Update 2.2

I submitted a minor update today, which addresses some stuttering issues related to the new ability to play custom music - those of you who were experiencing problems should be happy to hear this!

It also improves the controls somewhat - now you can drag your thumbs outside the wheels without worrying about them cutting out.

The only other change is the rocket launcher's reload time has been doubled, to prevent it being overpowered.

coming in the next update will be the ability to resume gameplay from where you left off, so you'll be able to quit mid-game if something comes up without having to worry about losing your progres!

The Soundtrack of the Dead

Marcel just sent me the finished version of Grave Diggin', the soundtrack to the upcoming graveyard level, and so I thought it would be a good time to post the soundtrack-so-far, for you guys to enjoy!

The majority of the music is by Marcel, from Battle Circus, with some additional electro-industrial by Ash of Neurotyk. Be sure to check out their other work if you like it!

You can grab the individual mp3s right here, including songs from two yet-unfinished levels:

Title Theme - Annihilate The Dead

Swine Farm Theme

Parking Rot Theme

Game Over - Have a Nice Day

Graveyard Theme - Grave Diggin'

Shopping Maul Theme

or download the soundtrack so far in a handy zip file by clicking this link.

Be sure to check out Battle Circus' site for details on their upcoming album, which has yet to be named, and also the Medinjekt myspace site - for those of you who like Neurotyk's sound, this is Ash's other industrial project.

Hope you enjoy the music; there's a big update in the works quite soon, with a complete graphical overhaul and possible name change too, so stay tuned!

-Twitch

Twitter contest winners announced

We just recently ran a Twitter contest, ending today - the ten lucky winners have all had their free codes messaged to them.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and enjoy your free copies of Annihilation!

Chapter 2 is out!

After a lot of optimizing, hair-pulling, and quite a bit of slacking off too, Chapter 2 has finally made it's way through the app store's approval process, and should be hitting an iPhone near you shortly.

There are two new game modes to play with, and a new weapon too, so here's the lowdown on all the new stuff:

Scavenge mode, one of the new modes, is alot like survival. The difference is in how weapons are collected - instead of being granted them in sequence, certain enemies will drop weapon collectibles.

The second new mode, Frenzy, presents the player with a series of timed challenges. Hack up mutants with a chainsaw, or hunt for pigs with a shotgun - there's enough there to keep things fresh, and as always, there are new online leaderboards for both modes.

To compliment this update, I've included one of my favourite weapons that I hadn't had time to finish before the first release, the Laser Rifle. An instant hitscan weapon, it's great for slicing off undead limbs.

In addition to these changes, there are now collectibles that appear out of dead enemies. Star Chips will add to a player's score, and Health Chips give a small amount of health back. Thanks to these shiny trinkets, you can now stay alive longer, and push your scores even higher!

Next update: another map, and a few more weapons.

No Lite version, apparently means more sales

As an experiment, I decided to remove the Lite version from the app store, since it was getting ten times the downloads. Since doing this, the sales from the normal version have nearly tripled.

I think the experiment was a success; unfortunate, but I guess it's my fault for making a lite version that users are too satisfied with.

Perhaps i'll release a new, less full-featured lite version later on, but for now i'm focusing on improving the full version.

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!