Zombox

zConnection just published an article about Zombox.

Click here to read it!

Did lots of work on Zombox this week….most notably the sound design, but here’s the overall scoop:

1) Many new props scattered throughout the city. Dumpsters, garbage bins, crates, trees….

2) All buildings are now labelled and their description will appear at the bottom of the screen when you enter inside (“House”, “hospital”, “department store”, etc)

3) The quality of the UI icons has been greatly improved. No more artifacting!

4) ….sound! I’ve begun the sound design process and it’s coming along nicely. Still much work to be done but I think the overall feel of things is there.

Here’s a Youtube video showcasing all of these changes:

Just making a note that comments are open on all posts here. Feel free to post feedback on anything and everything that you see. Constructive criticisms, suggestions and questions are welcomed!

This week I worked on a couple of new things in Zombox.

Firstly, zombies have a chance of dropping Zombucks (in-game currency) each time they are killed. These coins of varying values (values which depend on the strength of the zombie killed) can be collected and eventually traded for items that NPCs in the game world are willing to sell.

Secondly, the empty areas between buildings and streets (which were just flat concrete spaces in past builds of the game) are now populated with grass, bushes and trees. Like all interactive items in the game, the trees can be chopped down and destroyed.

Here are a couple of .GIF animations demonstrating the above features:

So this week I worked on the scavenge system.

Each building interior contains both contextual and randomized props which can be searched for useful items.

In order to search an object, you simply have to walk up to it…and if it’s searchable, it will flash green and a magnifying glass icon will appear in the top right corner of the screen. Once that icon is pressed, the inventory panel will open and the items contained in the object will appear in the bottom right panel.

I also added some food items to the inventory, and these can be found in various houses/restaurants/grocery stores/etc throughout the world.

So, I finished modeling all of the building interiors!

All the interior props have also been prepared for the destruction engine. This means that when you destroy any interior prop, it will break apart. Click the image below to watch some prop-destruction action!

I also got a day/night system going, as well as an in-game clock. Click the image below to view a full day/night cycle.