The Zombielands, 2d side scrolling action shooter, pre-alpha

[solewalker]

Hey everyone,
Today I released pre-alpha version of my work in progress game The Zombielands. Yes, it is build on haxeflixel, it took me around 8/9 days to build this pre-alpha demo, from installing haxeflixel to learning it and building this. Thanks to haxeflixel, I could do it in such short time. Here is the link of the flash version of the game http://gamejolt.com/games/action/the-zombielands/33352/

Please play it, rate it, talk about it, we are eagerly waiting for your feedback. And if you think you have some cool idea or feature request for the game. Feel free to tell us about it. If we like it and implement the feature, you will be credited in the game's "Special Thanks" section.

Don't forget to report bugs. Also please share your thoughts on games performance. I have coded it quickly, less time to test the game, but I can do it better. I still need to learn a lot of haxeflixel. Thanks and cheers.

[Gama11]

Fairly impressive considering the development time!

Here are some thoughts:

• The gameplay is extremely generic: shoot, walk right, repeat. No real challenge either. The overused zombie theme doesn't help.
• Movement doesn't feel right to me. The jump is too high / there's too much airtime. Consider implementing variable height jump + lowering the max jump height. There's also a lack of animations.
• Shooting could be improved. How? Watch this.
• "Z" is a very poor choice for controls, since the Z and Y keys are flipped on QWERTZ-keyboards. Consider allowing both Y and Z to be used, or simpler, simply use another key (like C).
• Explosions don't fit the art style, they are too blocky / pixelated.
• This is a keyboard based game - the cursor should be hidden. The pause button feels unnecessary. Along with the icons from the pause menu, it feels like a mobile port. I'd rather have text than those ambigious buttons, there's enough space.
• Might be a good idea to replace flixel's focus lost screen with your pause menu.
• There's a restart button. It's sort of a convention that the R key can be used as a shortcut for this.
• There's needs to be some kind of inventory management. Also seems weird that the pistol ammo bar never goes down. I can see why you'd give it unlimited ammo, but maybe that should be indicated somehow (infinity sign)? Being able to see the bullet count would be nice, too.
• The grenade throwing angle feels way too far, plus you have no control at all. How about "hold-to-throw-further"-style controls with some visual indicator?
• Zombies spawn out of thin air!?
• The buttons need some hover / pressed frames.
• Would be nice if Escape opened the pause menu as well.
• Feels weird that the movement of the clouds in the background is completely cancelled out by walking to the right. I assume they have a negative x velocity, instead of using a scrollFactor?

This has gotten a bit longer than I intended it to be. Hope it helps.

[solewalker]

Thanks for your feedback. It's just pre-alpha or prototype, so final game play will not resembles this. There is no achievement or real cause to play the game for now, we will introduce some cause or mission for our final game. And yes, it started as a mobile game, but then things got complicated.

1. Zombie overuse is just temporary.
2. Variable is planned, but didn't have much time to implement.
3. I watched the video, I tried to implement a few, will add more of it.
4. Explosions were added very last minute, also I yet to learn more about flxEmitter.
5. We also didn't like the UI, but lack of time.
6. I have also noticed the lack in consistency in some of the stuffs, will work on it.
7. The whole of pause things are added just before submitting, I took code from Flxsubstate demo, and kinda hack it
8. And grenades, I was having difficulty understanding flxEmmiter object, usually I am used to box2d, there you can apply force, but there is no force in flixel, or could not find and alternative, probably should have asked in forum.
9. Buttons are too done in last minute.
10. Silly me, thought "ESC" would work as recognizing escape, gonna fix it in next update.
11. I have noticed the cloud problem, though I have set clouds scrollfactor to 0, yet it was seem as it was pausing, will look further into it.
12. Zombies are very dumb right now, they fall from gaps, that's why I had to makeup for the fallen or stuck zombie, that's why this temporary hack. I yet have to know how to read data from loaded map, in a given position or coordinate, so that I know where there is a big gap or a wall, but reading from the tile.

Thanks for you feedback, it meant a lot. Lot of things are done with quick hacks and because of lack of knowledge of flixel, but I am working my way through this.

[Gama11]

If you're familiar with Box2D, you might want to take a look at Nape. Way more powerful than flixel's basic collision system.

You're doing grenades with FlxEmitter? If so, that seems odd.

Why set the cloud's scrollFactor to 0 (no scrolling)? You would want some low value like 0.1 for parallax scrolling. You're moving them with velocity then? 

[solewalker]

Updated to v1.3 with some improvements based on feedback

- Improvements on player movements, still no variable height jump
- Grenade motion is tuned, hope it's better now
- Some other key input, and minor changes
- Few annoying bugs fixed

Also, we are on indiedb http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-zombielands