Zombie Game Beta 2 - (Reviews / Testers Needed)

[imarkham]

Zombie Game Beta 2


This is my second beta release of a zombie game I am making. I really value the reviews, comments, and suggestions offered here. Most of the previous bugs were fixed. (From thread Click here to view previous post )

A few notes: This game isn't finished yet. I am hoping to complete it by the end of this summer. There is still no point to the game, no finish or goal. You can kill zombies until your hand hurt because you cant complete the game. I am yet to work on levels. Also, sound is still being worked out, there is a bug in the guns which continue making shooting noises even when the clips are empty and there is no background music yet. Basically, I am looking for opinions, reviews, suggestions, and bugs.

[T1ger]

1. To difficult
I think I killed one zombie and then I quit. Basicly because of #2. Also remember that you who make the game have played it 1000 times, and you are therefore much better than a first time player.

2. Shooting/facing angle
The facing angle/shooting angle is different. Why not let him face the way he shoots? And when you press W he walks in that direction too?

3. Too many zombies too fast
Couldnt kill the four that showed up before another four showed up. Will be better when you fix #1/#2.

4. Zombie movement
Why do they move faster when they are far away from you? It would be much more logical if they moved at the same speed all the time.

5. Gun/ammo
I ran out of bullets, what can I do?
You could:
a. Add a close-range handweapon
b. Give the player unlimited bullets with the handgun.
If you choose b, you can maybe reduse the firerate.

6. Thoughts
Gunning down zombies without purpose isnt fun. Not long. Its also a very common theme in games. Try making small goals within the game. There are numerous options:

a. The lazy way
Kill X number of zombies per level

b. The adventurous game
Make your map scrollable, add some buildings, items, cars(?) and other stuff. Objectives can be e.g. "Get to the barn without becoming zombie-snack!", "Get the power-generator up and running so you can turn on the lights in the city to scare away the zombies!" (May include many tasks, as getting to the power-generator, getting some items/parts, get back to it, turn it on++), "Keep the zombies at a distance so Jack can drive from X to Y safely". This way you can easily make a story for your game.

c. Any other type of game
Didnt have any more ideas.

The b option does really sound like an interesting game

And yeah, try to tell the player the whole plot with as little text as possible. Use animation/pictures or anything other than text when possible.

Sorry for the large amount of critisism in this post, I mean nothing bad, its just suggestions

[pentru]

it's a nice start...I like it, and has potential....it would be cool if it wasn't in an open field, but some kinda of city or tiled level of some sort.......

I agree, it is too difficult right now....something's gotta change.....less number of zombies, faster shooting, or something....keep at it! good start

[scheletro]

Bye bye plane, LOL

I like it but in my slow machine I could kill 4 zombies before the other 10 got me, to many zombies in the screen

I think you should kill a zombie with one shoot, one shoot one kil

The character should move faster and the zombies at the same speed all the time

I loooove SMASH TV, control the movement but you can shoot any where at any time

[imarkham]

T1ger- Thanks so much for the review. I agree the shooting and aiming is difficult to comprehend. I have tried a few other keytstrokes but I havent found a very versitile and usable way to do the commands yet.

As for the zombie moving faster in certain areas:thats very difficult to explain how I coded the zombies to chase you...I will work on evening out their speed.

As for your gun and ammo problemid you notice the inventory at the bottom of the screen, where you can pick a different gun? I never ran out of ammo, infact I set all four guns to 100 shots each.

But thank you. I think your idea on creating story with small objectives is brilliant. I will work on this first!

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pentru- Cities are very difficult to program and draw. I attempted this originally, but being only one man, I cut the city in hopes of producing this game to completion. I will work on adding other scenery objects to interact with though. Thanks for the input.



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scheletro - Yes, I cut the plane mission. It seemed to be everyones gripe with my first beta release.

[Ray Beez]

I like where this is going. I like the design of your instruction screen. It looks like 50's b movie style. You could fix it up a bit more and it would make a good title screen.

Move your intro so it plays when a game is started, or as an option the user selects. I don't like being forced through it. (I did skip it of course).

Last but most important comment: You have the beginnings of what could be a cool "Crimsonland" style game. I suggest you simplify the controls to work like theirs. WASD or Cursor keys to move up down left right (all at the same speed), and then the mouse to aim and shoot 360'.

[imarkham]

Thanks Ray Beez. I spent alot of time designing the instruction screen. I also like / agree with your idea to make a menu page. Which will consist of:
play new game
story
options
credits
etc...
I will have this implemented by the next beta release...

Thanks SOOoooo much for your opinions. As you can see compared to beta one, it has helped out drastically!

[Ray Beez]

PS: The reason I skip your intro is that I don't like reading... If it had entertainment value, then I would watch it (once).

[imarkham]

Ray Beez. Yes, I plan on animating the current boring text story. It was just something I whipped up for the beta. I think I will make the story a cemetery animation with zombies that come out of the grave.

Also, wait till you hear the music I picked out for this game. I dont want to give away what it is yet, but I will put it in beta 3. It is PERFECT for this game!

[scheletro]

If you put an animation with the story is better for me, I hate to read, but I like to see the story in a movie

[Fall_X]

Can't play this at all due to the stupid WASD controls. Not everyone has a qwerty keyboard you know. Why not use make the controls changeable, or just use the arrows?

Off topic: Don't really get why people would not want to support the arrows in the first place, it's what they're there for. WASD seems really un-intuitive to me. What's up with that?

[imarkham]

Fall X: I appologize for the handling in the game. I will try to correct this in the next version. If you are still reading this post, can I use the space bar to shoot, or is that not available to all users either? I guess I was unaware some users dont have a full keyboard. How do you reply to message boards without WASD?

[Ray Beez]

Off topic: Don't really get why people would not want to support the arrows in the first place, it's what they're there for. WASD seems really un-intuitive to me. What's up with that?

I prefer the cursor keys myself, but it means I have to move my keyboard over to the left, so that the cursor keys are comfortably under my left hand. That also means shoving lots of crap off that area of my desk.

WASD on a qwerty keyboard just happens to be in that comfortable left-hand position without moving the keyboard. Most FPS games have come to support those keys as a standard since the late 90's.

So that's the "why". But you bring up the excellent point that controls should always be reconfigurable. And all it takes is SharedObject to save that preference so the user only changes it once.

[imarkham]

I agree, but didnt post. WADS is a common control set in games. Most I have played. But, at the same time that problem is probablly the number 1 I have heard with my game. I think I will reconfigure the controls to the arrow keys, and remove the gun being able to swing 180 degrees. I had a international complaint last time I posted a beta of this game. Inwhich a non-english keyboard was unable to play the game using the wads system.

[imarkham]

Fall X: I just wanted to drop a line and let you know I just finished changing the controls of the game. I am going to wait to post until I make some more major changes. At any rate, thanks everyone for helping me. I will now go dormant in hopes of correcting some of these problems. Thanks.

[Fall_X]

Hi, thanks for changing. I'll check it out once you uploaded it.

I guess I was unaware some users dont have a full keyboard. How do you reply to message boards without WASD?

Lol, I do have a full keyboard, but my keys are ordered differently, so wasd seems illogical for this setup.

[imarkham]

Fall X: I went ahead and updated the game. You should be able to play the game now. Let me know what you think.

Also, thanks for letting me know why/how you couldnt use WASD. Even though I have 2 bachelors in computer science, and an AAS I still find myself learning new things. I didnt know you could reconfigure your keyboard. Actually, for the life of me, I cant think of a rational reason to do so. But to each his own...Thanks again!

Click Here To Play

[Fall_X]

It's not a reconfiguration thing, it's a country thing. I think the keyboard layout has to do with which keys are used more in a certain language, but I'm not sure. I'm in Belgium, and here (almost) everyone has azerty keyboards. In germany they have qwertz, and in most English talking countries, they use qwerty. There's probably tons of other layours out there, but these are the ones that I know off.

As for the game, it's a bit slow (what fps is it running at?), the zombies walk through eachother, there's no scrolling, and with my pistol, it makes a bang sound each time I press, but it only fires one bullet (can't shoot again until bullet has left the screen).
Change those things, and it could be a whole lot of fun

[imarkham]

Interesting, thanks for the insite into the keyboard problems. As for the other comments:

it's a bit slow (what fps is it running at?)
The game is set at a high fps. The game was designed on and for higher-end computers. Lag is a sign of a computer that cant handle the graphic intensity. I am pretty sure I have done all I can to lower requirments. All graphics were recoded in this version to take up little space. The actual code was rewritten also to accomadate some slower machines. Unfortunatly, I am not sure I can correct this problem, but I will try.

the zombies walk through eachother
Collision detection amongst the zombies is difficult and makes the game lag VERY badly. I will work on correcting this, but I imagine I will leave it much the same. I was thinking when zombie touches zombie, change x / y slightly to 'react' to a nieghboring zombies space. I will see what I can do about this.

there's no scrolling: in the previous version I included scrolling. However, it was garbage and I will be working on creating levels, including scrolling into the next beta release

and with my pistol, it makes a bang sound each time I press, but it only fires one bullet (can't shoot again until bullet has left the screen).
This is a basic weapon, you dont get as many shots with it. Try switching guns for more bullets and faster shot rate. The sound isnt finished yet. I am waiting to include music and to fix sound effects. Actually that will be the last bug I fix.



Thanks for helping me bug test it though!

[Fall_X]

Well, my computer isn't one of the fastest, but it can handle flash games with multiple parallax-scrolling layers, so it should be able to handle a few sprites. It's a P3 3ghz or something. Do you know how to optimize flash properly? Ie, don't use multiple onEnterFrame events, just one main loop, use for in instead of for where possible, etc?

For the collision, a grid system might work, where you move a zombie to an unoccupied place in the grid. It would mean less natural movement though.

For the scrolling, take a look at Strille's suprtile tutorial (http://www.strille.net/tutorials/part1_scrolling.php) - pretty good stuff. You should turn it into classes though.

I knew that I was supposed to only fire one bullet at a time, but the fact that the sound still played seemed a bit odd to me.

Oh, is there a way to change weapons with the keyboard? Would be useful.