A twisted firestarter.

I want to talk a bit about the code behind the flamethrower in Annihilation. Cleansing flame is one of the staple weapons to use when purging the land of the undead, and as such, I felt it important to get it right. There's nothing worse than a dull, unsatisfying flamethrower - if it doesn't look right, or if it's weak and useless, it ruins the whole feel of it, so I decided to spend that little bit of extra effort to ensure that our players' cravings for burnination would not go unfulfilled.

Like all the effects in Annihilation, I wanted the flamethrower to be very dynamic, and the best way I've found to achieve this is to construct it out of lots of particles. The framerate sometimes finds this disagreeable, but I think the effect is awesome enough to be worth the slight dip in speed seen when lots of things are burning.

The flamer shoots a stream of napalm, made up of lots of small pieces of fire aimed directly out from the player. If the player has turned, the fire particle angles itself to face towards the last fired, making it appear as if the flamer is shooting one continuous stream of fire. The particles don't always perfectly connect, but then again fire is somewhat chaotic in nature anyway. I think the end result is quite fitting, especially when in motion:

Making the camera less dynamic

Hey guys, today's post is a bit of a design introspective about the camera system, since I've recieved a few requests to change it to something simpler.

For those of you not familiar with it, the camera in Annihilation Undead pans out infront of the player, in the direction they're aiming. I designed the camera like this for two reasons: Firstly, it gives the player a larger viewfield to the front, to better see what they're shooting at. It also decreases the visibility behind them too, which has the effect of making the game more tense, allowing monsters to sneak up behind the player and suprise them.

The idea was to give the game a more panicked and scary feel to it, to more closely match it's horror inspiration. In hindsight however, It doesn't mesh very well with the rest of the game - AU is largely focused on balls-out action more than suspense, and so because of this, the Dynamic Camera is now optional, turned off by default, so new players will have a more familiar centered-character view.

This feature will be in the next update, along with two new game modes, and a new weapon. More on these later!

Compatiblity and Lite version updates.

I've recieved alot of feedback asking for a version that is compatible with iPhoneOS 3.0, not 3.1 as it is at present; those of you who've emailed me will be happy to know that an update supporting this is on it's way through the review process as I type.

I must apologise for making you guys wait; I didn't realise that the 3.1 update was a paid update, and since I am an early adopter myself, figured that using the latest OS version would be the best course of action. Lesson learned!

Along those lines, the Lite version has been approved, and is now available on the app store here. Now you won't have to take any risks to find out that Annihilation Undead is awesome, and worth of your money.

It seems like the popular vote is in favor of Vomit Pig at this point too. Those of you who are fans of LazerPig, or OtherPig, don't stay quiet! Let your voice be heard, lest these pigs be forever destined to hurl their guts up onto the rotting masses.

Monday Night Brainstorm

I had a brainstorming session with Lee on monday night, which was good fun until a bunch of people who wanted to get drunk and go partying crept into the house and distracted us.

We were discussing the behavior and looks of the new enemies we'll be working on, and also just the general direction of the game's storyline. There's going to be all sorts of horror themed monsters present - ghosts, werewolves, banshees, vampires, wraiths, and plenty more; as many as we can manage to squeeze into the iPhone's texture memory.

For example, Ghosts are going to merely slow players down, causing no damage to the player directly, much like the banshee's ear-piercing wail, and will disappear and stop moving when looking directly at them.

It was also decided that Werewolves being able to rip zombies' arms off and throw them at the player was simply too awesome an idea to ignore, so barring some obscene and highly unlikely technical hurdle, you should all be looking forward to this in the next update :)

Lee also suggested that we use this attack-pig she'd drawn as an actual weapon, but we couldn't decide on weather to make it shoot lasers from it's eyes, vomit a putrid, acidic bile, or even something more ridiculous. If you have a great idea for this pig, don't hesitate to let us know.

Updated: Gameplay Videos

Update: There are now two gameplay videos, both in high quality without the blurriness, showing off the swine farm and parking rot levels:

Swine Farm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGHUUQefrNE

Parking Rot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9DbWMKnzIY

No more BlurryCam, hooray! *dances*

First Post

Hey guys, Twitch here, and it's time to start the blog for our game.

It's finally out the door, and now it's time for us to break out the whiskey!

There's still much work to do on this game - designing this blog, for starters - but it's finally ready for you to play. I really hope you guys have as much fun playing it as we've had making it, it's been a blast working on it so far.

We're far from done, however. There's still plenty of content for us to add to the game - more eerie levels to fight on, more horrific monsters to battle, and more deadly and creative weapons to kill them with, so stay tuned, and stay alive!