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[Jase]

Current Version: 0.1.16 - 29th September 2012 View release notes here

Download and play: http://ratherbe.de/ad/download

New Video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V47jWBrJXCc&hd=1

The game I have in development at the moment is called Rather Be Dead. It's an open-ish world zombie survival game.

I know, I know, "Another zombie game? Really?!".

I needed a break from my impossibly monolithic main project and decided to prototype a much simpler concept of just walking around an urban environment in java. It was kind of fun, just made of boxes, so I decided to switch to XNA and put some effort into it.

My vision is to create a game which is not another action-driven zombie shooter. I want players to explore, cooperate, build, struggle to survive. I want the players to fear zombies not just mow them down. To that end, mechanics like sound propergation and light/heat will play their parts in attracting or repelling potential enemies, living and dead.

A big part of that vision is letting players experience that with friends and strangers online. I've already built a significant portion of the networking layer and have basic multiplayer games working with a standalone server, but it's not ready for public consumption yet.

Right now, you can walk around a very small 1155m x 1300m static area which is a testing ground for various features, shoot zombies, watch the day turn to night and drive a few cars.

Planned:

• Very large procedurally generated urban/city environments
• Vehicles with multi-player aspects (truck with gun on the back)
• Flexible crafting system ('explosive' plus 'timer' = bomb, regardless if the timer is an eggtimer or an alarm clock, etc)
• Environment destruction and creation

All the art is purely placeholder right now, free assets from TurboSquid or OpenGameArt, mainly chosen to help identitfy the visual feel that I want so I can have art created with the right look and feel (I'm no artist, not by a long shot).

I'm more than happy to discuss anything suggestions, feedback (good or bad) or issues that people have with this game. I welcome it all.

[BWG]

Looks great, I can't wait to see where you will go with this.
I've recently been playing a lot of dead nation on PS3, it's got the same kind of vibe but I love the GTA style car stuff.
Keep it up!

[Jase]

Thanks for trying it out.

Dead Nation looks quite good, but I was planning for RBD to not be quite so shoot'em'up, at least not all the time

If I can ensure moments occur where players have to cower in a dark corner while undead meander past because they're out of ammunition or are too far from their base to risk an encounter, then I'll be happy.

I take it there were no issues with downloading it and playing?

[Franklins Ghost]

Checked out the video and game is looking good. Can't download it at the moment but will have to give it a go later.

You should check out zombox if you haven't already.

[Jase]

Thanks. I've been following Zombox for a while, it looks really great and I love the art style. I was a little disappointed when I learned it was single player only, at least for the forseeable future, but I'll still be playing it when it comes out.

[Eniko]

Can't download right now but watched the video. Looking promising and I really like the idea of an open world multiplayer zombie survival game. Two things that struck me:

1. Your multiplayer button says "saftey" not "safety" >_>
2. The flashlight doesn't seem to illuminate the ground much, if it all. I'm not sure whether this is as intended, but I do think most people shine a flashlight somewhat downwards so they can clearly see the ground. Without illuminating the ground better the flashlight "feels" less effective.

[Jase]

Thanks for taking a look Eniko,

1) I can't believe I didn't see that earlier, thanks. I've rolled out a hot-fix to correct it.
2) The flashlight is just a regular spotlight which is positioned near the end of the gun, so it won't illumunate much of the ground  until you get a few meters away. But you do have a valid point. Maybe I can increase the angle of the spotlight but fiddle with the falloff value to make it shine weaker light on a wider area, at least up close anyway.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

One trick that's used a lot is to put a very mild point light in the same place as the spot light.

I do it for pretty much every spotlght I use.

[Jase]

Interesting. I did place one to see how it looked, I like it but there's still a large enough gap between it and the start of the spotlight on the ground that I'm not sure if it addresses the problem:



I then tried widening the angle on the spotlight and reducing the intensity substantially, but I don't think that quite worked out:



Might be something that I just have to keep tweaking to find something that finds right.

[Jase]

I'm not sure on the ettiquite regarding 'bumping' my own feedback thread when a new playable version is available, but if it's frowned upon just let me know.

Just released a new version, 0.1.13.1 which shifts the view to be Perspective instead of Orthographic, adds animation and a few other minor things.

If you have the launcher then just fire it up and it will automatically get you up to date, else you can download using the link in my original post.

* Note; there are a few known bugs with this version:
- Directional Shadows jitter and shake, it's a bug I haven't been able to resolve yet.
- Bullet collision is iffy at low framerates

[Jase]

I've released 0.1.14 and would love some feedback on the throwing/picking up of axes and how it feels when taking out a zombie with them.

A quick change list for this version:

Additions:
* Axe throwing
    * Axes stick into zombies, fences, the ground, everything.
    * Axes can be picked back up from zombies while they are alive or dead
* Ray-based shooting instead of projectile-based.
* Blood - squishy! But really, just a basic particle system crudely integrated with my lighting pipeline.
* Sounds! and a little ambient noise. Really brings things to life.
* Added desks with a chance to have an axe stuck in it
* Tweaked the HUD a little, just a little nicer now, though in no way permanent.

Changes:
* Fixed shadows, more or less. They're stable and not as bad as last version.
* Fixed many performance issues
* Fixed directional light source so it feels more like day when it is day, and night when it's night.
* Fixed collisions with walls, tweaked the volumes for other objects like the bus, the postbox, etc.

[Reggie]

Maybe it's just me, but in those two most recent screenshots you posted, I can't see anything at all.

[Jase]

They're very, very dark, since they were done at night with a soft spotlight, so maybe certain monitors or gamma settings make them black. They're not a big deal any more, I've moved on from what I was testing at that time

[James Rossi]

Hey, was just curious if you got a PM I sent you. If you want some assistance on the sound front, we can talk. This would be a really fun project to help on and you can concentrate on other things instead of SFX and what not for a bit.

[thatbennyguy]

This is really nice! I can imagine having a walking cycle will make gameplay look much more fluid and realistic, but nice work on the axes being embedded in zombies and walls, and such. Are you going to have items that the zombies drop? It would be nice to have area-of-effect weapons like grenades too. What is the objective of the game? Is it merely to survive, like Day-Z?