It was amazing to work on Zack Snyder’s Army Of the Dead VR Experience. My job was to program multiple different facets of the gameplay from start to finish. This required collaboration with the development team, the mechanics building the custom truck hardware, and the creative directors. Some examples of my gameplay work include zombie AI, weapons, animation state machines for the players and the zombies, as well as integrating the VR Hardware into the gameplay.

The zombie AI was an interesting challenge because the zombies are meant to attack the truck, rather than the players themselves. We needed to find creative ways to make this feel threatening and overwhelming, while also not overloading the player. Safety is a concern when dealing with a physical location that the players are playing in.

We have a physical gun the player uses during the experience to shoot zombies, which was fun to work with while developing the shooting gameplay loop. Due to the weight and size of the physical gun, we created a rifle and a shotgun with a few attachment variations such as a scope and a laser sight. The players get a score at the end of the experience, so these choices affect how well the player will end up doing.

Animation state machines were complex for the player characters, because we needed to replicate the player’s movement as accurately as possible within the VR headset for safety reasons and for visual fidelity. You wouldn’t want to accidentally hit your teammate with your rifle due to the visual representation of the character being off. We needed an animation state machine for both seated and standing players, since the middle two positions in the truck were seated.

Finally, working with the physical guns, tracking system, and motion platforms was a unique experience that felt more like working on a ride for an amusement park. I integrated the physical guns and the tracking system into the gameplay, as well as assisted another programmer in getting the motion platforms integrated.

We were able to show this game in it’s finished state to Zack Snyder, who enjoyed it!