#002 -Deeper Design Notes

Following on from the previous post, this post will expand upon the generalisation of that post.

The Level

The level in Zombieeub53 will by tile based and, at this stage, consist of a brick tile and a glass tile.

The brick tile will by solid and not passable by any agent, while the glass tile will also not be passable, but will be transparent and allow for line of sight detection from agents.

The outer bounds of a level will be a wall of brick tiles, while sub-spaces within will be a mix of brick and glass tiles with doorways being empty spaces between 1 and 2 tile widths wide.

The Player

The player in Zombieeub53 will be able to move in 8 directions using 4 keys, along the x & y axes, with the character facing the current mouse position, which is used for aiming.

The player will hold a weapon that is fired in the mouse direction, this is planned to only be ranged weaponry at this point. Weapons will be distinguished based on projectile spread, range, fire speed and damage – so a character could have a pistol or a shotgun.

Upon collision with a human agent the player will take no action except for moving the human ‘out of the way’ – but collision with a zombie will cause the player to take damage based on the zombie’s attack speed and damage.

The Human

The humans in Zombieeub53 are planned to behave based on a series of states, in their normal state they will wander randomly around a level, trying to avoid collisions with walls and other humans with a steering behaviour.

Upon detection of a zombie the human will enter a panic state where they will attempt to move away from that zombie.

Depending on the human there may be scope to define ‘personalities’ where they could be calmer under pressure and so able to navigate better when in a panic state etc.

Upon collision with a zombie the human will take damage based on the zombies attack speed and damage, and upon death will re spawn as a new zombie.

The Zombie

A zombie in Zombieeub53 will also behave based on a series of states. In their base state they will wander around randomly, colliding with with level where they can either detect a human and start to chase that human as long as it is in their line of sight – meaning that if a human breaks line of sight via a wall or other agent then the zombie will enter a seeking state where they will move to the last known location of their target and either see the target again or another target and carry on the chase, or return to the wandering state.

I’m also planning to add another state to the zombie where if they collide with another zombie then they will form a herd which will chase as one larger entity – which should add an element of tension and danger to allowing a large number of zombies to spawn.

Over the coming weeks I will expand upon each element of the game further as development continues.

The week in review

Over this week I have been working on the core engine for the game and have a basic system up and running and look forward to sharing a demonstration video in due course.

The upcoming week

This will I will be continuing to work on the core engine along with some more refined art assets.

The biggest focus will be to implement some sort of partitioning for speed along with refinement of the basic collision detection system in place.