Escape From Zombie City

[tmoney]

Hi tmoney!
by now, 3 things:
1. In the sewer, if you get killed with the char who got the flashlight, the graph of the light (the center, brightest one) will be pasted in the background, like a frozen process or something like that.
2. How can i show the menu screen with a joy? i pressed all 10 buttons and nothing happened.
3. when i lost my last char, the game ended (closed). Is this behaviour right?

ahh yes, the extra flash light bug.   I forgot about that one.  i've just fixed it now, thank you.  i never got around to putting a menu button for the joystick, slipped my mind. you'll have to use F1 on the keyboard for the moment.  i'll make sure to add it later tonight.

when the game crashed on you, did your character turn into a zombie yet? or did it crash right as he/she turned into a zombie?  my first guess is that a process was trying to access the character after that character process had been killed off.  i'll have to look into it.  was there anything unusual happening in game when that happened?

[Noivern]

hi again!
Oh nice, you will add a button for the menu, it's not very pleasant have to be near the keyboard in order to play with gamepad.
When i died... mmm if i remember correctly, it was right after my energy becomes 0, without any animation of zombification. But it happend just once, maybe the same game when i noticed about the flashlight, i'm sorry i don't remember that.
After the game closed, i played again, and that time it went perfect, without any noticeable bug.
The transparency of big objects is really good =). I read some post ago about the slowdown when the music is loading, what's the problem? why that slowdown happen? it isn't big deal, but anyway sometimes is annoying.
BTW the game is really fun, i'm expecting a save option, or autosave because after a while (for me at least) is hard to stay alive xD.
And finally (by now, again :P), in the title screen, you can activate the change of keyboard controls.... with the joy, so be careful with this in wiz, since there isn't keyboard you are stuck in that option window. Also you can't cancel this menu with keyboard (or i didn't figure how). If you press Esc, the game closes. I think it should cancel this menu first, then if you press Esc again, then quit the game.

[tmoney]

i think i found what caused the crash if it happened while in the sewers, and fixed it.  the music loading will not be an issue for the pc or wiz versions for the final release.  they will both use ogg files for music and won't have that loading slowdown.  the issue is really with the caanoo. i did not like the way that ogg files were causing the frame rate to slowdown randomly on the caanoo, so i switched to wav files, but broke them up into pieces so the loading would take place over a couple of frames instead of one long frame.  but i soon learned that that was not an option for the wiz as those music files are too large.  so i've had to go with two different strategies for the two handhelds.

there will be a save option.  you'll be able to save when you reach an "escape" node and are in the map screen when you are selecting which road to go down.

the control configuration is not present on the caanoo/wiz versions, so that isn't an issue.  but you are right, i will make an adjustment so you can back out of that without re configuring.  i will probably make it F1 from the keyboard and the "menu" button on the gamepad (btw, i did add a menu button to the gamepad last night).

[Noivern]

Nice! You have an answer to anything, i like that planning =)
Waiting your next wip, and specially the savegame option :3

[tmoney]

well, i guess it's time for an update.  first, the bad news, if you were hoping for a finished product soon, it's not going to happen.  i don't know when it will be done, but at the very earliest, it would maybe be the beginning of summer.  i'm not going to be making any more wips, although i will probably have a beta to get some feed back before i release a final version.  the truth of the matter is, the last wip took a lot out of me, and after making the wip, and then releasing the wip, and then scrambling to fix the wip... and then fix it again, i couldn't bring myself to work on EFZC for a couple of weeks after that.  but even if i had, i would not have made my self-imposed deadline of the end of the year.  just too much work to do.

the good news is that i've made quite a bit of progress in the last couple of weeks, and specifically, the last couple of days.  like i said before, i still have a lot of work to do, but i've laid the ground work for a number of the things i have to do.  the most recent addition is a goal system, which works kind of like an achievement or trophy system, except that accomplishing a goal in EFZC will net you points.


points accumulate each game you play kind of like in one of the star wars/indian jones lego games.  you use points to purchase characters, upgrades and stories from a store that will be available from the main menu.

additionally, i've worked on what happens when you escape the city, sort of little exit scenes, or at least i've got the set up ready for them, and i have one done (out of four). while i have the boss battles for a number of the stories either done, or a lot of it done, after the wip i decided i should try and complete that one story and get the layout and setup for a complete play through out of the way.  that way i would have one story done, with the back bone of the game in place so i would just need to flesh out the other stories.  i have almost completed that task, with one exception, but once i have that done, it will be a matter of filling in the spaces the rest of the way for the other stories, which will be a major step. 

i have most of the city done already, most of the cars made, and most of the zombies that needed to be made. so i have a lot of the grunt work done, a lot of the tedious stuff.  that being said, i still have quite a bit of work to do.  there are some boss fights that are partially done, some boss fights that aren't done at all, and in some cases i'm not sure yet what the boss fight is going to be.  and then as far as stories go, i really only have the one story completely fleshed out at this point.  some of the other stories are pretty well fleshed out, but others are just nuggets of ideas that i haven't got a complete grasp on yet, let alone the dialogs that need to be put in the game.

so anyway, that's the gist of it. i've got a lot done, but still have quite a ways to go. i'll leave you with a little sneak peak, here is a partially done boss:

[Noivern]

Please a video link a video with the new stuff!

[Mr Matsusaka]

That mummy looks cool hehe

I understand you. Making a game is not a easy task at all. Drawing sprites takes a lot of time, fixing bug is a pain in the back and sometimes you just don't know what to add next and you get stuck in a design dilemma. I have a couple of unfishished proyect that are lasting for near ten years so, honestly, I don't really espect you to have the game finished in the next year summer XD

Anyway, I understood from the very first time I've played it that you're game will become one of the best (if not the best) games available for Fenix-Bennu. Good luck!

[tmoney]

i appreciate the kind words and interest from you guys.  Noivern, i don't have enough that i'm ready to show right now to make a video.  on the one hand, a lot of the stuff i've worked on recently is technical, like the "goals" system, but on the other hand, i don't want to show all my cards either. i've probably shown too much already.  but i could see doing another video with a few more things down the line a bit, maybe in a month or so.

[handsource-dyko]

Why don't you start working with release numbers? This gives you some freedom to add new things,
but still maintain a playable/stable version. I do this for Malvado, too. The current version is 1.5, but
I'm already working on some new tools for it. Also, this way you have some liberty to decide if you want
to incorperate some features later on. Remember, Miamoto wanted yoshi in earlier mario games, but it
wasn't untill SMW that yoshi and some other ideas where introduced.

[tmoney]

the main reason, is that this game is about exploring and finding new things.  it would not do me much good to put out iterations of the game that slowly incorporate these new things.  one of my primary concepts i had while conceiving this game, was that variation can go a long way to making a game re-playable.  and so from the beginning, i planned on having multiple stories, paths and characters for a player to discover, so that the game could stay fresh for longer.  i would undermine that philosophy if i were to give new snippets of the game as it progressed because a player would search out the new bits, play with them, get bored, and wait for the next update (or stop caring altogether).  in theory, this game is meant to be like a buffet.  so if i were to put out iterations of the game, it would be like putting out a buffet table with one food item, and then filling in the other bins with different food every 20 minutes or so.  i think it's best to put out the buffet table with all the different foods on it at once.

[tmoney]

new video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6iNqz5wJCM

[josebita]

Pretty cool looking! congrats :)

[Mr Matsusaka]

Nice! Do you think you will have anything new playable soon?  ;D

[gecko]

Great! 

[tmoney]

Nice! Do you think you will have anything new playable soon?  ;D

unfortunately, no. but i am hammering away at it, and plan to get a lot of time to work on it this month.