Zombie Santa Gameplay Video

Latest News: Footage from the latest development version. I don't usually like to predict release dates but this time I'll make an exception. This is maybe a month away from being finished. Then it could be sent to Apple for approval.

We also announced a new game called Bike Baron. We're developing it with Aqua Globs creator Qwiboo - the programming muscle is coming from that side of the fence and we're mainly focusing on design and art:

Zombie Boss Gameplay Video

LATEST NEWS:

Tim has been working on a shadow system for the tiles & editor. The shadows are looking very cool indeed! There's a few small glitches here and there so I won't post any pics yet.

Kimmo and Tuomas have been doing lots of work on zombie bosses and other crucial gameplay features such as the coins. It's much more rewarding to kill the bad guys when you get some decent loot! The coin thing was mainly inspired by Blizzard's classic PC game Diablo.

There's two games for iPhone which also have some of that Diablo feel, both of them are games by Raptisoft: Solomon's Keep and Solomon's Boneyard. I highly recommend them!

This fellow here has his wide grin on the app icon,

his name is Dead Jester.

To make a long post shorter I'll let this video do the talking and show some of the new features in action:

I'll post more footage later!

Making of Level Editor - Part 4

Latest news: This week we moved to new bigger offices! We also hired a new guy to work on the level creation, his most recent project was PS3 game Dead Nation :)

Let's get started with a brand new level editor screenshot. Tim made lots of tweaks and the pits are a new tile type:

Placeholder tile art by Heikki Repo

Kimmo and Tuomas added support for multiple simultaneous bosses. It means we can spawn five zombie Jerry Gores at once if we so desire!

Some of the remaining issues on zombie bosses:

1. They're still too deadly even though they already have a decreased ammo speed. Their accuracy needs to be decreased.

2. There's a few annoying situations where the bosses walk through each other.

3. Health bar height is not calculating correctly for some bosses - the reason is unknown at the moment.

4. Perhaps all of them could be scaled a bit bigger to make them even more menacing.

5. Spawn animations missing.

Grandpa & Grandma weren't quite as scary when they were alive!

Another thing Kimmo improved is collision physics: it works much better now when you bump into obstacles. In one of those old zombie level videos there is a vibrating camera motion when the player character is walking against the wall. After the fix it doesn't do that anymore.

DISCLAIMER: There's no release dates for any of this stuff. The best thing I can do is keep you updated on what's happening.

Making of Level Editor - Part 3

Latest news: New "in-game" camera angle in Level Editor. Tim also coded in support for more tiles such as the sand tiles and low cliffs. It's easier to see the new things if you compare this new image to the screenshot I posted in part 2:

Placeholder tile art by Heikki Repo

Kimmo and Tuomas have continued their work on patterns and bosses. Here's a screenshot of Zombie Jerry & a bunch of zombies duking it out with John Gore:

They're able to take more punishment than just 3 shots.

That's the reason for health bars.

There's a zombie boss version of pretty much everybody. Though we still gotta ask permissions for usage of few of the visiting guest stars such as Hook Champ & Enviro-Bear... actually it would be Zombie Enviro-Bear :)

Death to the Impostor Bear!

PS. If you have any friends who haven't tried Minigore yet it's currently available for free.

Also our latest co-production Death Rally is on sale for $0.99! It's the number one game in over 40 countries!

Huge thanks for everyone who have supported us!

Making of Level Editor - Part 2

Latest news:

Tim is working on a smart system which selects correct pieces for the terrain. The user doesn't have to place each corner piece by hand and it saves a ton of time. It takes half a minute to create the following scene:

You can drag those cliffs with a few strokes

Placeholder tile artwork by Heikki Repo

Doing the level geometry is just one thing, but levels also need enemies. Kimmo has been working on a wave system which allows us to define various attack formations for enemies and spawn them anywhere on the level. If you have played Super Stardust HD on Playstation 3 you know exactly what I'm talking about.

This screenshot demonstrates the circle spawning pattern

Line spawning pattern and the new faster joker zombies

Box spawning pattern and a chest full of souls

That's just a simple example what can done with it. There's controls for size, enemy count, location, offset, victory conditions and everything can be combined to create a very complex chain of events.

What's unique about regular and fast zombies is that they can spawn in two different ways:

1. They can crawl out from the ground. (Slower method)
2. They can be dropped from above by the Master of Puppets (Faster method)

All other enemies are dropped from above by the Puppet Master.

Jussi or I'll do part 3 when something interesting happens... Stay tuned!

Making of Level Editor

We've been silent on Minigore blog for the last month. I've been busy with Death Rally promotion and Jussi has been on sick leave. Kimmo has his hands full with programming related tasks and handling the business side of things.

I have a moment to spare here so let's get you up to speed about what's going on:

On the programming side things are catching speed as the new programmers settle in and familiarize themselves with the code: Tuomas is working on enemy waves & boss characters - stuff that's related to the Zombies. Tim is working on the level editor and he's receiving plenty of help from the Cornfox guys.

The tile based level editor is something which started its life in early 2010. These were the first visual tests I did back then:

Wireframe

Textured Version

More visual tests from July of 2010. I recreated a town in 3d tiles from old SNES game called Lufia II. It's a similar tile system as in Minecraft. Most of the textures are from FF6:

Geometry

Textured Version

First screenshot of the actual level editor running on iPad. Visual target renders are more like a dream but working prototype is the first real step towards a faster content creation pipeline:

The problem with our current levels is that you need an artist and a programmer. With the new editor you don't have to be a programmer or artist to create something with it, it could be done by anyone who can use an iPad or iPhone.

The editor is gonna take a lot of effort to finish but once completed it could be the best thing to ever happen for Minigore!

Minigore HD hits the top 10

Hi everybody!

I'm happy to announce that Minigore HD is in top 10 of the App Store games category, thanks for your support! Here's a pic:

And to clarify, we did submit both iPhone and iPad versions at the same time. iPad version of Episode 5 was approved yesterday. Unfortunately the iPhone version is taking longer time to be approved. We will continue to keep the iPhone version free until the update is out.

As for the future of Minigore: We're already working on the next update but we're not quite ready to reveal the features of that update.