Hollywood Zombie Pinball Apocalypse is an iPad project developed by 6 students in game design, game art and management at the french institute Supinfogame. In this game, the player controls a crazy pin-ball shaped zombie horde through multiple fast-pace Hollywood movie sets! On their way to fame, these zombies must contaminate more and more humans to increase the horde's size! They'll fight and infect lots of cinema legends to acquire their tremendous powers and discover new paths in the levels...

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HZPA - Level design method

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At first sight it's just another Excel document. In fact, it's divided into two main parts: the level design intentions and the restrictions to which they lead. Whenever you fill the "intentions" column, you also have to fill the corresponding "restrictions" one to have a concrete idea of what you'll build in the end. Hence the "mirror" thing.

You start with the 2 opposite borders and alternate the 2 parts of the array until you get closer to the center columns. So the more precise you get in the method, the closer you get to the center. Columns stand for specific validation points. Priorité des contraintes inverses

A level consists in one or several strong ideas that you may define in columns 1 & 2 (e.g. in a DESERT, our zombies must be dying slowly and can't meet humans). A design validation must be set when about 10 ideas are at step 2.
Then, divide this idea into 3 parts: the preparation of the strong moment, this moment itself, and the consequence or reward you will obtain.

Steps 5 & 6 are meant to define the transitions between the divisions, to make them coherent. The décor elements are defined more precisely, in order to know the essential assets and feature to produce. At step 6, a team validation is necessary to talk about priorities and possibilities.

Once validated, the designers include the level in the whole game (e.g. World 1, level 3), to put the right gameplay elements at the right moment of the learning curve.

Finally, we must define the various patterns making up the level, with their rhythm and shape restrictions (e.g. in the canyon zone, the paths must be narrow and long, and a bit guided). We can also put them in chronological order before starting a concrete level design.

Time estimation for each part and our homemade "stars" placement can be done along all these steps. Once the array is filled, an ultimate validation is set to decide if we go on with the secondary assets and the level itself!

I hope this will be of interest for your own level creation and that you can adapt it to you own needs. For the moment, this method is still a baby, and we are testing it. We'll show you our results in no time!

HZPA - New zombies

HZPA - New zombies

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Hello there! Check out our new zombies, even more stupid and colorful than before... Extras, Stars and movie Legends are finally ready to welcome you...

Camera changes

Camera changes

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Here come some important changes in our game! Don't worry about the main recipe: Zombies, Hollywood stars and Pinball gameplay remain unchanged. Still...

Western features and gameplay elements

Western features and gameplay elements

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Our game is pretty much about dealing with tons of gameplay elements! Here are our first pinball and western features...

The horde

The horde

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The horde is the avatar you control all along the game. It contains ZOMBIES of course! They are spherical like pinballs and incidentally roll instead...

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Tibyon
Tibyon

Wow, this looks just hilarious. Definitely tracking. And I think an iPad release would do really well for you. Good luck.

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Coline
Coline

Thanks for the suggestion Kole!

We have neither the space/time nor budget for such extravagent features, but we'll include them anyway. Thankfully we've got a sound designer volunteering his services out of the love and kindness of his heart!

CNAFF, we've definately got the intention of releasing our game on multiple devices, however, at this stage (prototype) we've got only the iPad in mind.

Check back soon the both of you, we've got load of new stuff we'll be sticking on here. Thanks for your interest!

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KoleAudioSolutions
KoleAudioSolutions

You said it, Cnaff. Simple, but it looks like fun. I'm looking forward to hearing some of the zombie SFX and if I may throw out a suggestion...

If you have the space/time/budget for it, different music styles for different hollywood sets (maybe variations on the main theme) would be great. It'd be fun to hear Spaghetti Western Music w/ the associated set, Orchestral Adventure for any "Indiana Jones" sets , etc.

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Cnaff
Cnaff

ah simple and awesome. you guys will make money off of this =D. BUT you really should make it for all IOS devicews instead of just the ipad.

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