Week 9/10+ DevLog Update #8 All Zombied out - Finalising the game!!!

 

Development Log - Update #8

Week Beginning: 1/1/2021
Project Week: 9/10+

"Zombiphobia - Campus escape!" 

 It's done! 

Final storyline

So, Zombiphobia with a tagline "Campus escape!" is now in .exe form. After many plans and storyline changes, it is basically...

"the last remaining student on site has to escape a hoard of Zombies who have invaded the campus. He has to pick up health burgers along the way to fuel his escape and to recover from zombie hits. He has a backpack full of books that can be thrown to annihilate chasing zombies...especially when they start to swarm...When the going gets tough and he needs a speed boost he can jump on his scooter to sprint past zombies to the finishing flag where he can catch a trip off campus to complete the game. There are indoor and outdoor burger bars to top his health as needed"

Last thoughts on progress...

The last two or three weeks have been spent finalising the game and fine tuning the programming and reaching limitations of playability and programming knowledge. The menu system has been reorganised several times and there have been a lot more sprites created than used, as there are areas of player interaction, gameplay and functionality that I have yet to master. 

These include player death, attacking zombies, exploding book particles and more. Some areas of the game I'm the most proud of are the doors that "teleport" the player between the interior and exterior areas of the map (via a script sourced from online and adapted to fit the game), the animation of the "departing bus" at the finish tile and the menu designs being written in a student-like, hand-written yet pixelated style.

I started with big plans to work on this game, but I had to rationalise and simplify these large-scale ideas into something more workable, within limits of time and programming expertise. However, this means I still have creative ideas for future iterations of the game!

The game was tested at every stage, with testing run throughs that I have tried to resolve as best I can. One of the issues was the level of difficulty in the game, so I have tried to balance the number of health pickups with the number of zombies present and given the player an extra sprint ability and book projectiles to increase user interest levels. 

Known unresolved issues and workarounds

These are some of the issues that I am aware of that I have attempted to resolve, but have not been successful. They don't directly affect the enjoyment of playing the game, but it would be better with them resolved. These are:

• 
  Book throwing is stuck in one direction, despite putting two different directions into the script settings to resolve this. I have been unable to track down what is preventing the book from being thrown to the left. This unintentionally makes the game more challenging!
  
  
• The player damage particle animation doesn't show above the floor of the level, but he does turn red when taking damage from the zombies.
  

• The player doesn't die when the health runs out and it would be a lot better if the player dies, as this invalidates the need for a health bar. I looked for a scripting solution to solve this, but I wasn't able to track one down.
  
  
• Ideally, I would have liked the scooter sprint function to work outdoors only, however it's okay being able to switch indoors, as it still works in the game. It's actually very useful to escape when the zombies swarm.
  
  
• In one of the classrooms, despite testing on various layer properties, I was unable to prevent the player from appearing behind the tables. 
  
  
• There is a little bit of player overlap on some corners and walls, despite using a tilemap layer as overlays to hide the player and add depth.
  
  
• When the enemy is killed, their death image appears upon death, or contact with the player with the particle system. This was a workaround, because the actual enemy death "prefab" was spawning the image way off to the right, instead of where the zombies had died or touched the player. (see "DEAD" tombstone below for image mentioned)

• The "advanced enemy" script required three animation states; idle, walk, attack. But these animations failed to work, despite drawing and animating each of these functions for the zombies. 
• This functionality would have been really useful to keep the zombies evenly spread and in their general positions over the world. I also would have liked one of the zombies, the spitter, to have fired spit projectiles towards the player.

• Getting the geese flocks to move randomly around the exterior areas and flip directions at random to block zombies, player and player projectiles. Was attempted, but couldn't script the movement effectively, so left them in a variety of static places.
  
• The Tutor who looks down over the game was originally intended as a help pop-up to advise the player with tips on player movement, zombie hoard warnings, etc. ... However, he now watches over benignly as I couldn't work out how to implement his functionality.

Future Ideas and Developments

As I've previously mentioned, I've had lots of ideas that didn't make it into the final game and these are some that I think would improve the game further or good for additional levels:

• More complex inventory system, with additional pickups. 
• cards to keep the scooter running
• books to limit the number of throwables
• cash for using vending machines and ATM's and buses
• drinks for a thirst function (sprinting without a scooter) etc.
• Zombie attack particles
• 
  e.g. spitting, eyeballs and body parts.
  
  
  

• choice of player design 
• male & female
• with different skill-sets for each gender
• limited clothing options
• Easter Eggs 
• hidden areas
• hidden items
• hidden animations
• Moving and interactive geese/duck animations which can block zombies and attacks, but die in the process

And there are more ideas.... One of the great things about using the idea of a university campus, is that it can be modelled on different universities, real or imaginary. So it is easy to extend the game into many levels, with some being harder than others. The level built for this project was loosely based around the Waterside Campus of the University of Northampton.