Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (MARCH 2022 AND ANNOUNCEMENT!)

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Captain J
 
 
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Captain J »

Dude27th wrote:2) The Bazooka has a long delay because of the jokingly massive recoil of the weapon (After all you are just a kid in the game firing a Bazooka) so it's meant to be like that, regardless is still somewhat less delay that in the original game.
Wait, yeah. Both pop and bazooka projectiles do have explosion radius i mentioned earlier. However, it's not really effective than i expected them to be, especially the bazooka. The delay before firing is still slow and the projectile always goes forward no matter how you aim with it. Yeah, the protagonists are little kids but at least they're perceptive enough to know what the trigger is and stronger enough to pull it, no?

So about bazooka's projectile, it actually penetrates enemies. That's good, but i would like to eviscerate a large circle of zombies by firing on the floor, though. You know, with its own explosive radius?

Also here are more suggestions:

- If your ammunition is somehow nearly full and already rescued all the neighbors... Then that's it. You can now exit the level but you're still able to kill the endlessly spawning mooks like zombies, which giving you the score. It's not entirely consequential and exploitable with the scoring. So i'm wondering if the game could summon chainsaw dudes to prevent such exploit if you wait long enough, just like what you did to disappearing navigator.

- When you die, you're technically, not completely dead because of the life system. If you lose all the lives, the Game Over screen appears. And then... I can't skip nor exit the game like regular days of retro gaming. You always have to load the last save by opening the option or call an autosave. I'm pretty sure Contra Doom also had such system and it was stellar.

And speaking of autosave, the live system is not really meaningful anymore because of that. It's Wolfenstein 3D all over again.

- The level exit animation is not really appealing: All i see is pitch black void and all. Just a little animated HUD cutscene after entering the door would be fabulous.

Thanks so much for the reply and taking my feedback. Looking forward to its completion!
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Dude27th
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Dude27th »

Captain J wrote:...The delay before firing is still slow and the projectile always goes forward no matter how you aim with it. Yeah, the protagonists are little kids but at least they're perceptive enough to know what the trigger is and stronger enough to pull it, no?
Well I can make the Bazooka to have less Delay but it's supossed to be a slow weapon considering the damage that inflicts to large and regular enemies.
Captain J wrote: So about bazooka's projectile, it actually penetrates enemies. That's good, but i would like to eviscerate a large circle of zombies by firing on the floor, though. You know, with its own explosive radius?
The bazooka always fires forward because there are special enemies that interact with this projectile fixed altitude , like the Evill Dolls for example which they crouch when a Bazooka projectile is nearby (and I think that underwater monsters as well are inmune to it while underwater for the same reason)
If I would unlock that then I would have to make those and posibbly other enemies more stupid to not beign able to react to to it.

And the explosion radius wasn't part of the original game but I included it to give more of an impact to the projectile.

I recommend you to use the Soda if you want to deal with groups of zombies.
Just keep in mind that it will skip a monster if it's directly in front of you.

Captain J wrote: Also here are more suggestions:

- If your ammunition is somehow nearly full and already rescued all the neighbors... Then that's it. You can now exit the level but you're still able to kill the endlessly spawning mooks like zombies, which giving you the score. It's not entirely consequential and exploitable with the scoring. So i'm wondering if the game could summon chainsaw dudes to prevent such exploit if you wait long enough, just like what you did to disappearing navigator.
The radar doesn't dissapear based on a timer it dissapears when you enter the exit door. And the Chainsaw spawnings would be redundant and pretty much unfair considering that you are still going to be waisting ammo with the regular spawning enemies if you want to explore the levels.
Captain J wrote: - When you die, you're technically, not completely dead because of the life system. If you lose all the lives, the Game Over screen appears. And then... I can't skip nor exit the game like regular days of retro gaming. You always have to load the last save by opening the option or call an autosave. I'm pretty sure Contra Doom also had such system and it was stellar.
Could it work better if I deactivate BUDDHA when lifes are 0 so the game recognizes it as truly dead ?
Captain J wrote: And speaking of autosave, the live system is not really meaningful anymore because of that. It's Wolfenstein 3D all over again.
As far as I know Graf Zahl stated these two things:
- Saving is an option which can't be disabled as he didn't liked that
- Autosaving is a CVAR which cannot be modified by ACS

So I can't do too much about it
Captain J wrote: - The level exit animation is not really appealing: All i see is pitch black void and all. Just a little animated HUD cutscene after entering the door would be fabulous.
I'll look into that!
Captain J wrote: Thanks so much for the reply and taking my feedback. Looking forward to its completion!
Friendly discussion is always welcomed! ^^
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Captain J »

Could it work better if I deactivate BUDDHA when lifes are 0 so the game recognizes it as truly dead ?
Hmm... I guess? Maybe you can remove Buddha flag if you have 0 lives and only one hit point. And put Buddha flag back if the health is fully restored. I'm not really familiar with the Buddha script, but hope it's helpful.
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Dude27th
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Dude27th »

Captain J wrote:
Could it work better if I deactivate BUDDHA when lifes are 0 so the game recognizes it as truly dead ?
Hmm... I guess? Maybe you can remove Buddha flag if you have 0 lives and only one hit point. And put Buddha flag back if the health is fully restored. I'm not really familiar with the Buddha script, but hope it's helpful.
Yeah ! That's the idea!
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Dude27th
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Dude27th »

I just added a "Legacy Edition" for the folks who are stuck with older versions of GZDoom for any reason!
I've been there myself for several years so I can understand that and mostly the only things that needed an updated Decorate library where cosmetic so there's no much difference ^^
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by ryoshenron »

I hope this supports co-op multiplayer? Or will upon completion? Considering the original game was known for its couch co-op play, I feel it's an absolute necessity for this mod. The readme files that came with the demo didn't seem to mention anything about multiplayer support.
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Dude27th
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Dude27th »

ryoshenron wrote:I hope this supports co-op multiplayer? Or will upon completion? Considering the original game was known for its couch co-op play, I feel it's an absolute necessity for this mod. The readme files that came with the demo didn't seem to mention anything about multiplayer support.
It will upon completion ! At the moment it crashes as far as I know but I haven't had the chance to test it out myself to know why it happens exactly
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Dude27th
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Dude27th »

(W.I.P.) "Day Of The Tentacle" screenshots!


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DoubleCakes
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by DoubleCakes »

It's great to finally get to play a bit of this! This is looking very good. I do have some worries about how the mechanics and flow of a top-down shooter will translate into an FPS, but everything seems to be fitting together quite nicely.
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Dude27th
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Dude27th »

DoubleCakes wrote:It's great to finally get to play a bit of this! This is looking very good. I do have some worries about how the mechanics and flow of a top-down shooter will translate into an FPS, but everything seems to be fitting together quite nicely.
Thank you! ^^
It's not that hard to translate actually , but you do have to take into account that ranges between monster spawns , survivors and the player are very important , also some actors react based on what the player is looking at so they wouldn't feel unfair. Or in some cases do something if the player is not directly looking at them.

For example the Tentacles in "Day Of The Tentacle" are set to spawn if the player is not looking at the spawn point . Principally because I wanted to add an ambush factor to them and because that they don't have spawn animations as well
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Dude27th
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Dude27th »

Captain J wrote:Wait, yeah. Both pop and bazooka projectiles do have explosion radius i mentioned earlier. However, it's not really effective than i expected them to be...
Damn , I actually found that there was an oversight with the fulldamage radius of the sodas xd.
They should be more efficient in the next update!


Also added Smokeanaut's gameplay to the front page! ^^
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Dude27th
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Dude27th »

Some latest footage ^^
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Captain J »

Ooohoh man i hardly can wait. Just add some extra rotations for the tentacles then we are all sticky-set!

EDIT: Those tentacles doesn't seem like a real threat like zombies are. In fact, they move quite slow! I imagine them torn to bits upon death and regenerate, literally making them take over the world. But it's your call! I don't mind if you take my suggestion or not. I'm just helping.
Last edited by Captain J on Mon May 18, 2020 2:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Dude27th
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Dude27th »

Captain J wrote:Ooohoh man i hardly can wait. Just add some extra rotations for the tentacles then we are all sticky-set!
I wasn't thinking to draw some sprites for their rotations because I'm not confident enough has to make pixel art from scratch but now that you mention it, it is weird that they only have a set of sprites facing in one direction and regardless some other enemies in the future will need some new sprites as well so I'll try to make them for a future demo ^^
Captain J wrote: EDIT: Those tentacles doesn't seem like a real threat like zombies are. In fact, they move quite slow! I imagine them torn to bits upon death and regenerate, literally making them take over the world.

Oh they behave differently but I got some suggestions as well in ModDB and I'll try to make them more challenging in the future c:
Captain J wrote:But it's your game!
I know that you mention this because I seem to not take in consideration how many things should change in comparison of the original game xd, but please understand that my goal with this project is to make a moreso faithful representation of ZAMN as a FPS.
Sure I could make the weapons more lethal, I could change the sounds, I could make some enemies scarier, I could make it bloodier, I could use remixed music, I could add more weapons, etc. etc. etc.
But I don't want to waste this project in representing how I would think it would be more cooler or more bombastic, I don't want a "Brutal Doom" kind of ZAMN neither I'm interested on making this mod as a regular Doom mod and I want this mod to bring the same joy that I had while I played Zombies Ate My Neighbors in my SNES back in the day.

I'm totally okay tho with people making their own versions of it or making add-ons and such changing what they want to change, but again I'll be focusing on keeping it as I think that ZAMN as a FPS could work (plus some neccesary fixes.)

So it's kinda funny the "But it's your game!" because if it where really my game then it wouldn't be Zombies Ate My Neighbors. :/
Spoiler:
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Re: Zombies Ate My Neighbors TC! (NEW DEMO RELEASED) 25/03/2

Post by Captain J »

Oh my... Look. Your TC, which is based on old SNES classic doesn't have to be forced with the improvement or the changes, especially from others suggesting like me. A lot of changes would ruin the nostalgia point. You simply can pick whatever you want and import it. Without the suggestions even, if the game is not problematic, it's fine as it is.

I actually misspoken my last bits as somewhat describing that it's your own game. I actually wanted to say "You're the Boss!" or just do what you want with your TC. I'm really, really sorry for the confusion. Of course i know this TC is entirely based on Zombies ate my Neighbors but with your professional mapping/coding/spriting etc. Again, sorry.
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