Combat’s looking solid right now, as you can see from the above screenshot. Lots of shells, blood and graphical niceties exploding about the place. What’s not so solid is what happens outside of combat. You know, the walking around, searching for gear part of the game.

See, I don’t feel there’s enough going on when you’re not fighting zombies. Sure, you might say, that’s okay – it’s all about putting the undead back to bed – but I don’t think it is. I think there needs to be more going on when the hungry masses aren’t directly in your face.

I can recognise when I’m too close to a project, so I’m putting the call out for some ideas. At the very least, it’ll rejuice my drying creative cogs.

Best to start with a list of things you can do:
1) Move around inside buildings and out
2) Trade items, including ammo, weapons
3) Searching furniture for items
4) Breaking furniture for barricades
5) Barricading. Or yeah, barricading. I meant to show you guys this a lot sooner:

Neat, right?
6) Dispense medicine, break bottles, drink
7) Erm… that’s it, really.

What I believe needs to happen is for more “stuff” involving the survivors themselves. Tweaking personalities or statistics… some element of micromanagment. Something you do on a turn by turn basis to produce… stuff, be it a resources or survivor improvement.

See what I mean? I’m not really churning out the killer ideas here. That’s where you come in.

So, come in!

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Zombie marches are held everywhere, but Melbourne’s own undead shuffle is taking place this weekend on May 1. The horde will start at the Carlton Gardens north of the city at 1PM, and shamble its way to the metro core, bringing all the fake corpulent skin you could ever want with it. Even if the only shooting will be done with cameras, I’m sure it’ll be fun for everyone who doesn’t instantly drop a potato in their underdaks. If the photos from previous years are anything to go by, it should be a blast.

And, despite being an amateur affair, some of the makeup and effects are quite good… more than good enough to find their way into a certain zombie survival simulator…

Melbourne Zombie Shuffle 2010 [that's melbourne]

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I’m personally a little giddy about how it’ll all play out, and I reckon you’ll be pleasantly surprised yourself with the revamped combat. It has a flavour all its own, one I’m quite proud of. The instant it’s all working, expect a shiny video.

I will be working very, very hard to release the game this year, and extra super hard to squeeze it out a demo before the end of June.

Z2 has benefited enormously from the input of (what I hope are) fans, and it is a better game for those lovingly suggested modifications. In particular, kulik242 seems to have a direct connection to my brain; many of his suggestions adding the final pieces to my own, half-formed ideas. I think it’s wise to listen to those on the outside, the external observers, because distance is a magical thing in the creative realms.

In the meantime, if the survival horror simulation itch just won’t go away, check out Zafehouse: Infection, a user-made mod of the original Zafehouse. It’s got me thinking Z1 could do with a refresh sometime in the future…

Once Z2 is done, of course. :)

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All the thumbnails can be clicked for larger versions, if squinting isn’t your thing, and I can assure you they want to be clicked. By you. Right now.

Zafehouse 2 – Media [Zafehouse]

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Everyone knows how a door works; it’s a big hole, usually with some sort of removable hunk of wood or metal, that allows or denies passage between two areas. This pretty much describes the doors in Zafehouse 2… with the exception that you can transform a door in Z2 into a nigh-impenetrable force.

If you watch the first gameplay video, you’ll see doors are barricaded by right-clicking on one and selecting a reinforcement level. I wasn’t entirely happy with the simplicity and non-interactivity of this model, and so it’s evolved significantly in the last month or so. The biggest change is that doors can undergo three types of modification – barricading, narrowing and blocking. These upgrades are applied on a door-by-door basis, so you’ll have fine-grained control of your defenses.

Barricading is the most important mod. Currently you can have up to six barricades in place, and each one increases the amount of punishment the door can take. As a door is attacked by zombies, there’s a chance a barricade will fail. This chance increases each time the door is attacked, and resets once a barricade falls. The higher the barricade level, the longer it takes for each barricade to fail. So, sure, you can have a single barricade on a door, but expect it to fail pretty quickly.

Barricades also reduce the chances of a zombie attack “slipping” through. With six in place, it’s unlikely the survivors defending that door will get hit by a stray undead fist. A single barricade however means there’s a good chance a survivor will get hit. Note a survivor cannot become infected by attacks through doors, unless all the barricades have failed.

Narrowing reduces the number of zombies that can attack a survivor through a door. A door that hasn’t been narrowed at all allows four zombies to have a go at the survivors defending it, while a fully narrowed door halves this number. Narrowing also slightly reduces the strength of zombie attacks against the door.

Finally, blocking a door stems the flow of zombies into a room once the barricades have failed. Normally, eight zombies can shamble into a room each turn, if no survivors are there to stop them. A door that’s been totally blocked reduces this amount to four. As with narrowing, blocking a door shaves a bit off the damage a zombie can do to the barricades each turn.

Modifications can’t be performed on a door that’s under attack, so don’t be scared to barricade the hell out of any door that could face an assault. And you’ll want to make sure you have enough barricades to go round – each modification has a different supply cost, with narrowing being the most expensive and standard barricading the cheapest.

Expect screenshots of this feature soon!

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With the video out, everyone has a more grounded view of what will be in the game and its presentation.

There’s so much I’d like to do, but the video has really made the issue of feature creep hit home. It sneaks up on you so easily. You get into a pattern of putting a feature in, adding a new one to the list… but not making any actual progress. I think everyone would prefer if Zafehouse 2 was a complete, polished game, rather than a heap of disjointed, unfinished chunks that simply “showed potential”.

There’s also all the time in the world for expansions and patches. :)

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And I did it. My fingers are looking a little nubby, but hey, I can always learn to type with my toes.

Of course, it’ll need tuning, and bells and whistles, but the functionality is working great. I’m really pleased with the zoomed-in room, it adds another, much needed layer to the proceedings. I also took steps to “compact” zombie activities… while each zombie is individually simulated, I don’t think you want to read 15 lines of combat log every time they try to bite you. Instead, zombies will pick tasty targets, and attack in packs. So, the combat log is verbose when reporting on your survivors, but succinct when it comes to the undead.

The more immediate pay-off for this work is that I’m reasonably confident I can put up a video this week of combat. Consider it a gift for those who have stuck with me through the game’s development!

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First, a bit of background. In Zafehouse, you had to collect water to keep your survivors hydrated. Water didn’t serve any other purpose, and it’s not surprising that it was a neglected resource. I wanted to change that in Z2.

Now, water has been replaced with alcohol, everyone’s favourite beverage.

Alcohol is collected like ammo, barricades and medicine. You’ll find plenty of bottles in houses and stores, but not so much in police stations or hospitals. Alcohol can be used to make Molotov cocktails, to douse and burn suspicious-looking corpses, to steady the nerves and, if consumed in copious amounts, to uh, waste the undead.

Let me explain. Imagine John finds himself alone without a bullet or weapon to his name. The necrotic, animated remains of his friends and family are bashing down his bedroom door and, it goes without saying, things are looking grimmer than a 24-hour Brady Bunch special. What’s our doomed John going to do?

Quench his thirst for the bottle, of course!

His first taste has a positive effect; he’s feeling more comfortable with his situation. It doesn’t change the fact his internal organs are to shortly become an evening snack.

Ah, that second drink is even better than the first! Why did he spend all his time decapitating the undead when he could have rustled up some superglue and added an ethanol-powered glass appendage to his body! The mind boggles.

*Bernard Black voice* What?!? There are zombies in the Christmas tree? What’s this I’m drinking? Iceblock-flavoured bleach? Get the dragoons to my car so I can smoke my coat in peace!

Zzzzzzz…

It’s not like we didn’t know it wasn’t going to end well. But wait a minute!

Yes, you read that right. If a zombie is unfortunate enough to feast on the body of a drunken survivor, they too will have a BAC well in the thousands. Gameplay effects included reduced biting accuracy and bashing strength. It’s all good, really.

That, my friends, is the booze bomb. Put those useless survivors to work, and tune in next week for another scotch-stuffed update!

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