Love for zombies

[Robin]

You could also check the length -- printable keys always have length 1.

[coffee]

Hi Ellohir,
Very promising game, nice title screen, like the death red circle. Pretty much about advises or bugs already was been said. Just want to add that I tried v1.03 in OSX and I had the feeling that something is not right after playing the first game. Without reason following games have some slowdowns and became unplayable.

About the gameplay IMHO it's a bit hard to play. The rounded cursor don't help much as aiming sight, the tracing bullet also don't help because get lost in that grass and there isn't no second chances (first touch = sure death). Probably my biggest complain is that killed zombies need to be removed sooner and don't have that alpha remove delay (or have a clear dead gfx). That's because I usually waste time or one or two bullet till I have sure that the zombie was really killed. But anyway probably I suck in this kind of game.

I think this wasn't yet pointed but In after-game screen you could help if you put a cursor blinking or something else in name input.

That's all, keep the nice working.

[Ellohir]

Yeah, highscore input is really weird, it's just what I thought would work at the moment, char to char. I'll try the code from Yalt so it accepts caps, thanks

Hi Ellohir,
Very promising game, nice title screen, like the death red circle. Pretty much about advises or bugs already was been said. Just want to add that I tried v1.03 in OSX and I had the feeling that something is not right after playing the first game. Without reason following games have some slowdowns and became unplayable.

I haven't noticed anything on Windows (I don't have OSX), but I'll try to improve the restart system (right now is just calling "love.load", there must be a better way).

About the gameplay IMHO it's a bit hard to play. The rounded cursor don't help much as aiming sight, the tracing bullet also don't help because get lost in that grass and there isn't no second chances (first touch = sure death). Probably my biggest complain is that killed zombies need to be removed sooner and don't have that alpha remove delay (or have a clear dead gfx). That's because I usually waste time or one or two bullet till I have sure that the zombie was really killed. But anyway probably I suck in this kind of game.

I think this wasn't yet pointed but In after-game screen you could help if you put a cursor blinking or something else in name input.

That's all, keep the nice working.

The zombie-alpha effect was a placeholder for a zombie falling animation. I got used to that if the zombie doesn't move, it's dead. As I tested the game I thought it was good enough so I left it xD I'll try to make an animation

Difficulty is a very personal thing. I found it challenging that bullets were almost invisible and cursor was approximate. That looked real. It got me better into the feeling of being surrounded by zombies and act more from instinct and speed. On the other hand, a friend of mine got 146 kills on 144 seconds If everyone were like him, the game would be too easy. So I don't know, I may increase spawn rate, or make waves or something. I'll think about it.

I'll work on the highscore menu to improve it, blinking cursor and cleaning the string included

[coffee]

Difficulty is a very personal thing.

Sure, but I like I said is only my single but honest opinion. I also like you think that add reality is awesome but reality I'm afraid could also be a "very personal thing". I wouldn't want for real face fighting zombies but for sure I feel that at least I could have more fair chances in focus and right aiming zombies or actually see them die. Also I believe that a zombie would never cheat spawning about 2m away of me in plain thin air

I think that the fact that your gfx be a bit small and don't have enough contrast could help a lot my lack of aptitude for (not) playing well your game. That way I need a lot of extra eye focus and mental concentration to compensate the smallness problem.

When I lurking this forum for getting learning examples I remember playing this similar zombie type LOVE game.
http://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2121
If it helps comparing with this one I actually can go much further and reach the big swarms of zombies. I feel that there the big gfx makes no need for that extra focus. Even if the bullet trajectory wouldn't be present there, the big gfx would be enough for me for a more balanced gameplay.

Sorry can't help much about the slowdown in following games. It just happens without reason even with no other things running. I tried too to test it in virtual XP but there the game is too slow and demanding for virtual machine in the red death animation. Perhaps it's some resource eating some extra memory when reloading/resetting or a problem with some external library you use?

Thanks for the future improvements you announced! Keep us posted!

[Ellohir]

Coffee what resolution are you using? I'm at 1024x1280 so I guess I made it for it xD The game is quite big for me. I read about some resizing libraries on the wiki so I may try them to see what I can do. I will have to make a settings menu sooner or later, so why not xD

---
New version!

Highscore menu fixed, blinking cursor included. Problem is, "capslock" is only activated when you activate capslock, so "deactivating" capslock doesn't count as a "capslock" key pressed, you have to hit it a second time. But I don't know how to solve this so I hope people use Shift xD A million thanks to Jose for his Yalt code.

Zombie death animation included! I removed the ugly code from the splatter and added it directly into zombie death animation. It falls backwards. More or less. It's a bit clumsy, but, hey, it's a zombie xD Anyway, take a look and comment what you think

Zombies have health bars! Right now it's two shots for zombie it makes it really difficult and ugly so I think I'll only put health bars on special zombies when I have time to draw some. These zombies should be bigger and slower.

To come:
- player health.
- zombies grabbing, slowing player and damaging him over time

[Robin]

Highscore menu fixed, blinking cursor included. Problem is, "capslock" is only activated when you activate capslock, so "deactivating" capslock doesn't count as a "capslock" key pressed, you have to hit it a second time. But I don't know how to solve this so I hope people use Shift xD A million thanks to Jose for his Yalt code.

When capslock is deactivated, "capslock" is sent to love.keyreleased instead of love.keypressed.

[Ellohir]

Thanks! Fixed

[bartbes]

Also, can you put your updates in the first post in the future? It is where people look first for downloads, having to browse through an entire thread gets cumbersome.

EDIT: Oh, and what twinstick doesn't have joystick controls?!

[Ellohir]

Updated main post download, thanks.

Now player has 3 health and has to be grabbed for half a second to get damage. Normal zombies have 1 health an have a little random speeds. Red zombies have 2 health and are FAST. Black zombies have 5 health and are really slow. I didn't do any graphics yet, just set a different drawing color. I like this variability, it makes the game more interesting. Look out for red zombies!


I'll take a look for the joystick support, that should be interesting

[coffee]

Coffee what resolution are you using? I'm at 1024x1280 so I guess I made it for it xD

Well, I use the default native1920x1200 but that is pretty normal for the a 24'' screen on mac. But size don't really matters if contrast is right. I usually play that kind of small pixie indie games without eye problems.

About your new version, actually put the mob health bar helped a lot cause I can see clear when shot made his way or when zombie is dead. I can stand alive a more few seconds thanks.

Also now the blinking cursor also helps people in usability terms to alert that name input is required. Good feature.

However I'm afraid to say that even now in first game game have slown-downs. But anyway I have now a important clue that could help you. Before I was playing with low sound and headphones jacked and I didn't noticed the sound behavior in that slown-dows sorry. Now I noticed when I have that slowdowns sound stops and never turns on anymore! I have to quit window and open file again to have sound again. Helpful? Maybe some osx only sound problem? Don't know, but that now should help.

EDITED Perhaps my problem is still the same as headchant one (http://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php? ... 940#p39308) and you really didn't fixed how you suppose and told in next post the problem.

Anyway all the rest things are better now.