I'm starting this thread to talk about the latest Rocking Pocket game, Zombies: City of the Dead (working title, formely Zombies 4-Ever). Right now the game is 2 weeks in development so it has a long ways to go. Right now I am in the process of integrating the Bullet physics engine for player collision with the world. I also have full scene shadow mapping implemented with flashlights so it really feels like Left 4 Dead on your phone. There was a lot of buzz about Carmack showing off Rage on the iPhone and while it has impressive textures, that's all it is. Lighting is prebaked using radiosity and no shaders were used (as he said it works fine on a 2G). With my engine I'm doing full dynamic lighting and shadowing of characters and the world itself. In the final image you can see shadows from the walls, so it's not just limited to characters! The engine is running at a pretty smooth frame rate with 8 zombies animated and a simple level. Please disregard the background textures and level because it's just to test while I integrate the physics engine. I'll keep posting more info as the game develops.
Looks to be shaping up really well. I know it's only a working title, but I'd ditch that name asap. Made me think your game was a spin-off from a certain zombie themed dual-stick shooter
Wow, for a one man team in 2 weeks, that is incredible, however, I agree with iFanzine that the name is too similar to Alive 4-ever.
I have 21 original iPhone games on the store now, all by myself. Once you've got an engine to work with and can get past the technical hurdles it's easy. Helps to re-use code too. I've developed this 3D engine on the PC for 15 years and ported it to the iPhone over the past year. Maybe someone here will come up with a better name for it. Figure it needs to have 'zombie' in the title though to make it easy to find in iTunes.
Maybe something to do with shadows or darkness? I think Zombies 24/7 has too many numbers in it, especially if I do a sequel.
I love the idea! I just wish the graphics weren't so pixelized. Maybe get with a great 3D artist to revamp the art!
ah don't start that. I'm working on the game engine and still too early to work on art. Also the pics were taken on an iPhone 4 yet the game is running at 320x480 so the pixels were doubled.
Sheesh, can I have a couple of you on my team? We've got so many projects going that our lone designer/programmer is losing his mind.
I was doing some mock ups for the icon and title and for now, it's Zombies : City of the Dead. I passed on Dawn of the Zombie, Zombie Nightmare, Zombie Stalker, Zombie Island Too much like Dawn of the Dead I was able to get Bullet integrated with a character controller so now I can walk around and collide with any 3D level I can think of. Today I'm working on getting prebaked lighting into the engine so I can use lightmaps for ambient lighting and radiosity in the levels.
how easy was it to use bullet with opengl. I did my own 3D physics engine which isn't perfect but it's fast enough. I'll probably use off the shelf physics for my next game.
Well it only took a couple of days to get Bullet compiling and feed it the vertices from my level. Seems to run fairly fast without any tweeking. Not having any problems with falling out of the world like I've had with some physics engines.
I don't blame you. I remember buying a copy of Power Render back in the days - 1998? And prior to that you had a 2d engine but the name escapes me. It was all good stuff. Great to see you in the mobile sector
