It's a shame you stopped working on this, though I understand losing your interest is out of your control. This has such a cool atmosphere and ambiance. Even though it's a little basic, you should be very proud. On the slim chance you were going to make any updates to it, I would suggest putting a timer on the reload text to show how long until the weapon is ready again, in the absence of any animations.
Great work!
Hey mate, I saw your new video and it looks exciting! I love card collecting in games, it triggers something primal from my childhood. Have you thought about modelling the art of your cards off of tarot cards? Might be a fun way to add some mystique and creepiness.
I think some of the more interesting perks from Zombies have been the ones that fundamentally change a basic mechanic, like how PHD Flopper changed your dolphin dive into a weapon, or how Widows Wine gave a new use to your grenades. Perks that have multiple benefits are always fun too, they feel like you get more for your buck. Here are some ideas:
-Slow down time for a second when you get hit, with a cooldown.
-Melee attack does more damage, hits all zombies in front of you and pushes them back (kinda like a shove from L4D). The more zombies it hits, the less damage it deals, so your melee is now strong on single targets but has a utility against multiple targets.
-Landing a headshot on a zombie will increase the damage of the next headshot on that zombie (a stacking debuff). Landing a headshot on a zombie will momentarily reduce their movement speed. Zombies killed with a headshot will cause their head to explode and slightly damage nearby zombies.
-The player regenerates 1/4 of their weapon's ammo at the start of every round. Missed shots have a chance to be refunded. Reloading an empty weapon is faster. Weapons slowly reload while holstered. Picking up a health pack/grenade while the player holding maximum health/grenades will grant the player ammo instead.
-Using a health pack grants the player a shield that can withstand 1 zombie hit and lasts until the healing animation finishes. Grants the player an extra slot for health packs. Collecting a health pack while carrying max health packs will pay the player $500 instead. Maybe adds a funny or comedic healing animation to the potential animation roster.
-Grenades will split into three grenades upon being thrown. The player can carry more grenades. Grenades will stun zombies they don't kill. Reduces the damage to the player from grenades. The grenade animation is faster. Walking over a grenade while holding max grenades will pay the player $500 instead.
-A perk that increases the benefit of drops. Max ammos now grant a brief window of unlimited ammo. Quad damage grants more points per kill while active. Double points discounts the cost of the box and upgrading station while active. Full health will cause every zombie on the map to drop to half hp. Nuke will grant points for every zombie killed and delay the spawning of new zombies for a few seconds. Zombies will take more damage during time stop and move slower for a few seconds after it wears off. Allows drops to be rerolled once.
Your game is looking fantastic, I can't wait to see where you take it!
Heya mate, I was playing BO2 zombies the other day and I found about a neat way to maybe more reply value. In BO2, you don’t just pick a zombies map, but they let you add modifiers like starting on higher rounds, headshots only, etc. It might be cool to add some challenge modifiers, like no power-up drops, one-hit game over, no jumping, no sprinting, upgrading giving gun modifiers but no increase damage, etc.
And if you can be bothered, some sort of leaderboard where players can see other people’s high rounds on different challenges to inspire them to give it a try. I know it’s just a free project for now, but I’d definitely pay money for a cool little zombies clone that gives me competitive entertainment like that.
Found a crash- when firing either shotgun pointblank into a zombie, the game freezes and I have to restart my computer. Happened to me a few times now. I think you may need other zombies behind the targeted one to cause it. If it doesn’t freeze, then the frames will plummet for a second before resuming. On all my crashes, it froze on a frame that showed the blood spray particle effect taking up the whole screen. Maybe all those pellets trying to make a blood particle simultaneously, taking up the entire screen, is a bit too much for the program to handle? Not sure.
Also there’s some sweet spots you can jump to that the zombies can’t reach, notably the fallen shelf upstairs, two different sets of debris in the starting room, and the two shelves in the mystery box room that you can crouch-jump on-top of. My favourite spot is on-top of the left hand wall of the mystery box stairs. There's a concrete bulge in the wall that that gets cut off by the hole in the second floor wall. If you jump to the top of the bulge from the second floor, leaping over the stairs, you can land on the bulge and camp there as long as you hold down the w key. By jumping backwards, you can just hold the s key and face the zombies to shoot them.
Awesome update! Thanks a lot for the reticle. The ability to scale it was a fantastic idea. I can centre my screen and still be immersed in the spooky atmosphere. I really appreciate you going out of your way to do that, I know programming is a time-consuming nightmare :)
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The new guns are enjoyable to look at and play with, and your animations give them a nice feel and heft. The Weber is awesome, though I feel the screenshake on it is a nauseating. That might just be a me-problem though.
I feel like the Kar98 doesn’t suit your game very well. The Kar98 works in CoD zombies because the starting zombies are a lot slower and come at different time intervals throughout the wave, so it fills a niche by allowing you to snipe some zombies at the start of the round and thin out the horde. Your starting zombies are a lot faster and come all at once, making the Kar98 feel way too slow and obsolete, even compared to the starting pistol. Your zombies behaviour doesn’t create a situation for your Kar98 to be useful. A possible solution to this would be to let your Kar98 fill a different niche. With a buff to the Kar98’s cycle and reload times, and even maybe it’s damage, it could become a poor-man’s trench gun; filling a similar role but with pierce instead of spread.
You could leave it as it is considering it’s meant to be a cheap starting weapon, but as it stands I think it’s worse than the starting pistol, purely because of the way your zombies work.
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Your new upgrade system is simplistic, but I definitely agree that it’s more fun. It feels a lot more rogue-like and leaves room for you to fill in the gaps with a perk system.
It would be cool if each weapon got a special ability when fully upgraded, kind of like how the World at War/Black Ops guns would sometimes get attachments or special ammo types when upgraded.
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A nuclear power plant map is an awesome idea. Have you considered maybe adding a dynamic map event that triggers every few waves, like an artillery bombardment or an air raid that can kill zombies but forces the player to seek shelter, or maybe some event that changes the layout of the map temporarily? Something like that could really contribute to the fun of your game lasting into higher rounds, but it would be a slog to code.
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I really like your time stop power up. It’s made me feel like your game might benefit from some sort of slow-motion mechanic, kind of like FEAR. Your character controller feels very reminiscent of movement-shooter games, and I think it’d be cool to narrowly dodge through hordes of zombies while appreciating your gore system in slo-mo.
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Right after WW2, the Nazis tried to form a resistance group named “Werwolf” to scare and harass the Allies. I think that could play into a cool title for your game, “Operation Werwolf” or “Night of the Werwolf” or “Revenge of the Werwolf ” or “Army of Wolves”or something cheesy like that. The lore could include something about them releasing some sort of biological or occult weapon as a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide on the Allies, or maybe even zombifying their own men to try and create some sort of super-soldier. And it might differentiate your zombies to make them undead resistance fighters instead of the usual SS/Army zombies from other games.
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Overall your efforts and dedication is fantastic. Your game is really fun, very atmospheric, and I can’t wait to see where you take it.
This is very entertaining. The gameplay feels super smooth, and your reload animations are awesome. The map is small and gets tiring (as a proof of concept map is bound to be), but the work you've put into the lighting and environment is fantastic. The atmosphere is creepy, and makes me feel small and uncertain. If you make the game a bit harder and add in some zombie and ambience sounds, this could easily become really scary and tense.
I love your shooting, especially considering how early this is. I did really want to hip-fire the submachine guns into groups of zombies and spray them down, but the hip-fire aiming is a bit hit-or-miss. Because of how dark it is, it's hard to see the blood splatter and get a feel of where my bullets are going unless I ADS. I feel like having a basic reticle to show me where the centre of the screen is would help with the hip-fire feel, even if it doesn't adjust for bullet spread. A little dot to help me understand roughly where I'm aiming would be fantastic in a dark map like this.
Overall this is cool as hell and I can't wait to see where you can take it :)
