WIP FPS: NecroPixels 2.0

[ Moved from: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/129360-WIP-FPS-NecroPixels-2.0?p=874418#post874418 ]

Hello, Unity Community!

I have previously created a game for the GEE Wooglie contest, called NecroPixels. You can play it here
To my amazement, the game won third place in the contest!

To celebrate, I have decided to completely overhaul NecroPixels in a project I am calling NecroPixels 2.0. It will use Photon Cloud for networking and Player.IO for user authentication, item store, etc. It will also feature much improved gameplay!

Check out this video to see an example of gameplay:

So, questions? Comments? What do you guys think?

 

BUMP
Added Pickaxe weapon, will post vids tomorrow

 

Looks good to me! The graphics style is charming. I was wondering though: why is the player character so small? Feels like he/she's one foot tall.

 

That's because I had a different character model before, which was much shorter. I have since changed the character model to a taller more Minecraft-style character, but I haven't changed the player character to use the new model yet. The level is also a little bit out of proportion, so I plan to shrink the level a bit.

 

Looks like the original Doom style . Nice work

 

As promised, here are some more gameplay vids. First one is of the Pickaxe weapon, second is of the new Kablamo zombie

 

Very retro feel : )
One small thing though, might delay the dying a bit when using the pickaxe? Looks a bit strange when they are dying as soon as the pickaxe starts to swing : p

 

Sure thing. I just got the delay working (for both the pickaxe and zombie attacks), and I'll post a video up ASAP

 

As promised

 

Hm... I appear to have run into a problem with Photon Cloud. Yesterday, for some reason a room never got cleaned up after I disconnected, and today it's still there. Anybody know anything about this?

EDIT: Hooray for customer service! Apparently tomorrow ExitGames will provide me with a tool to view and close rooms for my game.

 

Been messing around and fixing bugs in Multiplayer. Here's a little preview screenshot

 

ARGH! Anybody know why players never seem to get timed out in Photon Cloud? I thought in the SDK it was 30 seconds by default, but I've got a room that's been around for about a day. Kind of annoying, especially if this is going to continue happening... I even made sure to call PhotonNetwork.Disconnect in OnApplicationQuit()

 

Added coin drops and a winner display! Pics below

 

I'd play it if it's a full bowser window web player. I suppose maybe a standalone would be okay.

 

I'm not sure OnApplicationQuit() is called on webBrowser version, might be worth checking this..

Good work, I love the contrast between old schol pixels and more modern lightinc and fire effects

 

Yes, it will be a browser MMO. I want to reach the largest audience, and internet/F2P seems the way to go

From the Unity Docs:
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.OnApplicationQuit.html

So it will be called if the webpage is closed, unless something else happens such as the browser crashes (in that case, I'm out of luck)

Thanks for the comment, khan. That's something I'm really trying to achieve with this project, the simplicity and innocence of 8-bit mixed with dramatic and creepy lighting...

 

Felt like working on the Item Store today. Preview pic below

 

Some quick updates: in the Item store, users can browse weapons and outfits, purchase them (only if they have enough Gems [the unit of currency] and have not already purchased the item), and the items are stored in an array on the PlayerObject in PlayerIO. Users can also click on the item slots to equip items to that slot (only un-equipped items are shown), and equipment is, again, stored on the PlayerObject and saved. I have just added a feature to show which items are equipped to the equipment slots (untested), and the next step is to load up weapons and outfits during the game, and then a 'Purchase Gems' feature

 

Looking nice! Gun firing sound is a bit odd, but the game is charming.
Keep it up!

 

Alright, some updates on the item store.
I have finished the functionality for purchasing items and equipping them. Equipped items are shown in three item slots ( Weapon system is like L4D, so you can only carry primary and secondary weapons ), and so far clothing also works (both in Item Store preview and in-game)

 

Alright! Small update: I polished some of the Item Store functionality, and added the following:
- Outfits now contribute to your overall Armor Class, which maxes out at 100 (at 100 AC you take 50% damage)
- Equipped weapons are now loaded in-game
- All items show their stats and required level

EDIT: Changed the system. At Max AC, you take 20% of the total damage, otherwise increased AC wouldn't be even marginally noticeable due to the relatively small damage scale of the zombies.. I also reduced the Max AC cap down to 20 for the same reason.

 

haha, this game looks familiar (Doom,wolvenstein,..) and still is refreshing !
I like it !

 

Thanks

More updates: added a Mailbox feature, so you can send and receive private messages similar to e-mail.

 

Alright, added a few gameplay features. First of all, the Pistol now has limited ammo. If you run out of ammo, you get a nice reload animation and ammo is replenished (technically, you have infinite ammo, but have to deal with how long it takes to reload). I also added an ammo display to show how much is left, and you can force a reload with the 'R' key. I have also added an SMG weapon... Oh how much fun it is to run around shooting up crowds of zombies with a machine gun

I also added a nice weapon-bob animation to the weapon system, which I think adds a fair amount of polish which was sorely needed
And finally, I have decided to abandon NES-style noises, since they are so difficult to make sound right. Instead, I am going to basically downsample real sound effects, to get them to sound like they came from a SNES or Genesis.

 

Yay, just added Achievement system to NecroPixels. It even saves your achievements if you're logged in

 

I don't understand why your using minecraft characters?

 

Mainly because I don't have a better idea for 3D 8-bit characters. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that it's very hard to copyright a vaguely humanoid-shaped collection of six boxes (head, torso, arms, legs), because it's so generic.

 

There is also a sneaking suspicion that notch is rich and could keep dragging you through court until you go broke but seriously you cant use there characters.

 

OK, well on that note...
Anybody have a better idea for the character??

 

Yay, just added voice chat to NecroPixels, a surprisingly easy feature to code now that we have the Microphone class.
Basically, I record little one-second segments and send those as byte arrays over RPC (each byte corresponds to a sample). I also have a function which returns the highest magnitude of any sample in the clip, so if it's silent I won't send it over the network. Additionally, I'm recording at a really low 2000 Hz, which significantly reduces my data and is still fairly clear. Yay!

 

Working on a new Prison level, check out this preview


Plus, I've been playing around with the character's proportions and such, trying to get away from that "Minecraft" look which could land me in some legal trouble. Aside from the skin (which is just a placeholder), how's it looking?

 

Yay, just added two new weapons to NecroPixels: A minigun and "The Caretaker".
The minigun, of course, is pretty much a standard minigun.
The Caretaker, on the other hand, isn't really a weapon per se, but it allows you to heal teammates by 20 HP each second.

 

Made a few new updates to NecroPixels.
First, added two new weapons: Katana and Landmines.
Secondly, I significantly updated the gore. See the images below. I decided to use the decal system included with the Bootcamp demo, and with a bit of fiddling, it works great! (does anybody know why the decal system was calling System.GC.Collect at the end of CreateObjectDecal??? Was really slowing things down!)

 

Sorry for not posting in a while. I've been really busy lately and haven't had much time for NecroPixels development.
Anyway, HOOOLLEEE SHEEEP! Did anybody else see that C3 Voice Chat for Unity is FREE?? I love my voice chat solution (or, rather, the fact that I came up with one), but I think I'm going to scrap it and replace it with C3 YEEAAH!! (sorry for my enthusiasm)

 

wow this is awesome, and I like the new character better then the first one..will you be putting accecories like hats..haha

 

Accessories would be a great addition, character customization is really an important note for game developers, even if your not looking at your character during game play, people like it all the same. Adding things like watches, hats, clothing, and other items of the sort will bring more people to your game.

 

I like this skinny character. but change the iconic minecraft face skin. maybe add some slight differentiation to the head shape too.

 

Off of what Charlie said, I think the head looks ok, but to add something would be a mouth, make it a bit more long and less boxy, add the mouth, then you can make emotions or do dialog better.

 

Wow, really great input, thank you!
I think hats and other accessories are a great idea, and probably not too much work from a technical viewpoint.
RingOfStorms, I like that idea. I might add in some facial features (mouth, eyes, eyebrows, noses, etc), and I was already thinking about playing around with context dialogue, kind of like in Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead (your character makes noises when hit, in need of assistance, found some ammo or medkits, the list goes on). I know there was an article about lip-synching in one of the Game Programming Gems books, so I might take a look at that and figure out a way to animate the face for the context dialogue. Would definitely add some depth to it, as well as separate the character further from that Minecraft look.

Also, I think I'm going to start a sort of informal poll here (the forum apparently doesn't let you do a poll on a thread AFTER already creating the thread). The question is, do you guys think I should continue with the pixel-art look, or possibly add some bevels and round corners and go after a cartoony-blocky look like in Brick Force?

 

Well I think for the icons they should not be pixelated, in gameplay - I would have to see the other way to decide. Maybe you should try both and put some screens up and show us the differences.

 

OK. After quite a while of fiddling with the art trying to get a more cartoon look, my efforts have compounded the fact that I am a terrible artist.
So, Unity community, I turn to you for help! I just need some somewhat skilled modelers and painters, but I can't pay anything (because, in all honesty, I'm pretty much broke), but I could list you in the credits (and, having admin privileges, I can give you as many in-game credits as you want when the game is released)

 

Hit me up skype: leonardarmstead

 

OK, just to clear something up: Skype does NOT work on my machine, for some reason... I have no idea why, but until I figure it out we'll have to communicate over PM and email. Sorry about that.

In other news, small update: Been working on a lip sync system. Some preliminary results (works OK, but a little shaky/vibraty)

 

hmmm if you find out how to get skype working hmu

 

I've had similar problems with Photon Cloud not closing out rooms. Then I got the Unity Master Sever to work and it works better than Photon and it's free too!

 

Functionally, I think Photon actually works better than Unity's networking. And, lately, it hasn't been acting up as much. I think they updated the server code or something. I'm not that concerned about it anymore. I think as long as my code makes sure to call PhotonNetwork.Disconnect in OnApplicationQuit (which I did verify with plenty of debugging, it was in fact being called every time, even in the browser), I should be fine.

EDIT: Not that I think you should switch or anything. If you prefer Unity Networking, go for it!

 

An idea for your Character's look is to keep the Thin Legs and Thin Arms but have a old school Voxelized Head

 

@MysticWorks: Possibly, but... I'm still seriously debating going with a more cartoony/blocky look, closer to Brick-Force and Ninja PvP (and for that, I need an artist because I suck at art XD)

Update on the lip syncing: I followed the article in Game Programming Gems 4 and came up with this (surprisingly not that different from what I was already doing)

 

Awesome stuff! I agree about moving away from "Minecraft-ish" and more to "Doom-ish", though. If that topic is still relevant...

 

Yeah, I think I'm definitely going to try and re-brand NecroPixels. The new name: Necro-City Online. Messed around with Photoshop to produce this:

EDIT: Weird, the image didn't show up. Here it is again: