uDG: Kill Dr. CotÈ

[JustinFic]

Hey all,

I'm looking for some feedback on "Kill Dr. Cote." You can download it here:

Kill Dr. Cote (http://www.justinfic.com/Kill%20Dr.%20Cote.dmg) (~1.4 MB)

Some basic instructions:
WASD or arrow keys to move
Aim with your mouse, click to fire
Right click / space to chuck grenade
1,2,3,4 keys to try out different guns :)
ESC resets the player score/lives.
P spawns a turret. Grenades get rid of them.

At this point, I'm looking mainly for:
-FPS on your machine. The FPS is on the bottom right, enemy count right above it. If it starts dropping, what's the enemy count? Also, you can keep hitting ESC to spawn tons of enemies behind the doors and cripple the game. Please do :)
-Your favorite and least favorite guns. Is there one gun that's way more useful than the others? Do you prefer the regular blaster (1) over any other gun?
- What wave can you make it to? (Wave is on bottom left for now.)
- Finally, notice on the carnage meter at the top right, after 5x there are a bunch of small divisions. Is it cooler to have it stay at 5x, or should it go to 10x in that small range?
- How many turrets can you dance around while still shooting enemies?

Also, any other comments regarding anything are encouraged and welcomed.

Thanks and have fun :)

[ThemsAllTook]

Holy CRAP this game is fun! I could hardly tear myself away from it to write a reply...

1. Runs decently well on my 1GHz PowerBook. Frame rate was usually between 50 and 60. I'm sure there's room for optimization, though... I pressed the escape key a whole bunch of times, and when the doors opened, my frame rate didn't drop below 50. So seems like all is OK there.

2. The guns are pretty well balanced. I found myself using the machine gun and the 3-way blaster most of the time, but the railgun and the standard blaster worked OK too.

3. I only played for about 10 minutes, but wave 12 was the highest I got to.

4. Don't know... What's the carnage meter for again?

5. Ooh, turrets! Forgot about them. I'll have to try again later.

Anyway, this game is looking fantastic. Keep up the good work!

Alex Diener

[phydeaux]

Cool! I got to ~ wave 13 or so. Without playing around with turrets or ESC I get about averaging 45 fps on my 1ghz tibook.

My favorite gun is definitely (3) the machinegun. Anything that craps out bullets like mad I can't help but like (see: Gunstar Heroes.) The regular blaster is way too slow to be useful. Possibly if it had a small area of effect damage or stun when it hit it might be better. It would be fun if the carnage meter was more than just a score multiplier and it allowed you to do some other stuff- I can't really think of anything though right now- the way you have it set up numerically I think is fine.

Though I suppose I have similar effects a lot and probably should know by know how to do it myself, I was wondering how you do the effect for the explosion- do you just use the same fire texture and just randomly move around the texture coordinates each frame?

Anyway, looks great, but definitely would like more weapons that spew bullets like it's their job (which, incidentally, it is. :) )

[skyhawk]

1) the most annoying thing was not being able to resize the window, and not having a 30-60 pixel buffer because I kep clicking outside the window. This was also a problem in MaFFia. fix it. It will increase your gameplay score.
2)on a 400MHz G4, I got a solid 30fps even in pretty insane conditions.
3) I prefer the machine gun and the laser gun, but I'm not entirely sure why the lase gun always hits the back of a giant group. least favorite is the regular blaster. the multishot gun should definitely be the default... of course upgrades to increase the number of shots it can fire would be cool too.
4) I sucked at the game because I kept clicking out of the window.
5) after playing for a little bit longer, it is VERY clear that the absolute best weapon is the grenade. I have taken out nearly entire levels with it. and I now personally the grenade with the machine gun (LET ME TURN THE SOUND OFF!)

keep up. Although I hope to see more variety in gameplay, this was a nice little time waster

[kelvin]

under normal play the game runs fine at 85Hz (my vblsync) on my Radeon7000. many turrets makes the game drop some and at 200 enemies with the escape key, they stop comming out and the game no longer advances.

[ellrx]

SMASH TVVVVVVVVVVV, YEAH-HHH..
uhm anyway very nice, i smashed them good...anyhow lots of fun i pushed the limit up to 374 enemies on screen, my fps was 68-71 at all times.
oh 1ghz, g4 emac, 10.2.8

[igame3d]

Wicked. ran well.
Shrink the shot size of the regular blast, its ugly at that size, with the odd angles. Little glowy balls would do the trick

Some slightly larger levels with an obstacle or two would greatly reduce the repetitive nature of playing, involving some duck and cover strategy here and there, as well is more places for zombies to poor out of.

Window resize would be nice, my mouse jumped out of the game, damn.

The Grenade rocks!

I assume the weapons will eventually be pick ups?

Will we see real zombies or will it stay pyramids?? I want zombies!!!

Good work!

[Nick]

That is the most fun I've ever had with my Mac. Stuck with 60 FPS solidly with a 1.33 gHz PowerBook G4 with the 64MB Radeon. Loved the machine gun. Rail gun was definitely my least enjoyed weapon. I think I got up to 400 something zombies with no drop in frame rate. The grenade is the most fun in the game. Even without real zombies the pyramids are hilarious at the same time. Simply having this geometric shape based war :). Can't say I had any trouble clicking outside of the window (I just held it down from start to end). Didn't play with many turrets (due to having 400 enemies to avoid at the same time) but they looked fun. I made it up to the 19th wave though. As far as the weapons, here's my list from favorite to least favorite:
1) Machine Gun
2) Trifire gun (?)
3) Blaster
4) Rail Gun

Ran it once more with some more, stressing conditions.
I threw in one turret and got 1372 enemies at once. The FPS dropped to about 26 and I lasted all of 10 seconds. :) Definitely humorous though.

One thing that might make stress testing quicker or easier is a simple menu or option that can set the starting zombie rate and turrent quantity so that, while playing, i don't have to worry about creating these things and can work on staying alive and watching the frame rate. Just a thought if it's not too hard to do.

New data:
Hit 2200 enemies. gun stopped firing. everything kept moving. got about 22 frames per second.

[codemattic]

love SmashTV/Robotron/Mutant Storm/Eugene Jarvis-type games - so Im having fun with KDrC. On My G4/400 Rage 128 - I get about 20-25 fps. I wish there was a warning before a door opened - but maybe Im being wimpy. "Total Carnage - I Love It."

[ERaZer]

Fun game!
My FPS was almost constant 30(on a g4 400)
The machinegun(3) owned. The 4 was too slow to be usable. So to rank them, in effectiveness:
3
2
1
4
Without changing gun or playing around with turrets, I got to wave 12.
Hmm, don't know about the carnage meter, was to busy trying to stay alive to look at it much :)
Didn't test the turrets.
Otherwise, the movement(of the player) feels a bit jerky and stiff.

Keep up the good work, this is a really cool game!

[Zwilnik]

Fun Stuff :)

It needs full screen though (that will solve the mouse out of window problems and this really isn't a window mode type game, unless the final zombie graphics are cards or tetris pieces ;) )

The weapons are a good spread if you're planning on limiting them in the final gameplay. But I'd increase the play area slightly (again, full screen will help this) as the lower powered weapons are too weak in such a tight space. The Railgun looked the best of the weapons, but I'd balance it so that it's particularly effective against a specific slow moving enemy that's almost (but not quite) invulnerable to the other weapons (that way it has a specific use).

Grenades rock, so definitely limit them ;) (the explosion effect for them works really well, so try and find ways of overusing it as much as possible)

With the game in windowed mode, the meters just blurred into nothingness as they were surrounded by the other data on my desktop and the action was too manic for me to be able to read them. I'd suggest fewer, more simple displays (use bars rather than numbers)

[JustinFic]

Thanks everyone for the input and praise! I appreciate it big time. I'll try to address as many suggestions as possible.

Answers to some common issues:

On the windowing, the game will mainly be in fullscreen (I'm with Zwilnik on the immersion issue) with an option to window. I plan on an auto-pause when you click outside the window, as in MaFFia. Because of the aiming method (directional as opposed to positional in MaFFia) I don't think having a buffer around the window would solve the problem. I'll test it out and see how it works though. For now it's windowed because it's easier to test (the few seconds of resolution switching each run drives me bonkers) and I want to make sure it plays nice with the desktop etc before I send it out.

On the railgun, there is a bug in the hit detection at low framerates. I'm digging around for it now. It's line based and not point based so it shouldn't be skipping any possible hits. For the railhaters, the railgun is meant to be one of the worst weapons for a multi-directional zombie assault. It's good for a ton of zombies bunched up, and will also be good for killing robots and Dr. CotÈ, which will have high armor and can take cover behind the zombie meat shields that other weapons can't penetrate as easily.

The machinegun has a similar bug where it fires far less bullets when the framerate drops. This is because right now the rate of fire is so fast that it basically fires one bullet every frame. So less FPS, less bullets. I'm on this one though :)


What's the carnage meter for again?

In the game the carnage meter will multiply any points you score. The multiplier is the number right by the meter. Whether it will grant additional bonuses as per phydeaux's suggestion is still up in the air.

Though I suppose I have similar effects a lot and probably should know by know how to do it myself, I was wondering how you do the effect for the explosion- do you just use the same fire texture and just randomly move around the texture coordinates each frame?

Anyway, looks great, but definitely would like more weapons that spew bullets like it's their job (which, incidentally, it is. )

Close. That inner fire sphere is rotated extremely fast (which I guess has the same effect as moving tex coords.)

And I should have a flamethrower ready by next weekend :)

many turrets makes the game drop some and at 200 enemies with the escape key, they stop comming out and the game no longer advances.

The game opens more doors when the number of enemies drops below 15. It's possible, if you have 15 turrets, to prevent any more zombies from spawning. This will be way different when the game is finished, and it's only in there now for testing purposes. In the game, each wave will have timed spawns, which can be sped up if you kill everything. You move to the next wave when you Kill Dr. CotÈ.

Some slightly larger levels with an obstacle or two would greatly reduce the repetitive nature of playing, involving some duck and cover strategy here and there, as well is more places for zombies to poor out of.

I'm definitely considering making the levels bigger... once you start adding turrets and dodging bullets the place does feel a little bit cramped. Walls and holes are on the list but they're low priority at the moment.

Also, Dr. CotÈ will be able to spawn zombies out of thin air. (The original testing code had the zombies teleport in like you do at random places instead of coming through the doors. It's much much harder :) )

I assume the weapons will eventually be pick ups?
Yup.

Will we see real zombies or will it stay pyramids?? I want zombies!!!
They'll be zombies, complete with blast-offable arms, legs, and heads. Bruce Campbell would be proud. I just need to bite the bullet and do some skeletal animation/keyframing stuff. Some people like the pyramid look too though, so I might leave it as an option (for style, and as a performance boost on slower machines.)

One thing that might make stress testing quicker or easier is a simple menu or option that can set the starting zombie rate and turrent quantity so that, while playing, i don't have to worry about creating these things and can work on staying alive and watching the frame rate. Just a thought if it's not too hard to do.


Difficulty levels are definitely on the list, with an "insane" option for stress testing/masochists.

I wish there was a warning before a door opened - but maybe Im being wimpy.

I agree, it's a little too cheap right now. I want to make a split second delay between when the door opens and when the zombies spill out. A warning is a little too much. With a delay, the player is still startled when the door opens but they have a finite chance in hell of getting out of it without getting mauled.

I'd suggest fewer, more simple displays (use bars rather than numbers)

I'll see what I can do for the test builds to make it easier. In the real game, all the numbers on the bottom will be gone, save (maybe) for FPS. The wave number will be prominent at the beginning of each wave and then make like a tree.

[funkboy]

Game's running even decently on my iBook 500, which is impressive.

Smash TV, I'm lovin' it. Can't wait to see it keep improving. It's just really hard to not get touched once by the enemies, though on my iMac G4 it probably is easier with a real mouse and keyboard.

[EvolPenguin]

well, i've just found a little strategy(stress test) in the beginning of the game. Use the 5th weapon, and get the enemies all in the middle, and just keep making mines. I surrounded the entire floor wiht like >200 mines. There is a limitation to the enemy's one mindedness charging at you. If they just killed themselves, there would be no way for me to build up that much. Also, it lagged the game down like crazy. I died because I moved too much with lag.

Alex

[EvolPenguin]

One more thing.

Are we supposed to see the title screen yet? I'm not getting it, but i see screenshots of it, and info about it on your blog. Is that just not put in yet?

Alex

[Hog]

-FPS on your machine.
usually 70 fps but for about 1200 enemies around 40 fps, 30 for 1700... (on a Dual GHz MDD G4)

-Your favorite and least favorite guns.
favorite: the railgun is neat but with the current key settings it's hard to switch back to the mg to shoot the single ones you've missed and gotten too close, so you might just aswell stay with the mg, and ofcourse the grenade. least favorite: mines (atleast how they are now)

- What wave can you make it to? (Wave is on bottom left for now.)
34

- Finally, notice on the carnage meter at the top right...
never drops below 5, so i don't see much sense in it. i also don't make much of the score...

- How many turrets can you dance around while still shooting enemies?
i'd say 3 is enough if you take the other enemies into account

[JustinFic]

The mines aren't really a weapon- that's what I get when I make a gun and don't put any parameters on it. The fifth gun will be the flamethrower soon. (Also, in the game you won't be able to switch on the fly- it'll be Contra-style: you only have one gun at a time and pickups can switch it for you.)

Mines I don't think will be a feasible weapon, as there will be an enemy that floats above ground (Dr. CotÈ will have either a jet platform that she zooms around on, or a miniature, personal UFO a la Dr. Wily.) It's possible to put some mines in- my first thoughts is that they'd have a slow rate of fire so you can't just spam the place with them, and they would have area of effect (mini grenades.) Floatingn enemies would still set them off but would receive reduced damage. Thoughts?

Are we supposed to see the title screen yet? I'm not getting it, but i see screenshots of it, and info about it on your blog. Is that just not put in yet?

It's in, but for testing I bypass the title state and go right to the game. I know it works, and it's an extra second or so I don't have to sit through per run.

There's more functionality to the title states now, so they'll probably be in the next build I put up along with some other stuff.

never drops below 5, so i don't see much sense in it. i also don't make much of the score...

Yeah, once you get the carnage meter up to 5 it's real easy to keep it pinned there. There was a point where the zombies took way more to kill (3-4 blaster shots, and you had to hold the mg on them for some time) and the carnage meter is still balanced to the zombie's old life. It ended up to be way more fun for the zombies to be about 1/4 as strong, and just have 4 times as many of them :)

It's a little trickier to balance now because you can constantly be killing stuff with any gun. Either it ends up getting pinned on 5 or it never leaves 0. I'm playing around with it though.

[skyhawk]

lvl 18... then they just jumped too far

[JustinFic]

lvl 18... then they just jumped too far

My personal best is wave 43 (switching between machinegun/railgun, and gratuitous grenade use.) It gets really ridiculous after 30 or so.

Haven't really sat down to a see-how-far-I-can-get game since I put the zombie delay in. They now wait .3 seconds after a door opens before spilling out. I took average human reaction time (source (http://www.gecdsb.on.ca/sub/projects/psl/senior/24/reaction.htm)) and halved it. :p

I'm toying with a different scheme for enemy speed at high waves- at a point they'll stop lunging with greater distance/velocity but will go through more lunges per second. The zombies can't change direction in mid-lunge, so more lunges means they're harder to dodge, but at least you won't get blasted by enemies from off-screen.

[EvolPenguin]

Man, those mines were fun :(. Anyway, my favorite weapon, machine gun, it's the best weapon for my style, which is run around the screen super fast and shoot guys. I like the 3 way shots manueverability. If the mouse is farther away, the shots are closer together, I like!
I got to about level... er, over 20, I dont remember how far.

Alex

[JustinFic]

Man, those mines were fun :(.

Heh, if I put some mines in they'll be way cooler than gun #5.

Initially I considered mines after seeing gun #5 in action but I'm not really big on strategic weapons. I never did understand the bio-sludge gun in Unreal/UT.

I'd tend to think mines would need to be offensive in nature (like the grenade launcher in Quake- so you'd still need to aim) and result in violent explosions. Possibly detonate on their own if nothing hits them after a second or two? All that without becoming too similar to the grenade. Thoughts on this?

[EvolPenguin]

no way, keep mines, they are awesome. You can run around laying mines everywhere and people explode, of course, they enemy breaks in pretty fast, but still, it's cool and adds a big of strategy. People would like that. How about they don't go out so fast though.

Alex

[JustinFic]

I think I've got a good compromise- good offense and strategy. They could be a combination of land mines and the satchel charges from the Myth series.

And they won't be the dinky little things that gun #5 squirts out:

(the explosion effect for [the grenade] works really well, so try and find ways of overusing it as much as possible)


:D

[Steven]

One thing that I didn't like was the weapon selection - you have to take your hand off of the arrow keys to switch weapons. This gets annoying when if you stop moving you die in about a quarter second ;)

Mouse scroll wheel or something?

[JustinFic]

One thing that I didn't like was the weapon selection - you have to take your hand off of the arrow keys to switch weapons. This gets annoying when if you stop moving you die in about a quarter second ;)

Mouse scroll wheel or something?

The way I'm figuring it now, you'll only have one gun at a time. Each life you start with the blaster (1) and getting pickups will switch to the cooler weapons.

When I implement powerups (bit down the road) I'll release a build and see what everyone thinks. If it's not fun that way I'll let players collect weapons and switch. And if this is the case, scroll wheel will definitely do that.

[EvolPenguin]

Any idea when there is going to be a new update. I'm on my flippers with anxious waiting.

Alex

Also, a laugh for your message. I'm interested in seeing what the new mines can do.

Edit: And the flame thrower :ninja:

[EvolPenguin]

Also, you should have a stand still counter, the longer you stand still, the more your points get multiplied by, because, i haven't been able to sit in one spot for too long without getting killed and it would be a cool thing. Maybe, if you sit still for 3 seconds X2 6 seconds X3. This would be in addition to the "chaos counter" or whatever it is.

Alex

[JustinFic]

Any idea when there is going to be a new update. I'm on my flippers with anxious waiting.

Alex

Also, a laugh for your message. I'm interested in seeing what the new mines can do.

Edit: And the flame thrower :ninja:

I'm shooting for a new alpha sometime this week, by this weekend at the latest. I want to polish off the UI stuff, stomp a few persistant bugs, and just get the new version nice and stable. (The performance is notably worse at the moment, as I suspect the flamethrower is causing a memory leak.)

Also, you should have a stand still counter, the longer you stand still, the more your points get multiplied by, because, i haven't been able to sit in one spot for too long without getting killed and it would be a cool thing. Maybe, if you sit still for 3 seconds X2 6 seconds X3. This would be in addition to the "chaos counter" or whatever it is.

Interesting idea. In the finished game, it will be even harder to stand in one place for any period of time since there will be enemies that shoot at you (turrets, robots, and Dr. Cote.) In the current version you can spawn a turret with the P key and try it out. I don't know off the top of my head but I'm pretty sure even at wave 1 the turret's rate of fire is 3 seconds per bullet. It may end up being way too hard to stand still to make a bonus worth it.

It would be fiendish to have some sort of standstill bonus though. Points would work, or perhaps some sort of mega-gun that must be charged up from a standstill(or slow down movement while it charges.) Or perhaps the grenade timer would only fill up while the player is stationary (and freezes while the player is in motion?) I'll play around with it when I take care of my current to-do list (above.)

[JustinFic]

Ok, I've uploaded the second build of Kill Dr. Coté. Grab it here:

Kill Dr. Coté Build #2 (http://www.justinfic.com/Kill%20Dr.%20Cote.dmg) (~1.9 MB)

The changes are in the readme, but in a nutshell:

-Two new weapons: The mine gun (#5) and the flamethrower (#6.) Try setting off mines with your grenades!

-It starts you in the title screen now. The structure is pretty much there, it just needs to be fleshed out and polished.

-There's three game types: normal, survival, and tutorial. Normal is what you've been playing. In survival, you get one life and you're timed until you croak. In tutorial, you'll have infinite lives and you will play on a very easy mode with hints in the HUD. It's not done yet, except for the infinite lives part. So if you're really curious you can see what wave 200 on Insane mode looks like. (It's ridiculous.)

-Speaking of Insane, there's 4 difficulty levels. Switch them in the options screen.

-Many other small and/or cosmetic changes.

As always I appreciate all feedback. I guess the big things I would be looking for are your opinions on the two new guns, the game types, and difficulty levels. Also, your FPS during Insane mode. It's not quite the planned upper limit of enemies on screen at once (it's ~200-400) but it's real close.

Some notes:

- The flamethrower will feel overpowered for now, for the same reason the railgun feels underpowered. It's meant to be the most effective weapon against the zombie hordes, but the least effective against the robots and Dr. Coté. Once I put the rest of the enemies in there they'll be much closer to being balanced.

- There is a bug where you can keep setting mines in an explosion and they will instantly explode, creating a perpetual shield of fire around you. It's cool but sadly it is a bug. Enjoy it while it lasts :p

- I still haven't finished the options screen. There are some real cockroaches in there that are giving me headaches. The game is still stuck in window mode and with sound on. Working on it.

But anyway, enjoy!

[EvolPenguin]

WOOO!

Alex

[EvolPenguin]

That is so fun. Flamethrower is addictive, and the mines are even better now. I could play it for hours, except I'm hungry, and pancakes taste delicous. Keep it up Justin.

Alex

[Joseph Duchesne]

this game is addictive. I have barely any free time for my own entry :mad:

[skyhawk]

this game is addictive. I have barely any free time for my own entry :mad:
pwn'd!! :lol:

[JustinFic]

Putting the new build up before I motor to Cali this weekend. Grab it here:

Kill Dr. Coté (http://www.justinfic.com/Kill%20Dr.%20Cote.dmg)

New to this version:

- Excessive Mode
- Options for fullscreen, sound and music on/off
- Possible new enemy style
- Hit detection is a little more lenient (for artful dodging.)
- The railgun fires slightly faster
- The bug affecting the machinegun/flamethrower at low framerates has been fixed. They constantly spew the correct amount of bullets per second now.

I need feedback on the guns in excessive mode, and on the new enemy style. The guns are all meant to be their previous versions on steroids. 3-way becomes the 15-way and so on.

The new zombie will be a 2D sprite slapped on that 1 poly model. The less frequently appearing enemies will still be 3D. I'm hoping flying body parts will still look good as 2D sprites, because having any kind of 3D model for the zombies would be ridiculous.

But is it much more difficult to judge dodging/shooting this new style of enemy? Is the imperfect billboarding distractingly noticeable?

As always I appreciate everyone's feedback. Enjoy!

[codemattic]

Im downloading now and will report back, but... in the previous version I loved the "story" and all the names in the high score - E.J. at #1 - mutoid man - r. obotron. I laughed out loud.

[Steven]

I was having a good time until I got to a point where there were so many enemies that I kept getting lag-killed :/
My computer's too slow :p

[Steven]

My new high-score is just over twelve and a half million. I got it in a rather cheap way :)
Take out the mine layer, and lay a few mines. Don't move off of them. Toss a grenade right where you're standing, and hold down the mine-lay trigger. Look, ma, I'm explosive! The chain reaction never ends :)

[Steven]

Oh, and a minor annoyance - I have Expose bound to my mouse and if I hit any of those keys I die immediately, as the window loses focus and I stop shooting :)

[JustinFic]

Im downloading now and will report back, but... in the previous version I loved the "story" and all the names in the high score - E.J. at #1 - mutoid man - r. obotron. I laughed out loud.

Thanks! I put a lot of thought into the backstory and conflict/resolution arcs. Going for the story category this year :p

And does anyone remember if the M.C. in Smash T.V. had a name? I could have sworn he did and if so he can bump off a more obscure name on the HS list.

My new high-score is just over twelve and a half million. I got it in a rather cheap way
Take out the mine layer, and lay a few mines. Don't move off of them. Toss a grenade right where you're standing, and hold down the mine-lay trigger. Look, ma, I'm explosive! The chain reaction never ends

This is the "mine bug." In excessive mode the mines come out so fast you can even inch around the room to speed things up. Hopefully with the addition of enemies that return fire the standing-in-one-place tactic will be defeated but not the running-around-on-fire tactic. The former makes things too easy, but the latter tactic rules.

I was having a good time until I got to a point where there were so many enemies that I kept getting lag-killed :/
My computer's too slow

Oh, and a minor annoyance - I have Expose bound to my mouse and if I hit any of those keys I die immediately, as the window loses focus and I stop shooting

On them both. The speed is getting on my nerves too now that I'm habitually playing on either Insane or Excessive. And it's about time I threw in a Pause for Windowed mode and the stray Expose click.

Finally, did anyone see the gremlin that's been running off with all my accented e's? (Note to developers/self: accented characters in filenames are a real pain in the ass.)

[ERaZer]

And does anyone remember if the M.C. in Smash T.V. had a name? I could have sworn he did and if so he can bump off a more obscure name on the HS list.

He had a name, a quite silly name like something Man and I don't know if it really was used that much in the game, but rather in the manual or something… I'll try to find out(I have the game here somewhere :P)

[CarbonX]

16.8 mil in excessive mode without cheating with the mine bug :p

[JustinFic]

Happy Halloween everyone! It took long enough but here's a new build of Kill Dr. Cote:

Kill Dr. Cote build 4 (10/31) (http://www.justinfic.com/Kill%20Dr.%20Cote.dmg) (~6.8 MB download.)

Most Recent Changes:
--------------------

•Â*Too many to list. Let's see:

• Zombie graphics
• Music
• Powerups (the numbers still work too, but not for long.)
•Â*Highscores
•Â*Options/Highscores saved to file
•Â*Laser/ Armageddon Laser and their excessive counterparts
•Â*Zombies explode into giblets when you kill them!
•Â*Floor decals- grenades/mines leave holes in the ground, and giblets splatter along the floor.
•Â*Tutorial Mode is now Practice mode. Infinite lives, high scores don't count. Press ESC to quit.
• The game is a bit harder now at higher waves and higher difficulty levels.
•Â*More stuff I can't really remember off the top of my head

Do the giblets slow the game down too much (esp. on excessive mode?) Can you even see what the hell is going on? What do you think of the graphics/music so far?

Anyway, enjoy!

[ThemsAllTook]

Gameplay is spot on. A winner for sure, in my opinion.

That music is awfully painful... I hope you have a version that hasn't been amplified to hell! It could sound really good without all that horrible clipping.

There's some real inefficiency in filesizes. Maybe you could do some of the following for us poor dial-up users ;) :

- The "requiem" music is there twice; once as MP3 and once as Ogg. Since both are a good 1.1 MB, it'd be a good idea to remove one of them...
- You use a lot of BMPs for images. Converting them all to PNG (and removing the duplicate decals.* files) saves a good 2.4 MB uncompressed, 150K compressed.
- Your sounds are all WAVs. Converting them to Ogg saves 900K uncompressed, 750K compressed.

Total savings: 4.3 MB uncompressed, 1.9 MB compressed. Quite a difference!

Anyway, this is looking great. Keep it up!

Alex Diener

[arekkusu]

Looking good! Nice humor, frantic gameplay. I see brief slowdown in excessive mode when gibbing an entire room of zombies, but otherwise it is 60fps. CPU usage is pretty low in normal mode. My list of criticisms is similar to GunWings:

* viewport doesn't scale when window is resized.
* mouse isn't captured so you can click outside the window while playing, activating another app and killing yourself.
* mouse cursor isn't hidden inside window or in fullscreen mode during gameplay.
* window minimization = white.
* standard app menu items are missing (about, hide, quit, etc)
* app icon?
* when dying, you should pan the camera back to the respawn point instead of instantly jumping there.
* game options (fullscreen, difficulty, window position) aren't remembered across launches.
* is the player going to remain a triangle?
* I keep expecting the music to break out into Michael Jackson's "Thriller" every time it loops...
* there's a bit of texture bleed between V and E in EVERY in story mode. Looks like similar bleed sometimes above the score.
* some of the artwork, like the zombie, bomb and splatter decals, have white fringes around them.
* 11 megs on disk?!
-- don't forget to strip your executables when you GM. You also don't need to include the SDL headers in the release.
-- .bmp format sucks. Use .png or .jpg for everything. Font.bmp is 196k, Font.png is 8k.
-- some of your images are duplicated in multiple formats.

Story mode rocks.

[JustinFic]

There's some real inefficiency in filesizes. Maybe you could do some of the following for us poor dial-up users :

* 11 megs on disk?!

I'm on it. The duplicate resources are due to forgetfulness/laziness on my part, and trying to prepare and upload a build in 15 minutes. ;p

* when dying, you should pan the camera back to the respawn point instead of instantly jumping there.


Good idea. Done.

* game options (fullscreen, difficulty, window position) aren't remembered across launches.


Laziness/rookie mistake on my part. The settings are all saved in a file inside the app- so if you run it from the disk image it won't save. I'll have it use a preference file like a proper app.

* is the player going to remain a triangle?


Nope. The player will be a sprite similar to the zombies. I just need to draw it :/

* some of the artwork, like the zombie, bomb and splatter decals, have white fringes around them.


Somewhere along the production line I seem to lose my alpha channel. Those white fringes should be partly transparent. The png files seem to have the alpha in there, so it's probably lost in the loader code. The SDL one-line-of-code solution is nice and quick but the results are not always what I want.

[Skorche]

To get rid of the white fringes, multiply the image by the alpha. Assuming that you are working in photoshop, just convert the alpha to a selection, invert selection, lock alpha, and fill with black.

You also need a different blending mode to, because it's now premultiplied alpha. I think glBlendFunc should be GL_ONE and GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA. (I think, I didn't double check.)

anyway, off to class with me...

[skyhawk]

*mumbles something about a uDG winner*

[phydeaux]

Pretty damn cool. I think what I first noticed about this build is that it was kind of hard to tell body parts from zombies, which provided fairly good camoflauge for the ones that was still alive. So making parts a slightly different color or possibly a bit bloodied I think would help that. Maybe nobody else has that problem, so it's probably not a big deal.

Never slowed down much at all on my machine, so performancewise you're good in my book. I'm sure you're on it already, but what I'd prioritize is getting in a few more enemies to change up gameplay.

[isgoed]

I didn't read the complete thread, but I wasn't able to complete a level on easy. I got boned everytime on easy. I only used weapon 3 and I used grenades. The times I looked I got 60FPS on a PB 550mhz

[skyhawk]

Pretty damn cool. I think what I first noticed about this build is that it was kind of hard to tell body parts from zombies,
I had this problem too... but then again, I shot at everything that moved

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

Awesome game, Justin. It really captures the insanity of Smash TV.

[JustinFic]

I think what I first noticed about this build is that it was kind of hard to tell body parts from zombies, which provided fairly good camoflauge for the ones that was still alive.

I've bloodied up the pieces. It helps out a bit- but the giblets still obscure things at the excessive level. It helps when a piece flies at you and you're tempted to dodge it, though. If it's still frustrating I'll play with the alpha of the pieces, probably having the max alpha be inversely proportional to the number of gibs on screen. If I have the time I'll also make it an option to turn off blood/gibs, or reduce the amount of it. (Low priority for now.)

But more blood = good. :p

I'm sure you're on it already, but what I'd prioritize is getting in a few more enemies to change up gameplay.

Yup! Expect to be dodging bullets very soon :)

I didn't read the complete thread, but I wasn't able to complete a level on easy.

Right now there are no levels- it goes on forever, non-stop. It's based on waves- the next wave will spawn when you're getting close to finishing with the current wave. For now, you can check the wave number on the bottom left.

[drzeip]

hehehe..... i just discovered weapon number 8 :wow:

[skyhawk]

hehehe..... i just discovered weapon number 8 :wow:
yeah, just keep pressing it over and over again while firing... totally insane... and yet you can still die.

perhaps it should start at the BACK of your body, that way it protects you from leaping lizards.... er zombies

[JustinFic]

yeah, just keep pressing it over and over again while firing... totally insane... and yet you can still die.

perhaps it should start at the BACK of your body, that way it protects you from leaping lizards.... er zombies

Heheh, enjoy the free guns while they last. Starting with the next build you'll have to switch by getting the powerups.

I tried sliding the Armageddon Laser back a bit to envelop the player when it fires- it looks kinda weird. Plus the humiliation factor from dying with the Armageddon Laser is always fun when you have people watching.

When you grab it (or press 8 ;)) a common tactic I always use is to make a quick circle around yourself with it. Even going as fast as possible the A-laser is strong enough to vaporize everything in the room. :love: You'll save yourself plenty of bites in the back that way.

[NCarter]

Excellent work, Justin. A winner is you. ;)

One slight bug: the system mouse pointer appears over the ingame crosshairs. This is on a 2GHz G5 with a Radeon 9800 XT.

Better stop playing it now or I'll never get my own game done....

[JustinFic]

Here's build #5:

Kill Dr. Cote build 5 (http://www.justinfic.com/Kill%20Dr.%20Cote.dmg) (~5.5 MB)

Most recent Changes:
--------------------

- The textures no longer bleed. Think I caught all of them.
- The gibs are bloodied up, making them a bit easier to tell from whole zombies.
- All the images are png/jpg format now, and unused resources are gone. Chopped a good 4 megs and change off the app size.
- The camera movement is more fluid now.
- The screen fades to black when you're Boned.
- Made some obvious optimizations to the gibs. Not much difference but when you're up to your knees in innards on Excessive mode, every little bit counts.
- The mouse cursor is hidden during play.
- The game now captures the mouse events. So those of you playing in windowed mode no longer have to click outside the screen and die.
- Fixed some stuff in Practice Mode. You can now get powerups in Practice mode, and score is not displayed, but instead "Practice- press esc to quit."
- If you got too used to using the number keys to change your weapon, you won't like this build ;) You'll have to grab the powerups like everyone else!

BTW, what difficulty level is everyone playing at?

[arekkusu]

Good progress, much better size wise. Font bleeding looks fixed, but:

* decal/zombie textures still have fringes. See recent thread (http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7560) for ideas (you've got a white background matte.)
* when the camera pans to center after dying, your player flashes in the wrong spot off center for an instant.
* how about an explosion at the center when you respawn, to take out the pile of zombies there and let you see yourself while invulnerable?

[drzeip]

I agree with the explosion idea. Usually i manage to stay alive for a while but then I die once and die again straight after and again and its all over :(

[JustinFic]

Build 6 is up with six minutes left to go before the deadline! Plenty of breathing room ;p Grab it here:

Kill Dr. Cote build 6 (http://www.justinfic.com/Kill%20Dr.%20Cote.dmg) (~5.9 MB)

From the release notes:

Most Recent Changes:
--------------------

- Added player graphic
- Added wave number display
- Removed debugging info
- Powerups and grenades no longer go outside the room boundary
- You can now enter your name in the highscore list
- You can kill enemies by running into them while invincible.
- Added some more gameplay sounds
- Added a small layer of polish

- This is the release candidate, meant for the 11/6 deadline. I'll most likely be continually updating, so please keep checking back! Expect more enemies, more action, more fixes, and more carnage!

Thanks to everyone on iDevGames.com for input, support and enthusiasm, and to my friends and family for putting up with me these past three months!

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

Justin,

Your game has stolen hours of my life.

Congratulations.

[skyhawk]

please please have an icon for your application, it improves your polish so much more.

[JustinFic]

please please have an icon for your application, it improves your polish so much more.

Done. I have a placeholder in there (which at this point basically means "final" ;p) and it will be ready to go with a few more improvements by the time voting starts.

[quartex]

Fun, sick game. But what does the bar in the upper right corner stand for?

[JustinFic]

Fun, sick game. But what does the bar in the upper right corner stand for?

Thanks!

The bar at the top is the carnage meter- any points you get are multiplied by the number beside it. More carnage means more points, more powerups, and more lives. I'll work on making its purpose a little more obvious, as it's a very common question.

A new version went up last night that fixed a fatal bug in the highscores and practice mode, and some weirdness with Dr. Cote. Expect robots tonight. :)

[pobjoy]

Brilliant, brilliant game! I have just one suggestion (besdies more weapons and monsters)...
It would be great if picking up more than one powerup of the same type would have a cumulative effect on it's power? So if you picked up say ten machine-guns you'd have a machine gun at Extreme level? When you died it could be zeroed, or maybe count down a few. Go on...please ;)

[JustinFic]

Brilliant, brilliant game! I have just one suggestion (besdies more weapons and monsters)...
It would be great if picking up more than one powerup of the same type would have a cumulative effect on it's power? So if you picked up say ten machine-guns you'd have a machine gun at Extreme level? When you died it could be zeroed, or maybe count down a few. Go on...please ;)

It's actually already in the works! :)

The mechanics work pretty much how you described, although the number of powerups required to reach the excessive level is lower- right now I'm thinking 3, but if that's too easy after playtesting I might up it to 5.

The other mechanic I'm toying with is switching weapons. Say you have a machinegun at level 3. You grab a railgun, which starts off at level 1. Now you grab a machinegun again. It can either start off from scratch, or pick up where you left off (level 3.) I'm leaning toward the second method, since it isn't as frustrating when it comes to accidentally grabbing an unwanted powerup.

This will all be in the next build, along with some killer robots once I iron the kinks out of em.

[JustinFic]

There's a new build up:

Kill Dr. Cote (11/16/2004) (http://www.justinfic.com/Kill%20Dr.%20Cote.dmg) (~6.5 MB)

This version ties up a lot of loose ends. The robots/bigger guns are still AWOL. They're definitely in the works, but will most likely be post-contest additions. Need to take a few days and salvage some coursework :)

From the release notes:

11/16/2004 Changes:
-------------------

- Tied up a lot of loose ends:
- Added sound and music volume to the options screen
- Added options to clear high scores for one or all lists
- Added a pause key (Finally!) Hit p to pause.
- Added a brief readme
- Added some more feedback to the user interface
- Threw in a splash screen featuring Command-R :)
- Fixed physics of scorched gibs
- Due to the continued absence of the killer robots, exploding zombies and specters now appear in earlier waves although at reduced numbers.
- Made some of the more obnoxious sounds less so.
- Fixed a few balance issues with the mines and excessive flamethrower.

Enjoy!

[arekkusu]

Good stuff! This is way better than the earlier builds, with more varied and frantic gameplay, and more polish.

But:
* on excessive mode, the blue Specters seem to stick around longer than everything else. At the end of wave 8, you'll sit there killing nothing but Specters for a few minutes.
* on excessive mode, game froze up completely starting wave 9. No crash, froze using 100% CPU. Had to force-quit.
* the lighting doesn't affect the splatters/carnage? It makes sense for i.e. your character to always be visible regardless of the lighting, but it seems like the stuff on the ground should be lit.
* some artwork (splatters etc) still has white fringes. This is more noticeable with the lab lighting.
* there is definitely more slowdown (this is on 1.25GHz AlBook/Radeon 9600) on excessive mode... but that's OK given how excessive it is. :)