Release 1.1 Update

This is the first update since the game jam ended and I think I've managed to address the majority of the issues received in the feedback during the rating period. That said there is still quite a bit of work to do to finish this game off and push it beyond being just another jam game.

Getting stuck on things was a common theme in the feedback so I've tried to make more things destructible to avoid that. While you might notice the obvious things like trees and fences, the biggest gain was making the NPC's squishable, they now splat when the digger drives over them rather than getting stuck in the wheels and ruining the momentum of the game. These changes also provided the opportunity to add additional sound effects which just adds to the fun.

One of the other big negatives was the lack of music so I've added some simple background sounds that change depending on the state of the game. Initially it's light and up beat but when the zombies appear it gets darker to indicate danger, then after a short while it switches to a "chase state" as you chase the zombies around the town. Each time you kill a wave of zombies the music returns to the light and up beat tune until the zombies return.

I've also addressed the delays between waves of zombies spawning, originally when you wiped out a wave you may have to wait 20-30 seconds for the next wave which could feel like an eternity, now each new wave spawns about 5 seconds after you kill the last zombie. I did this by centralising control of the zombie waves rather than having a bunch of random spawn points generating zombies after some arbitrary delay.

I've tried to address some of the issues with the camera, I was hoping to use Cinemachine's collider and clear shot features to switch between different views when the player was obscured however I could never quite get it working as I liked so I implemented a very simple camera selector based on whether the main camera had a direct line of sight to the player. It isn't perfect but it does seem better and works well in outdoor areas with no overhangs.

One thing I wasn't able to address is the physics on the digger, the cab and boom are currently pivoted using their transforms however this creates weird situations where the boom moves too fast and embeds itself in buildings and other objects. The correct way to do this seems to be to add physics joints to the various digger components and control them with physics forces. I believe I almost had this all working but what I didn't realise at the time was that the mini-map maker that sits just above the digger still had a collider on it which was interfering with the boom and creating all sorts of problems. I spent quite some time trying to solve this until I gave up and moved onto other things, it wasn't until several days later while watching the game play in the editor that I noticed the zombies behaving strangely and realised that their mini-map markers had the colliders still on them, unfortunately by this time it was too late. I plan to go back and have another go at addressing this as I think it will make a big difference to the feel of the digger and stop all of the weird cases where the digger launches into the air when the boom gets stuck in an object.