Sunday.
So uninspired. Is it normal to want to work every single day on a project?
Probably not. Other people take days off for hobbies or ‘family time’.
I do both daily, so days off.. what are those?
Since I have no inspiration to create something new nor to fix what may be broke,
I shall introspectively look at why things are broke.
Obvious things that need fixing:
Some polys are attached to the wrong bone, mostly in ankles.
AI can’t deal with level designs which is why AI team tactics
games are rare and few and many have become first
person shooters or coin collectors because the AI
problems hinder production and testing.
AI can roam the whole level of their own free will.
What a great pain in the ass.
Can’t plan for anything. Stick some people in a spot
figuring “ok this is a buffet” or “this is an ambush”.
Nope, freakin people run in every direction.
They come from where I least expect and plug
my zombies full of holes.
Randomized weaponization of AI is a nightmare.
For me.
I think maybe it will work for players but its
really hard to plan for that right now.
UNLESS, the whole point of the game itself is the random zombie scenario.
In that case we drop the ‘story.
Its possible but hard for me to say yes to, because I’m stubborn?
Or because I don’t have someone else saying “yeah freakin brilliant lets do that!”?
Or because its an arbitrary decision that could lead to chaos?
Oh because we can’t tell what these little AI people are going to get up to in there.
I load a level, I walk away to maybe eat, and all I hear from this room is
moaning and screaming and gun shots. What are they doing in there?
I make police and soldiers, and I put them on the levels, it doesn’t help.
These things they weigh a mans soul so that he does not rest in death and wanders
the earth feeding on the flesh of the living.
Yep thats going to be the opener for uDeadGame, the game fan corrupted into sleepless developer undeath.
Let me eat your brains and absorb your knowledge.
I feel like that a lot at iDevGames.
If cannabilism actually worked to give you a persons knowledge, I’d be overweight and really smart.
Lean mean and thick as a tree is the reality however.
So working without a brain feast.
Where was I? Oh bugs and troubles.
Game scale is a huge issue. Its really impossible to know what I’m dealing with
in terms of the map from either iGame3D’s 3D scene or AC3D. At any given
time I can be at any scale anywhere in 3D space.
Then I’m in “game mode”, and what seemed impossibly small in my deific viewports is now colossal.
It really comes into play with textures.
Suddenly I’m dwarfed by a single brick and all those details in texture and
perspective I worried over in the bright world of a 3D program
are actually deep in the distant fog unseen by all.
But also on the map itself, what seems like a small map to build,
turns into a huge maze when I have to run around it chasing
the AI, and getting the zombies to figure out a thousand
nodes of terrain that I’m pretty much randomly interjecting
because it ‘feels good’ in god mode to put all my little world bits just like ‘so’.
I suppose the Living Inn and Alley levels have set standard for size of a general level.
That alley is a …trip.
I really want huge levels, huge adventures and scenes that I could never
single handedly gather all the textures and models for.
There is a hunger for that, I’ve become a 3D content zombie, raaagh!
Ok so scaling down is good, I’ll have to try that and experience it.
The levels to date took me a few seconds to ‘doodle’ on a 2D map
and project into 3D and they are for the most part labyrinths,
which had its attraction a month or two ago when I could
just drop a random FPS script in there and go around
bouncing off walls.
But when you have to feed eleven moaning and starving
mouths ,you want the trip to the flesh feast to be not so confusing.
When you have to place doors and furniture and dood dads
to suspend disbelief, you want it to not be an all day project per scenario.
When there are fifty doors you don’t know where your zombies are
or where you are getting shot from.
I just don’t want to do a lot of level loading, but I
suppose it is a sacrifice worth making.
The trouble with level loading is, I hate it.
The screen goes black.
Maybe you get a beach ball.
Sound stops.
No room for “maybe pay attention to this important information” text.
No intro music while you wait to set the mood before the screen comes back.
Sucks.
If you are in full screen and it either takes too long
or actually faults its like falling into the abyss.
Black screen level loading. Its wrong, like a crime, right down there with littering.
Something should be done.
What else before I forget to remember to write it down again.
People really need to be scripted better, this all in one,
or four AI is too much ‘reality’ and lacks character.
We need a couple of predictable “personalities”.
There are women in this game, wearing fuzzy short skirts, that will beat your face.
The zombie’s are like “fuzzy hugs!”
She’s like “Talk to talk the heel”
THUD
People are beating up zombies left and right.
Its a gamble with the gameplay to know what will go down,
if a level will be difficult or if it will be a horroshow bloodbath.
There’s a really fine line. I kid you not!
I suppose its up to ones sensitivity to such things.
Many other games are simply “shoot the weak point until its dead”.
Our game is “catch dinner and multiply, two necessities of all sentient life.”
Its science!
In fact I’ve been leaning toward the “zombie experiment” angle of a game.
Where these zombie scenarios are carried out in steel framed
caged areas by a research facility. You’re ‘player’ is basically
controlling a zombie and through that controlling the other zombies to
do your bidding in war games scenarios.
Like a military UAV only… Unmanned Autonomous Vector, the walking corpse weapon.
Play dramatic music now.
Could work.
The trouble with the original plot as I’ve scripted is that
personally at the end I want more.
Like “every zombie scenario you could come up with” more.
Which isn’t really possible, but a dead end for the zombies just seems wrong.
There’s this ‘science experiment’ idea.
This ‘undead on the highway’ idea, sort of like Bill Bixby the The Incredible Dead!
Old people will get that joke, young people will have to Google.
Oh man, I had this one from years ago, where everything is a movie set,
and the director yells cut, and people and zombies get up out of
their blood pools and go have coffee and the techs change the set while you
review and edit the action into a final feature length zombie film.
35 days or so to go, we’ll do that.
Alright, now I’m inspired.
Time to work.
