When you shoot something with a rocket...

...it should ragdoll gaily through the air.

Tired of those yellow pills just disappearing when you shoot them?  Well, no longer!  Yes, that's right - ragdoll pill corpse physics have been added to ZOMG Rockets!

Introducing corpses was actually fairly simple.  It was just a matter of disabling input and AI on death, adding (and enabling) a collider on your weapon (to stop the cute little pill corpses from rolling forever), and setting rigidbody.freezeRotation to false for that endearingly haphazard final flight.  The result?  Instant hilarity.

A job well done

As an added bonus, when you die you leave behind this sobering reminder of your mortality:

For extra laughs, try using the Repulsor on corpses.  As usual, you can play the latest version here:  http://www.kongregate.com/games/CodeBison/zomg-rockets

Scoring Update

I've put a new version of ZOMG Rockets! up on Kongregate.  What's changed?

UI changes - mostly new font:

Kongregate API tracking of:

• High scores (level and game)
• Kill streaks
• Level completion times

The game actually ends (3 lives - once you're done, you're done).

You can play it here.

Adding support for the Kongregate stats API was actually remarkably simple.  After setting the stats you want to track on the Kongregate site, there are two steps:

There's a single function call to link to the Kongregate API at game start:
Application.ExternalEval( "if(typeof(kongregateUnitySupport) != 'undefined'){" + " kongregateUnitySupport.initAPI('ExternalAPI', 'OnKongregateAPILoaded');" + "}" ); And then a single call for each event you want to report:
Application.ExternalCall("kongregate.stats.submit", eventName, eventValue); eventName is any string, and eventValue is any non-negative integer.

PS:  If you know why my code blocks are word wrapping even though I've set white-space: pre, please tell me! :)

It's Alpha Time!

Yes, that's right - ZOMG Rockets! has entered alpha.  Things have changed a fair bit since the last update.  Where before we had a leisurely stroll through an outdoor cube world that involved lazily lobbing rockets at things, what we've got now is more of an up-close knock-down-drag-out rocketfest.

As you can see, there's a lot more close-quarters action.  Enemies are rendered as allbrights, for the vision impaired (this one's for you Joe).

There's also a new weapon, the repulsor:

Careful, don't kill yourself with it - ricochets are not to be taken lightly.

Other than the new and shiny, there are a lot of internal adjustments.  Those who know Unity will see the telltale signs of a Pro trial.  When the trial expires later this month, we'll be going Pro.  The shiny effects will be nice, but I'm just as excited by things like the profiler.

Here's a random grab bag of changes in the new release:

• Improved enemy AI
• New rocket launcher graphics
• New weapon - Repulsor
• Ambient sound
• Random internal level generator
• New textures
• Improved lighting
• Scorekeeping
• Tracking for kills, deaths, time and score
• Fight in the void of space
• Improvements to character controller and motor

The changes are exciting, but there's still a lot to do before it's really solid.  Try out the latest build here and let us know what you think.  Comments and suggestions are always welcome.