (hard to see in the video), they get weapons from a special building called "The Armory." With guns, humans can fight back against zombies on their own. Zombies are white, normal people are purple.

We had to use a very high aerial view over the simulation in order for the user to see enough of a population to have interesting interactions. This is why the people are dots and it's hard to see in the video. The game allows for up to 2000 individual characters acting autonomously, so to keep a high level of frame rate, we had to really trim down special effects and flare (sadly).

There isn't an objective, exactly, except perhaps to destroy all the zombies (if you want to save humanity). As the omnicient user, you have the ability to drop bombs on the city at your will. When you do, anyone in the blast radius, zombies or humans, will die, and buildings will also be destroyed. From the movie you'll see that there are two kinds of bombs, small ones (hard to tell in the movie) and large ones.

When the zombies infect all the humans or the humans kill all the zombies, the game is over, but you can always start with a new city or even restart with the same city.

Hopefully this helps explain what's going on in an otherwise really strange video.

Posted 2 years ago #
AbyssNOLF
Member

Oh, and if anyone here is interested in writing a review for it when it comes out, just give me your email or whatever and I'll send a promo code when we get them.

Posted 2 years ago #
coolman
Member

My advice is ...

Make a better video :-) That shows better the gameplay.

Posted 2 years ago #
AbyssNOLF
Member

Thanks for the tip! This first video was kind of just for fun and maybe to pique curiosity, but we definitely plan to make a better video that shows more about what the game actually is and how the interface works.

Posted 2 years ago #
Cypher
Member

Unlike big budget games that have a LOT going for them, the videos for iPhone games should seldom provide little to try to pique curiosity. You're going to get more mileage from 2 things. 1) A video that shows the actual gameplay, 2) a lite version that can be played.

The gray blocks doesn't indicate that its' actually the city components. Perhaps there is some graphics you can use there since they are static to depict the city.

One idea is perhaps to start the level (if there is such a concept) with the zoomed in view showing simple figures for humans and any other characters you have, and the city walls/buildings and then zoom out to the level where the user can do the bomb dropping.

That allows the user to know WHAT they are looking at.

Now as far as gameplay goes, you have 2 bombs and dropping them kills both humans and zombies, so how does the user "win"? Do the humans try to defend themselves from the zombies on their own? If so, what's the incentive for the player to do anything other than start the game and watch for the outcome? How does the player influence the outcome?

Regards

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

Its amazing how many individuals your AI tracks in real time!

Posted 2 years ago #
AbyssNOLF
Member

Thanks for the comments.

We admit that this is not a traditional "game" in the sense of level-based objectives and required user interaction. We think this is basically as much a game as an ant-farm is a game, where the value isn't enveloped in the completion of goals but in watching a system interact in itself (zombies attack humans, humans defend themselves or flee). As the user, you have the power (through the bombs) to influence the simulation, but that's the limit of interactivity.

We do want to have the zooming feature that will be able to show actual people, not just the dots and all, but we made a choice (right or wrong) to complete the app without zooming in order to get it out the door faster. This may have been a mistake that will limit our app's success in the store, but I think it's true that every app could have more features and you have to draw the line somewhere.

I agree that the greatest weakness is how vague the game feels when you first get started. There are no in-game indicators of what's going on, which means we have to rely on pre-educating the user before the get started. Without marketing experience, we may fail at this, but our efforts to spread the word have increasingly included basic information about the simulation itself.

Posted 2 years ago #
AbyssNOLF
Member

Also, we are making a more informative video which we hope to finish today. I can post that here as well for the community's comments unless anyone objects.

The goal of that video is much more in-line with Cypher's comments, to show how to use the app and to explain what's happening.

Posted 2 years ago #
cloudmike
Member

A clone of the open-source infection sim released back in 2003?
http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/

Posted 2 years ago #
AbyssNOLF
Member

Yes, it is in fact based on that original idea, though it's not an exact clone by any means. We made significant alterations to how the AI functions, adding and improving various features of it to tweak performance and enrich the character interactions. However, the drawing remains largely true to the original, primarily because we found no other way to render more complex textures for so many characters without significantly damaging the fps of the game.

When that original sim came out, I was a huge fan and quickly became addicted, which is why we worked to put it on the iPhone. I'm hoping for the same addicting experience while taking advantage of the phone's features to improve the UI (still a work in progress).

Posted 2 years ago #

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