Hi Diogo,
nice to meet you again here...
Well, what did the WoSP project become - Superheroes fighting hordes of Zombies?
Not exactly, although the player characters in my game are very special and - like the mysterious Mr.X said in a note the PCs found in the intro-level: "...You all are very unique and high potential characters..."
In the current version of the "Zombie-En4Cers" project you play with up to 4 characters that find themselves in an odd place, not remembering what has happened. They have to find their way out of the basement levels of a strange building, and guess what will happen to them, what horrors and dangers will lie ahead...[:'(]
I don't want to spoil the story here (although I do not know if I'll ever reach the state to make this a freeware or demo-version, at least not with over 1200 sounds taken from other games. But maybe I find some good freeware sounds for the FX-stuff and present the speeches and other voices through speech-bubbles - we'll see).
I tell you about a few features of the game engine - so that you can get an idea of what the game experience will be like:
- you move in turns with PCs and Creatures having action points, life points etc. Every character and opponent rolls for initiative based on his/her abilities
- The characters have the standard abilities like in AD&D (Int, Str, Wis, Dex, Con, Char) and derived sub-abilities like willpower, agility and so on...)
- agility determines the amount of APs, Str may give damage bonus in HTH-combat, Dex adds to to-hit with firearms etc.
- moving on the map is done by "walking" or "running", where the latter increases fatigue (only in case the PC is threatened by enemies -> all action taken in combat produce fatigue, even firing or reloading weapons - The characters nerves are strained to the maximum in such situations - will the reloading be successful, will the the opponent be destroyed before he strikes back...?)
- PCs automatically gain skills due to the actions they perform, e.g. opening a small box with an electronic lock adds the skill "Opening normal electronic lock", firing with a pistol and hitting an opponent automatically adds the "weapon skill pistol". For a successful skill roll you get XPs, if you manage to raise the skill for a level, you may get e.g. a combat bonus, reduce fatigue produced by the appropriate action, need less AP e.g. for opening a locked box.
- The characters raise levels due to gaining XP (act in combat, using skills, move under threatening conditions)
- The characters can find health packs (small/medium/large), ammunition ,weapons, adrenalin doses etc.
- The map is in isometric perspective, the standard map having 30x30 cells in a level, with up to 5 levels above ground (that gives the possibility to even have tower buildings - there could be more than 5 levels above ground, but there is a certain limit due to the playability. We played with 4 players on a fully developed standard map with an area of 30x30x6 cells for roundabout 8 hours... but during development I tested a large map of 100x100x3 cells - this is indeed very, very large.
- Every cell that is comparable to the cells in "UFO" (but in that game an atomic cell contained a complete creature or wall) is further scaled into 3 smaller cells, which allows creatures to knee or lie behind obstacles for cover or to move through small wholes in the wall or even climb upon a table. In addition this allows for very detailed lines of sight and lines of fire.
- The engine handles daytime with 4 stages: night, dusk&dawn, cloudy sky, full sunlight. These different illumination levels of the different day-times have impact on gameplay: in darkness you get penalties for to hit, reloading, moving, the visibility at full sun light is unlimited, but at night the characters can only see up to 5 cells (=5 meter) if not having a - flashlight - yes, you've heard it right- a flashlight [8D]
- The engine raytraces every small cell (up to this version only simple ray trace up to the first obstacle - later we will have reflection of raytraces for better/more natural illumination. At this state we already have flickering lights and different illumination that add to the atmosphere
- The engine supports full visibility, including terrain memory => the PCs can remember the terrain they saw some time ago (just like in TOS) for a certain amount of time, then the "fog of war" slowly [:'(] reclaims the terrain and the map grows dark [;)]...
((Of course there are modifications possible to memorizing the terrain due to abilities/sub-abilities like Intelligence, Willpower, ... and skills like "sixth-sense"...
..now stopping this and referring to the small pic I've attached to this message.
The small screenshot-arrangement I attached has just picked three small scenes from different larger screenshots - the game has a fixed resolution of 1024x768 with 24/32 - bit depth. Due to the conversion to jpg-format this pic has some artifacts in it - the original screenshot in bmp-format is of better quality...
In the pic you can see: different illumination, transparent glass (and yes, shooting through the glass has glass fragmentation effects, in the pic you can see broken glass lying on the ground as well as blood stains and other remains being produced during combat...
In one scene, if you take a close look, you can see a zombie standing in a lower floor being visible through the glassy floor tile. If you take a more closer look you can even see the shadow that is cast by Leo on the transparent, glassy floor tile...
Well, enough now, I have to fight some more zombies now to make a few more screenshots for you [;)]
Marga
