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[ignitiongames]

UPDATE: Released! Click the image below to purchase.

Hello everyone! I was recently referred here and my game Undead Shadows is already close to beta but Id like to get it in front of some more eyes!

The description

Undead Shadows is a modern day post-apocalyptic zombie survival FPS that puts the player inside the shoes of a survivor trying to last as long as he can in a zombie infested world. Zombies aren't the only thing the player needs to fear. Giant spiders come out at night from the forests to hunt for live prey! You must survive the never-ending waves of terrifying infected creatures until you are run down, backed into a corner and devoured.

As the survivor, you can scour through cities and the country side looking for supplies to help you defend yourself against never ending waves of zombies. The longer you last…the harder it gets. Killing zombies and spiders will give you money that can be exchanged for items that will help you survive. There is a weapon store that allows you to upgrade your firepower, a hardware store where you can get cheap but effective weapons and a pawn shop that supplies you with handy things to make killing thousands of zombies a bit easier!

Undead Shadows is a First Person Shooter with singleplayer, multiplayer and local LAN co-op.



Where I'm at..

Like I said above, I'm pretty close to beta and just mainly wrapping up the final tasks and applying the polish. Id like to get a gameplay trailer out later this week to give people a better idea of how the game plays. I have already submitted the game to Steam Greenlight and even attempted Kickstarter campaign which failed miserably due to no external advertising. The Greenlight submission has generated lots of interest and opinions which have been good and not so good, but that is expected with a game that is trying to wedge its way in an already crowded genre. Once the game got off the first page of the recently submitted titles, the votes really started to get scarce.

With that being said, I still have a nice list of things that I have to do (and would like to do) before the beta is ready but once it is - ill be looking to get a testing group together. The goal is to release at the end of this month and its slightly doable, but well see!

Anyways thanks for reading and Im open to any feedback anyone has. You can also check the progress on our Dev Blog which has some pretty pictures as well as more detailed info on where Im currently at. Ill be updating this thread with more info as it comes in!

[ignitiongames]

Forgot to mention a few things

I am using the Torque 3D enigne which I havent had to modify too much because it fits my FPS needs really well. The only things I've done are performance tweaks for networking and a few minor changes here and there.

[BeardedSloth]

Sounds interesting, is this going to be similar to CoD Zombies? It seems like your going for a wave/round based horde mode with a similar survival aspect from something like DayZ. Which could be a very interesting idea indeed. If this isn't the case, would you care to take us a little further on how the main game mode is going to be played?

Would love a good zombie horde mode game besides CoD Zombies tho.
Keep up the good work 

[ignitiongames]

@BeardedSloth,

Yes the basic idea is similar to CoD Zombies but you're not confined to a small, tight area. You are also correct with the survival aspect. You have the freedom to roam about the levels which are roughly ~1.5km squared and search for supplies and weapons while you have waves of zombies coming at you from all sides. Right now there is 1 and a half minutes between rounds so you have just enough time to get what you need. However between rounds there are also wandering zombies that will attack you if you if they see you!

[gnarvin]

I like that you're trying to take these 2 ideas and merge them, but I do have some questions.

How many zombies can be out at once?
   -With such a large area to move in it seems like it would be easy to just run a bit and get most the zombies behind you then just group them up.

Will there be weapon upgrades?
   -Personally I feel like CoD Zombies should have multiple tiers of gun upgrades making them stronger and stronger, and actually killing zombies in the higher rounds.

Anything like wonder weapons, perks, and drops(Max ammos, nukes, insta kills)?

Im a huge fan of CoD Zombies, played it more then any other game probably. I hope you can make a solid zombie horde mode game we need a new fresh version for sure.

[ignitiongames]

@gnarvin

Right now I have the AI manager set to 40 max alive AI at once. The way the spawn system is setup, the zombies spawn within a certain minimum and maximum radius around any player so they will be coming at your from all sides. If you try to run away, there will still be some coming at you from the direction youre moving.

In each level there is a gun store where you can purchase weapons and ammo so the more money you collect, the better the gun you can buy. CoD Zombies seem to give zombies more and more hit points as each round gets higher and Undead Shadows does not. Zombies health, speed etc. stays constant from round 1 to round infinity.

Ive tried to stay away from getting too close to the way CoD Zombies does the drops but all zombies drop something when you kill them. There is a 95% chance they will drop a money pickup that ranges from $10 to $40, spiders drop a bit more. There is also a 4% chance they will drop a money bag which is between $500 and $1000, and a 1% chance they will drop a radio which allows you to call a 1 time air strike. The air strike kills all the zombies that are alive.

I may end up adding more drops before the beta is ready but for now Im willing to have those be the ones the game will ship with.

[ignitiongames]

Just a quick update for everyone following Undead Shadows. I have been working on the second level "Cornfield Country" for the last month and am ready to start showing it off.



There are a few additional areas to explore besides the main gun shop  and hardware store. You spawn in a pizza restaurant which is an exact model of a certain pizza place in Burlington, Ontario - see if you can guess…



One main concern with developing this level was the size of it. With Undead Shadows being a fast-paced round based game, having time to explore and get supplies is very limited so we decided to add in an all terrain vehicle that makes getting around a lot easier.



As of now, only 1 spawns in Cornfield Country but further testing may reveal the requirement for more. The spawn location is randomly chosen from pre-defined spots and they are scattered all over the level. Here are a few more shots of the level from the air:




Starting next week I will be opening up access to around 100 people who wish to beta test Undead Shadows. Ill post here when beta access has started. Thanks for reading and I welcome any feedback!

[ignitiongames]

Another quick update here - Ive just pushed the final commit so were now at beta status! I will be releasing the beta at some point tomorrow and will post on here again with some instructions on how to get signed up.

[ignitiongames]

The beta is now ready! There are limited slots so hurry and register before they’re all gone! To download the beta, just go to www.undeadshadows.com/beta and fill in the information. Once you’re done and your application is approved (its instant) you will be redirected to the store where the download will be available on your My Account page. Also on the My Account page there is an icon in the Beta Programs section where you can submit feedback and bugs.

We ask that all beta testers please submit feedback and bugs if they run into them to help with getting Undead Shadows into the final release stage. If you have any questions regarding the Beta, visit http://www.ignition-games.com/contact.php and send us questions, or simply post here.

Thanks for following along and I hope everyone enjoys playing Undead Shadows!

[Savick]

It might be my monitor or the time of day here, but most of those screen shots look so dark that I have no idea what's going on or almost what I'm looking at. I can see the trees in the outside shots, but inside it's just blackness more or less.

[ignitiongames]

@Savick,

Honestly Ive heard this quite a bit and Im not sure why, but inside the game its not really dark at all (except for night time).

[gnarvin]

Glad to see you got the Beta up for testing. I played it for a little bit this morning and noticed a couple things.

• Option for remembering my login
• In single player, pause actually pauses the game because life happens.
• I would love to have a little notification message every time I pick up a drop, telling how much money I got or what item I picked up
• I would also love to see the drops blink a little when they are about to disappear.
• once I picked up a weapon I couldn't seem to switch back to the melee weapon
• controller support
• The night cycle is very sudden and I think to early in game. It should start at round 5 and take a couple turns to actually get fully dark.
• I did crash one time after dying and it was trying to restart the match or something.

Thats the basic stuff, I did think the AI was flawed but dont know how to describe it right in text, I could make a little video if you'd like. Otherwise, great start so far cant wait to test some more once I get a chance.

[ignitiongames]

Thanks for the feedback gnarvin!

-I think because your game crashed it didnt save the login preferences, Ill look into this one.
-What was happening when you tried to pause the game? Did it not work at all?
-What controller were you trying to use?

If you could show me how you think the AI are flawed I would really appreciate that! Id like to try to get a multiplayer session setup soon, would I be able to email you to setup a testing session?

Thanks!

[gnarvin]

What was happening when you tried to pause the game? Did it not work at all?

the pause menu comes up but the game doesn't stop, so if I wanted go to the bathroom or something I would just die.

What controller were you trying to use?

Xbox 360 controller and it worked but seemed buggy like certain direction didnt seem to work right, but to be honest I didn't really look into I was just seeing if it worked at all, so it may of just been on my side, I'll try it again and let you know whats happening.

I'll try to get a video going for the AI stuff, and Id be glad to help you out with some multiplayer stuff. I can PM you my email or you can hit me up on Steam, same name gnarvin.

[ignitiongames]

Beta patch 1.0.1 has been released! You can download it from here and just install to the same directory as the beta installation. Here is the changelog of fixes and other changes:

Beta Version 1.0.1 Changelog    (11/25/14)

Additions & Changes

• Pushing escape in single player now pauses the game
• Disabled pause functionality for multiplayer
• Added auto-login functionality
• Added an overlay to the login screen when being logged in
• Changed the day length to 10 minutes and night to 5 minutes
• Zombie money and special drops fade for 5 seconds for a better removal warning
• Changed the amount of money subtracted when a player dies from 100% down to 50%
• Changed the mounting to the ATV in Cornfield Country to use the [e] button like other interactions
• Changed mission cycling at game end to restart the same level
• Made changes to zombie and spider AI
• Zombies now spawn from under the ground
• The spawn minimum  and maximum spawn radius has been reduced
• Increased the angle which zombies can attack a player at (up to 45 from 20 degrees)
• Lowered the damage given by zombie hits
• Increased the speed at which zombies can run (up to 7.48 – 9.35m/s)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the missing blood decal texture in multiplayer games for non-hosts
• Fixed an infinite loop that caused the game to halt when a player was killed by zombies
• Fixed an embarrassing spelling mistake on the gun store sign
• Fixed bugs with player ready up code that caused the wrong messages to show up
• Fixed a bug where zombies would still see a close by dead player as the closest target to attack
• Fixed a bug which allowed dead players to revive other dead players
• Fixed a crash that was caused by the air strike
• Fixed a bug that caused players being able to push zombies out of the way to not work as planned
• Fixed a bug allowing players to toggle their flashlights while dead
• Fixed a bug with the zombie AI that caused them to slow down when they got too close to a player
• Fixed a bug that was causing no variation in zombie speed
• Fixed a bug that was causing the zombies to not be able to push each other around in groups

[ignitiongames]

Just a quick update..the Beta went really well and we are now at a release candidate build! I'm aiming to release Undead Shadows on December 12th on my own website and a few other platforms the following week. Thank you to everyone who tried out the Beta and thank you for all the feedback!

[ignitiongames]

Undead Shadows is now available to purchase in the Ignition Games Store for only $14.99!

Thank you to everyone who tried out the Beta, if you check your My Account page you all get a free copy of the game for trying out the beta We will be releasing on a few other websites in the coming weeks to give players more options on where to buy. We are on Greenlight so please vote for us!

I want to thank the TIGSource community for their support and hope to have more for you in the future!