DEAD News

This is part 3 of the final overhaul of the game. This is part 3 of 4 (3/4).

In this update I focused on changing the sprites to be clearer by changing the colors, or updating assets that were literally from my "I made this in a month" build.

Here is the change log listed out:
Updates/Changes:
- All level selection images.
- The hit box of every enemy to feel better.
- Bullets look, feel, and speed for each weapon. (Feels better, still arcadey).
- Player looks a lot more visually appealing (changed the body, and skin colors)
- Various level backgrounds to make the player/enemies look a little clearer (I can only do so much without just re-doing all the art (though a lot of it ended up getting recolored)
- Recolored a lot of Assets....
- The weapon holding sprites are a little different.
- Walking Sound Effect
- Default Gunshot Sound Effect
- Music On/Off option
- X, not > for exit.
- Reorganized all folder structures for open-source release.
- Redid all item common item sprites, and buy station sprites.
- "Hedge" level and leaderboard.

Tweaks/Bug Fixes:
- Pausing properly pauses all enemies. Sorry this was not there before, I basically never pause the game, and only recently added the proper options menu.
- Fixed Studio Start-up Crash
- Removed a lot of redundant code/old images/old objects to prepare for open-source publish.
- Tweaked startup screen button colors/text
- Seeing despawn.
- Hearing despawn.
- Random Player2-4 deaths on some maps causing loud bit noise.
- Audio Mixing for Music
- Resized all Buy Text
- Correct Levels sometimes showing incorrect leaderboard

Future Information as of 11/29/2023 1amish
Realistically, DEAD 2 will be great and I am not worried about that.

I am currently spending 3-4 hours a day when I have the time/will to actually work on this. I usually listen to PKA, but this time I was listening to "The Making of an Internet Monster" by Art, or TheGamerFromMars. I've never really looked into Chris Chan aside form know of him and various happenings by him for the last 7 years.

I am enjoying revamping DEAD 1 for the final update and I did a lot in the last few days like re doing all of the coloring to be a lot clearer. I wonder how people will react, if at all. I know this game isn't anything huge but to me: finishing what you have started matters. Quitting when you could do better is what losers do, but knowing when you should move on is important. Sunk Cost Fallacy is very real in the world we live in.

Luckily, I do not make money off this game and enjoy spending my time making this and many other games. Over the last 4 years, my life has been very much a learning experience, but it has also been incredibly depressing in terms of my personal life and past as well as how I have been personally treated by people I thought close, including friends and family members. Treat people well, or have them out of your life.

It is such a pain in the ass to make maps for this game, a very big reason why I am moving onto DEAD 2, that, and having new AI. Part of me (like right now) thinks I should keep DEAD as a singular game and have maps in different categories considering how much this game has evolved on it's own over the years but I am not sure that makes any sense long-term when I could realistically just remake any fan favorites from this game but in a new format.

Call of Duty, and everyone involved are lazy, and have no work ethic. It is not hard to design things, it's actually incredibly easy. It's also easy to make maps, tweak weapons, change IDs, edit anything in your game in general. Those impressed with the very tiny are the reason we have bad games where people are impressed by audio bouncing off walls when if I wanted to have a gritty experience I could very easily have enemy a.i. detect you based off of sound alone and it would take me (took me) about 2 hours to do. "Oh but George, you aren't making Call of Duty!!" it's the same principles, design does not change at it's core, it's not hard to know what is fun, it's not hard to listen to your community, it's not hard to change the price of your 15 year old game, it's not hard to tweak some weapons, it's not hard to add new weapon skins, it's not hard to keep the game not an anime/rapper/invislbe skin fest. It's purely bad management, and bad design.

I fully plan to release this as an open-source thing people can dig through. This is one of the only GameMaker Studio 1, GameMaker Studio 2, and GameMaker Studio 2.3 games that has been not only released on Steam, but consistently updated over a period of many years. I hope that the open source of this project will help people learn the engine if that's what they want to do, or help them in them see what to/not to do for their own projects. Maybe someone will learn something, maybe it'll be universally hated.. at least I tried.

This is part 2 of the revamp. there are 2 more parts.

Below is the list of all additions, updates, and changes made to my game DEAD in the past couple of days.

Updates
- Changed Path finding for all Enemies as well as their speeds. l.
- Level Selection Screen Overhaul 5: There kept being stuff wrong, so I redid it again.
- Options Automatically Save to whatever you set them to, and Load Automatically.
- Cat Launcher, Aura Bow, Slow Gun, and Ric Gun no longer suck.
- Music: Readded Main Menu Music, Changed Ash Level tracks

Minor Tweaks/Bug Fixes
- Updated Steam Version
- Added "Top 30" text to steam leaderboard.
- Redid a lot of code.
- Tweaked Location of Bullet Creation (If a zombie is right next to you, it'll actually hit it now).
- Fixed Steam Screenshots not working (nobody cared but still)
- Options Text was bad, now it's not. (Visually and Alphabetically)

Added Bugs:
- Going to the main menu and clicking on a level after already having been in a level will let you instantly click the desired level instead of being able to click to see the map/stats beforehand.

Future Information as of 11/18/2023
Over the next 3 months there will be updates until the steam together event. After that, only bugs will be fixed/looked at. Why? DEAD 2 needs focus. We recently redid the A.I. for DEAD 2 (redoing it for DEAD 1 would break all of the maps to the point of having the game unplayable so we just have to move on).

What I plan to do over the next 3 months is add 2 more maps, maybe more but promising 2 (Hedge, and one other) for free. While more fixes/changes, and overall balancing will go through the game. The leaderboard will not ever be wiped besides removing cheats but the common man can easily see who faked it, and who made it. Revamp 3 will come in December and will include Hedge, as well as update, or redo a few maps (redos do not replace a map, it just adds more maps (think box expanded)).

DEAD 2 will be 100x better as any good sequel would be. The reason it didn't come out last year is because I made it, and then I lost the file (no idea how, blame ADHD and life). It's a lot better than it was anyways but I lost a lot of progress including a lot of art. It would have come out October 15th 2022. You can still play that version of the DEAD 2 under this games Beta Tab under properties via Steam.

I have updated the game today, I also plan to go over a few things:

In the last 3 months this is everything changed including stuff changed today:
-Main Menu Redone: Leaderboards working properly, navigation working well
-Escape Menu Fixed:
-Enemy Spawning Tweaked for slower fast-paced gameplay (more tweaks to come with feedback)
-Costs reajusted and prices fixed
-Enemy Drops Changed
-Enemy spawnrates changed
-Explosive enemy explosive properly exploding visual

These may seem like stuff that should've been fixed and now they are.

Changelog:
-Proper Pausing (Sorry, I didn't have this before)
-Revamped Main Menus (Works way better, if you can about the original, change the game version)
-Updated Performance.