Hello again people, and of course, users of this marvelous community. I am here to (not necesarily proudly) present a new game of mine that I've been working on as a part-time development game since the last week.
But first...
The (little amount of) people who know me show know that I've been working on a game called Ooni. I'm afraid to say that I won't work on it from now on.
Apparently some guy stole the character and now he's using it on his own game. I couldn't do anything, his game was almost finished and they rejected the idea of using a new character.
But it's not all his fault. I have my other reasons.
Anyways, new game? Yes, I've been working as programmer and complementary artist with Dennot, the artist.
What's the game about?
Well, Viral is based on another project of mine, which was my very first Game Creation Marathon in 24 hours or less. We managed to finish it in 17 hours, but the game was pretty lame, it sucked and it was not the way I wanted it to be. So I'm here, working on a newer and possibly better version of the game. And now I'll be able to take my time to polish it.
Because I want to make this one better, I'll post the game since the very first Pre-Alpha, so you people can test it, feel it, tell us what it needs, what needs to be taken out; I want you to help me to build a good game. Well, if you want to, we're not forcing you.
So, what's the game about?
*People get their wallets ready*
-Let's just say that it's another third person zombie shooter...
*People turn around and walk away*
-...And it's free.
*People walk back*
No, seriously. We're not going to do a classic zombie survival with waves and that, or at least we'll try.
Viral works with randomly generated maps. In single player mode, you'll play in a different world each time you play, or each time you die, since in Viral's single player mode each time you die you'll start from cero. We're considering to add lives or a "soft" mode for those who want to respawn with all their collected loot, but that won't keep the game fair and will make it really easy.
By the already mentioned "loot", with Viral, we want to create a survial, this time for real. And I tought that random generated worlds are just perfect for exploration. By exploration, I mean going as far as you can collect all the resources you can, craft better weapons, efficient tools or food (yes, there will be crafting and a hunger bar <--- Survival!) so you can survive the nights. You'll encounter zombies during daytime, but at night, it will be challenging. The point of the game is that you should not go back, no matter what, because there won't be a reason for doing such, Dennot and I will make sure that it stays that way.
Character
One year ago, on the previous Viral we used this guy as the main character, the one at the right:
Which one is the zombie?
99% of people get this wrong!
We wanted to use the same character on this Viral. Here's my drawing of the 2012 Charlie!
He's back and.... Yes, he's back, just that.
The reason why it is called Charlie is something pretty dumb, actually. It has a meaning. When G-or-G was helping me with the first Viral thing, the main object was called "obj_char", refered to "character". Then I tought I would complete the "Char" to "CharLIE" or something.
Why am I telling you this? It's not important! :D
Anyways. We've been working on the game for almost one week, which is nothing. Between three of that week, we completely changed the art style three times! Leaving us with four different versions of the game!
At first, it all started as a: "Hey, let's make an 8-bit styled zombie shooter".
Then I realized that the blocks were so small that the player had to spawn lots and lots terrain squares and it's FPS would go down to 1 in less than a minute!
We had to enlarge the squares and this improved the stability a lot.
I was like, if I'm going to make it with large sprites, I'll make it HQ!
But neither, Dennot or me were comfortable with that, we still wanted pixels!
So I made some 16-bit textures for the game. Now that I realize it, it's pretty bad.
Finally, Dennot used his magical powers and re-textured everything.
We kept my characters' sprites and grass tiles, anyways.
We kept it that way, and everyone lived happy forever after.
TL;DR?!
Yes, this is what we've got so far in one week. And it's not over yet.
As I said before, we want you to test what we've got, and tell us your oppinion and your ideas.
We already got the...
VIRAL 0.0.0.1 Pre-Alpha
for PC download.
Go for it, tiger!
VIRAL 0.0.0.1 Pre-Alpha
for PC download.
Go for it, tiger!
It includes:
- Moving Charlie (WASD)
- Pointing at mouse
- Random generated terrain
- Houses
- Doors (open & close)
- Zombie AI
Not much, really. I've been busy for a while, so programming was stopped.
This is what you can expect soon:
- Destructible bricks by zombies
- Infinite worlds
- Water
- Crafting
- Shooting
Please report any bug you find.
So, I think this is it. Thanks for reading such long post I wrote, it probably won't happen again. I'll just make smaller dev blog posts just with the changes and some comments.
If we reach the small amount of 20 IndieDB followers, we'll open a forum in here.
If you have any questions, don't forget to ask. I'll literally answer all of your questions.
Remember, we're building a game based on your opinnion, together.
Thanks.
The Green Tie's Twitter
Dennot's Twitter
