Hi,

I've been developing my game Zombie Hunter inc for 4 years already and recently I was finally able to record its first video.

The game features quite a unique aiming system which, from my humble knowledge, has never been used in any other game. The best part of this system is the ability to aim for weak spots of any enemy (head, legs) in a top-down setting which is impossible in standard twin-stick shooters.

Check out the video and tell me your thoughts:

Gfx look great, and the aiming is interesting.

But have you tried to filter the camera rotation angle? Watching the video it feels not comfortable, somehow twitchy or jumpy.

I can not imagine if this is still an issue while playing, but guess it would be for me. Some smoothing could be worth it eventually.

I've thought about smoothing but my game relies on precise mouse input to function (headshots), so I decided not to introduce that. I can tell you that around 30 people played the game already and only two said they cannot play. But even those two quit because they were overpowered by other players - they felt they are way to slow to learn the controls, they did not feel dizzy. So you are absolutely correct after a few minutes of play the dizziness fades away ?

@JoeJ Did you watch it on a huge home cinema?

Usually watching gameplay is making me dizzy, but not this time. It even made me wonder why it is not making me dizzy.

I watched it on a tablet. The dizziness while playing yourself is much less than the dizziness while watching others playing. Just like driving a car.

@cubr Looks very nice! Although i am personally not a fan of 15 pixels tall characters. but this is my personal taste. You could get a little bit closer to the main character in order him to become bigger, and tilt the angle of the camera a bit in order to give more view to the front of the player, and compensate this way for the loss of view due to the zooming.

Ha, ok. I thought it is played with gamepad. With mouse i would be fine because i want precise mapping of my movements. I can imagine this works well then and is fun.

Maybe it's still a minor issue when you make trailers for the game. You could select material with little shaking, and eventually also show how somebody plays it with mouse because that's not obvious but changes everything.

How does it work? Moving mouse up and down for aiming, and making a jumpy horizontal move to change player left / right side on screen?

NikiTo said:
Usually watching gameplay is making me dizzy, but not this time

Good to know! I don't feel dizzy watching the video and people who played the game with me never do. But many people who only watch the video do feel dizziness. Looks like you have quite a strong vestibular apparatus.

NikiTo said:
You could get a little bit closer to the main character in order him to become bigger, and tilt the angle of the camera a bit in order to give more view to the front of the player

I've been iterating on the camera position for at least 3 years. The character used to be in the center of the screen, the front view used to be huge. But I changed all this because I want to focus players on watching the area where the bullets fly.

It was very limiting to see only 15 meters to the left and 15 meters to the right - that is why I scaled the camera back and moved the character to the edge of the screen. Also it was very frustrating to see an enemy above you, rotate the “turret” to kill them, only to realize that they escaped from view due to perspective projection - that is why I set the FOV to 15.

JoeJ said:
Ha, ok. I thought it is played with gamepad. With mouse i would be fine because i want precise mapping of my movements. I can imagine this works well then and is fun.

It is played both on mouse and on gamepad. I have people playing with me using both devises in the same match. From my experience, mouse is more precise than gamepad, but the difference is not as huge as with your standard FPS/TPS shooter. Moreover, playing my aiming system is much more comfortable on gamepad than your average twin-stick shooter.

JoeJ said:
How does it work? Moving mouse up and down for aiming, and making a jumpy horizontal move to change player left / right side on screen?

I tested moving mouse up and down but it felt unnatural - you move left to rotate counterclockwise and right to rotate clockwise.

@cubr Please, don't change it only because of me! You own the final vote. You will find many people out there who will love it the way it is.

And, after 3 years of tuning it, don't waste more time on it. Forget what i told you, keep it the way it is!

NikiTo said:
Please, don't change it only because of me! You own the final vote. You will find many people out there who will love it the way it is.

That is my default worldview, but healthy criticism is always welcomed ?.

NikiTo said:
And, after 3 years of tuning it, don't waste more time on it. Forget what i told you, keep it the way it is!

Funny enough, I only tested and iterated it in my brain. I never really had a playtest before 3 month ago. What's even more funny is the fact that the game is quite bland when played in a blockout level. Dunno how it works, but I suffered 2 months of feverish dreams of between me and my friend playing the blockout and then us playing with many people in the final HQ level - I was almost sure the system does not work due to our blockout playthrough.