I have been away for a while, but I’m now back and making
loads of progress again, since the last update there has been the addition of
an animation system that allows for death and infection animations to be played
showing the transitioning stages as a human erupts into a zombie or when chunks
of gore are thrown from a body after a powerful shotgun impact.
The animation system itself is fully implemented but the
additional thousand or so sprites that need to be designed and drawn out will
take a fair while, until then there are some placeholder animations that at
least show that the system is working but they look a little jumpy as they
repeat frames which was done to make the placeholders faster to produce, this
of course will all be rectified when the animations are redone and will likely
involve a redesign of all the AI and player sprites. In particular when rotated,
the sprites can look a little bit pixelated but with a combination of anti aliasing
and intelligent redesign of the entity sprites it may be possible to entirely
smooth it out.
Objectives And Deeds
Right now I’m in the middle of developing the objective/deed
system which will expand the currently limited gameplay from being basically run
away from or kill zombies with some occasionally collecting of weapons of ammo.
So the idea behind the system is that if you are surrounded by an ever changing
dynamic world amidst a zombie apocalypse then the gameplay should incorporate as
much interaction with the world as possible. Objectives are currently split
into two main categories of deeds which are typically smaller requests or interactions
often initiated by one of the AI and also larger over arching objectives that
incorporate a bit of story and are generally more involved and come with potentially
large rewards.
So far the larger objectives are yet to be added but the
core of the deed system that hinges on smaller interactions with AI is
implemented. So for a few examples, when civilians are being chased by zombies
they have a chance to initiate a save me quest, this is quite simply a case of
the AI calling out with the new speech bubble system that they desperately need
your help. If you are successful then for now the reward is a simple thank you.
Additionally police officers have a chance of asking for a weapon which means
that now instead of being limited to just a pistol if they request a spare
weapon, you can deck them out with shotguns, machinguns or go nuts with flamethrowers
and RPGs at your own risk. This quest has no direct reward but the benefit of
having better equipped humans is obvious and something I intend to put some
focus on in future deed quests. There are plenty of other ideas for these deeds
waiting to be added which will include lab coat civilians asking to be taken
safely to a hospital with the potential to provide you medical attention as a
reward or a simple quest in which a civilian with some spare ammo asks you if
you can make use of it.
The aim of the smaller deeds is to put more emphasis on the
importance of protecting as much of the human population as you can, humanising
them when they ask for help or increasing their value with potentially reward giving
quests.
The above image shows the new speech bubble system for objectives in action along with the persistent corpses
Persistence
Work on adding more persistence to the world is also taking
place, in particular the bodies of fallen humans and zombies now exist permanently
which complements the new death animations very well. This both makes the
combat more aesthetically pleasing and provides lots of information into how
the infestation has impacted an area. Ultimately I would like to have bullet
holes and cracks of lifted up concrete from explosions showing up, with
additional environmental weathering effects that would occur in an unkempt city,
like overgrowing tufts of grass and maybe encroaching wildlife not dissimilar to
the film I Am Legend.
So sometime next week there will probably be an update and another
accompanying news update that covers what’s new in the updated build. Most of
the new stuff will be the animation and objective systems but there will
hopefully be time to make other additions, in particular I want to add in a
menu system that will allow you to rebind your keys which will probably replace
the current instructions menu.
Keep up to date on development news by following me: @ZombieFluidGame.
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