It’s been almost a month since I’ve been able to get an update out. What a month it’s been. From a major ear infection, flat tires, Hurricane Florence and bites from angry bugs that caused swelling… Even Dragon Quest XI didn’t stop production. Things just slowed a bit here and there. What have I got to show? Quite a bit really. Let’s get started.

The Puppet Master Arrives.

Puppet Master by Root motion is all about torturing your characters in cruel and unusual ways. You can rig them up, unpin muscles and watch them collapse in hilarious ways. One of the first things I “discovered” was you have to be very precise about the Layers and what collides with what. My characters would just flop around like a drunk college guy on Spring break. Because all the body parts were colliding and causing the muscles to unpin. I fixed that, but there’s so much more fun to be had. Puppet Master is like a game making a game and is totally awesome.

The biggest benefit to Puppet Master is it’s ability to, well, be dynamic with animations. As you’ll see in the video as the zombie chases me about the puppets fall over and get right back up as they’re knocked about. When they punch the character their fists move, well that part needs to be worked. Fists need to stop not be deflected. I haven’t even scratched the surface of Puppet Master yet, but the value is completely there. It currently gives my game that “campy” feel I wanted. Imagine a hoard of zombies chasing you, but they’re also tripping and falling over each other. THAT’s the effect I want and will be a laughing moment as your face gets eaten off.

Opsive vs Ootii vs Invector oh my, it’s not George Takei.

Tim from Ootii has been an amazing asset in giving support. But his shooter module is too immature at this stage to be used. However his entire motion controller suite made the cut for Immortal Realm. The flexibility and extensibility  of that suite is beyond what anyone else has provided. But for a basic shooter it’s surprisingly lacking.

Ivector‘s “Third Person Controller Shooter Template” is pretty good. But it gets a massive hit on performance due to a lack of native pooling. You’ll see in the videos how the frame rates drop after consistent firing. It’s not a huge thing, I could write or buy a pooling module and rework the scripts where it calls instantiate object. But everywhere else it “fits the bill”. Always aim, a nice aim cursor and decent camera control. This is in the runner up pool. But their documentation absolutely sucks, because there pretty much is none. You have to bounce around the different demo levels pulling out what you need/want.

Opsive (the winner if…) just release version 2.0 of their third Person controller. So I picked up the entire suite. It does a lot, has native pooling (huge bonus), mobile controls, audio manager and a ton of other features. Sadly after 36 hours I haven’t gotten past character and Item creation due to a plethora of game breaking bugs. Justin has been responsive and offering up fixes when he could. The biggest issue was once I got my items created, I couldn’t actually use them. Creating a gun and a sword the same exact way also net weird results. He want the package released a month ago, it wasn’t ready and pushed it through. If he can get the bugs worked out by October, this will be what drives the game as I’m developing for invector OR Opsive at the same time. Why? Despite the bugs, Opsive’s Support, documentation and growing playlist of tutorial videos is done the way everything should be. Justin is even discovering all the bugs I ran into while making the tutorials, which is great and should have been done before release. Still the conditional winning package.

Explosions, Blood Splatters and Impact Details Galore. 

Finally getting to the point of adding sound and effects while working out other items or waiting on a support response. In game development there’s rarely a hard stop while waiting on something else to be completed. So I worked out blood splatters, impacts, decals and a slew of other cool things. Each material (metal, wood…) has it’s own sound and impact effect. Rubber tires bounce and roll naturally and sound cool when ya shoot them. There’s so many cool little details being added in to add fun to the game.

I have over 1000 “gore” sounds alone that I have to sort through to pick the right splatter to please your ears. I want to be a bit over the top, so yeah, things got gross here and there. Selecting sounds to match effects is a job within itself. The reward is your happiness and enjoyment of the game.

Where to next?

Great question! Level design. This is an arena style zombie game. So it will consist of a series of rooms. A door opens once that room’s criteria is met. On initial release it will just be kill enemies or kill the boss. There will be future updates! 

Level Design is hopefully going to be procedural in nature to form a labyrinth of interconnected rooms with a variety of monsters and objects populating it. Spawners are also in the works to create waves and other such items.

User Interface is non existent. This is my greatest weakness so forgive the time it’s taking. I want really nice mobile controls as this is slated to be a mobile and possibly PC title.

Weapon types. Currently around 10 weapons are slated for the game. Grenades, rifles, sniper, SMG and a few others. Possibly a nice combat bow with strong knockback/knockdown capability.

Character select. This would also mean abilities and attribute system which will all come after release. Each character will not only look different, but have a set of skills to help them survive.

Multiplayer, start sending investment money and this will happen. Networking is not my thing, so I’d need a lot of spare time or hire staff.

 

Thank you

Currently this is a small indie game project with big ambition. Your support is appreciated as is when you share the articles and videos. It helps grow the project and gives motivation. Even now with my 4 devout fans it’s making this project worth it.

Thank you new and old.