Zombies will now chase and attack humans, who then die, zombify and come back. Shouldn’t be long before the next update as well!

Have a look at the development video on youtube:

Cheers!

Jay

New features include animated civ and zombie types, first pass of the collision layer and a level of detail system that turns civs/zombies into dots at long range.

Have a look at the development video on youtube:

Stay tuned!

Regards,

Jay

As the post title states, we are about 6 weeks into development of ZOS for the iPhone and iPad. Saxon has been getting his head around that crazy Objective C code (it looks even more foreign to me than “normal” code) and has managed to get zombies animated on top of Google Maps, with directional movement, panning and pinch to zoom. Have a look at a quick youtube video I uploaded:

We also had a bit of a set back where a bug or incompatibility was introduced with a new version of Google Maps. Saxon had to spend some time fixing this so that users could publish maps again.

The reason we are now focusing on ZOS for iOS is to fund development of our games and Binary Space in general. We are still only part time, and in order to fast track development we need money to allow us to work more days per week (hopefully all of them!). The app store is a great opportunity for us and we are going to be promoting it heavily and giving it most of our attention in the short term.

Keep your eyes open for future updates and videos on the forums and Facebook.

Regards,
Jay

It’s been far too long before the first weapon release, and we thought we’d start off by bringing you a shotgun in this latest version. The shotgun works differently from the pistol, in that you aren’t just clicking targets to shoot, you line up a template over as many zombies as possible and fire. Any zombies caught at close range will be scattered to the winds, while zombies further back will be damaged and pushed backwards.

Press 2 to ready the shotgun and aim the template, click to fire. If you decide you no longer want to fire, press 1. Shotgun is limited in ammo, and shells aren’t easy to find, so conserve ammo!

The only person to carry the shotgun for now will be yourself, and your friends provide backup fire using just pistols.

Other changes:
- Pistols are infinite ammo for now. This may change again if/when melee goes in.
- Pistols fire slower and are less accurate
- Zombies are faster
- Infinite zombie spawning from fog of war is out for now. We will revisit this later, but for now it has a few problems.
- Shooting in general should be more reactive. If you click to shoot now, you’ll get instant feedback rather than waiting for the survivor to pull his weapon out and fire. You still can’t fire as fast as you click, though.
- Survivors turn quicker and are more responsive to move.
- Fog of war radius larger
- Zombie/civ stats back in
- Numerous other balances/tweaks. Please tell me what you think of difficulty for “normal” suburban maps.

Hope you like it!

Regards,
Jay and Saxon

The two main features are Fog of War and Recruiting.

Fog of War represents what your survivors can see, where they have been, and where they have not been. The dark area shows unexplored regions, while the semi transparent areas have been explored, but you don’t have line of sight. This compliments the next feature release, recruiting.

6 survivors are now scattered across the map for you to find and recruit. Simply walk up to them (or let them walk up to you) and you will be able to control them. You have no way of knowing where they will be, so you must send your guys out and try to find them. Be careful later on in the game as they could be infected when found.

We’ve also added a brief intro/story/goals/tutorial, which will be built upon in future versions and will eventually work like the original C3O tutorial.

There’s also a few other minor tweaks, with fatty now taking a little less time to turn, and running slightly faster, among other things.

Keen to hear how you go, how long you last, etc!

Regards,
Jay

We’ve just released a new version of C3O, which you can play here: http://www.class3outbreak.com

There are two main changes in this version.

The first change is that you can now choose the names for the three controllable civs, instead of them being fixed to Ethan, Emil and Paul. The first civ uses your account name, and for the other two civs you can choose from your Facebook friends. You can also choose the type of civ for each of them.

The second change is that you can now build roadblocks, using wood which you can find when searching buildings (like ammo).

Our crowd-funding campaign at http://www.indiegogo.com/Class-3-Outbreak has just ended earlier today. Thanks everyone for helping us raise over $1300 – we’re really thrilled with that result! :)

Thanks especially to Ethan, Emil, Paul, Adam, Joao and Sean, who each donated $100. Now that the controlled civ names can be chosen, each of these supporters appears as a random civ in the game. At the moment you can’t do anything with these named civs, but in the future we plan to make it possible for you to recruit them into your group.

For now we have set all of these named civs to the default guy, but let us know if you’d prefer a different civ type, and we’ll change it in the next release. Also, your names are now listed in the credits at http://www.class3outbreak.com/credits – thanks again!

As well as these changes, Jay has made a number of tweaks to the various game settings, to change how the game plays. He wanted me to add this:

We’ve reduced civ auto attack distance (conserves on ammo, requires more player input, but still keeps you safe if you’re getting attacked).

Civ numbers have been brought up and zombie numbers down initially, with 2 min infection time. You have around 3 minutes to move around searching until you start really getting outnumbered. Watch out for reanimating zombies around this time (bright red dead people).

Maps with only a few buildings are still going to be mostly unplayable until we decide to implement a building dependent number of zombies and ammo.

Finally, we’ve added a new music track by Rhys Lindsay into the start of the game music.

We hope you like the new release – let us know what you think! :)

cya,
Saxon

Binary Space, developers of the game Class 3 Outbreak (www.class3outbreak.com), are looking for an experienced UI, UX designer to advise them on their existing and future UI/UIX design. The role will be a short term contract period, starting immediately. We are looking for someone with a creative background and/or art director experience who has designed interfaces, preferably in games. We are considering applicants from anywhere, but Adelaide is preferred. You would help us to create UI that flows logically, is easy to use and understand, and that also has a distinctive look and feel.

Requirements and Qualifications

• 3+ years experience or 3+ titles released as the lead UI/UX designer, preferably in games
• A solid portfolio of work that confirms you have built great interfaces previously
• Ability to concept and brainstorm a dramatic, cohesive visual theme for the interface that is used throughout the game
• Be able to document UX flow from screen to screen, with detailed descriptions and reasoning.
• Team player
• Knowledge of usability, human factors, and the UX process

Please send any applications to jobs@binaryspacegames.com with your CV and portfolio.

We’ve just uploaded a new version of C3O with the results of our first three days of full-time work.

Play it here: http://www.class3outbreak.com

The main gameplay feature that we’ve added is the ability to search buildings. You now start the game with a limited amount of ammo for your 3 civs to use. However they can enter buildings and search for more ammo.

There’s also a bunch of smaller changes that we’ve made:

• Smaller minimap, so it doesn’t cover so much of the game area.
• Civs show up as dots on the minimap, when there are less than 50 of them left.
• The ability to delete maps from the editor which you don’t want any more (as long as they haven’t been published).
• Previously all published maps would be submitted to Jay to be moderated. With over 30 maps being published a day, this was starting to take a lot of time. We’ve now changed this so that you can choose to nominate your map for inclusion on the world map.

We hope you like the changes!

Saxon

We have just begun full time work on our zombie game, Class 3 Outbreak! Part of the upcoming development involves writing up a compelling game-world and backstory that we can use to give our game some character. Story will be used throughout the game in the background to give the game context, through dialog, game objectives, an in-game journal, and potentially even for missions.

Jay is currently writing the dialog, but we require an experienced writer to help us create a detailed game world, backstory and to advise on already completed dialog.

Effectively, we need a “creative writer advisor”. The position will be a short contract period (~20 hrs) to develop all of the above. Ideally you will have one or all of the following:

• Experience in writing for games and/or interactive storytelling
• Experience in writing novels or screen plays
• Specific background or interest in apocalyptic tales, sci fi, horror and drama
• Credits in completed projects
• Knowledge of the zombie and horror genres in games, film or novels

Please apply to jobs@binaryspacegames.com and include your resume and writing samples that are relevant to this position and target audience.

Both Luke and David will be joining us in just over a week, from the 13th of June – the same day that Jay and I are going to start full time development on Class 3 Outbreak.

Our team is now even more geographically distributed than before! I am in Perth Australia, and Jay is in Adelaide Australia. David joins us from Melbourne Australia, and Luke is all the way over in the United Kingdom.

Over the next week we’ll likely be busy on preparation for the transition into full time work. We’re looking forward to getting lots of game features developed starting from the 13th!

Saxon