BlitzBotz : Think you've got the BlitzBallz?

Community Showcases
1

OUR DEMO IS LIVE AT BLITZBOTZ.COM NOW!!![/CENTER]

BlitzBotz (http://www.blitzbotz.com) is a free-to-play, online multiplayer, top-down shooter built with Unity3D and Smartfox server. Players will jack-in to their own customized BlitzBot to compete in online arenas with players from all over the world, and from all kinds of devices, including PC, Droid, iOS, the Ouya, and more1!

Players will participate in 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 6v6, and Free4All matches against other player-controlled BlitzBotz in coliseum-like arenas. Your score is based solely on your performance; every player earns experience that can be used to unlock new weapons, classes, and special abilities. Members of the winning team get double XP2 along with the coveted ‘W’ added to their ranking.

Recent Updates :

  • Practice Arena added for testing out loadouts
  • Free4All Multiplayer Arena added
  • Several bugs fixed (listed at www.blitzbotz.com/game/)
  • Marine classes’ Jetpack Armor Ability is now completed.

Coming Soon :

  • New Arena, with objects/buttons that can be used for taking cover
  • Zombies!!!
  • Co-op Zombie levels
  • Completed attack animations/sounds/damage calculations
  • Finishing separation of Marine Gladiator classes

Notes :

  • The game has a fully authoritative server; clients merely run as graphical representations of the servers data.
  • All data, including damage for weapons, player stats info, and even the entire menu structure, are all easily modified via database tables to make updating any part of the game as easy as possible.
  • The store for the game will contain only aesthetic items, like new weapon and armor skins, to ensure that every player’s rank is earned rather than bought.
  • Our guest system will allow you to play indefinitely without ever registering… if you decide to register, your account will be automatically saved at it’s current progress: the aim being new players can click-to-play for free without having to enter any personal information before trying out the game
  • We are currently using assets from http://www.3drt.com, but these will be swapped out for our own graphics before official launch. A huge thank you is due to 3DRT, their game assets have been incredibly helpful during this proof-of-concept phase.

The Story

As a convicted criminal, you are serving a lifetime sentence strapped into a cell-pod in Federal Prison. It is 2185, and all prisoners now serve their terms by providing entertainment for the masses, battling surrogate robots in a televised gladiator-like competition. The same jack in the back of your skull that keeps your body paralyzed from the waist down while serving your time will also become your only route to freedom. You will control a BlitzBot remotely, without ever moving a muscle, as you battle thousands of other prisoners for the chance of a lifetime… the chance to unplug.

Current Progress
It’s been a long road, but the game is almost ready to start taking registrations and getting players in the arena! I wanted to post to the Unity WIP section first, since the Unity community has been both a huge inspiration and my most important tool (no offense intended) in the development of this game. This is my first attempt to complete a Unity game, so the learning curve has been a bit steep at times, but I am confident I will be able to wrap things up and start getting Alpha Keys out to registered members within the next month. I will be sending out 100 Alpha Keys to registered members as soon as I can, and am only sending out 100 because I want to be sure that each step along the way, the server can handle the load. As things progress, we’ll be sending out more and more Alpha Keys in the order that registrations were received. If I had my way, all 100 of the first keys would be Unity Forums members, but as far as I understand it there is no API to make sure of that.

Screenshots


The Main Menu, featuring the Loadout system


The old HUD system vs. the new one.

Video

The latest preview video of our upcoming BlitzBotz Zombies Arena

I am working very hard and using up the majority of what free time I have to get this game prepped for Alpha testing. So far, it’s just been me, but my graphics designer is biting at the bit to start making this game look even better visually. My graphics designer being my girlfriend, and considering we now have a 4 week old daughter, progress has been a bit slow lately. I will have a playable demo up during the coming weeks, and would appreciate any help I can get as far as filling the arenas with BlitzBotz to get some good data on how the server handles the load.

That’s about it for now, I will keep things updated here as best I can, but the majority of my updates will be via the Dev Blog, which you can view at either http://www.blitzbotz.com or http://blitzbotz.blogspot.com. I just realized that I need a good gameplay video showing how the guns shoot and grenades are working, so that should be posted within the next day or two.

2

I just took a quick gameplay video. The screen being recorded is running on my PC, the other player is being run from a Nexus 7.

Note : I get great frame rates from all versions of the game, including mobile… any lag in the video is caused by my crappy graphics card’s inability to keep up with screen recording and rendering the game at the same time.

3

Looks promising, especially considering the number of platforms you target.

Probably gonna give it a shot once you launch.

Out of curiosity, how long has the development time been so far?

4

Hey buddy, it’s looking great, I can’t wait to see the final product! :slight_smile:

Grats on your daughter man, bet she’s beautiful! My daughter is due May 27th, coming up very soon ^.^

Goodluck with the rest of the project.

5

Well, this is my first real game with Unity, so development has been a long time coming… I’ve been learning both Unity and Smartfox for a little over a year now, and this particular project started around Christmas of 2012. The hardest part was the authoritative server, and getting that server to work with a SQL database. Now that all the foundation work is done, things are coming together much quicker.

My main goal, as far as different platforms, was to make sure you can sign on with the same account no matter what device or platform you choose… so you can access your same loadouts/ranks/etc. via the webplayer that you can with the mobile version.

6

Thank you, and yes, she is perfect. Grats on yours as well!

7

That’s not so bad. Pretty good progress for a single developer, all things considered.

Oh, and i never realized there were so many parents here. My son is 14 months now. I guess progress will speed up even more once you get to sleep properly again :wink:

8

Really awesome stuff mate, I’m definitely keeping this on my radar and I look forward to playing! I like the cross platform especially, my main problem with mobile games is that I feel like an idiot playing something on my phone when I have access to my pc, but the odd time I’m stuck at a doctor or whatever I wish I could play one of my pc games remotely, so this sounds like a really good solution.

9

Quick Update:

Registration system is complete on the site for anyone who wants to join the first round of Alpha tests coming soon.

http://www.blitzbotz.com

10

A quick preview of a few of the weapons in action… hoping to add some particle effects for the attacks soon. A new matchmaking/load screen has been added for the Arena as well.

You can read more via the dev blog at http://www.blitzbotz.com or http://blitzbotz.blogspot.com

11

Just posting another update on the games progress so far. I am in the process of separating weapons/loadouts between the two classes of Marines Gladiators, and have finished the setup for the latter’s armor ability. Marines will be able to quickly escape harm by deploying their jetpack, which will carry them away from the enemy and place them strategically behind them with gun drawn, ready to counter-attack.

I have also built an improved Arena in my modeling program, since the previous arena was nothing more than a textured plane with a collider. I wanted to test out my theory of making parts of the Arena “usable”, so I created pillars with “buttons” that allow a player to duck behind cover, which will allow the pillar to absorb most/all of the damage that they would otherwise receive:


By using the buttons on the ground, players can take cover behind pillars/walls when available.


The beginnings of the new arena.

I also browsed the Asset store the other night looking for a little inspiration… my girlfriend and I are big fans of playing the zombie levels in Black Ops, and there happened to be an awesome zombie model (Micro Zombie Brain) available in the Asset store, so we couldn’t pass it up. I have the server setup to control all the AI for the zombies, which much like when players move, all info is sent from the server to the clients simultaneously… this will allow for many players to join an Arena together and fight off zombies as a team.

Video

12

We have just published a Web Player version of our first demo on our site at www.blitzbotz.com Players can customize loadouts and then bring them into the Training arena to get a feel for the games controls.

CLICK TO PLAY OUR DEMO AT BLITZBOTZ.COM NOW!!!

The Free4All arena is just about ready to go as well, and we will hopefully be adding that within the next 24 hours. We are excited for the Free4All, since everyone playing the game can be in the same arena at one time! We’ll post an update once it’s ready.

You can login as a guest to try it out, but we will eventually be taking down the Guest login for Alpha testing, so be sure to register in order to receive an Alpha Key when we start sending them out.

13

We’ve just posted an update to our demo at www.blitzbotz.com! We’ve added the Free4All multiplayer arena, allowing players to all enter the same arena at the same time. This is to demonstrate how multiplayer will work, and although we aren’t quite finished with our damage calculations yet, players can still get a feel for how attacking other players will work. I’m curious as to how many players we can fit in a single arena before frame rates start to drop to a point the game is unplayable. My Unity Editor was getting 40-70 FPS, and that was while the same computer also ran 3 copies of the Web Player.


10 different Botz in one Arena.

Game Clients being run in the image:
1x Unity Editor
3x Droid (Nexus 7, Galaxy Proclaim Droid X)
2x PC Standalone
4x Unity Web Player (2 Chrome, 1 Firefox, 1 IE)

Hope to see at least some of you in the arena tonight!!

14

BlitzBotz is now listed on indiedb.com!


15

Looking good so far

16

I’ve been working on the Zombies Arena this last week, and it’s coming along pretty well. It’s already setup so that the server handles and tracks all zombie movements (attacks coming soon) to discourage any cheating, and once completed it will be pretty simple to open the system up for Co-Op Zombies as well. Preview video is below, showing how the servers movement tracking and damage calculation systems are working. I gotta say, it’s nice to finally be able to play the game and attack something after all of this work!

Hope to have the rest of the single player mechanics done soon, and Co-op to follow shortly thereafter!

17

As a long time fan of zombie levels in just about any game, I decided the next logical step for BlitzBotz was to add it’s own version of this tried and true game type. The concept was relatively simple: send zombies in waves to attack the player in increasingly difficult waves. Maintain a leaderboard and personal high scores, and in keeping with the theme for BlitzBotz, make sure that the server handles the zombies rather than the client, to prevent any cheating and/or network manipulation. What has come of the work is a relatively simple, but incredibly fun, zombies game for BlitzBotz that I’m hoping to have live on the site very soon.


My main goal right now is programming, and art assets will be done and replaced once the majority of programming is done. Once again, the Asset Store proved priceless in saving me time when setting up the assets… this time in the form of graveyard assets for the new Zombie Arena. This is where I would usually give credit to the creator with a link to their item in the Asset Store, but I cannot find the item in the store now for the life of me… if anyone can provide a link it would be greatly appreciated.


I’m hoping to have the single player version wrapped up shortly, and the co-op version will soon follow. For now, what has been completed thus far has, at the very least, made working on this game a lot more fun… as I am effectively playing a game now as I test and tweak weapons, loadouts, etc.