Yeah okay, a month late. Well, there's a lot to update you on! Some of it's going to have to wait for the next update, but it's pretty exciting stuff.

10 Second promo 3D promo thing.. (these videos are both actually for a university brief - I love this course!)

30 second faux 80s game ad. - I'm probably going to do a lot more work on material like this when the demo is nearer completion.

Francis is getting a make-over to fit the standard of the level graphics, various things around the swamp are getting either simplified (scripting) or improved (graphics). The UI will have been overhauled by the next big update.

Most importantly. ZH is now a Universal Binary and runs smoothly on any intel Macintosh.

Oh, and completely off topic, but anyone who hasn't watched my personal journal, I'm going to be a parent in a couple of months!

— Michael Dawes 25/01/2008 10:37

Get your updated zombie fix at: http://www.zombieholiday.com/download/ZH0-0-2b.zip

Adjustments - Added new door graphics (which appear in front of player instead of behind - may have to redraw!) Adjusted & redrew fish (still need tweaking) Decreased amount player flies back when hit by rats/bats/fish. Combined 2 parallax layers in the swamp, reduced size of one. Made platforms more clear in swamp level. Fixed a bug where important message pane in boss chamber was not appearing. (?) Added lighting effects in boss chamber to help clarify how the rocks work. Added lighting to respawn points, making it so you can re-tag earlier ones. Superficial green ambient lighting adding on trees. Loading screens added for training and swamp levels.

I'm working on some special stuff now - the next few versions are going to offer some nice improvements.

— Michael Dawes 19/06/2007 11:40

Thanks to a lot of helpful feedback by PGF users I've been doing a lot of tweaks.

I've reduced the game size by 3 MB. Combined two parallax layers.. Fixed 2 critical camera zoom bugs. Clarified platform locations. (see here) Continued to polish the swamp painting. (ambient lighting to make scenery less flat) Created new fish sprites. Fixed the resolution profiles.

Now I'm just going to do some loading screens and maybe fix up the door graphics and add a tiny bit of new content, and 0.0.2 will be ready.

I started a ZH roadmap page, explaining how much and what I'll be changing between updates.

— Michael Dawes 10/06/2007 01:00

The very first ZH demo is available. Please read the included README file.

Download from: http://zombieholiday.com/download/ZH0-0-1.zip

More info at the Sawblade Software forums. The next demo I'll be a little more open about: there are some critical bugs and raw areas in the current demo.. Your mileage may vary - Please do not distribute!

http://sawbladesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8417#8417 for more info.

— Michael Dawes 09/06/2007 23:49

7/6/7

Thursday 7th, basically. In a week. Demo, with lots and lots of shabby edges and things missing, but just for you guys anyway so it doesn't really matter!

It won't likely work well on most Intel macs, but I'd really like peoples benchmarks on those in particular, the more high-end the better - MAYBE on C2D/Xeon uber-intel macs ZH runs at a reasonable speed - i have no way to test that one way or another!

I'm not going to call it an alpha as it's only the first 3 levels (2 sort-of - not sure the boss level would count as a full level!) but it's a start, and it'll be nice to get some gameplay feedback.

— Michael Dawes 31/05/2007 17:22

Well, most recent PGF update did indeed fix most of the problems I was having. We have respawn points now, in particular.. All of the major ZH bugs/shortcomings to date have been dealt with.

I've got a new title-screen with working options, and some new music.. Actually I have way more music than I need right now! I'm planning on letting people download the 3 level demo when it's had some problems sorted out.. In fact - I've decided to 'release' it anyway, despite some engine glitches which make it play strangely.

So, now I have a short list of things to fix up ASAP before i can do the demo.. Those include - sound effects (ugh) .. The training level's Background.. (uuuuuugh) .. Swamp Boss Music (eeek) .. A strange bug that causes the game to crash whenever bog zombies bite (wtf?).. Graveyard zombie claws currently don't do damage and can be pushed around (heh)

Other changes I've made recently include: Camera zooming out for big setpieces/bosses, the ghosts now fire 3d homing skulls (which look pretty!), Some balance tweaks, I've also made the dialogue less wordy. Next update will have screenshots. :)

— Michael Dawes 12/04/2007 22:44

You'd be forgiven for thinking work on ZH has stopped entirely. Not quite true! I've been doing occasional tweaks and finishing off various bits of sprite work. The next version of PGF will fix most (all?) of the problems I've had sofar too, making the game much more viable. (respawn points are basically impossible until the next release) - once the sprite polishing and tweaking is done there's a little sound work to do, then a demo will be one step closer!

You can't keep a good idea down.

— Michael Dawes 04/03/2007 17:58

Things are coming along nicely now. I finished the swamp background. That in it's own right is a big milestone. Drawing any picture for months is pretty taxing. Now I'm tweaking enemy behaviour and confronting various bugs and issues I've had.

I've finished the run cycle for the bog-rats and I'm doing a whole new load of spriting. As soon as I've done some more sound effects I should be able to make something like a trailer as the demo's still at least a month a way.. Ho-hum!

— Michael Dawes 06/09/2006 22:30

Progress has been quite slow. I've tweaked a lot of the gameplay. It now plays much better than it has previously. A few bugs have popped up since the latest PGF beta came out… Staring at the same level map for so long - a few questions keep coming to mind.. Is it all really worth it? This is weeks (Months?) of work. I get like this about a lot of projects when I work away at something compulsively without much feedback.

I could rush a demo out - then I'd get feedback, but I'm still set on having more of the game complete before releasing a demo. Can't win can I? I don't think I'm too much of a perfectionist, but I'd REALLY love to have this at a demo-able stage before I start Uni.. Gah.

I've been posting a few little videos of ZH on YouTUBE - though nothing special, it's something.

— Michael Dawes 26/08/2006 18:12

I've been on holiday in Northumberland for a week, but I was able to get a lot of ZH work done anyway. Mostly music.. I'm beginning to get a proper grasp of Garageband. It's a lot of fun! Other than boss music I've pretty much finished the music for all the levels that should appear in the demo. Playing the game even at this early stage with music makes it seem a lot more “real” - i'm pretty excited about it!

Crypt.mp3 - Prototype crypt level music.

I also did rough planning of some of the later levels properly for the first time, and drew the swamp's loading screen.

On the break I took hundreds of inspirational and reference photos for scenery and architecture, which will speed up work immensely. Now I'm working on finishing the swamp level still. I added a lot to the froggy boss level before I went away too.

— Michael Dawes 04/07/2006 15:06

Sorry for the lack of updates - the work I've been doing lately has been painstaking and monotonous.. Mostly detail work on the boss room and swamp level. I've done a hell of a lot more routines too and are about to start work on the map sections. For a 3(or 4) level demo there's a hell of a lot of hidden stuff to discover or play with!

Every day the elusive demo gets a little closer and more bugs get squashed.

I updated most of the software running on this site (Oekaki, Wiki, Gallery), breaking my gallery in the process.. Oops. It's taken me a few days to sort everything out again! If you find any broken links or suspicious behaviour please let me know!

I finally added a link to Zombie Holiday : Old Windows Game - might be interesting to people with PCs - even if just as a curiosity.

— Michael Dawes 22/06/2006 06:37

The demo is coming along quickly.. Here's the icon. I think I'm happy with it at least. Nice and aqua-ish. The demo will be bigger than I'd previously thought.. Though I haven't finished colouring the swamp (lol) some other parts have been comparatively easy to get together. Spent all of yesterday drawing some cut-scene graphics.. Today I plan on polishing the Francis sprite, and maybe starting one for Sid. He shouldn't be so hard as he's not going to be playable.. Probably!

— Michael Dawes 27/05/2006 11:59

I'm not going to talk about stuff that'll be in future ZH in this update, but I'll talk about what's already working on level 1! This will likely only make sense to PGF users.

• 35 routines
• 4 Parallax layers
• 7 enemy species
• 10 Weapons (2 player weapons sofar)
• 23 Projectiles
• 28 Character types

The level takes approximately 1:30 to to complete if you dash for it, avoiding all enemies.. (It may be possible to trim time off that in extreme cases) I estimate 3 mins for 'normal' play, and around 5 if you're looking as getting the unlockables. (and if you know /how!/ I can't factor in how long it takes people to work out) That's pretty much exactly how I'd wanted it, so I'm happy about the decision to extend the early part of the level.

I'm currently working on the game icon and still painting the map. I had set myself an unrealistic deadline for that, but progress is being made quite rapidly now.

— Michael Dawes 23/05/2006 22:56

Right now I'm still working hard on getting the level's detail upto full quality. Progress is steady but sloooooow. Here's a pic:

Green indicates squares that are 100% complete and '1px' detailed. I've shown the mask because I don't want to reveal all the level's secrets. I've been selecting some complex squares to paint first, so I really don't anticipate it taking forever..

Each of the squares is 300×300 pixels - the level weighs in at 11339×1280 pixels. … I've never painted anything this big before - it's really a lot of fun, if mind-numbing.

— Michael Dawes 15/05/2006 23:35

Attention to detail.. Here I'm testing out one of the methods I'll be using for carry-able items. It still needs a little work. The other type will require a PGF fix from jesse (which is in the next update already), but for most stuff this is preferable anyway I think. Don't want too much stuff clogging up the GUI layer - nor am I sure I want levels so complex you need to carry multiple keys simultaneously.

Key Test

You can see much of the new gui here too.. Ignore the misplaced timer and the Growl/Mail popup, hehe. I still have to decide if I want to hide the weapon icons until the weapons are collected or if i like having them all visible initially to get players curious and go hunting. The latter is certainly less complex to make. :) It's not as if their functionality is obvious from the logos anyway! Oh, one good thing about the timer being visible, you can see the textured transparency I've put on most GUI elements. The purpose of the top left sphere will be clear soon too.

— Michael Dawes 07/05/2006 01:14

Level one's coming along steadily - I've switched to a method of doing the detail work where I use a grid and do it square by square. It'll take a while! The level as a whole is much more complex and interesting now.

I've decided to put together a 1 level + boss alpha demo for testers ASAP.. The To-do list for that as a project is;

Background graphics.. 65% done, approximately..
Sprite Polishing..*
Level design and events.. 90% done.
Sound effects. 40% done.
Interface. Around 80% sorted now.
Start screen/Menu* 40% done

* signifies stuff I'll probably let slide for the first demo/s - though I can't be sure.

So, you can see i still have a lot to do, but at least it'll be less than half the time before some people get to play-test part of it.

— Michael Dawes 29/04/2006 00:58

I've been getting increasingly frustrated at the linearity of level one. When I've spent so long working on it it seems a shame to have the player just sprint through it. So! The levels getting increasingly Lionheart I was also concerned about the wasted vertical space.. Soo.. Here's a preview of a section of the map now..

click for image

I've added rats and some damaging scenery to the level now, but I've just set out a lot of work for myself with all the new trees to paint!

— Michael Dawes 18/04/2006 04:28

I've been going over level 1 with a 1 pixel brush adding detail.. Click to view - as you can see this may take some time! I've got a couple of fun weapons in the works and some new enemies that need fixing up before I post about those too.

In case you haven't read anywhere else, I was accepted for a degree (BSc) in games design, so as of Aug/Sept I'll be balancing creative stuff and university stuff. I'm pretty excited about it!

— Michael Dawes 12/04/2006 06:59

http://mixelmagic.com/cmo/comics/filler.jpg

- It's not finished, but it's going to be the titlepage pic/“cover” Once i get further with ZH.. I've been concentrating on getting chapter 1 of CMO done first so I can dedicate my time to ZH properly.. Sorry for the lack of updates.

Just letting you know I haven't forgotten about it at least. :D

The pic has Francis, Anna and Gogo (all eventually playable characters) Lexima (might be playable eventually, I dunno) a random Zombie, and Sgt Kershaw (the big robot) who's going to be one of the first bosses. Not v exciting, but at least it's alive.

I've posted the first proper gameplay footage.. Feel free to take a look.. As you'll see the graphics still have some fixing left to go. The boss fight is pretty much done though. http://mixelmagic.com/pixelrats/ZH/swamp.html - 8MB - Happy late xmas. :)

I've mostly been working on the boss chamber. He has dying frames now and the place is almost fully decorated. I've been somewhat distracted by other life related - and death related things :( .. Things are at least progressing.

I'm thinking of making some giant boulders into some weird magical blobs or something. I think it might be too hard if the rocks AND the boss' projectiles hurt you.. Decisions decisions! Very close to movie stage.. In fact I could record it today I suppose.

I think Francis punch/kicks will be unlimited.. No 'getting tired'.. Shouldn't make a massive difference really, but will be a lot friendlier to new players.

— Michael Dawes 14/12/2005 07:40

Still working on the boss' surroundings. It's looking pretty special. It'll be worth the effort. :) Took ages trying to work out the best way to make a gateway that slowly opens in the background.

— Michael Dawes 03/12/2005 13:46

The boss is coming along very quickly. You can hurt him using routines and the level's pretty intense. I've tried to finely tune it so there's a rush trying to avoid incoming fire. In a sense it's more like a traditionally upwards scrolling shooter despite being a platform level.. I've certainly not seen anything so hectic in a platform game, but it works well I think. :D

I'm having trouble deciding whether the game's too easy or i'm just good at it now. Oh well. The demo will help decide that.

I'm not going to spoil the boss surprise with screen grabs - wait a few days for the next gameplay footage. :)

Here's the previous gameplay footage - you may have to save it to your HD before it'll play:
frog test (Quicktime, Mp4, H.264, 800K)

— Michael Dawes 2005/12/01 00:19

Things are coming along well - I still haven't made that gameplay movie.. I'm being a bit of a perfectionist about it. Oh well.. The graphics have been coming along nicely, and a lot of the routines have been finely tuned. The game has been 100% de-eskimod now, Francis dies nicely, lots of extra secrets, etc.

Check the three latest grabs here. I still intend to have that video done in the next few days, but I've not sorted out the boss yet.. He'll be fun.

— Michael Dawes 2005/11/24 23:21

Level one.. Urrrgh.. Still doing it. At least I'll only have to do a lot of these graphics once and then I can use them again and again in the game! I made a to-do list that's almost a page long just for level one things, and I'm slowly ticking them off.. Still have a lot of animation frames to do on the bog-zombies and francis (who never really seems to end!). I've almost totally finished the level routines, and there's a lot of them. Most of the enemies now do interesting things when they die.

One of my enemy types relies heavily on a modification Jesse's making to how touch damage is calculated as they're stationary but supposed to hurt you. I've disabled stomping damage completely. As there was no visual clues as to what was stompable and what wasn't it didn't seem fair. Two different types of enemy are generated on level one now, not just the bats. I've made a lot of UI fixes too.

I've added an odd sub-quest where you collect pages Lexima has hidden around the levels.. They explain about the creatures a little like a Pokedex, or 'scanning' things in Metroid Prime - it's totally optional, but the game keeps a tally of how many you've received and will give you a rating/bonuses at the end of levels and the game. Also gives me a chance to put some traditional art in ZH. I'm very close to being able to make a movie of gameplay.. I might wait until the first boss is done though.. That's what i'm working on once level 1's done, and I'm hoping he'll look quite interesting!

I'll post screenies in the next entry.. In the meantime Some new ones here.

— Michael Dawes 2005/11/17 12:37

Although level one is far from finished, i've started looking at it in a different light. As PGF lets me create levels as multi-layered PSDs, the level is basically just a giant painting.. With a few giant paintings in the background, and another one in the foreground. As a piece of art (I consider all game graphics art, but bear with me..) it's definitely the largest piece I've ever attempted - it's also becoming my best. It says “what I'm about” and has more odd style than anything I've done before and is truer to my roots than any of my attempts at fantasy art.

If you know the tricks and rush through the level (ignoring the secrets and avoiding the enemies) you can reach the end in approximately a minute. So what's taking so long? The details! I haven't timed the level taking into account things like puzzles and unlockables - all of which are optional anyway, but I suspect that puts it closer to 3-5 minutes if you know the solutions. Like a lot of games I guess the longevity is partly in pratting around. I think the frogs are fun to fight. :)

I've finished a couple of very important landmarks.. There's still quite a lot of filling in to do.

— Michael Dawes 2005/11/10 22:42

I have a new goal.. I'm making enough of ZH in a polished way to record a movie of level 1 gameplay. I aim to have this complete within a week or two. The graphics have been coming along pretty fast, I'll upload grabs soon. I still have some sprite fixing to do, but I've already finished three of the background parallax layers. I worked around a few odd problems with platforms and have been fine-tuning some level elements. More news shortly!

— Michael Dawes 2005/11/06 10:44

I've been busy with a few other things recently, but have been occasionally dabbling with background graphics.

I've had good news on the music front and have permission to use a great band's songs! More information on this further down the line.. It's pretty exciting for me as I know I'd not be able to make tracks of that quality and it'll help ZH reach the next level. This is going to be great! I want it to look as professional as possible even if it doesn't ultimately get finished..

Back to drawing the level for now.

— Michael Dawes 2005/10/29 10:47

Well I've made my first piece of music.. It's a short looping thing for the start menu/loading screens. Sounds a bit John Carpenteresque, oh well!

I'm painting the background, which is a ridiculously massive job. The interiors will use tiles! The first few outside levels though 'unfortunately' are going to be insane giant psd jobs. On the plus side it's beginning to look pretty sexy.

Had some problems with a routine, but now i've created and set up three weapons, 2 of which need some tweaking. I've also made continue points which don't work. Hopefully in a later version of PGF I'll be able to move respawn points around the levels.

The first zombie is moving nicely. So many numbers to tweak though! Can't wait to get the Gallery back up and running again, I want to post screen grabs.

— Michael Dawes 2005/10/03 13:19

I've implemented bats properly. They're made in quite a funny way by a repeating routine which generates them at the X/Y co-ordinates of a 'character' floating off the top of the screen that's attached to the player! Craziness. Oh well, it works. There seems to be a good balance - No more than X amount of bats can exist, so if I want to up the bat count i can just change a number.

I'm going to have to shrink the squirrels, they're currently about the size of a dog, and rather than look cute it's pretty scary. I still have occasional problems with my swinging platform jumping around. It always returns to it's proper pattern, but it is a little frustrating.

I've had the perfect idea for ranged weapons later in the game! Today I plan on having the first proper working zombie up, too.. I'll try not to make him too loveable.. That wouldn't help.

I also had an idea for another PGF game yesterday. It wouldn't be as huge an undertaking as ZH, but it would still take a lot of work. If/when I've got the first few levels of ZH sorted as a demo I'll think about fleshing the idea out properly.

— Michael Dawes 2005/09/29 23:42

Last couple of days have been dedicated to scripting the puzzles on level one and working out the format of dialogue. It's looking pretty decent now, though totally unpolished. The puzzles are all working great - it's taken me a long time to get used to the variable and routine system. I've managed to make my swinging platforms break a couple of times too, which is worrying. I'll have to tweak those again.

Only one more puzzle left to script in the short term for this level. Next priority is really to sort out the monster presence on the level, then paint the backdrop properly. I've also got to think about adding the first ranged weapon too, I just don't want to do it too early!

Other new changes; You can now kill the annoying fish.. You have to use the action button to activate many events.. And the bonus squirrels are working nicely. I've decided to have multiple little bonus items scattered across the level to avoid monotony.. Much like in old games like Robocod.

— Michael Dawes 2005/09/25 14:27

After a marathon spriting session Francis can finally jump, fall and attack mid-air without turning into an Eskimo. Now all he needs to do is get hurt and die and I've 'finished' all his frames. Some of them might be stand-ins as I've reused a lot.. For example when he jumps and kicks he just does his normal dropkick frames.. I might alter this later, but I'm surprised how good it looks! When you fall the coat flies up behind you to about head height - it's pretty effective.

I worked out a good way to make one of the level 1 puzzles work too.. I'd been pondering it and had all sorts of dumb ideas involving a single-use weapon. Rubbish. It'll be good now though!

— Michael Dawes 2005/09/24 03:14

If there are broken images around the site, ignore them, something's under repair. I've done some work on the GUI, the result of which can be seen in these screen grabs: Fish Frogs Kick

— Michael Dawes 2005/09/21 16:40

I've made a lot of progress. I have vicious swamp fish.. I made it so the frogs spit, so they're less of a pest in close range combat. After help from Jesse got the swinging bridges to behave.. I've put in my first zombie. Next come the bats, and some sort of new swamp monster.. That'll make quite a few different species for an introductory level.

It's getting quite fun to play, too..

Whilst experimenting with stomp damage I created a prototype bug monster. I don't think he's going to be in the game.. Can't make my mind up. His head/tail hurt you, the rest of him doesn't, which could make him an interesting form of transport later in the game..

I still haven't sorted out all the Francis frames, so he changes into an eskimo quite a bit! Need to fix that!

— Michael Dawes 2005/09/16 02:22

Eeexcellent! Things are coming along even better, and after a lot of experimentation, trial and error I have my first proper enemy, Ribbit.

Fear him. Seriously, he's a complete git. He jumps at your face and bites at your ankles. Hitting him up into the air can be pretty dangerous too as he has a habit of falling back down at great speed and splatting on your head.

They're teaming up on me! Some new screenies here.

Francis' primary attack is mostly done apart from some graphics.. I think next job is to get rid of the greenlander guy completely, which will take a while.. Wish me luck!

— Michael Dawes 2005/09/11 03:22

PGF arrived, everything's running smoothly after a few hiccups. Francis now handles properly and has running/standing animations. The swamp is coming along slowly.

I created moving swamp platforms, next i need to try swinging platforms.

Made the first part of custom UI, a 62 frame energy bar - it looks pretty sexy! Unfortunately i imported it backward, so you get more energy if you get hurt. Oops. Will have to fix that.

— Michael Dawes 2005/09/01 18:58

Started ZH pages! Tweaking Francis. Painting level one (swamp) background. Keeping a log of notes and ideas. (Some of which I want to be surprises for in the game!)

Awaiting PGF.. I was a beta tester a while back, that's when I started making the map. It's going to be fun getting back into it.

— Michael Dawes 2005/08/26 02:49

• About Zombie Holiday
  
• How you can Help with Zombie Holiday
  
• Discuss ZH on the ZombHol Forum.
• There's the original Web-Comic.
• Windows users might be interested in Zombie Holiday : Old Windows Game.