Update: ALPHA v1.071 🚧
New Zombie: Crawler
This little guy is small and weak, but forces vertical aiming, and changes the way players build barricades. Make sure you allow room so you can shoot them! They don't do much damage, but can become quite the nuisance if left unchecked as they chip away at the bottom props of your barricade.
PILE IN
For the longest time, zombies would not pile into the barricade as expected. I kept going back and forth between enabling and disabling collisions amongst the zombies to varying success. Then when I upgraded to Godot's 3.5 NavServer, I figured Navobstacles would be the solution. This was also a failure.
Finally, after some research into the solution. I came across Minecraft, and how their enemies collide with one another. It turns out they use what's called soft collisions. See when multiple mobs share the same space they gently push off each other, in order to space out.
This turned out to be the solution I needed. Now the zombies will fully fill in a barricade, or surround the Vendo-Machine. Not only does it look nice, but it makes defending that much harder!
Attack Detection, and Accuracy!
One of the biggest bugs to be fixed is the possibility for zombies to get caught on props that were sticking out around corners. When a zombie is in range of a prop, a line of sight would be drawn to the center of the prop in order to confirm the zombie has vision. This prevents them from attacking through walls, which we really don't want.
But what happens if the center of a prop is behind a wall, but the rest of the prop is still visible? Well in this case the zombies wouldn't be able to get line of sight, and just get stuck trying to navigate to their next point.
The solution was to add several look at points to each prop, so zombies will scan each point to find one they can draw line of sight to, voila! Problem solved.
The next problem was with the Horker projectile accuracy. I spent two days on stream trying to implement some heavy physics math in order to get the projectiles to be mathematically accurate. In the end we got close, but the system still relied on adjusting the angle in a hackey way. So I spent one more day tweaking the angle based on the distance and direction to the target and now I'd say we are 95% accurate, which is good enough for me!
If you want to see more of the game as I work on it, I invite you to watch me live on Twitch everyday at 6AM EST.
Change Log
New Stuff
🆕 : Crawler zombie.
🆕 : Soft body collisions to zombies.
🆕 : More props and decorations to the Vendo-Machine room.
🆕 : New particles for t he Horker drippings.
Changes
🛠 : Changed particles on the spit splash effect when the player is hit by Horker projectiles.
🛠 : All props have had their physics handling values altered.
🛠 : Zombies play sounds more frequently when hit.
🛠 : Increased Horker projectile damage from 5 to 6.
Bug Fixes
🐞: Zombies always face the direction they are attacking.
🐞: Zombies will expose themself more when attacking.
🐞: Removed collider from some lights. (Was getting in the way of barricading)
🐞: All objects should move at the same speed on all devices.
🐞: Zombies no longer get stuck on props sticking out around walls.
🐞: Zombies pathing through walls and props.
🐞: Stopping Hammer gun primary fire, and switching weapons on the same frame locks out all weapons.
🐞: Horkers were not damaging the Vendo-Machine.
🐞: Horkers would ignore the player, if the player re-entered and left their attack range quickly.
🐞: Large Crate wasn't emitting healing particles.
🐞: Props would stay frozen in the air when dropped while holding SHIFT.
🐞: Horker projectiles were unable to target props close to the ground.
🐞: Hammer Gun primary fire would continue to loop if it's stopped on the same from the looping sound was started.