LONG NGUYEN | Digital Artist & Game Designer

Hello folks! Just want to drop another update on how the polishing phase is going!

Even about a year ago, I didn’t think the polishing phase would have taken this long (or this much work) because from an art standpoint, I already knew what had to be done to optimize things, what to spruce up and exactly how to do it. To a lesser extent I knew what was left in terms of the programming side (I did have a TODO list afterall), but what I didn’t count on was how much I actually missed in terms of features that people wanted to see.

I start to think about it and realize that much of it is basic stuff too; things I had in the mod but for one reason or another didn’t include in this version! I’ll break down.

1: Different stages of damage for monsters

In the 2009 mod version when you shot a zombie, the clothing and face would get bloody. I’ve included it again and if you shoot a zombie in the face, the material changes to a bloody (or at least, bloodier) version and repeated hits will damaged the head model itself (parts of its skull will fly off)

2: Brains and maggots

In the mod version, a headshot resulted in a geyser of blood and brains and writhing maggots! I didn’t add it on purpose in this version because I thought people wanted the gore tamped down and I didn’t include the maggots because I never heard any remarks about it before, so I thought people just didn’t notice it. However, it turns out people did notice it and wondered where it was and they also wanted the bloody headshots back! So now, each headshot will yield at least a 5 pound bag of brain matter, skull fragments and writhing maggots!

3: Unequip animations

I didn’t include these initially because I thought it got in the way of the pace of the game (I wanted to opt for a more quick switch method for the weapons) but then I realized that the pace of this game is deliberately slow…so why on earth would I rush the weapon switching animations? *forehead smack* So I decided to put them back in.

4: Sprinting animations

I left this out because I’m just a lazy bum. I’ve added motion to the weapons for sprinting now.

5: Reloading mechanics

This was one where if it weren’t for some members of the Discord channel pointing it out to me, I never would have known! My experience with real-life firearms is very limited. I’ve held a hunting rifle, an over-under shotgun and a handgun in my chubby little hands before. The only thing I know about firearms now is that they are waaaaayyy heavier than they are made out to be in the movies! XD

So imagine my surprise when I find out that some of my gun animations were inaccurate! (this is what I get for watching other videogame reload animations for reference hehe!) I was able to correct them, but as a result had to program some more things to accomodate the new functionalities. You can see it in the video at the end of the post.

6: Ironsights/Aiming down the sights (ADS)

I will say this right off the bat; I absolute DESPISE ADS in first-person games! I found that it always got in the way and resulted in me getting my ass kicked in multiplayer games so I never intended to include it in Out Of Hell.

But lately as I was going through my old code, I came across it tucked away in my base weapon class. I had added it as part of a tutorial video I watched years ago, but never “connected it” in Blueprints, so it was just kept as reference and nothing more. I decided to hook it in and try it, just so I could prove to myself again that ADS is a stupid, terrible thing to have in games.

To my surprise, I found that it made the game so much more intense! The first boss fight is just a basic encounter and easily breezed through, but as soon as I had to rely on ADS, this simple encounter turned out to be really freaky! Anything that adds to the unnerving atmosphere of the game is good in my books!

As shown in the video, you can fire without ADS but it will be much more innaccurate than if you do. This makes the game more challenging in a fair way, as opposed to framerates of about 9 per second making the game artificially harder!! **wink wink**

7: Walking attacks for zombies

This one took a lot of effort and messing around but I got it to work! This was on my TODO list for years, but I never succeeded until now. For the longest time, whenever a monster attacked, it would have to stand still and then perform its melee attack. This is easily exploitable as you could simply step in, smack it, step back, step in, smack it and rinse and repeat. It was also exploitable when monsters chased you but had to stop in order to attack, and all the while you could literally keep walking backwards and they would never be able to catch or hurt you (unless you backed yourself into a corner)

Now, most zombie types will be able to attack as they are moving and this makes for some incredibly dangerous encounters! It is programmed to be a random occurence to give the player some breathing room, otherwise you’d be dead in less than 30 seconds against a fast-moving zombie.

There are a few other things I’ve fixed and added, but those will still be kept under wraps as not to spoil too much.

I want to thank everyone for their suggestions and feedback over this past while! Keep the feedback coming and if it’s useful, I’ll see what I can do! Of course, it takes more time to implement these things, but in the end it only improves the game and makes it a more polished experience.

Hello Hello!

Polishing and optimizing is going fantastic and so I decided to record a small video of  the GPD map in fully playable form just to keep you guys updated (Though it appears that the zombies are all the same, that’s only because of the random spawner that just happened to pick the same zombie type from a pool of many others. That’s RNG for you!)

When you spend your time someplace else for 10 hours a day (work, ugh), you have to make the most of every spare minute you have and so I’ve been working on this thing like an absolute madman.

I’ve had a list of bugs/issues/TODO’s that I’ve written into over the years and now I’m going down the checklist and completing it one by one. I’ve solved a crazy amount of bugs that have been plaguing this thing in a pretty short amount of time and it feels great! Many of the bugs I had to put on the backburner because I couldn’t fix them at the time and I truly dreaded the day that I would have to face them again (which is now) but surprisingly, it’s been much more simple to do these days!

I hope that you could see this starting to come together now. I built each piece seperately and now I’m locking them into place so that you could see the entirety of this beast!

Hello! I just wanted to update everyone on a couple new things! First, I got a new job as a Graphic Artist…again! It’s funny, in the past I worked as a cook, which I eventually left and became a Graphic Artist, then after years of that, I left to become a cook once again and stuck with the same place since 2013 and now I’ve left that post to work as a…..Graphic Artist.

I didn’t leave because my passion lies in designing logos and making banners for people or anything. The old place became tiresome in many, many ways and the Universe presented me with an opportunity at the perfect time with better pay. The people that I was loyal to that would have been a factor in me staying had left a long time ago, so I said fuck it, why not? What’s holding me here? Although by now I realize that this new place is just another job and in time, the same thing may happen again. My passion is my game projects and that’s where I derive my happiness from, not my job.

This new job slowed down the OoH work just a little bit. I was supposed to have completed the new demo for the testers a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve been focusing on learning the ins and outs of the new job (they want me to learn a bunch of new machinery and software) I was sidetracked just a little bit, but I’m back to working on OoH when I get home and on the weekends once again!

Just wanted to give you all a heads up about this development and to show you that these guys are patiently waiting to reveal themselves! 😉

My schedule is absolutely screwed right now up until about August because of work, but the good news is that after I finished the Midtown map I had begun to assemble the Alpha version for the testers (or is it Beta? I should look up what these terms really mean!)

Until now they’ve been testing out various disjointed portions of the game to get a feel for the atmosphere, the game mechanics and so on, but now it is structured and will play out in the proper sequence that is intended for the final release.

I have gone back and combed through every step, from the intro to the configuration screen sound effects, music, rerecording the voices etc. I hope to have this ready to go in June and will keep everyone updated on how the test goes!

In the meantime…

I work in a kitchen and one of the things I just really, really hate making is this Cous Cous dish we have. I really don’t know why since it’s soooo easy and only takes minutes to make, but I just always drag my knuckles and it ends up taking 10 times as long!

This final area of the map (the gas station) is my Out Of Hell Cous Cous. When I finished the layout phase of the map years ago (with only minor detail added) I couldn’t even finish this damn gas station! The model was incomplete and I left the whole thing untextured because for some reason, I didn’t want to do it. I just didn’t!

Fast forward until now and I saved this gas station for the absolute last and I just dragged my feet when detailing it out. It’s so stupid too because all I did was fight through that “not wanting to do it and putting it off” attitude and surprise surprise, I got it done and it was simple. One thing that helped (which I’ve said before in other posts) is making a list and crossing the stuff off as I go. For example:

Dreaded GAS STATION area:

• Stupid Gas Pumps
• Stupid Propane tank things
• Propane cage?? So stupid
• Posters
• Garbage can (octagon plastic ones)
• Window wiper things with the container things for the window wiper things
• Papers
• Big car Vacuum
• Air pump
• Signs on windows
• Stupid Bait fridges (make two? Freezer style as well??)
• Dumb hedges
• Stupid Convenience Store with triangle roof
• Gas sign logo
• big Gas costage sign

Etcetera etcetera.

The thing that took me longest was actually coming up with ideas for the posters and signage and not even the creation of the gas station itself, which I dreaded for so long.

I AM SUCH A SILLY GOOSE!!!

Keeping things unique in a map this big is a damn difficult thing to do by hand and it was just so tempting to copy and paste entire city blocks in order to get through it faster…but I didn’t do it. 🙂 I figure there is about another 2 weeks until the map is complete (including the buildings that you can go in) It was a time-consuming process for sure, but there was a lot of stuff that needed to be fleshed out!

I went into every last nook and cranny that you could see and added details. I also had to keep that up for distanced areas that you couldn’t access but could still see if you zoomed in. That’s something that drives me absolutely crazy in some games; how everything is detailed only in the play area and no real work is put into extending the visuals into the distance! It breaks the illusion!

I posted a pretty long video showing a few more areas of the map and at the end it shows how potentially dangerous it will become once the sun goes down. It’s extremely dark and even with an upgraded flashlight (you get a wider, stronger light if you can find it in the game) it will still be difficult to deal with things that come at you!

The idea is that you do your exploring during the day, collect as much stuff as you can and then make your way to a safe area to spend the night. Of course, there will be pros and cons to both staying out the entire night or hunkering down in a building, but that’s something you’ll have to decide when you’re playing!

I always intended that after this map was completed I would begin working on the public demo and wrote up a checklist of things that needed to be done in order to make that happen. The thing is, I found the list to be pretty long which meant that I would have to stop work on the next handful of small maps in order to make the demo.

Timing is a huge factor in this and I think the best thing to do is to release a demo followed by a trailer when I’m about 6 months or so from the finish line. This way, it would give me some time to make any fixes and changes from public feedback and then people wouldn’t have to wait that long until they could play the final version.

If I stop now to make the demo, it will basically be like working on another small game which takes time away from the main project. If I were to just continue work on the project itself, that long checklist of things that need to be done for the demo would naturally be completed anyway. I can then release the teaser without too much work.

At the moment, I don’t know what I should do, but I am leaning heavily towards just continuing what I’m doing. If you want a demo really soon, I’ll definately need some convincing. Let me know what you think! 🙂

I gotta tell you, I’m so paranoid and anxiety-prone these days. I can see the finish line in the far distance now and it’s just a matter of closing the gap…but, what if something happens?! I try not to think about it so much, but my personality can’t help but make me stress…what if the hard drive crashes? What if this–or that happens? What if? WHAT IF?! Aaargh! The closer I am to the end, the crazier I’m going to get!

I think the silver lining of this is that the fear keeps me in a constant state of motivation to get it all done as fast as I can. Focus is not a problem, believe me. Why, I haven’t even logged into GTA Online to menace any squeakers for months! :D