Zombies in the Dark

My friends and I have been participating in 7 day FPS challenge (7dfps.org/). The goal of the challenge was to create a first person shooter game in 7 days. Since we were already working on a project using Panda3D, we took a little break and decided to try and bang something up.

The result can be seen and played here:
loshdev.com/zitd/

Our project on 7dfps is here:
7dfps.org/?projects=zombies-in-the-dark

Source code repo is here:

code.google.com/p/zombies-in-the-dark/

Screenies:

Code is kind of hacky because you just didn’t have time to make everything the way it should be, but it works (hopefully ). I really really think I finally got a hold of Panda’s collision system.

Core mechanics are:

Use standard WASD keys to move, SPACE to run, left mouse button to shoot, right mouse button to toggle flashlight on/off. The goal of the game is to make your way through dimly lit corridors to the exit portal (rainbow colored box).

Doing just that would be pretty easy, even if you are without a map or a compass and have pretty much no clue to your whereabouts. However, corridors are filled with monsters craving your flesh. So you need to do your best to sneak or outrun them, because you start with only 4 bullets in your gun in one hand, and a flashlight in the other.

Zombies react to sounds and your distance: they can sense you if you get really really close to them, they can hear you if you walk really close to them, they can hear you if you run near them, and if you shoot your gun they will hear you over long distance. Also, if you turn your lamp on, they can see you as well.

Some tips:

Shooting zombies in the head deals significantly more damage than shooting them in their bodies. You are able to outrun them, but try not to run into bigger trouble. If a zombie is in front of you, but has his back turned towards you, when you turn your lamp on he will start to chase the shine of your lamp on the wall (this is internally called herding). Something like a cat following laser pointer. Use it to keep him turned away from you.

It was a fun little experiment, and I believe it really shows Panda’s capabilities for rapid prototyping. So, if you can be bothered, feel free to try it and give us your comments, we will appreciate all of them

I suggest adding some screenshots to this thread - they really help make your game look good.

Thanks for the suggestion, added a couple of screenies to OP.

On my laptop the low FPS makes it unplayable. Still, it looks awesome and it’s incredible you put that together only within a few days.

It’s very cool! The gameplay elements you cited are very advanced if we consider that you have built it in that short time slot. Please, keep this project active!

Man, what I would give if someone implemented a reusable FPS abstraction layer on top of Panda. I’ve already written one FPS with Panda for PyWeek, and I’m about to write another (not for PyWeek, though) - having the most common FPS functionality already pre-made would be a big help.

Thanks all for the comments! I was also surprised at how much we managed to achieve in 7 days. Of course, when we started thinking about the game, we came up with ideas that would take at least 7 months but we managed to strip everything to basics

@Nemesis#13 - can you tell me your comp specs and os? The game does not have any special fluff, it’s just some lights and autoshader, but it’s painfully untested so there might be some problems.

@Flavio - we will definitely squash some bugs that we just didn’t have time to do before, and do some more optimizations. Most work will have to go towards the gameplay and tuning some of the AI parameters and such. I definitely don’t plan to abandon the project, but we will shift our workload more towards the stuff we were doing before, which is another game in Panda

@DangerOnTheRanger - yeah, I hear you. We had to do everything from scratch, but I think some of the code in the project could be beneficial to someone just starting with Panda, like FPS camera implementation, collisions (pushers for walls, events for bullet damage, queues for zombie-player line of sight), basic light setup etc…

Incredible! I like the way you make his eyes brighter in the darkness which makes him look scary

I also enjoy playing different games that related in zombies and aliens and the zombie game that I played before on my PC was Left 4 Dead and Resident evil.

Still being worked on? Source code is not available any more?

Are this source code also available sir?,
I’m pretty want to work on it…
Pretty good.

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them.
Benjamin Jowett’s survival knife

This project has not been worked on after the initial release for 7dfps, however source code is still freely available from googlecode, link is in the original post.