PixlBit

Hi fellow Pixlbitters. 

This is my very first entry and I'm not entirely sure what to write about. Mainly due to the fact that so much is going on right now. So let's start at the beginning, My name is Joure and I've been the lead level designer at Monochrome for a good year and a half. Right now I'm working on Contagion. A zombie coop survival game. We've entered early beta and have been giving away preliminary beta tester keys to start up the community before we go on early access on steam.

 

Having worked on the game for so long makes me smile whenever I see a populated server with new fresh meat. So far the campaign has been a great success and I'm looking forward to see our game released and grow. I still remember about a year ago part of the dev team went to PAX Prime to demo our alpha build to the public. I wasn't able to follow them but I was able to watch from the sidelines. It's an incredible feeling when you see random people play the levels you created and how people react to what's happening on the screen.

Flashforward to just a week ago we saw random gamers starting to populate our servers and joining a game for the first time with these guys. It was a blast. The closed community has been amazing and everyone was helping eachother out trying to survive. Real teamwork and pretty much without any hastle. I hope we'll be able to keep the community as fun and engaging as it is now, it is truly the heart of what makes this game work. Since then I've come to befriend a number of the beta players and I hope to meet many more interesting people.

 

Even with the bugs in the game (which we are squashing at a daily basis) it's a ton of fun. I remember selecting a grenade by accident and throwing it, i tried to run but it went off too close. The only thing my team mates could do was watch and laugh their asses off. After that I joined Team Zombie and managed to take two of my ex-team mates out and have them join our ranks. >;D

Mapping for Contagion is unlike any other source game. Not in the least because of the scope of the maps. The maps are large and complex. Multiple routes, random weapons and item spawns, insane amount of balancing and not to mention the entity work in them. I've implemented multiple systems to keep everything as random as possible, providing different experiences everytime. So much has happened and so much has still yet to happen in the future. I hope that I may meet some of you guys in one of our servers someday.

For now it's goodbye and hopefully I'll be able to add more blogs if time permits. We're running a kickstarter campaign now and we're only about a month away before we release. If anyone's interested I'll share the link to Contagion's website.

Greetings to all and have fun. :)