Hello and Goodbye (The Future of VR/AR and what that even means) P.2
The Game Right Now
Hello, I'd like to say firstly: Thank you for playing my game(s). If you have played all of them up until this point... amazing. At least 80,000 people have played my games which is simply hard to understand. It's really cool. I do need to move on.
The total number could be 500,000, but 80,000 is a safer bet to say for sure.
For almost 5 years DEAD has had consistent updates regardless if I have posted about it or not. It has been in my background for a long time relative to my life. I am 23 years old. A game that was once an offshoot of a survival game to kill time has now taken my time while the game that I was originally working on has become the background game.
The game in question is GIGASTRUCTURE. I've talked about the game before, vaguely, is what may be the best multiplayer game ever. The problem with a game like that is alone it would take me 20 years to finish it as I have never had the money to make something so fantastic. The money isn't even a server cost, it's a staff cost. It's just too much to do alone. That sucks.
If you want to hype yourself up for no reason go to gigastructure.com
You aren't here to dive into that game, you are here to know about the future of DEAD and possibly to know where I have been.
During the entire development of DEAD I have grown as a person as all people should do over a period of time like that. My focus has shifted totally. I am at a point now that has been built upon for years and that point is this: I cannot personally enjoy DEAD, maybe I never could, but I can admit that I cannot now. This information should not invalidate your enjoyment dear reader. It should, hopefully, give you an insight as to where I am.
Many people have enjoyed this game. Many people add me just to tell me that, or comment the same sentiment, post a review of said sentiment, maybe they enjoyed it so much they posted in every place they could on problems just to get my attention that I would reply to within the hour just to surprise them (that I quite enjoyed).
The view I have now and the view I hold along with my many personal shifts, and personal challenges is what is pushing me onto new things. I gotta go.
"So what's next, and what of my prior promises? What of Dead? What of Dead+?"
DEAD is not dead, but it is going to continue to be further and further behind me. You might have noticed that there hasn't been really anything new anywhere about this game. We will get to that a little later.
As of this post I am going to be ignoring this game (for the most part). There is still the personal obligation that every developer should have at every level in the industry of continuing the game. My personal obligation to finish overhauling every system so that I may leave it alone, throw it to open-source, and possibly talk about it to some nerd in ten years about how "this shit got them geeked" or "I played it when I was 10 and it shaped my reality" or something like that, is still there. The overhauled build will come out. In fact, it kinda already did but then I had to revert back to a much older build due to Steam policy. As an insight, it's already much better than the current state of things but not all of the maps are there. Whatever bugs are in the public build will basically just stay there until I can finish. It's a months old build at this point.
The primary reason for this is because there are no DEAD+ maps available in said build and Steam requires you to keep up with your DLC promise once people buy said DLC. It's a good policy*
Essentially, I work alone on this, so updating it in mass either requires months of focus or gradual addition. All I can say is that when it re-releases, it'll be a lot better because it already is.
"So what are you doing then big guy?" the straw man said:
VR
I am moving on, but to what? The next generation of VR gaming.
Like I said, there has been a lot of personal situations in my life. One of those situations is the limited time I have left to use my wrists. I cannot play a lot of PC games anymore, Having to actively hold down WASD, etc. is becoming a strain on my wrists to a level that I do not trust. I literally have a cyst on my left wrist right now that I do not have the money to deal with... possible two on the same wrist (Anyone have $2000?! woweee! gotta love doctors!). it'll just get worse with time. As of that happening suddenly I haven't actively touched playing or making games to a crazy extent.
I basically just spent 6 months playing Civ and Intruder. Two games with a lot of pause.
Playing GTA with a controller is great, making DEAD controller compatible and making sure all games I have worked on since being controller compatible has been important to me for years because I knew this would happen eventually. Now the pain is there. The situation reminds me of a character in the show Silicon Valley who is only beyond his prime because he cannot physically type anymore and it's a basis of a lot of the background problems in the show.
Word of advice, do not let your kid use a computer at 11. There is no real reason for them to do so, even now.
Despite Gabe Newel's general hatred for VR, it has come a long way. My favorite thought for what is from my experience now with hand-tracking. It is there, we can do it. How do we commercially sell lasers? (If you find that sentence hard to read, just move on, but know I am asking the right question as simply as I can).
Another question that needs to be asked, but solved soon is what we do about cancer. Cancer is half of the reason people do not have Jet packs. Think about it. "No!" "yes, I promise."
Controllers and VR have the key component in common that it is really easy to pick up and play because you are holding something and interacting with it like a monkey, and VR gets our monkey mode back while being in a fantasy universe to blow off some steam in a simulation. Even just watching a movie is a different experience. Being able to hold a tiny controller like what the Oculus has, or do what the Index does, or do what the Deckard... It's all really cool and is what my body is forcing me to do. VR helps move both towards a new future of development myself, but will provide a vision for the next generation of what it means to play in an experience. Up until this point I have only worked with 2D games, but my visions have been in 5D. I am seeing what is possible, and know what is to be done. I see where we are at now, and what was before us.
I wish Mark Zuckerberg didn't rebrand the Oculus (a perfect title for what the thing does) into a project name "We are on a Meta Quest! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Okay! Now our quest.. that turned into quests, is completed and we can experience meta." Super lame.
From where I am sitting right now, VR gaming is really shitty.
The gaming selection is kinda shit, and to a normal person it's pretty awesome so nothing is changing. Valve really thought that putting out a headset and putting out a really pretty vr game would shift an industry, but it didn't.. at least not immediately. The most surprising part is when they did it coronavirus was primed to have VR explode to a global level. After they failed because they didn't even make something as good as Quake, Mark Zuckerberg had an Identity crisis of his go public and went in deep on VR. Re branding a billion dollar, billion person corporation is wild. It's like when all the drug companies merge and name themselves a concept. Luckily, he had a solid system that didn't have a freaking wire, and an easy to understand, usable controller unlike anything else prior. Unfortunately, Mark isn't a creative guy in that way so he let his greed get in the way of making what had already come before. Meta Horizons was and sitll is a bust. It's just shitty roblux with a really solid avatar system. I bet Mark knows it.
Mark please make it better. It's just.. so bad. It can be awesome. So awesome.
These failures in product forefront from major companies have left games like Beat Saber, a Rhythm game where you hit blocks to generic songs unless you understand above average web ux and modding to add ones you like, or Pavlov, a super clunky shooter game that lets a rushed first build ruin an entire games visuals and performance. The space right now is one of e-waste. People buy a cool futuristic thing, play it for like 100 hours, and then get rid of it on Facebook or leave it in a room collecting dust. Worse case, they vomit because for some reason motion blur experiences are allowed to be published on platforms next to games that actually work and play well muddying the space. Everyone is too focused on over-creating bs, or pooping out products to make something fantastic. Palmer Lucky popped in, created something sick, and then went to go make money selling high-end sims and military equipment because that's what you do when you want to experiment with wacky shit.
Point is, the barrier to entry for all modern games is Quake. It was the first commercial full-3D game, it literally gives you the source code. It looks solid, and has probably the best use of a soundtrack in gaming still, We all have the same blueprint, but everyone seems to be stuck on DOOM.
Quake is great. Quake 1 is great. Go play Quake 1. Don't bother with the rest... just play 1. They invented and then failed the formula for all modern games, but 1 is the greatest game of all time.
I am building something that will change the game for VR, maybe it'll take a few months for it to come out but it'll be a changer.
"What has lead to where we are now and the feeling you have before you to lead anew is what is giving way to the future." This is what is in me. Big words.
I do not want to show off anything as of right now. It'll be great, but the point of this post was to talk about why you won't be seeing anymore of DEAD and what I will be doing instead.
None of this is to say I will fully ever abandon any of my projects. I do not think I am capable (blame my "parents"), but I do have to move on.... to something sick, or at least very interesting.
So what has AR have to do with any of this? AR is in the same situation as VR. Nobody understands that we all just watched Pokemon GO rise and crumble. Microsoft and Mojang couldn't even make 3D blocks fun. The most fun thing to do on your phone shouldn't be to scroll. Nobody cares about the videos, it's all about the scroll and noise satisfaction. That's why a game like Pokemon GO works so well, Pokemon has very little to do with it.
I do not care to deal with AR right now, but for years I have had the same ideas for it and despite my lack of push in the space there is still nothing better than just opening tinder and swiping. Maybe 2048.
let me know what you think george.c.r.hennen@gmail.com @georgehennen on x.
Map Addition
Added a odd challenge map I made in 2 hours called "destroy" based off the idea of needing to destroy wood. I was going to call it wood.
This update is also one to clarify that I fixed a bunch of stuff in the last 3 months but have not been on top of making announcements or keeping track of everything I did due to personal life situations.
What's Next?
Normally, this would be the "introduction" of the post followed by a list of changes. Though there has been many changes, that list is not the focus of this post.
(you can read a decent amount of the changes at the bottom of the post)
Almost every month I try to inform you all of what is new with the game. This month I decided to spend my time polishing what was there for future improvements, but mainly additions.
With polish comes tough choices, and one of those choices was to reset every leaderboard currently in the game. Why? The game is meant to be a fun, arcade shooter to play with your friends, or as a highscore killer. It always has had this vision aside from the core idea of "make a game that supports controllers". To let this idea come to light, I decided to update the game to be entirely score based rather than based how many enemies you killed. It has lead to an overall more quality experience and I hope you find this to be true.
Below is every level that is/was in the game and who the top players were over the last 4 years. With this is also a video from myself thanking and naming the top players for each level. It's about 10 minutes long.
Infinite Levels
Round Based Levels
So what's next?
The next update, Novembers Update, will be a bunch of map overhauls and obviously: more polish. -Enemies: New, and Morphed Enemies. -Items: Lots and Lots of new items, powerups, etc. -New Music: Jesus dude, we need more/better music. -More Focus on the Splitscreen, and the improvements that need to come. -Lighting
The Normal Monthly Update Stuff
I spent all a bunch of time agonizing over the sandbox game I showed a bit ago. Development is Hell sometimes. This game helps me focus on something far easier to deal with, the problem is that this game is sometimes also it's own development Hell and I end up being annoyed at how messy some aspects of the project is due to it's age, and my original lack of caring to organize anything. At least it is fun to improve this game, and it's not like anything is counting on whatever outcome I come up with considering it is released, and out (technically).
Most of the month was spent upgrading this game, and as you read above: the leaderboards were reset.
I really do not have more to elaborate on than just to say "I did it to make this game better".
I paid good money for DEAD+/MAP PACK DLC I have completely removed Round Based Levels for now, this will come back. Everything is free. For those of you who bought the map pack/dead+ please note that content will be reintroduced specifically for those players and that the price will go to $5 (and be worth $5) instead of being $1. It is still $1, anyone can take advantage of that right now as I plan to leave that up. The DLC description has been updated to reflect this post and my feelings. This change/improvement will happen by January of 2025.
If there are any specifics you would like to see out of DEAD+ when it comes back, let me know. I have, for 4 years, been open to feedback of any kind and many people message me about this game every month. It's really hard to bother me.
Some of the Changes and Improvements *SCORE is now entirely score based. All scores have been reset for the infinite round base, it will not happen again. *Singleplayer now displays ammo, hp, and score differently. *Colored Blockade visuals have been fixed. *Optimized some achievements to not be being called every second. *Bombers speed towards you visual has been changed *You are no longer able to fire or use a weapon while n the pause menu (i just never tried) *The time no longer ticks up when you are "paused" *The hitbox of enemies is now different to feel more responsive. *The door block buy code has been optimized down to 10 lines instead of like... 100 copy/pasted nonsense. *Optimized shooting to be more optimized (less lines of code doing the same things) *Re-added screenshake, will be changed later. *Updated Box Expanded to have less visual issues. I will revisit this map to redo its flow. *Updated Box to have less problems. I will potentially revisit this map to re make it. *The color of wood has changed. *The Absorber not being in the game means I removed the achievement. It was barely an achievement, but it was one that you could earn. *I changed some of the skin colored heads. Anyone other than the whitest white guy is hard to make not "hard to look at" for pixel art. I've kept these 6 variations in the game for years and do not plan to remove them, the challenge of keeping the color of the skin of a pixel art character to be visually pleasing is fun. There are 50 variations and tones of every main "type" of skin color. White guy 1 wont be the same as white guy 2, etc. The 6 I chose a while ago were basically the main 6 types of people from super white to the darkest black, I felt these 6 were a pretty solid representation of the generality of people. Your skin color is chosen at random as God intended. The challenge for me is to make sure it isn't impossible to play as your skin type. I mention any of this because I changed the body sprite once again. I wanted it to be more visible and my hope is it will make the darkest skin type easier to look at as before it was sort of a blur of dark orange and grey. (everyone in the universe is a shade of orange btw, nobody is "black" or "white") *There are now 10 skins for the "skincolor" variable. *Besides wood, various ground objects like "brick" and "mud/dirt" sprites were changed. *The Hedge map has had a minor art overhaul. *changed bomber size. *so much more.... i mean, just play it. the game has been overhauled haha.
Thank you for reading, if you thought this was a decent enough read please react to the post.
I have no idea what I am doing.
NEW MAP, CHANGES, AND THE FUTURE | August 2024
INDTRODUCTION I decided to update the game how I used to this month. This resulted in a few errors so I will probably not do that again. Errors like "Levels going to the wrong levels" after rearranging the main menu was not the goal lol. Overall, I think the game feels nicer to play. It's a more "well-done" game now. My work over the last year has definitely paid off. ..so this is everything new, fixed, or changed this month.
At the end of the change list is a bit more to read for those interested in the development of the game.
NEW MAP Grand Hall Compressed was added by accident haha. This is a great take on the make "Grand Hall", it is a new Horde level for people who own the Map Pack.
NEW STUFF AND CHANGES LIST * Starting with Quad, every map has been updated to fix spawning issues. * Fixed the Depth of various objects not complying with Flood Depth. * Slime have been fixed, (you know what I mean) * Changed the visual effect for blood over buy stations. * The Cursor is now green. * Added Mouse Assist for fun. Also changes the mouse back to white when off (on by default) * Fixed an issue with "Auto Aim" was not being saved. * The mouse now is at the angle of your aim. Not that this was overlooked, it just looks better now. * Hedge has had it's secret achievement fixed. * Big Bois now have a death body. (Oversight) * Flood speeds have been changed. Both Horde and Round based modes have better speed progression. * Removed the stupid puzzle from Introdux because it was obnoxious. * Changed the Absorber Noise. * "Grand Hall" Map has had slight alterations. * Fixed a spawn issue with Bombers that kills FPS. * Potentially fixed an issue with over-spawning of Bombers which also killed FPS. * Changed Money Colors. * Changed the Drops of ALL enemies. * Fixed Hedge scores not uploading! * Fixed enemy-kill border for outside of the map on every level. * Added a new Horde map that will also be a round map. It's just Grand Hall, but changed up because I was testing it to fix some stuff while fixing all maps for various reasons and thought it would be more fun if it was smaller. This is a DEAD+ map like all future maps will be. DEAD+ is $1 as it has been. Someone told me it was a good idea to change it to $5 because it will make it look "more credible". * Updated the way music is done. * The level menu has been rearranged to better suit the majority of players who probably like Horde mode more than Round levels. I also did this because the round based levels aren't even really done and I was tired of being taunted by the fact that I've had these levels out for 8 months and I couldn't get much done with them. * Added "Stats" to the bottom of the options/esc menu. * Changed "off" options color. * Optimized the "Bomber" enemy a bit. * Added a small art detail to the "Bomber" enemy where when they get close to instant-kill you they get "lower". * Bombers now speed up to fuck up your shit. * Potentially fixed shotguns interacting with explosions. * Blue Flood Health has been altered to not be 1 shot kills with base level weapons. * Removed the "Box" black border (looks cleaner ngl). * Slater: Fixed the Blockade from crashing your game. * Slater: Wrote the story for Slater and the basis for subsequent levels. * Changed the coloring of some enemies. * Fixed some exploits with Grand Hall (you sneaky sneaks). * Added some hedges to Box. * It is now more obvious what you need to do on Hedge. * Fixed a ease-of-use issue when using a controller to buy items. * The hitbox of "Health" is now bigger to easily buy-and-go. * Fixed "Lava" over-hurting enemies and causing lag holds.
Why I do any of this I make this game for the challenge. I think it is fun to work on. I believe in the community, however small, and I like making the game for those people.
Personal I hope y'all are alright, I know I sure ain't.
DEADs Future I have tried for a very long time to get other people on the project to help me with things like music, or advanced programming concepts I simply do not understand/do not have time to understand. This effort has just not worked out in my favor. I have a friend of mine who helps occasionally but he, as I, do not have the time.
I may try and fix performance issues with the game by removing features like "co-op" by changing co-op to all be on one screen, removing it all-together, or having it be a separate but equal build similar to how there is a "Bedrock" and "Java" version of Minecraft. I may also make a standalone camera that is just better in singleplayer and keep the poopmess that is the co-op camera for co-op.
I am actively disappointed in the round based mode of the game. I may remove the mode for a month at some point when I get the chance and re-do every level. I think I have mentioned this before. This would also come with a revamp to how the round-based mode is done, and new music. The music part of getting someone to do it is such a painful experience as a lot of "musicians" are using a.i., are sad about a.i. and therefor lazy because they think it'll take their job (but that thinking will make it take the job), or they want to charge me 1000 dollars per track (I cannot afford that). Hopefully, one day, I will meet another musician that will do the tracks for a reasonable price. I am unsure why people think I have 1000 dollars. I would use FMA, or even find a licensed track I can buy but I prefer music made for this game rather than random music made for no reason.
Recently I have been playing Quake. I have never played Quake before because when I first was learning about the series when I was younger the only way to play was in a poor state, and over time I didn't care to play it. In 2020 a ?remake? was put out on Steam, so I've been playing that with the recent Quake-Con sale that happened. It is a bit inspiring. Why I mention this is because I, for a long time, have been trying to think of ways to make the round based levels stand out in their puzzle design but the only puzzle games I've ever really enjoyed were Mario, and LittleBigPlanet. Two Side-Scroller games that have puzzles that do not exactly apply to a top-down game. The way that puzzles are done in Quake are very cool. Doom is terrible btw, just throwing that out there again, sucky mf game. Duke Nukem is better (another game i've been playing and being inspired by).
I am wondering how to get the community more involved in the game. I want more discussions to take place in the Steam Discussions tab. No idea how prompt that.
Map Pack Rename and what even am I doing with it. This Month, I renamed DEAD+ to "Map Pack" on the Steam Store pages DLC section. The reason I did this is now unknown because I did it pretty early in the month with no write-up on why, and then a bunch of personal life stuff happened so... yeah. It's renamed for no known reason. Let me know how you feel about it.
I am thinking I may go further and either remove it and making all levels free, or having all Horde Levels Free, while removing the round based levels until I can remaster them with the new format I want to do and having the DLC be buying the round based mode for 5 dollars. (Obviously everyone who already bought DEAD+/Map Pack would not be charged as it would be under the same DLC)
Thank you for reading, if you thought this was a decent enough read please react to the post.
I have no idea what I am doing :)
JULY 2024 UPDATE
JULY
introduction Hello, sorry for the lack of full updates recently.
The Slater Map has been added in a test phase. You must have DEAD+. This is the first round based map added to the game for DEAD+. It represents what round based maps will go towards and be replaced by. It is not complete, do not expect complete for another month (life + gigastructure). If anyone has a theme idea for the map let me know, I am thinking lone farmer.
Additional New Stuff and Changes * I fixed the weird animation bug with enemy legs. * Hedge has had visual bugs fixed. * Hedge Weapon Upgrade area has been modified. * Hedge Flood and Bomber Spawns have been modified. * Studio intensive lag has now been fixed. There are thousands of spike traps and none of them were being disabled out of range. * Studio Space Suits on Flood were not proper. This has been fixed. * Finally fixed the main menu mouse being hidden. This was not fixed both from laziness, but primarily it made sense to me to have it hide behind the images. I should have changed this sooner. * Fixed the inability to click the big level images on the main menu for DEAD+. * Fixed the inability to click the individual level images for DEAD+ (Dumb) * Fixed the wrong mouse displaying under DEAD+ menus. (Ugh) * Fixed Dead+ Levels under "Horde" going to an Empty Room when clicking he big button. * Horde Levels have been rearranged to better suit an "order" to levels. * Opera and OperaGX is still evil. I urge you not to download these softwares onto your computer. A browser based on the idea that it is "for gamers" shouldn't be a sell you buy. It's just RGB. * Levels in the round based mode now require you to actually unlock them. * Slater Map for those who own DEAD+. It is the first round-based map. It is a prototype.
DEADs Future Again, the levels that are coming are coming slow due to my new schedule, and my focus on gigastructure. DEAD, as continued to be promised, will continue to live on so... do not worry.
I still have no word on new music for this game. I want to get more Quake 1999 type music in the game.
I have had 3 random people, with 1 promising person, message me about doing more with this game in the last month.. so that's nice.
The overhaul of the round based levels will come. I think it will be neat to do but it will literally change how all of the current round based levels work. It will be cool, but new.
Gigastructure For 5 years I've been working on the idea of GIGASTRUCTURE. Conceptually, it has always been on my mind. With various prototypes, I, and others I recruit towards the project are working towards a final mvp to be pushed as an Alpha to grow on Steam, and eventually Xbox, PSX, and Phone devices.
A new few new screenshots can be seen below.
Depending on when you read this, there should be an additional announcement of a Steam Playtest access application. I strongly want to note that it is not a game yet, it is "open application, break said application, tell me what you hate about said application in the discussions, close said application". I am opinion fishing to make sure the game is nice and fun to be clear.
To clarify the plan for launch: This is pre-alpha play-testing. Once the Alpha MVP is met, there will be a publish to Steam by my birthday. From launch, we will be going from Alpha in EA for about a year, and then developing with a schedule.
From End of June to End of July, there have been minimally 21 pushes on Github for various features, visuals, and fixes to make sure the game feels nice.
The more I type the word GIGASTRUCTURE the more 50/50 I am on the name, the problem lies within what it represents and how accurate the word is.
Personally I tried DOOM 1 and DOOM 2 recently after years of not. These games are incredibly easy, and low-key boring/cringey. I always loved the core idea of DOOM, but it's really nothing. Quake is better. Duke Nukem is far better than DOOM could ever be. You do need to acknowledge the "first" in DOOM, but it's still not great.
Steam Please give the post a like so it will show up somewhere.
If anyone out there knows #GameMaker (the thing this is made in) and is a fan of this game and wants to work on stuff with me, hmu.
Screenshot 1
6/28/2024 June Update
INTRODUCTION My life has been wild the last month, but you do not care about that so here is some stuff I did rq:
NEW STUFF AND CHANGES (Fun note, this list is basically what is added in it's order) *Github said 300+ so, I probably did other stuff. *The Main menu background has been changed once again, but I think my monitor is dimming so I dont think I actually know if it looks good anymore. *I added a new secret achievement that took less than 2 minutes to add. *I've changed the main menu lobby and quit button color *The DEAD+ levels for horde had bad images due to an oversight, it is now fixed. *GameMaker is terrible in terms of support, Opera is evil and was malware (if not still is). Anyways, they messed up my animations so maybe it's fixed maybe it's not but GameMaker is going downhill.
NOTES I have no idea why the studio level is so slow. I blame the engine. I haven't changed it in years and it's all of a sudden the slowest map.
FUTURE PLAN UPDATE if you have been reading these for a while, gigastructure, my sandbox survival game that I have been dealing with delays for years is finally at a place where it will come out on Steam. The plan is to roll things out slowly, as it from 0, to keep the game updates going, and to let people play while we make it because we will be doing some dramatic things I think will be dope. I think there also might be potential for a multiplayer addition to this game later this year, or early next year once we have a few months of gigastructure out... or we need a break.
The levels that are coming are coming slow due to my new schedule, and my focus on gigastructure. DEAD, as continued to be promised, will continue to live on so... do not worry.
I still have no word on new music. L.
The overhaul of the round based levels will come.
Anyways, have a great day.
Please give the post a like so it will show up somewhere.
If anyone out there knows #GameMaker (the thing this is made in) and is a fan of this game and wants to work on stuff with me, hmu.
Here is a crappy image that hints at how to do the newest achievement
5/26/2024 Ash Update
INTRODUCTION I changed the level ASH to look kinda cool, and fixed some other stuff over a long period. I have not been with it lately in terms of having time to mess with this project, or really drive to do anything. It's been busy.
CHANGES a few changes, fixes, and additions to the game that you will notice: (Fun note, this list is basically what is added in it's order) *removed round based scoring in infinite mode... some of it. It looks cool sometimes so I left the coolness? Maybe it's just a mess, let me know. *fixed enemies not spawning, or too many/fix enemies spawning in infinite mode *removed line of code that changes the music (because it stops all sounds) from the controller option. *door buys now display around the closest character *some other small fixes i forgot. *I changed some things with the 3D positioning to speed up performance, notibly 1 variable, and a removable of a line of code. *I then sped up the machine gun fire speed. *The Ash Level has been updated to resemble Ash instead of Snow. *A bullet bug has been fixed, thank you "dr*gs_good" for the bug report. *You now auto-reload on infinite levels. Seemed to make sense. *Test level is available for those with a mouse as you must click it. It is for testing for myself only. *The FPS counter was removed as it was a debug thing.
FUTURE PLANS Game is still going to have more fixes, changes, etc. minimally for this year, so don't be upset. I am currently trying to find someone to do the round based music as the guy who originally made the music for the infinite based modes I am not in contact with anymore.
There will be more levels coming out. I have a fun idea for one that is using lighting, and another using Spikes as they are underutilized in the entire game. The lighting map focused map will come with what I will describe next.
I want to vastly improve the round based levels. I only started messing with them in december (yes 6 months ago), and actually focused on improving them like 3 months ago. I've been very busy. What I want to do is something similar to cod zombies where the a.i. takes apart a wall. This has a lot of potential to be expanded greatly.
I feel that the infinite mode I have made is good enough as it is. I originally made it in 2020/2019.
There will be a focus on other games. I haven't made a new public game in a while despite making a few prototypes (fighting game, various survival games, virtual board games, etc.). I would probably focus on this more if it effected more people. Additionally, Valve has made a few things clear to me so I am sort of forced to work on other projects.
Anyways, have a great day.
Please give the post a like so it will show up somewhere.
If anyone out there knows GameMaker (the thing this is made in) and is a fan of this game and wants to work on stuff with me, hmu.
April 2024
CHANGES a few changes, fixes, and additions to the game that you will notice: (Fun note, this list is basically what is added in it's order) *Controller switching fix confirmed to work properly (going from keyboard to controller without interruption). *The Main menu has been altered to better fit future levels. There are now sub-pages for each category of game-mode. These are DEAD+ levels, like I said there willl be a lot of them so I needed room. It will be a thing with value. I will say that I think it has value, I update this game all of the time. *Along with the redo of the main menu, (hopefully the final one until more modes are added), the leaderboard has been updated to look better, as well as show more names. Soon it will be scroll-able. *The Shotgun was given a different visual for it's animations. This will have future changes as well as all of the other weapons and sprites. *The Camera was slightly altered to be better, I still need to redo it completely but... it's better. *You can no longer control all 4 player dolls with your keyboard/mouse. Nobody should have been able to to begin with but someone might have been abusing this so... they can't now lol. *The player model is now a different size, and so is everything else. *This is 1000 changes says github, so far anyway. *I added the ability to change you volume at some point.
These are some of the more obvious changes, there are a few others. I did majority of this in February, recently I have been feeling very burnt out from this. Not that I will be stopping, I just have a lot going on. I keep this game as a scheduled thing I do just to make sure it does get touched.
give the post a like?
new menu
new menu has been added along with some other fixes. have a great friday.
in april there will be a lot of changes including overhauling a few of the maps, and changing how the game is played in some instances. I want to make the game 100x more fun than it is. Horde mode is sitll a lot more fun to play. Round bases is basically a proof of concept with a few levels.
So a sum: a new menu has been added, and a bunch of changes are happening in april that will be dope.
