By Ali Maggs – Co-creator and Programmer on Zombies Ate My City
The next week or so will be spent finalising Zombies Ate My City.
Pretty much all of the elements that make up our game are now up and running but they all need locking down, ready for our beta test. Today I’m locking the videos.
A couple of weeks ago, we had the video system up and running. The system dynamically pulls in and plays the videos and handles the UI and “what happens next” differently, based on whether the video is a “tip” video, a “mission” video or a “transition” video. Today, the content is in!
Last week, we had the final edits through from Luke at Befour Creative in Glasgow. I’ve worked with Luke on a number of projects now (we co-edited a feature film together a few years ago) and I’ve finally had a chance to sit through all the videos today, watching them for the first time since we reviewed them after the shoot. It’s a good sign that I’ve been laughing to myself all afternoon, they’re surreal, funny, weird and random… Perfect!
There’s basically three types of video within Zombies Ate My City. The “mission” videos are delivered by our Professor from his bunker in the future. The “tip” videos are survival tips recorded by our Professor when he was a younger man, and our “transition” videos feature zombies doing every day things, zombie style. We had great fun filming these in London back in October and it’s great watching these now they’re complete. It’s been great seeing our Professor in his videos, both in his younger and older forms. If you cross Walter Bishop from Fringe with Doc from Back to the Future, then you’ll be thinking along the right lines. The transitions, seeing zombies complete everyday tasks, have turned out equally as humorous… Nothing like watching a zombie chase a pigeon around a park.
We’ve also had the musical score sent through from our composer, Andrea Possee, for the first batch of tip videos and they compliment the visuals perfectly.
We should have a trailer up within the next two weeks, with the beta to follow shortly after and a release in early February.
They’re nearly here!