Hi everyone,

I’ve just uploaded a new version of C3O with the ability to select multiple civs at once. Click to select the first civ as normal, then hold the control key and click another civ to add them to the group.

We noticed that sometimes it was difficult to tell where your civs were going to walk when you moved them – such as not knowing exactly where the doors on buildings are, or whether a fence has been drawn in on the map. Therefore in this version we’ve also included a display of the path which each civ is going to take. This makes it easier to tell if your civ is about to walk into a horde of zombies! :)

Check it out here: http://www.class3outbreak.com/

Also in this version we’ve renamed Jay to Paul, in thanks for Paul’s contribution to our campaign at http://www.indiegogo.com/Class-3-Outbreak. Thanks Paul! :) As I mentioned in the last progress update, these names are temporary. Eventually the controllable civs will be yourself and friends you’ve imported from Facebook. At that time Ethan, Emil and Paul, and any other $100+ contributors, will become named civs wandering the map. In a later version these named civs will be able to be recruited into your group.

The next feature which we plan to work on is the ability to search buildings on the map for supplies.

Saxon

UPDATE 4th June: These positions have now been filled. Thankyou to everyone who applied.

As we’ve mentioned before at http://www.indiegogo.com/Class-3-Outbreak, we’ve recently been awarded $60k in grants to further develop Class 3 Outbreak. This is going to make a huge difference to how quickly we can develop new features. We’re looking forward to starting on that – we’re currently aiming for the middle of June.

To speed up development even further, we’ve decided to pitch in some of our own cash, to hire some extra people to help us out.

We’re looking for one or two additional programmers, to work part-time for up to a couple of months, starting from mid-June / July. This will most likely suit university / college / tafe students. We’ll be flexible around your studies / exams / mid-year vacation / etc. Depending on how it works out, we may be able to extend the work longer-term as well.

The key attributes we are looking for are someone who:

• Is smart
• Gets things done
• Has initiative
• Is enthusiastic

Below is a list of technologies / areas which we currently use. If you already know some of these, then great! If not, then we will expect you to be able to learn them quickly, based on your coding experience.

• ActionScript 3
• Flex
• FlashDevelop
• Python
• Google App Engine
• HTML
• JavaScript
• CSS
• jQuery
• AJAX
• Game Development
• 2D Graphics

Although optional, we would also be interested if you have experience developing for iOS.

We are primarily looking for people either in Western Australia or South Australia (where we live – about 2500km apart from each other). However given that we work with each other online, we’re also open to receiving applications from other states of Australia, or other countries. You will also be working remotely, and so you will need to be able to supply your own computer / internet connection / etc.

If you’re interested, please contact us at jobs@binaryspacegames.com with the following details:

• Your resume.
• A summary of your uni / college / tafe results.
• A demo of something you have created. Preferably something you have worked on in your own time, rather than a study project. Instead of sending an attachment, please send a link where we can download it from. Note that we have Windows machines (so won’t be able to run a demo on other platforms), even though most of the technologies we use for Class 3 Outbreak are platform independent. You might also want to include a link to screenshots / videos.
• A sample of your source code. There’s no need to send a whole working project, just send an extract such as a single class or function – enough for us to get a sense of your ‘programming style’.

For visitors not familiar with us: Binary Space was formed in February 2009 by Jay Weston and Saxon Druce, who worked together developing PC racing games at Ratbag Games back in the late 90s. We are currently developing Class 3 Outbreak (www.class3outbreak.com), a zombie real time strategy game based on Google Maps. Since the first release in November 2009 it has been played over 2 million times, and we have lots more features planned!

Saxon

We’ve finally uploaded a version of the new Class 3 Outbreak which includes the ability to control civs!

Check it out here: http://www.class3outbreak.com/

There’s still lots more to go, but this is a ‘first cut’, which we thought we’d put out there so that you can start to play around with it.

When you load a map, it will initially start the Zombie Outbreak Simulator as before. Click ‘Play a Game’ on the left, and it will reload and start a game. In this version you have three controllable civs who you can move around, and order to shoot the zombies.

Now that you are controlling civs instead of police, the game is more about survival than about attacking zombies. We’ve therefore changed the behaviour so that when you click to move a civ, they will no longer stop to shoot at zombies – they will just keep running. In the classic C3O you had to double-click to get that to happen. Your civs will however still auto-fire at zombies when the civ is standing idle. For the same reason, by default the game now starts already overrun by a map-wide outbreak of zombies (but you can still change that in the options).

In our crowd-funding campaign at http://www.indiegogo.com/Class-3-Outbreak, all perks for contributions of $100 or more include “Your name/character appears in the game world. Choose to be a zombie or civilian!”. Our plan for this is that your will appear as a non-playable civ or zombie roaming the map, which the player might be able to recruit later in the game. Our plan for the original civs that you start the game with is that they will be yourself, plus friends you’ve imported from Facebook (or just typed in). However we haven’t implemented any of that yet, so for now I just inserted three fixed names. As a temporary bonus for our two top contributors Ethan and Emil, we’ve included them as the first two controllable civs (and Jay rounds out the third). Also Ethan and Emil have been added to the credits page at http://www.class3outbreak.com/credits. Thanks Ethan and Emil for your support, and also to everyone else who has made a contribution! :)

As of this release, we’ve also decided to remove all of the ads from the site, as they just made it look bad, and they weren’t earning much anyway.

The next feature I’m planning to work on is the ability to group civs together, so you can move them as a group, instead of having to do it individually as they are now. And then of course we’ll move on to all of the other features we have planned, as described at http://www.indiegogo.com/Class-3-Outbreak.

We hope you enjoy the new release! Let us know what you think :)

Saxon