But I’m hoping they will.

Still, I’ve decided there’s enough reason to tentatively begin design work on Zafehouse 2, so Deadshed can be all it can be. It’s likely I’ve spent more time talking about Deadshed than coding it, but I think the Zafehouse connection has been a mental roadblock until now.

I want to finish up on the 4e Class Creator – now called the 4e Power Toolkit because of all the functionality it provides – but after that I’ll move 95% onto Deadshed and 5% onto Zafehouse 2.

If you have suggestions for either title, visit the forums and post about it. About 80% of the changes made to Zafehouse after v1.5 have been player-motivated, so there’s a good chance your ideas will be heard and even incorporated.

No related posts.

Combat for Deadshed has gone through a few iterations. Originally, it was to be completely automated, with your choices beforehand (weapons and equipment, number of characters, etc) making the difference. This didn’t change until I was hit with a fever that required more X-Com.

I then briefly toyed around with something that can only be described as Fallout with zombies. As cool as it sounds on the surface, I wasn’t happy with it, mainly because it would involve a lot of coding for AI, collision detection and line-of-sight (*shudder*), and I just wasn’t prepared to do all of that, given the multi-faceted nature of the game.

With the help of the always awesome David Kidd, I’ve settled on the above – a melding of JRPG and Armageddon Empires. And probably a little 4e D&D.

Characters are positioned on a grid of nine squares. Each square can be marked “safe”, “threatened” or “danger”. If a character stands between another character and a zombie, then the latter character’s square is marked safe. If a character is adjacent a zombie, then their square is marked danger. Finally, if there’s a square or more of space between a character and a zombie, then the character’s square is threatened.

Action points are still in, and can be spent shifting, attacking or using items.

Then there are tactics. They’re still under development, but essentially, you can crack out tactics to generate impressive effects, such as double damage or perhaps free formation reorganisation. These will come from research and character perks. Some will require Morale (a new resource), while others might just have positional requirements.

I’m a strategy-lover at heart, and this system rings true for me more than a straight rip of an isometric turn-based title. It takes a little something from a bunch of sources, but its unique enough that I’m enjoying the chance to experiment.

No related posts.

No related posts.

What happened: Deadshed languished on my PC, ignored by eyes and coding fingers. From time to time, I’d hear a gentle, sad mewing from my hard drive. I’m assuming it was Deadshed, and not a super-tiny kitten caught between the platters.

Basically, between September-December, little was done on Deadshed. A lot more was done on the 4th Ed Power Creator (rewrite incoming), CrawlNotes and, most surprisingly – Zafehouse.

I needed to say sorry to Deadshed. And I did.

Over the Christmas break, disconnected from work and other distractions, I had a chance to give Deadshed some much-needed attention. I stared at the shopping list of features I wanted to add, glared at code that didn’t include said features, and sighed a bit. Then, I got to work.

I redesigned the interface. I added controls for base-building and action-point based combat. Gone are the six survivors, replaced by green-gilled soldiers. The town is now a quarantined city block, and the city generation code has been completely rewritten.

Survival is just one facet of the game now. You’ll have to manage the media, local government and the affected populace. Riots will break out when you mess up. I’ve added semi-realistic infection spreading code so if one building is filled with zombies, it’ll reach nearby buildings if left unattended.

It’s all so much. Too much maybe. But the more I think the scope has blown out, the more I don’t want to code Zafehouse 2. I want it to be new. I want it to be a challenge. I want it to be massively rad.

Yes, I said massively rad. And I’m cool with it.

I’m a little sad to see the survival horror aspect of the game slowly slip away. It will be retained with the action-point combat, the infection spreading and the event timeline. The important thing is, it’ll be something that isn’t Zafehouse. That’s a good thing – really.

P.S. I’ll post a picture of the new UI soon. Would love feedback.

Update: Said UI pictures can be found here.

No related posts.

It needed spice. Preferably, the sexy type.

We threw about a couple of ideas – air-strikes and such – until we came upon X-Com. I love X-Com. My brother loves X-Com. There aren’t many (sane) people who don’t have a warm spot in an internal organ for it. Particularly, I liked the resource management and base-building aspects.

At first, I thought these subjects were outside the scope of Deadshed. But they’re not. Reinforcing a house or shop to keep out undead invaders? Making sure you have enough ammo for your next fight? These activities sound like base-building and resource management to me. I was always enamoured by the research element as well, and this, if anything, was the most left-field idea to come out of my brotherly musings.

Regardless, I knew I wanted it all in Deadshead.

After pondering it for a little longer, I sold myself on the idea of converting my six survivors into newbie soldiers. Your troop will have to find and secure a building, retrofit rooms to serve their needs (somewhere to keep supplies, a radio room) and send research data off to their HQ in exchange for ammo, food and other bits and pieces. You still have the survival horror thing going, it’s just from a different viewpoint (the armed rescuers) and quite a shift in gameplay from Zafehouse.

No related posts.

My original, completely devious plan was to write an expansion to Zafehouse so players could control building encounters… instead of staring at a steady stream of text, text and text. Yet, as I started hacking away, I found the feature detracted from the simple formula that makes Zafehouse so cool. I decided to split the module, called Deadshed, from Zafehouse and turn it into its own game, with the RPG flavour of SimMMO, another project I’d shelved a while back. The above screenshot is the result.

If I had to make up a genre for it, I’d go for “zombie survival horror RPG”… or something better if I was more creative. The game design itself is in a state of flux (I’ve already rewritten the combat engine), but there are a few details that shouldn’t change that I can share.

Firstly, instead of 40 odd survivors, there’s just six. I’m tossing up between having six to start, or one guy who finds some mates, but the functionality is there whichever way I go. Survivors have three “stats” – health, mental state and stamina, and can hold three types of items – weapons, tools and medicines (or consumables).

The game is set in a deserted town, much like Zafehouse, except our survivors have arrived at the peak of the invasion. There will be multiple objectives, so you can complete the game anyway you like. I’m toying with: a “survive until this point” victory; one the requires you to kill a certain amount of zombies; and a story mode, where you have to clear the major buildings in town for some mysterious reason (to get to a helicopter, say).

Weapons are weapons – you shoot them, they fire. Unlike Zafehouse, there’s a lot more variety and… ammo types! Tools provide a minor bonus while you hold them, and a big bonus if you consume them, while medicines cure you of various conditions, and serve to calm the survivors, improve their stamina or boost their health.

Instead of turns/hours, there’s a clock that ticks a minute every second or so. It can be paused, allowing the player to ponder their situation and switch items around.

Each building – well, the bigger ones anyway – will be like mini dungeon crawls. You’ll have to make sure the survivors are stocked up and have the right combination of abilities before proceeding.

The biggest feature of Deadshed is the event timeline. It records all the major events that occur in the game, so you can see a history of your efforts at any time. Clicking on a building will filter events for it, so you can reminisce over your close encounters with the less-than-alive.

Zafehouse was a fun random number generator. Deadshed on the other hand will have loads of handmade content in the form of encounters. These encounters will check your various statistics, or require the player to make a choice – such as trading an item or taking a risk. Lots of stuff to do, basically.

I don’t have a release date… I’m still tinkering with the design, but I’d like to have something reasonably playable before the end of the year.

No related posts.