Dev Diary: Immortal Realm GO, Zombie shooter and A*

I apologize I’ve not been as proactive on updates as wanted. It’s been an extremely busy two weeks and all positive. In order to make the Zombie shooter better, I took a detour into A* path finding.

See, I personally want hoards of zombies coming at the player from all directions. They need flocking behavior and to all be independent of each other, but also work together to rip apart the player. It’s a tall order for what is essentially a “mindless” shooter.

One Thing Leads to Another

In learning A*, C# style I learned of a very interesting way to generate levels. Basically in photoshop I can just create a basic pixel map, assign a specific color to a wall, ground or combo type. Load this into Unity3D and it then grabs the proper prefabs. All I need to do is map a prebab (floor, floor with wall, floor with 4 walls, floor with corner…) and go crazy in photoshop.

Further I could load these level prefabs with a procedural generator and you now have a structure of rooms to make interesting new levels each play through.

Immortal Realm GO

Through my sidetrack in learning, I hit upon the concept of “Immortal Realm GO” (currently Dungeons GO). It’s a complete shift in how I was making games. But I started on Mobile and would love to get Immortal Realm on Mobile. If I get enough response on one or the other, I’ll completely drop and roll with what the people want.

For now I’m making games that I fully enjoy and would want to play. Even when going the direction that the majority want, I won’t stray too far from my main objective of games I want to play. THankfully my interests are extremely broad.

You’re like an over caffeinated squirrel on Crack

Yes I am. I seems like I’m lacking focus and going 100 directions at once. This is a natural progression of learning and creation. Here’s a rundown of what happens.

• I start working on a game and get to a knowledge barrier.
• I start a new “project” to learn how to overcome that knowledge barrier.
• I merge what I learned back into the main project.
• I get inspired with the new found knowledge and try something slightly different.
• I go back and work on the main project, enlightened.
• Process repeats.

I did very similar with Super Panda Adventure Tour. It was updated about 30 times in the year since I released it. From better AI, to more robust performanc, to better controls and UI. Even new monsters and traps were added.

I care about all the games I make and continue to support them long after release.

Time Is Limited though

I have a day job so I can afford my side job of making games. So that comes first unfortunately as the Day Job pays the bills. If a kind hearted Billionaire, or multimillionaire wants to toss a few $million my way to get this ball seriously rolling, by all means I accept all donations. Even Unity or Daz assets. One day I’ll migrate to Unreal. Sadly that is not for a while.

For those that missed it and newcomers

Welcome! Here’s my projects and scope:

• Immortal Realm: Main game. RPG set on a mysterious island where nothing dies. Explore towns, ruins and dungeons to find answers. (On hold because massive scope and short funds).
• Apocalypse Zombie Shooter (needs name): Quick(er) to make game targets towards mobile. The hope is it becomes popular enough to bring in funds to make Immortal Realm.
• Immortal Realm GO: Rough concept. Mostly a learning platform for now. It may just become a slimmed down version for Mobile. It does have a lot of fun potential.

That’s it in a nutshell. Immortal Realm is huge, making the other games to raise funds to make the big game.

Thank you everyone.