Corpse Crew Alpha Version 0.4A (Want your input)

[Major_Boobage]

How you gonna sell your game? are you signed up with some publisher?

A while ago he said that he would use steamplatform.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

How you gonna sell your game? are you signed up with some publisher?

I'm not worried about it. A good game will sell itself and nowadays the best ones market themselves, too. I am just concentrating on making sure it's the game I always wanted to write in this genre.

I always wanted to write the ultimate Wizardry/EOB/M&M style RPG and I always wanted to write a really good survival horror game. If I finish both in the same year I will be very happy. I don't really care about the money, I'd rather focus my energies on making it a really good game with the right mechanics and atmosphere.

 

[Andhaira]

Well Cleve if you are really serious about releasing Grimoire this year you really need to update your website with screenshots from the latest version.
The earliest you do the earlier the buzz about it and that will mean more sales.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Yeah, and the Codex should get free copies cause we've been such devoted fans. We never stopped talking about it even when others thought it was vaporware!

... or raise it myself and slowly augment it as it grows until it is a kick-ass cyborg?

Okay actually that probably won't be in the game ...

Put it in as a cybernegro reference. :D

 

[Knightrider]

So, here you have it, douchebag Cleve impersonator! Make your point or fuck off. At least post screenshots or GTFO. I refuse to believe the real Cleve would be such a little bitch.

Look for hidden text on the bottom of Grimoire splash page.

Not enough proof. That shitty and laughable website has not been online for long. Plus, having seem the original grimoire page on google cache, the one that was an actual website with game information and screenshots, I find it hard to believe that Cleve standards would have deteriorated so much.

Also, the "golden child" was a mockery created by an old local. Why would the real Cleve use it on his website?

Heads up everyone, this is a troll. My spider senses are tingling. I suspected it last time, but this time is for sure. If you doubt it, just wait a few months for confirmation. This guy is hanging himself with his own rope. He is going "beyond plausible" too much on me.

 

[Knightrider]

There's actually an old alpha of Grimoire floating around the web. Ironically enough, it's mostly complete. Cleve is just never happy with it, so he ends up rewriting the code every year because of his OCD.

I'm assuming this project will meet the same fate.

This was leaked in 1997, almost a decade before this fake Cleve popped up out of nowhere, regularly posting on the place the real Cleve despised the most. Yup, the real Cleve always refused posting here.

The real Cleve also didn't mind posting screenshots on his website, game description and everything else. Why announce a game on an website if nobody knows anything about it? Either Cleve is a retard counting on the population of GD as his sole consumer base, or he doesn't have no game to show, because he is a fake.

That whole website reads as a huge pun, and yet you fools see it as something the real Cleve would pull off. Idjits.

This "oh, you will dish the graphics I bought for 200 bucks and I can't stand it!" is too much. The real Cleve would never be such a sad and whiny bitch. Never.

 

[Wyrmlord]

I will not believe a single word you are saying, until you reveal your other three troll alts.

 

[wrathofdog]

I will not believe a single word you are saying.

Fixed

 

[MisterStone]

Can't wait to see how this is all going to turn out, regardless of what happens.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

Cleve, you are using the unity engine?

 

[Jeff Graw]

Ok, here goes, some zombie game brainstorming:

No one plays Co-op L4D anymore because it's boring and everyone knows exactly where to go, what to do. If you want to make a good Co-op experience that has staying power you'll need some amount of randomness.

Some kind of geomod-like wear and tear, both for environments and enemies, would be cool. Having the building you're in take damage the more the zombies attack it would both discourage camping as well as slowly increase the intensity throughout the night. In L4D zombies die when you blow a limb off, but why not have those zombies still come after you? Even headless zombies could wander around trying aimlessly to attack you. You could do something similar with the survivors: When one takes a certain amount of damage there's a chance one of his limbs becomes infected and needs to be amputated. That survivor then has to live with the disability.

You have a big focus on barricading, why not a similar focus on finding weapons? Make it so that a variety of everyday items can be used as melee weapons with various effects. Hammers, 2x4s, limbs, chainsaws, chairs, wrenches, baseball bats, etc. Limited ammo and weapon decay can be applied so the survivors are always looking for new things to be used.

In terms of health, a lot of shooters nowadays use regenerating health, but what if you went in the opposite direction? For example, after a survivor loses a certain amount of health they start to slowly die, and they'll need to get patched up quickly or that's it. If this happens during a zombie attack and you have to heal that survivor while holding back the zombies things might get intense.

That's all for now, I'll post more later.

 

[Ion Flux]

I'm guessing this is Chefe metatrolling. If so, it's pretty good.

Edit: Actually, no. Make that the most amazing trolling I have ever seen.

 

[Trash]

Honestly I think you're pretty much on a roll here Cleve. You mentioned a siren going off at nightfall in one of your earlier threads. Keep that in, it's guaranteed to be one of the most intense shit in your pants part of any game yet.

Randomising items might go a long way. When players really have to scavenge and look for high end loot it keeps them on their toes. Also let players pick their own way to try and survive. Running, camping on a roof, barricading a building. Let them all be viable, but all incredible difficult.

Please don't go for the recharging health thing. Let players scrounge desperately for med packs, food and other small items to add a few much needed health points.

Mostly however, KISS (keep it simple stupid). The core concept is great, don't go spoiling it by adding feature after feature. Good luck!

 

[Darth Roxor]

Please don't go for the recharging health thing. Let players scrounge desperately for med packs, food and other small items to add a few much needed health points.

He already said he wants to implement the 'limb health' system from Dark Corners of the Earth.

 

[Kingston]

Randomisation is always cool. A few simple scenarios could be spiced up with a few random elements to create a lot of gameplay.

An example: You're hiding in a farmhouse. It's safe enough to keep you alive for five days, if you spread resources carefully. So you will eventually need to get to a safer area. You reckon your chances of making it to that safer place by foot are slim, but it's by no means impossible. You also know (via e.g. a radio transmission) that a heavily armed truck of survivors will pass your farmhouse. The truck is due in three days. Do you wait it out three days, or do you take your chances on foot? What if the truck doesn't arrive on the third day - are the survivors just delayed or have they died? Do you run now, or do you figure that since you've waited three days, you might aswell wait one more? Another day passes - no sign. Do you leg it now, with your very limited resources, or do you wait, knowing that you're gonna die if the truck doesn't arrive? I think it could add a lot of tension and a good sense of dread when your hope is slipping away. Perhaps the truck will arrive at the last minute in a totally epic fashion, giving you a huge sigh of relief. Maybe it doesn't and you die.

Playing through in Iron Man mode would be hella fun if these situations were possible.

 

[DefJam101]

Sorry to crash the thread, but I'd like to provide a link to the best L4D mod yet. It changes the game from a bullshit casual fragfest into a very tense, very difficult fight for survival:

http://www.l4dmods.com/index.php?op...al-mod-for-left-4-dead&catid=2:news&Itemid=82


Features of this mod:

- No HUD. All HUD features are removed except for the health bar (at the bottom of the screen). You can't tell how many shots you have left in your gun. Unfortunately, there is no clip reload system implemented as of yet.

- No crosshair. You have to aim with a red laser sight on your gun, and this only works out to about 30 meters.

- No flashlight.

- No bullshit weapon/supply spawns. You start out with a pistol and nothing else. You must find all of your supplies while traveling through the campaign. As you have no flashlight, this can be difficult. More importantly:

- No ammo spawns. Once your gun is out of ammo, it's gone, and you need to find a new one.

- No ingame music or musical queues. You'd be surprised how much this improves atmosphere, especially when you are alone and have no HUD.

- Slower player movement speed and slower zombie movement speed. Makes levels take much longer to travel, and makes running by all of the zombies impossible.

- More idle zombies. In vanilla L4D, zombies aren't a threat until a horde hits you. Here, you can expect to find 30-40 zombies in every major area in the level. As you are much slower, have less supplies, and cannot aim as well, this forces you to take your time, but be efficient.

- Only headshots kill zombies. That's right. No more spray n' pray—if you do, you're fucked. This completely changes the pace of the game, and meshes well with the 'limited supplies' element, too.

- Zombie hits from the back do double damage, and a 'KO' hit to the back instakills you instead. This is fucking deadly, considering your slow movement speed and how hard it is to check siderooms with no flashlight.



Very fun mod. Much more fun than L4D. A 3-hour play-through of Dead Air in this mod is a blast, especially on Advanced (solo, good fucking luck) or Expert (with a partner, good fucking luck, again).

Another thing; this mod is great for playing with friends. Because resources are so limited, you'll have to share guns & kits with each other. Even with two people, one of you will be using a basic pistol most of the time. Melee has been seriously nerfed, too, so corner camping won't work for very long.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Cleve, you are using the unity engine?

Awesomely good guess. I could have been talking about any of fifty engines out there.

Just as a comparison :

Sauerbraten : Worked on ragdolls for three weeks in Sauerbraten using their new codebase and finally got shite ragdolls working after hardcoding joints for about two hours for my zombie model. Looks hideous naf.

Unity 3D : Imported my .X models with "Import skeletons" checked and set ragdoll controllers in about five minutes. Beautiful, awesome ragdolls with zombies doing backflips when shot in chest and rolling along ground from inertia. So good.

Sauerbraten : After 12-14 man hours got Newton physics roughly working. Never did get mouse physics control working to manipulate objects other than crude lift and carry with code hack into viewport.

Unity 3D : Full Penumbra style physics control of environment in 30 minutes using their sample code. Pull open/close/lock door with latch was working in maybe twenty minutes.

I bought everything for U3D Pro, IPhone license, Wii kit, everything. I'm hoping they come up with an XBox360 kit during the coming year.

Unity3D looks so good on older rancid graphics cards it seems like a miracle. Water and other shaders look so awesome and run faster than Penumbra on my machine. On a half decent graphics card it looks incredible. Not the Cry engine but the Cry engine isn't really the Cry engine on most machines anyway. I saw the Cry engine running on an older card and it looked like Wolfenstein 3D.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

- No ingame music or musical queues. You'd be surprised how much this improves atmosphere, especially when you are alone and have no HUD.

This is the big thing in survival horror - avoid thematic construction because it takes the player out of the immersion and makes the game a dramatic contrivance. It works in a whimsical, fairy tale like Grimoire but survival horror is the absolute opposite.

I think it is okay to have industrial tech ambience, however. Eerie tones and long nightmarish chords played at a very low volume add to the atmosphere. Also you're right about the HUD, too. It breaks the illusion. Penumbra is much better in this regard. Minimalism is really good in the interface for survival horror.

 

[Satori (original)]

Beautiful, awesome ragdolls with zombies doing backflips when shot in chest and rolling along ground from inertia. So good

Uh, you do know that getting shot actually has no visible effect on the individual? Any movement the victim makes after being shot is due to shock or pain i.e. is self propogated and zombies being invulnerable to pain means that they have no obvious reaction to getting shot.

Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Randomisation is always cool. A few simple scenarios could be spiced up with a few random elements to create a lot of gameplay.

The thing I'd really like to do, of course, is total randomization and actually build the city from the ground up laying out the roads, buildings and terrains.

I know the logic of it but it is very ambitious. I've written map makers in the past and I know about the algorithms to block out sections and assemble things in context.

The problem is once you get into this you get into random contents and random placement of items and random structure of furniture and layouts inside of buildings. Any way you slice it there is no way that is ever going to look as good as something laid out and designed by hand, especially for interiors.

Randomization of story, events, plot incidents and other occurrences is less ambitious and far more practical to integrate with maps for cities and interiors that will be fixed. It might still be possible randomize the contents of drawers, lockers, chests, cabinets, etc. in the game.

One random incident I was thinking of is once in a while the army would fly over and drop a thermobaric fuel bomb on a parachute, survivors be damned. I could see to it the player was going to get a warning and have to get out before this happened.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

In terms of health, a lot of shooters nowadays use regenerating health, but what if you went in the opposite direction? For example, after a survivor loses a certain amount of health they start to slowly die, and they'll need to get patched up quickly or that's it. If this happens during a zombie attack and you have to heal that survivor while holding back the zombies things might get intense.

This is what is really good in Call of Cthulu - some medical conditions go from bad to worse, which makes sense and feels realistic. No magical healing.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

<a href="http://sourceforge.net/community/cca09/nominate/?project_name=Vault OS&project_url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/vaultos/">Nominate Cleve's Vault OS for "Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything" at sourceforge</a>

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Mostly however, KISS (keep it simple stupid). The core concept is great, don't go spoiling it by adding feature after feature. Good luck!

If I stay away from having to write one million scripts and a million data editors like in Grimoire and just let the player create the emergent gameplay from the physics and a few triggered events I might actually finish this game inside of ten years this time. By December would be really good. I am actually thinking of chaining my feature creep demons up altogether by just refusing to hardcode anything other than mechanics and let things just happen in the game. I really like the idea of letting most of the game come from emergence.

For example, a fire escape. How do you get up there and gain access to the roof? You could pile up boxes and jump, pull the ladder down with a stick, throw something at the ladder to get it to drop down, etc. ... I would just code the rules and let the player create the game for themselves in 95% of the situations.

 

[Satori (original)]

Beautiful, awesome ragdolls with zombies doing backflips when shot in chest and rolling along ground from inertia. So good

Uh, you do know that getting shot actually has no visible effect on the individual? Any movement the victim makes after being shot is due to shock or pain i.e. is self propogated and zombies being invulnerable to pain means that they have no obvious reaction to getting shot.

Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.

Proof - http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=310_1212367354

 

[Kingston]

I think it is okay to have industrial tech ambience, however. Eerie tones and long nightmarish chords played at a very low volume add to the atmosphere.

You might want to look into Atmosphere for some really kickass ambient sounds. It has 4 gigs of the weirdest sounds around, and you can play around with them a lot. It's designed so that you can combine different sounds within the program itself giving you basically limitless potential. It costs 300 USD, but they don't charge any additional fees for licensing if you are making music (i.e. not samples). From the FAQ:

Are there any legal limitations to how I can use Atmosphere?
The main limitation is that you are not allowed to use it to make a sample library or another kind of sample-based product. You are also restricted from giving away or posting online any loops or samples created using Atmosphere. However, you are able to use Atmosphere in all musical recording applications without paying any additional licenses.

Do I need to obtain a special license to use Atmosphere on a commercial project?
No, the lifetime license fee to use the samples is covered in the purchase price of the instrument. You can use it on as many of your own projects as you like and we hope that you make some hits with it!

Can I use Atmosphere in multimedia or game music projects?
Yes, this is OK unless you want to put samples created with Atmosphere directly encoded into the game. That requires an additional license.

The interface of the program is very easy to use, so you won't be in menu hell.

If you want to go all out you can buy the bigger brother Omnisphere, which has a lot more features and over 40 gigs of samples!

I couldn't find any Atmosphere examples on youtube except for this song. I think it's the "Ancient Evil" ambient pad that is playing in the background. There's a slight break at 0:27 where you can clearly hear that eerie rubbery echo. There is a big presentationon Omnisphere, though.

Edit: The website has some demos actually. At the bottom are some of the samples played on their own. None of them are really from the creepy side, though.