Changgi
Member
Unsure if this is the right forum to post it, but basically this is a for now abandoned project of mine that I would nonetheless like to "show and tell" to people.
This is a mashup of Zombies!!! the board game and its expansions and Robotron I wanted to make as my video game based on Zombies after making other board game-based video games, plus seeing people request Atari zombie games played like Robotron.
As you can see, this game basically plays like Robotron 2084 but with a Zombies!!! theme. You move with the arrow keys and shoot with RDFG. In particular, there are several points of focus:
- The zombies didn't have smooth movements aside from the Government-enhanced Zombies. This is to imitate the movement of the GRUNT robotrons from the arcade game. Also, the fact that the regular zombies do not all move in unison prevents them from all overlapping eventually.
- There is a powerup you can get every 1st wave in a 5-wave cycle, based on the Event cards from Zombies. Luckily, the random number generator was generous enough to let me show 3 different powerups I had. The power-up you have is displayed at the bottom right corner and may be activated any time by pressing the Space bar.
The 3 powerups shown here are:
1. adding a computer AI hunter that shoots in random directions. Once hit by an enemy, it turns into a regular zombie
2. you are given a temporary ability to shoot in all 8 directions simultaneously
3. A minefield that destroys/hurts zombies that run into the mines.
- I found that since my keyboard doesn't allow you to hit more than 2 keys at the same time, the typical WASD keys do not work for movement + shooting (if I tried to press down and right, and W and A, all 4 together, it wouldn't let me). On the other hand, it works with RDFG, with the central F key marked by a little braille-like bulging bit on the keyboard. I suppose that signifies that those key let you press more than 2 at the same time or something, and when I tried it, I was able to do stuff like pressing down+right+R+D simultaneously. Therefore, I have RDFG as opposed to WASD for shooting. I know there would be keyboards, especially gamer keyboards, that work with WASD, but I just thought maybe with RDFG it'd work for more keyboards.
- The Pages of the Book of the Dead float around and are removed from the screen if the leave the screen. I originally had the Govt-enhanced Zombies remove them too like in the original Robotron, but I think them being "blown off the screen by the wind" works well enough, especially after how the Govt-enhanced Zombies are now locked onto your position.
- The "dog rabies vomit" don't travel in a straight path towards you, whereas the Clown zombies either move towards you or in a random direction, both based off of their respective counterparts in the arcade version. Here, the Clown zombies are a mix of the Tanks and Enforcers from Robotron.
- The arcade game suffered from the problem of only being able to play like 2 sounds at a time or so. This here also works as a bit of an experiment on how it would have sounded like if all the sounds that needed to be played played at the same time (though without overlapping, i.e. no matter how many Clown bombs there were, only 1 Clown bomb sound played instead of it being louder the more Clown bombs there are).
The only thing really missing from the gameplay is the ending level when you reach the helipad. It is going to be a race between some AI players with lots of zombies attacking from all sides. You lose if you let an AI player reach the helipad first (though the AI isn't smart enough to evade the zombies so there's a better chance that they'd get turned into zombies) or if you run out of lives. However I couldn't get enough motivation to complete this game, so for now this is what I have.
This is a mashup of Zombies!!! the board game and its expansions and Robotron I wanted to make as my video game based on Zombies after making other board game-based video games, plus seeing people request Atari zombie games played like Robotron.
- The zombies didn't have smooth movements aside from the Government-enhanced Zombies. This is to imitate the movement of the GRUNT robotrons from the arcade game. Also, the fact that the regular zombies do not all move in unison prevents them from all overlapping eventually.
- There is a powerup you can get every 1st wave in a 5-wave cycle, based on the Event cards from Zombies. Luckily, the random number generator was generous enough to let me show 3 different powerups I had. The power-up you have is displayed at the bottom right corner and may be activated any time by pressing the Space bar.
The 3 powerups shown here are:
1. adding a computer AI hunter that shoots in random directions. Once hit by an enemy, it turns into a regular zombie
2. you are given a temporary ability to shoot in all 8 directions simultaneously
3. A minefield that destroys/hurts zombies that run into the mines.
- I found that since my keyboard doesn't allow you to hit more than 2 keys at the same time, the typical WASD keys do not work for movement + shooting (if I tried to press down and right, and W and A, all 4 together, it wouldn't let me). On the other hand, it works with RDFG, with the central F key marked by a little braille-like bulging bit on the keyboard. I suppose that signifies that those key let you press more than 2 at the same time or something, and when I tried it, I was able to do stuff like pressing down+right+R+D simultaneously. Therefore, I have RDFG as opposed to WASD for shooting. I know there would be keyboards, especially gamer keyboards, that work with WASD, but I just thought maybe with RDFG it'd work for more keyboards.
- The Pages of the Book of the Dead float around and are removed from the screen if the leave the screen. I originally had the Govt-enhanced Zombies remove them too like in the original Robotron, but I think them being "blown off the screen by the wind" works well enough, especially after how the Govt-enhanced Zombies are now locked onto your position.
- The "dog rabies vomit" don't travel in a straight path towards you, whereas the Clown zombies either move towards you or in a random direction, both based off of their respective counterparts in the arcade version. Here, the Clown zombies are a mix of the Tanks and Enforcers from Robotron.
- The arcade game suffered from the problem of only being able to play like 2 sounds at a time or so. This here also works as a bit of an experiment on how it would have sounded like if all the sounds that needed to be played played at the same time (though without overlapping, i.e. no matter how many Clown bombs there were, only 1 Clown bomb sound played instead of it being louder the more Clown bombs there are).
The only thing really missing from the gameplay is the ending level when you reach the helipad. It is going to be a race between some AI players with lots of zombies attacking from all sides. You lose if you let an AI player reach the helipad first (though the AI isn't smart enough to evade the zombies so there's a better chance that they'd get turned into zombies) or if you run out of lives. However I couldn't get enough motivation to complete this game, so for now this is what I have.
Last edited: