Next milestone.
It seems that the next year we will still be working as a team of 4 without a publisher support. Thus we plan on adding enough content to the game so that players can actually start visiting it regularly and providing us with constant stream of feedback.
To do that we will be adding a hub area - the main headquarters of Zombie Hunter, incorporated - "Bob's office". It is a large abandoned industrial building, turned gunshop, where the Zombie Hunter, inc gang resides and flies to their various missions from. Every adventure will start from this area.
We decided to use Midjourney as our 2d concept artist, both to save costs and to give use enough unique ideas that our hub looks awesome. Here are a few concepts we chose as our final references:
The tricky part would be to make the actuall gun purchasing area both functional and pretty. It needs to have a single gun per square, so that you can walk close to it, pick it up and test it. We won't have a standard system where you buy things via a menu. Neither we would have a system where you buy things by clicking on them. No, you pick up a gun, any gun, then you can go to the shooting range to test it. You can see it in your inventory, play with it, do whatever you want. If you change your mind - you can put the gun back, where you took it. If you like the guns you picked up, you come to your boss and pay for all of them.
The tutorial level will end up with the player on the roof of a building, waiting for Zombie Hunter, inc helicopter to rescue them. We want the player to exit onto a roof that was rebuilt as a restaurant:
and then move onto a more industrial-type roof:
where helicopter would pick them up.
Dmytro, our artist, is already working on rooftop elements. Here is one of them:
While Egor, our senior artist, is working on Bob's office:
We also plan on expanding our Streets level. It will include adding buildings, cars and a construction site. If you want to get a glimpse at why it takes so long for an update to be release, check out this twisted lorry:
We are striving to add objects into our game which bring realism to another level. Objects, you are unlikely to see in other games. The best source of models is photogrammetry. However, quite often photogrammetry models are of very poor quality, due to not having enough photos to build the model from. Then we will rebuild the high poly model from scratch, while using the textures from the photogrammetry model to have the best of both worlds: the amazing color textures and mathematically accurate normal maps and models that make sense, when you shine light onto the object. And that is not all, afterwards you need to remove lighting and shadows from the object (so that it looks consistent when being lit in-game), build roughness and metalness textures and assign propper materials. Here, the cabin of the lorry uses carpaint shader, while its tent uses silk shader to have this awesome anisotropic highlight.
So that's our plans for 2024. Thanks everyone who supported us all these years and have a happy new year!
To do that we will be adding a hub area - the main headquarters of Zombie Hunter, incorporated - "Bob's office". It is a large abandoned industrial building, turned gunshop, where the Zombie Hunter, inc gang resides and flies to their various missions from. Every adventure will start from this area.
We decided to use Midjourney as our 2d concept artist, both to save costs and to give use enough unique ideas that our hub looks awesome. Here are a few concepts we chose as our final references:
The tricky part would be to make the actuall gun purchasing area both functional and pretty. It needs to have a single gun per square, so that you can walk close to it, pick it up and test it. We won't have a standard system where you buy things via a menu. Neither we would have a system where you buy things by clicking on them. No, you pick up a gun, any gun, then you can go to the shooting range to test it. You can see it in your inventory, play with it, do whatever you want. If you change your mind - you can put the gun back, where you took it. If you like the guns you picked up, you come to your boss and pay for all of them.
The tutorial level will end up with the player on the roof of a building, waiting for Zombie Hunter, inc helicopter to rescue them. We want the player to exit onto a roof that was rebuilt as a restaurant:
and then move onto a more industrial-type roof:
where helicopter would pick them up.
Dmytro, our artist, is already working on rooftop elements. Here is one of them:
While Egor, our senior artist, is working on Bob's office:
We also plan on expanding our Streets level. It will include adding buildings, cars and a construction site. If you want to get a glimpse at why it takes so long for an update to be release, check out this twisted lorry:
We are striving to add objects into our game which bring realism to another level. Objects, you are unlikely to see in other games. The best source of models is photogrammetry. However, quite often photogrammetry models are of very poor quality, due to not having enough photos to build the model from. Then we will rebuild the high poly model from scratch, while using the textures from the photogrammetry model to have the best of both worlds: the amazing color textures and mathematically accurate normal maps and models that make sense, when you shine light onto the object. And that is not all, afterwards you need to remove lighting and shadows from the object (so that it looks consistent when being lit in-game), build roughness and metalness textures and assign propper materials. Here, the cabin of the lorry uses carpaint shader, while its tent uses silk shader to have this awesome anisotropic highlight.
So that's our plans for 2024. Thanks everyone who supported us all these years and have a happy new year!