Zombox

I got some feedback about the size of the UI controls in Zombox, so I went with a sleeker redesign.

Some people suggested I make them semi-transparent but unfortunately transparent shaders cause the iPhone to chug so I’m keeping them opaque.

It’s worthy to note that the web version of Zombox will not have these visible controls at all, since keyboard shortcuts will control the character, rather than clicks on a screen.

These last couple of weeks I’ve been working mainly on detailing the environment.

• Textures have been added to all environment elements
• Buildings now have roofs and unique floors made of various material.
• Damaged walls now get cracked.
• The roads now feature various street signs, parking notices, etc.

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Here’s a video which shows the results of the pathfinding system I’ve implemented. Below I roughly outline the process involved:

I haven’t posted any new developments for Zombox in a couple of weeks because I’ve mainly been doing code re-writes, optimizations and other things to get the game running faster on iOS.

One of the main hiccups in development has been the zombie AI. Until this week, zombies “saw” their environment with raycasts. While I was pooling raycasts and not doing 1 per frame per zombie, raycast performance with 30-40 zombies and many colliders on the iOS was slow. Also, while zombies don’t require an overly complex AI system, the previous I-won’t-chase-it-unless-I-see-it method left them unnecessarily dumb. Not to mention, the AI system couldn’t really be scaled up to include NPCs that need to be able to find targets.

So, I implemented an A* pathfinding system for all AI instead. The main hurdles I encountered while working on this system were:

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