Sprite layers

The code I'm using to draw sprites doesn't allow you to specify drawing order, so I'll have to go into the code and change that. Then I can correctly layer the zombie limbs and carriage attachments.

Zany Zombie Mayhem

That's what I'm talkin' about. Now the carriage can climb up a mountain of the undead (most of the time, at least)! Wooooo

Think I should make the wheels have traction spikes, for easier climbing?
Also: it looks like one of the wheels is in back now (the left one). I think it looks better. Thoughts?

Don't worry about not getting anything done, Tom- I'm going to be ulcer-level busy until the week after next.

Happy Birthday to your MOMz Tomz

W3rd.

Papers and finals

Only 2 weeks left of school, I just got swamped. I'll try not to stop coding all together, but I was unable to get any code done this weekend because I went home for my moms birthday.

P.S. I like the idea of throwing the necrocarriage Chandon.

Bossfight

Hey, I had a cool idea for a boss fight. There should be a huge monstrous zombie that can pick up and throw your carriage to do massive damage. The only way to beat him is to shoot his legs out from under him to slow him down, and when he falls over, shoot his brains while he's down.

Holy fuck

Early morning beer is tasty.

Brilliant!

...And, obviously, they have to be dead bunnies.

Random

Integrate(Size(Xk), X) = cuteness

You should probably draw some bunnies, cause when there are no zombies around the machine gunners will need target practice.

Watch Out! Tiny Undead!

I wonder if there is a mathematic equation that describes how things get cuter as they decrease in size.

Smaller they go

you make the zombie smaller and I'll code it in.

Dance Dance Zombielution

I like the frantic scratching parts especially... I'd like to hear some of it with more bass and guitar. I think crazy electronic-influenced music (like the Go Team) would be a good fit for the zombie fight scenes in our game.

TOM: make smaller zombies? Or I can send you some(?)

Zombie Placeholder Breakdance Troupe.

Hey all

I made a placeholder mp3 song for the music, might be a little ahead of the game at this point with it. Just something I made out of a bunch of loops to get back in the groove--sounds pretty cool though. I'll email it to you guys, it's only about a minute and a half long.

It is titled Zombie Placeholder Breakdance Troupe.

Black and white

It wouldn't be hard to color later on. Plus, it will help the speed of developing actual gameplay which is an important part of the process right now.

ALSO

So about color:

I'm thinking I'll make black and white mock-up art and then start coloring all of it at once (so I can use the same types of colors throughout). Chandon mentioned that the lighting-centric ambiance might benefit from black and white (or modestly-colored) art, and I may concur.

Any thoughts?

Lookin' Good

Haha- hilarious!

Let me know if those next parts work for you (if they're the correct size and whatnot). Looks like I made the zombie a little too big- they should be about as tall as the portals' widths (so they can get inside the carriage and eat the delicious crew). (About as tall as either of the wheels.) Ideally, the carriage should be able to run right over groups of dead bodies (up to a certain point) and maybe even some zombies (but then ya got zombies stuck to you).

Can you make the zombie smaller, or should I re-send you a set at a smaller size?
Also maybe it would be fun to try like three zombies (so we can see how they stack and act when the carriage hits them)... And put the other wheel on instead of having two similar ones! Unless you don't like that wheel (which is cool- I can make a different one).

I've got to go print, but I'll be back online at ten or so. I think I'd like to do more carriage parts tonight.

About the sound format

I think we should stick with .wav for now because I have the code working to play those, but I can't get .mp3's playing. I'll let you know if this changes.

Formatting Sounds

Hey Tom--

Almost forgot, is there any particular format you want the sound FX in? Or is .wav ok?

Reason I ask is .wav files can get pretty big.

Also: I will be recording all sound at 44khz to try to alleviate file size-- this is CD-quality and should be fine for our purposes.

Pretty damn cool

Whee... the physics are fun to play with.

I like running over the zombie's head repeatedly.

Re: the music situation--

We don't need no fancy proceeduuurally generated music. Just want it to bust into a 1 second leader, then into the zombie crushin' tunes when those undead bastards start pouring from the ceiling.

Hope you like those placeholder sounds-- it's amazing what 5 minutes, a free copy of Audacity, and a $40 voice recorder can do.

PS-- the real sounds will not suck so bad.

Zombie Ragdoll

Look, He is doing a dance:

Spotlight

Here's the spotlight:


I'll send the separate parts to you, Tom.

Cannon: Rough Draft

Chandon's making placeholder sounds for the zombie impact and for the cannon firing.

Here's the cannon:

Depends

If you mean procedurally generated music, then no.
But we could changed the music based on if zombies are attacking, or similar events, yes.

Hey Guys

Sorry I've not been posting the past couple days. Our grandpa died. (Not yours, Tom.)

Anyways...

What do you think about programming dynamic music (which changes based on what's going on on the screen)? Easy enough?

SOUNDS GOGOGO

I don't think it will make a difference if I do music or sfx first... I can always remix and play with the volume levels once all the sound is finished. I want to get some actual samples for the gunplay and all that if possible, otherwise I'll try to find some stock sounds. All the death sounds and zombie sounds I would like to have people make and I will mix em down and add FX... already working on writing some zombie crushing tunes in the meanwhile.

Chandon,

1. As of now I think you’re artistic opinion is going to drive the sound tracks, unless Rollin’s vote counts (which we tell him it does). You’re point about music reflecting the ambient is valid. A dark level calls for eerie music, but a boss fight could be spiced up with something more intense. I’m thinking that the sound effects should get done before the sound tracks, especially if the crew is part of the game play fundamentals.

2. .mp3 will work great. An mp3 player would be sweet, but I should focus on getting everything else programmed first.

3. I heard for Soldier of Fortune they smashed melons for the headshot sound!

Headbangin' Zombie Crushing Tunes

Heyo. Here's some of my ideas for the soundtrack and fx.

1. What kind of music should I start putting together for this? Can we do a dynamic soundtrack? Like for example, a bunch of zombies bust out of the ceiling and the score changes to some headbangin' zombie crushing tunes. It would be pretty cool to have the music change from an ambient, creepy song to balls-out headbangin' zombie crushing tunes.

2. Is it ok to make all the music .mp3 files? If so we could include an ingame mp3 player, maybe make it possible for people to add thier own songs to the directory or whatnot.

3. For the fx, we will have to record a lot of zombie sounds for variety-- we want male, female zombie voices and male & female crew member voices for that necrocarriage. Rollin and I were running the idea around to make the interface invisible and have your game progress determined completely by the way your necrocarriage is holding up and what your crew is yelling at you. ALSO! To make all the zombie dying sounds we will have to smash fruit with hammers and stuff. That will be a lot of fun.

P.S. Please send me the program so far.

Yes

Objects can have different weights.

Been Playing with the Physics

Some ideas:

Machine-gunners and other crew of the carriage should have a natural chance to fall out (if the carriage gets flipped or something). People flung free from the craft could have a rag-doll-then-get-up process, and then they could pull out their pistols or something and look around nervously for zombies (if they're in the dark, though, they can't see the zombies, so...).
It would add some strategic possibilities with the spotlight and such.

Also: how do you assign objects different weights? Just a value you change?

Our Very First Zombie

Black and white, but oh so cute!

It Works!

...Needs some ramps, though. I'm gonna make zombies:

XNA Framework Redistributables

Forgot that you'll need the XNA Framework Redistributables:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2E136A1F-F187-478C-9DA5-AAEB0904782B&displaylang=en

Let me know if that works.

Hmm.

Is there a certain spot that I need to place those files? Got .Net 3.0 and DirectX 9.0c, and still no luck.

1. You need to have .net installed to make the demo work. If you have .net, get directx 9.

2. Evertime there is a join just make a new image and I'll rotate it around the sprite.

We are grilling, talk to you later.
Happy 420.

One More Thing

That app you sent in the archive doesn't quite work- pops up with a "send error report to Microsoft" box every time. What do I need to have installed to make it go?

I'm antsy to see it!


Also: about the movable/pose-able parts (spotlight, vacuum, and plow): Do you just want these broken up into different sprites for each of the segments? How are we going to make those work?

Nice Necro-Carriage

That looks pretty sweet so far. We should make it go up a hill- I think that would be a fun game. "Go Up the Hill"

Chandon wants to do sound design or perhaps music. You down with that? We need somebody to do it eventually.

Necro-Carriage

Let's See

You should post a screen of the wheels together on the carriage (when you have one).

I'm drinking beers

1. I don't think pngs have animations like gifs, but you can just put each frame for a character in a png which would be a sprite sheet. So, if you had a 64x64 character with 4 frames, just make a png 128x128 and put the 4 frames in it.

2. Things that rotate, like the wheels, don't need to be animated because I can just rotate them with code. Actually the wheels already turn and the carriage moves. But, I can definitely make animations cycle. I think that answers your question.

3. I actually forgot what you were asking, but it was something about empty shells piling up. Just make a machine gunner and a shell casing and I'll make code to pile them up. For now we won't put a limit on the amount of shells to pile up. I'll just turn the games memory heap up to a gig.

You should give me a call this weekend, especially if you have any questions. I should be getting a cell soon so I can call you more often. Right now I am taking Ruth to speach about global warming.

p.s.
I like the gfx you posted, keep them coming!

Regarding Animations

A few questions:

1. Do pngs have a built-in animation feature like gifs? Actually, maybe it doesn't matter... You need every frame, so you can go back and forth between them, right?

2. When making (for example) the wheel animations, how many states should I make? Should I make a set for going forwards as well as a set for going backwards? Most of these animations will be cyclical, so they can just keep playing- wheels turning, zombies walking, machine gunners machine gunning, et cetera.

3. That reminds me: we should totally have some bullet casings fall on the ground. Bodies too... How long can we make them remain? Do we have a set limit on objects?

Okay Well

I made pngs to play with: The carriage's chassis and wheels. The chassis looks weird because the transparent color shows up wrong for it (for some unknown reason... the wheels work fine). I'm pretty sure it'll be okay, though.

Also: what to do about the jaggies on some of the edges?

Sprites

png supports an alpha channel so I would suggest it to be superior to jpg. If there is no transparencys though they can be jpg. Let's just make the standard be png. It's up to you if you want to make new image files for every frame of the animations, or just make sprite sheets. It would probably be easier for me if you just make seperate files.

I tried making some shaders today. Turns out I can make vertex shaders, but pixel shaders are out till I buy a new video card which I hope to do soon.

What Format

...do you want those sprites to be in?

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Good news - I found a tutorial to apply pixel shaders to sprites:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb313868.aspx
And now that I'm done with my stats test I can move onto my Prolog programming assignment and American Indian Politics paper instead of programming the game, which happens to be the bad. Of course, the ugly is myself cause I'm riding on little sleep.

How are the graphics coming?

RE: Last Facebook Communique

RE: pixel shader for spotlight and lamp: hellz yes.
If zombies/other enemies are in the spotlight on the correct side of the carriage and on the screen, that gunner shoots at them!

RE: deformable terrain: We could kinda fake it by completely filling the ceiling area with dead bodies, ore, and artifacts (and traps and such). They'd be affected by gravity, but would "stick" to one another until shaken free by a cannon blast. The cannon's blast could have a radius of diminishing effectiveness, strongest at the center (certain to break dead bodies, etc. free) and growing weaker as you reach the outer edges. "Stuck" bodies would basically have a value of "stickiness hit points" that accumulated until reaching a limit that "unstuck" them.

Delegating

Chronologically Ordered TODO list:

1. Necro-Carriage - Make it in parts beccause I want to piece them together with code. I'm especially interested in the lamp and spotlight because I'm working on the code for those.
2. Zombies - One or two is fine, but they'll need walking animations, also break them into their core and limbs so we can do ragdoll physics when they fall from the ceiling.
3. Scenery - This comes last cause it's not really part of the gameplay fundamentals, although we will probably need a lot of it, like you mentioned, if we are doing scrolling.

Like I mentioned above, I am going to work on the lighting, which is tricky cause I don't know how to use shaders with sprites. Most likely the lighting will be done with some sort of light map, which is a black texture to mask the scene, with alpha blending to unmask lit parts of the scene. This will work great for the lamp, but I'll need another technique for the spotlight.

The Next Step

So what next? You think I should start piecing together the carriage, or make a room background?

About the level backgrounds: should they be scrollable? I figure that sense a big part of the game is the fact that you can't see everything at once, scrollable = good.

Also: I'm thinking zombies (and other critters) should both wake up from the debris dropped from the ceiling and creep in from the room entrance and exit.

Necro-Carriage

So instead of studying for my Statistics exam, I coded the wheel physics for the Necro-Carriage. When you press the arrow keys it begins to crawl creepily. Side note - the wheels remind me of Elasto Mania.

Here is a screenshot of the Necro-Carriage (its beautiful):

Chapter 1, Part 1: The Invitation

Hi Tom!

Prologue, Pt. 6

rollin kunz to Thomas - 3:59 pm (26 minutes ago)

Here are some sketches. Maybe I am making this a bit too complex? What do you think?

Prologue, Pt. 5

Rollin Kunz

Today at 12:48pm

XBox porting = awesome!

I'll have to find someone that'll let me use theirs though. Heh

I'm going to make sketches today!

Tom Christensen

Today at 2:58pm

Sounds good. I'm going to try and make a nice background sometime. Right now the window is set to 1024 by 768, so I just used a windows background of those dimensions for scenory. If you feel like making a background make it whatever size and we can just change the window dimensions. I might also work on some simple objects for stacking. Also, something circular would be fun. Give the player a ball to bounce and roll down a hills!

After I get a mock up level with objects done, I'll start making some components to puzzels. probably start with a scale that reaches a certian weight triggers an event.

Keep me posted on the ideas and sketchs.

Rollin Kunz

Today at 3:36pm

I'm going to scan and send you my ideas for the gameplay, what a level looks like (vaguely), and what the robot looks like.

rollin kunz to Thomas

3:59 pm (26 minutes ago)

Here are some sketches. Maybe I am making this a bit too complex? What do you think?

Rollin
- Hide quoted text -


On 4/17/07, rollin kunz <> wrote:

Holy shit. Sweet! I'm staying home today. I will put some pen-time in.

Prologue, Pt. 4

"Christensen, Thomas Conrad" to rakunz

8:03 am (8 hours ago)

Screen4.jpg
96K View Download

"Christensen, Thomas Conrad" to rakunz

7:14 am (9 hours ago)

Prologue, Pt. 3

Rollin Kunz

3:01pm April 15th

Well, I think we need to solidify the basic game mechanics first. Hang on, I have to piss.

Thanks for waiting. Okay, so do you think we should make a platformer-style game, where the objective would be to make it to the end of an environment/level? (This would be difficult to program and make graphics for- we'd need a level editor as well as graphics for each level.) I'm leaning more towards a "Tetris" kind of puzzle game, where you have basically one screen that you play on (but different levels can be different screens, and we can advance any story we choose to add through cutscenes of different types).

Rollin Kunz

3:08pm April 15th

I like the idea of robot + dead bodies. I think the premise of the game could be something like this:

You (the player) are entrusted with the organization and removal of waste for the grand metropolis of ___. This city's sanitation department uses giant custom-engineered robots for trash disposal. As (different types of ) trash falls down from the top of the screen, you have to use the different tools built into your robot to organize and eliminate it. I'm thinking different types of trash have different properties- some might explode after a while, some might be used to power your vehicle, the dead bodies might animate as zombies after a certain amount of neglect (which you would then have to fend off).
Different tools on the robot might be a plow, which you could change the orientation of, some kind of cannon for fending off zombies, and the engine itself (which might need to be powered by dragging a fuel source onto it, when you want your machine to move).

Rollin Kunz

3:13pm April 15th

So then around the screen would be different contraptions that you could push the garbage into, perhaps- like filters that sorted the trash into different piles, etc. You would be pushing around different piles of stuff while maintaining your vehicle and fending off zombies, bandits, and hyenas. You could upgrade your robot with different turrets (or different crew members to man them- an easy way to change a part of the robot without changing the graphic) between missions.

Rollin Kunz

3:16pm April 15th

So maybe to start with, you could make a simple mock-up of the level itself... WITH A PHYSICS MODEL THAT ALLOWS FOR STACKABLE OBJECTS woooooo

haha. Or however you think would work best.

Rollin Kunz

3:22pm April 15th

WE could start out with something simpler. How about a hop n bop game, 2d, that takes place on top of the boss of the level? Let's say the boss is a giant brain. The character would be running around the surface of the brain (it would be a big circle; the level would be cyclical) and killing different enemies that pop up. After a number of adversaries are eliminated, the player gets to move down to the next level of the brain (the top layer is destroyed and removed like a layer of onion) that contains more enemies! We could make it so that the amount of corpses on the current brain-level eventually makes it implode. Once you hit the "core," you fight the boss.

It would basically be like a 2-d version of Shadow of the Colossus, maybe kinda. Almost.

Tom Christensen

6:39pm April 15th

Do a real simple sketch of a level you are thinking of.

Tom Christensen

7:00pm April 15th

The incinerator for garbage could just be a fire that needs oxygen, so you have to fan it...unless you can figure out a way to build a fan! ...of dead bodies. Damn this game is sweet, just because of the theme. Maybe it could be post apocalyptic, mmm cliche, but that would explain the need for clean up.

Rollin Kunz

12:14am April 16th

I think maybe "para-apocalyptic" would be more appropriate. THE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US! parapocalyptic?

I will sketch.

!! There's a sweet-ass new feature in illustrator CS2 that converts raster files (i.e. my sketches) into vector paths (i.e. flash graphics). I'm planning on utilizing it extensively.

I don't suppose you know any Flash? Maybe I should take a class.

Tom Christensen

6:35am April 16th

I can take a flash class also, but that would mean it's a while before development. Another good choice for fast development would be XNA using C# and DirectX which I have no code for, but XNA is a complete 2D game engine. Another great language, especially for mock up until we learn flash, would be Python which has its own API for game development called PyGame. Just throwing it out there in case you haven't heard of those.

Tom Christensen

12:05pm April 16th

I think I'm going to use XNA for the game. It's for fast development and scene as how I have no attention span that should help. It's also free and legal to download visual studio express and develop in c#, so multiple benefits to that, like you easily set it up and poke around at the code if you wanted. C# can be scripted so no recompiling to run new game code. And the best part in my opinion, it can be easily ported to the xbox 360, which my roomate has and is encouraging me to make a game for it. There is a concert outside and the guitar is got my attention, so I'm going to go check that out. Later.

Prologue, Pt. 2

Tom Christensen

1:02am April 15th

It should involve robots!...and fruit. Shit, I got nothin.

Rollin Kunz

12:09pm April 15th

No totally onto something there.

I think what we need to make is a puzzle style game where you control a steampunk-style robot- but you control its different parts in different ways (like you might have to turn a crank to reposition your cannon by "hand" with your mouse).

There should be a gameplay mechanic where little dudes rush at you and you have to kill a certain number of them so that their bodies pile up and you can cross a river (for example).

Tom Christensen

12:19pm April 15th

I think there should be a water slide, because robots always get left out, but not in my game!

Tom Christensen

12:19pm April 15th

And of course there is a puzzle where you push dead bodies down the slide...because the robot feels left out he pushes dead bodies down the slides.

Tom Christensen

12:20pm April 15th

RE: maybe there is no puzzle, you just push bodies down slides because you can.

Tom Christensen

12:21pm April 15th

RE: there could be a puzzle i guess.

Tom Christensen

12:21pm April 15th

I'm going to go make another pot of coffee.

Rollin Kunz

1:17pm April 15th

I think there should be a puzzle. People like puzzles!

I was thinking there should environmental puzzles- physical puzzles. Involving dead bodies.

Rollin Kunz

1:18pm April 15th

Have a big Metal-Slug style robot maybe, and a bunch of levers and things, and the dead bodies could be like the tetris blocks, in a way.

Rollin Kunz

1:24pm April 15th

We can work the coffee in, too. Perhaps the robot could have upgradeable parts, and there could be a coffee cannon?

Rollin Kunz

1:25pm April 15th

I'm down with making robot parts graphics this summer. I'm also signed up for a comics course (woot).

Tom Christensen

2:52pm April 15th

Dude, you will be awesome at making comics. You need to let me take a sneak peak when you get some of it done.
About the game, I have alot of code laying around. Is there anything particular I should implement that you can think of. I guess it's probably better to stick with 2D. Do you want the robot to have rotating joings or is everything just animated by images? I am better at loading sprite sheets so everything can be on one image. I could really start a lot of game coding, but maybe I can work out a simple script to make puzzles, so you can tinker around with some game flow on your own. There is alot to program, do you have any idea where to start?

Prologue, Pt. 1

HEY

Between Tom Christensen and You

Rollin Kunz

11:41pm April 9th

oops- forgot to keep the conversation going. I'M FUCKING BUSY god damn. lots of work to do! want to go to a soup party this weekend?

Tom Christensen

7:33am April 10th

soup party? what kind of soup?

Rollin Kunz

11:17am April 10th

ALL KINDS, dude. All kinds.

A couple of old friends of my parents (along with a bunch of other people, I guess) are making a bunch of delicious soups. For ten bucks (which goes to some sort of charity- soup charity?) you get to sample said soups. Splendiferous!

P.S. "Splendiferous" is NOT in the facebook's dictionary. Neither is "facebook's," apparently.

Tom Christensen

11:34am April 10th

Where is this soup party going to be held?

Rollin Kunz

6:21pm April 10th

At the Art-Bar in Milwaukee.
I donno, though- I emailed the dude that invited me a couple of times, and haven't heard back yet. It'll be a public party, of course, but y'know.

Tom Christensen

7:44pm April 10th

I'm trying to talk my roommates into going. No such luck yet. I told Scotty about the soup party while we were in Statistics and he laughed at me. Later, we went home and ate some beef and vegetable.

I just went into Macy's looking for a new cologne and it turns out you don't even have to spend money. The lady behind the counter gave me a bag full of samples for "Polo: Double Black" which was my favorite. It was like being at the doctor when they give you a shit ton of medicine samples. Now if only pimps had the same policy, my life would be complete.

Well, this Bush Light isn't going to drink it's self, so I better get crackin. Keep me updated on the soup situation.

Rollin Kunz

3:09am April 11th

What do the doctors give you bags of free samples of? THAT is the important question, methinks. Or not so much.

Anyway, I don't think the Soup Party is really going to be a huge deal or anything, so meh. Be happy to have you down whenever your whimsy carries you here, though (excepting finals, probably).

How goes it over in your neck of the great Wisconsin wastes?

Tom Christensen

11:53am April 11th

Beer for breakfast and now I'm off to the library to research more American Indian politics to enrich my soul. that, and I want an A in the class. Anything new with you? Want to start making a game we'll never finish?

Rollin Kunz

2:10am April 13th

Hell yes, I do. Anytime.