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Zombox

Discussion in 'Made With Unity' started by zombox, Oct 1, 2011.

  1. zombox

    zombox

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    Click here for the latest post (updated July 7, 2012)

    Hey guys,

    Been developing my game Zombox with Unity for a while. Aiming for a web/iOS release in the coming months.

    Zombox is an open-world destructible-environment post-apocalyptic zombie survival game...ie, quite a mouthful!

    I've got a devblog up by I figure it's a good idea to post progress here too!

    Here's my latest update video. I post regular update videos to my Youtube channel and you can browse through the old ones to see how far Zombox has come.

    Here are a couple of recent screens:



     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2012
  2. diddykonga

    diddykonga

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    Looks pretty fun, cant wait to see more :)
     
  3. hellraizerhhh

    hellraizerhhh

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    looks awesome man, your gameplay and core is basically locked in and you didnt get bogged down with making the "uber" graphics everyone focuses on first
     
  4. Blacklight

    Blacklight

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    Looks really cool!
     
  5. Duskling

    Duskling

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    Wow, nice job :D
     
  6. fallingbrickwork

    fallingbrickwork

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    Great job, it looks really great!

    Regards,
    Matt.
     
  7. hizral

    hizral

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    what language do you used? Javascript or C#??
     
  8. zombox

    zombox

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    Thanks guys!

    Hizral84: All Javascript.
     
  9. ChimpKing

    ChimpKing

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    Nov 24, 2010
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    Amazing Job!

    Just out of curiosity, how did you make that amazing lighting and spooky effect?
     
  10. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Looks like fun! Bookmarked!
     
  11. zombox

    zombox

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    The lightning is just a direct light with a script that causes it to flash every once in a while.

    Also there's a GUITexture vignette over the screen to add a bit of extra shadow.
     
  12. Mechanoxx

    Mechanoxx

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    I like it, Although it is kind of bloody for such a cartoony seeming game.
     
  13. TehWut

    TehWut

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    The game looks really good....

    but it seems a little too similar to the Boxhead series :p
     
  14. pixellegolas

    pixellegolas

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    I am liking it!
     
  15. zombox

    zombox

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    More updates to Zombox!



    Tinkered away on the AI and pathfinding this week. The A* algorithm runs in a coroutine now so paths can be calculated over multiples frames, lessoning the load of the CPU which works great on handheld devices.

    Also worked on other things like the rivers in the city environment. Objects and zombies can be pushed in.

    Here's a short clip of the water splashes.

    Here's a short clip of the weapon destruction system.

    Here's a short clip of the updated pathing algorithm in action. Updated zombie paths are shown in white
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2011
  16. Kellyrayj

    Kellyrayj

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    Very cool. I'm diggin it.
     
  17. KarelA

    KarelA

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    Dec 30, 2008
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    Hey T.

    I have a question for you. When you started to develop Zombox did you have everything planned ahead? Did you have a complete vision in your head about the game? Did you have any documentation with locked down features?

    Or did you started playing around with an idea and this beautiful fun rampage is just the result of an "inspiration on steroids"?
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2011
  18. zombox

    zombox

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    Hey gotmilk!

    I knew I wanted a sandbox zombie game with a scavenge system and a destructible environment.

    Everything else sort of just flowed out of that as I went along :)
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2011
  19. zoxmax1

    zoxmax1

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    i like it
     
  20. TheAll

    TheAll

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    I love it! Fun looking game. Keep it up! Have you thought about putting it up on other sites like indiedb?
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2011
  21. zombox

    zombox

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    It's up over there already :)
     
  22. TheAll

    TheAll

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    If you wouldn't mind giving me some pointers but how did you go about making the destructible environments?
     
  23. zombox

    zombox

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    Each object in the environment has a collider and a hit point value.

    Every time something hits the collider with enough force, some HP is subtracted. When the HP hits 0, the rigidbody on the object is turned from kinematic to non kinematic.

    Pretty simple :)
     
  24. frontakk

    frontakk

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    Very nice design.
    I love it!
     
  25. TheAll

    TheAll

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    Wow! That was pretty simple. Thanks for sharing.
     
  26. Bork

    Bork

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    This looks great. Looking forward to a playable version.

    Isn't having every block in the world as a rigidbody quite expensive?
     
  27. zombox

    zombox

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    Hey Bill,

    I apologize ahead of time for the long post, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to share some of what goes on under the hood in Zombox, for those interested

    The game uses a fairly complex pooling system I wrote to create the environment.

    Firstly, because everything in the game procedurally generated from a small set of prefabs, I can easily enable/disable anything that is not directly within the view frustum. Not just disable its renderer...but literally remove it completely, and use its gameobject to create something that *is* in screenspace. This means the total number of active rigidbody/static colliders in the game is limited to what's visible in screen space, because only a finite set of gameobjects are used to create everything. The entire city features over 350 buildings (each with many walls, props, etc....about 40,000 different "pieces" are required to create the whole city), many roads, rivers, etc...but all of that is generated using only 300 gameobjects, which are recycled constantly. This keeps the game running really fast and there are no load times in the huge sprawling environment once the initial city-generation load time is passed (and that initial load time only takes a few seconds).

    Secondly, the pooling system also manages the number of active non-kinematic rigidbodies, so that I can easily control the max number of rigidbodies in the game at any time. The downside is that the same small group of rigidbodies are recycled for new zombie/building/environment chunks that are generated, so as new chunks pop in (like when a wall is crumbled, or a zombie is killed), old chunks pop out. But generally this effect isn't that noticeable and doesn't detract from the gameplay.

    I think I've got about 30 rigidbodies in the building-debris-rigidbody pooling system, a dozen in the zombie-limb pooling system and a few more in the environment-debris pooling system. With all of those rigidbodies active and colliding, the game runs at about 20-30 fps on the iPhone 3GS, and 30+ fps on the iPhone 4.

    The following gif showing the environment pooling system in action. The white lines represent zombie paths, and the roofs are disabled so you can easily see all the objects necessary to build all the walls of each building.

     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2011
  28. Duskling

    Duskling

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    This looks amazing!

    Really really good work with this game, it looks like so much fun.
     
  29. ASchumacher

    ASchumacher

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    This is great. You have created a really neat system. Thanks for sharing. Lots of brainpower at work there.

    I agree with everyone else on this post: This looks like fun!
     
  30. twitchfactor

    twitchfactor

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    I'm curious, are you animating the zombies, main player and car? They have nice wobbles and I was wondering if you were carrying the load of a bunch of skinned/boned meshes or something else.
     
  31. zombox

    zombox

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    The car animation is procedural, but the zombies and main character are animated with keyframes, yes.

    The main character is just what you see...a bunch of animated cubes imported from an .fbx that was originally made in 3dsmax.

    The zombies are similar (animated and exported from 3dsmax), except that I run a script on startup which generates a skinned mesh containing all of them so that they're drawn in 1 draw call. I can change the total number of zombies that are generated, and the script will adapt, and I can also change the number of zombies per generated skinned mesh. So, I can do something like: tell it to generate 50 zombies, and make 5 skinned meshes each containing 10 zombies....so that all of the zombies would be drawn in 5 draw calls.

    There's a performance hit that comes with drawing them as a skinned mesh, but I've found (up to a certain threshold) that the performance hit from Unity having to calculate the skinned mesh is less than the performance hit from Unity having to batch all of their individual cubes out.
     
  32. bug5532

    bug5532

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    Wow, this looks amazing, nice work!
     
  33. mgrenier

    mgrenier

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    Wow ! Very impressive work ! Subscribe to your blog !
     
  34. zombox

    zombox

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    Character customizations have been added to Zombox. The main character can now be dressed in various clothes, including over 60 hats, shirts and pants. Each clothing item provides a unique bonus to the character's stats. Some items provide extra armor, some provide extra hit points, some increase speed, some increase the chances to land a critical hit, some increase attack and others regenerate health.

    The clothing items, like all items in the game, can be found throughout the world.

    Click here to watch a video of the clothing system in action!

     
    Last edited: Oct 15, 2011
  35. Blacklight

    Blacklight

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    Awesome, looks very professional.
     
  36. zombox

    zombox

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    More updates have been made to Zombox!

    -been working on building interiors...about half of the interior models are complete

    -controls added to allow the player to rotate the camera

    -doors must now be manually opened/closed



     
  37. Duskling

    Duskling

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    This game is going to be a big hit. Great job. really great job.
     
  38. Swearsoft

    Swearsoft

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    Awesome progress Tyson.
     
  39. Yippie

    Yippie

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    very good game idea :D good job pal!
     
  40. LucasDaltro

    LucasDaltro

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    Smell like success:D
    Awesome work
     
  41. bug5532

    bug5532

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    I still cant get over how awesome this is looking, one small thing I noticed though is you still have rain drops inside ;) once again looks great cant wait to play it :)
     
  42. zombox

    zombox

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    Good eye! I'll fix that in the next build :)
     
  43. Arowx

    Arowx

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    Wow cool looking game, I like how you've got it working on mobile, great work!
     
  44. CharlieSamways

    CharlieSamways

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    Game looks bloody amazing man, great work!
     
  45. karl_

    karl_

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    Looks very cool!
     
  46. VinnyG

    VinnyG

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    Looks very good I look forward to playing it :D
     
  47. zombox

    zombox

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    Did some more work on Zombox this week.

    -Worked further on modeling building interiors.



    -Got an object interaction system prototype working. When the player touches an object he/she can interact with, it begins to glow and a context-sensitive icon appears in the top right of the screen which can be pressed.

     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2011
  48. againsthelaw

    againsthelaw

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    Love the way you have made the look of the game. Can't wait to try it out.
     
  49. zombox

    zombox

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    This week in Zombox development I finished modeling the building interiors:



    I also finished getting all interior props ready and prepped for the destruction engine:



    I also implemented a day/night system and in-game clock:

     
  50. Priske415

    Priske415

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    This game looks so wonderful!!!!