Inquisition of The Dead 0.16 Summary

Core Gameplay Loop

• Round-based survival - Fight through increasingly difficult waves of zombies, a more classical round based zombies approach
• Point system - Earn points by hitting and killing zombies to spend on weapons and doors
• Progressive difficulty - Each round brings more zombies and tougher enemies
• A well designed and mostly complete map that works for all intents and purposes

 Weapon System

• Multiple weapon types including pistols, rifles, and shotguns with different feel and damage
• Weapon upgrading through special upgrade machine, weapon upgrading adds a cool name, camo, and sound to your guns
• Smart ammo management - Each weapon remembers its ammo when you switch
• Mystery Box - Spend points for random powerful weapons
• Wall weapon purchases - Buy specific weapons or refill ammo from chalk drawings

Weapons in the game

Zombie Variety & AI

• Three zombie types: Walkers (slow), Runners (medium speed), and Sprinters (fast)
• Intelligent pathfinding - Zombies navigate around obstacles and each other
• Limb damage system - Shoot off zombie limbs for strategic advantage
• Dynamic spawning - Zombies appear from different locations based on where you are in the map

Interactive Environment

• Purchasable doors - Spend points to open new areas and unlock more spawn points
• Power system - Turn on electricity to activate lights and certain doors
• Environmental lighting that responds to the power state

Player Experience

• Health system with automatic regeneration after taking damage
• Blood overlay effects that intensify as health decreases
• Responsive controls with weapon recoil, aiming down sights, and movement momentum
• Flashlight for navigating dark areas
• Dynamic crosshair that adjusts based on movement and weapon type

Combat Feel

• Satisfying shooting mechanics with bullet penetration through multiple zombies
• Weapon-specific spread and recoil patterns
• Hit feedback with blood effects and screen shake
• Headshot bonuses
• Camera shake and weapon sway for immersive combat

Audio & Polish

• Full zombie audio including damage sounds, chase audio, and attack sounds
• Weapon sound effects with upgraded weapons having new sounds
• Environmental audio including electricity effects and round announcements
• UI sound feedback for interactions and menu navigation

Settings & UI

• Pause menu with customizable controls for mouse/gamepad sensitivity(A little broken)
• Audio controls for different sound categorie(kinda broken too)
• Clean HUD showing health, ammo, points, and round number
• Interaction prompts that show what you can buy and for how much

Mumbo Jumbo

Technical Achievements

• Object Pooling System - Zombies are recycled instead of constantly created/destroyed for smooth performance
• Modular Weapon System - Easy to add new weapons with just data files, no code changes needed
• Smart Ammo Tracking - Solved the tricky problem of remembering each weapon's ammo when switching
• Dynamic Lighting System - Lights respond to power state across the entire map automatically by swapping out materials at run time
• Realistic Lighting behaviour
  
• Hit Scan weapon System with Bullet Penetration

🎯 What's Coming Next

High Priority Features

• Local support - The foundation is there with multi-player UI systems just need to learn more on how to do this

• Special zombie types - Boss zombies, exploding zombies, etc.
• Perk machines - Except it will be called super snacks or something
• More weapon variety - SMGs, LMGs, explosive weapons, Wonder weapons
• More Abilities shield, specialist abilities, and more.

Polish & Juice

• Environmental Interaction- Grab and throw different barrels for different effects
• Dynamic challenges within maps
• Leaderboards and statistics tracking

Development Insights

• Lessons learned - Learned so much stuff about Unity like Cinemachine, Scriptable Objects, making namespaces, player preferences etc.
• Performance considerations - Had to remove a lot of debug logs causing crashes, also object pooled many things like blood, limbs, and the zombies.
• Tool choices - Unity, Blender, Asset Store, CG Trader, Photoshop
• Timeline - Started roughly around fall of 2024

Metrics & Goals

• Current build stats - 84 Scipts adding up to 13,824 lines of code
• Performance targets - 60 fps on my laptop