Devlog #1: Trees, Plants, and More

Welcome to my first game development log. In this series of logs I’m going to break down my work on a month-to-month basis showing you my methods and progress on my beloved game, Zombie Jack.

What is Zombie Jack?

First off, you might be asking what is Zombie Jack? It’s a co-op couch-party game for you and all your friends where you must fight the undead with whatever you can find. Sporting goods, chairs, broom, whatever you can find. Pick it up and start swinging. Why? Because the best games are the ones you share with friends (and have zombies).

While the game is 3D, the camera only movies from left-to-right on a rail (more on this in future logs). Here you can see a basic mud-map used to position the first couple of assets.

Pine Trees

I started this month off by creating some 3D assets for the first level beginning with the pine trees. Rigged with bones and animated in blender, this tree sways gently in the breeze adding a bit of motion and life to the background. This single model can be reused and scaled randomly to add a bit of variety.

Notice the change in design from the original 2013 concept versions. This change is to better suit the current style of the game.

Tall Grass

I wanted to implement some obstacles as well as dress up the levels a little and one thing that came to mind was tall grass. Tall grass you can squish! When players run through it they will be slowed, which I believe will make for some interesting navigational decisions when trying to avoid enemies.

Modelled and animated in blender, painted in Krita, and then imported into Unity. There I finished it all up with a simple grass script that lets you squash the plant when you run through it as well as apply a slow to the player.

Picket Fence

Next I needed some boundary assets. The fencing around Jack’s house was the next to come. I thoroughly enjoy painting wood-grains. I don’t know why, I just do.

That’s it for this devlog. Thanks so much for reading. If you want to stay up-to-date with my progress you can subscribe to the newsletter below. Also feel free to drop a comment. Thanks again! Have a good one.

CinnamonToastKen Plays BBQ DAD

This was surprising! As I was hunting around the internets for funnies and cat videos, I some how stumbled accross a video of a Ludum Dare game I made many-a-year ago. Cinnamon Toast Ken plays the original version of BBQ DAD. Even though this was uploaded back in 2014, it was great seeing many Tubers in the comment section ‘lol’ing.

Back Online!

It’s alive! IT’S… ALIVE! … and so quiet too. I guess that old hard drive really was on its last legs. Probably should have known. Whoops.

As some of you know, my projects hard drive failed a short while ago and I lost a lot of my design files, thanks to Windows Backup and Restore for doing an amazing job of backing up every hour as requested. *He says sarcastically*. Seriously, how can it be that broken? My last successful backup was in May. MAY! No notifications or no pop-ups to suggest otherwise. As far as I was concerned everything was backed-up safely, but noooo, Windows just had to go and be a jerk.

At the end of the day, I recovered 99% of my work from cloud storage, emails, and sheer willpower. What I did lose I can recreate. Thank goodness for BitBucket! They kept Zombie Jack company until I had a hard drive up and running again to download onto. Now, back to work!