He’s published his work on the Zafehouse forums so if you feel like playing the game in Russian, or translating it into a language more compatible with your brain, please check it out!

Link: Zafehouse (multilingual) [Zafehouse forums]

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The “I” shaped objects represent doors, while the “O”s with the funny curves are windows. A window is currently selected by the player (the red circle) and a little image shows you how fortified it is. Red arrows mark entry vectors. Oh, and survivors can’t walk through barricaded doors or windows… so keep that in mind!

Still lots to come, so hang tight!

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Welcome to the new-look Zafehouse 2, or Zafehouse 2.5 to help separate it from previous efforts. The game is based entirely around manipulation of a dynamic journal. Chapters keep locations, events, supplies and survivor information nicely contained. A special context-sensitive entry system allows you to configure events, lock them in, and then accelerate time. When something occurs, time will stop, allowing you to react however you see fit.

Survivors will report in as they return from their adventures, meaning you must rely entirely on them for information. Figure out who to trust, and you’ll do fine. Piss everyone off, and you’re all doomed.

Expect more shots and info in the coming weeks.

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So, if you’d like to keep abreast of developments, sign up to the Zafehouse Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/Zafehouse. For major features or changes, however, I’ll be writing them up here on the blog where there’s more than 140 characters to play with.

For those who haven’t been following Twitter, I’ve finished implementing the new, saner firing code and am charging ahead with the tutorials and general polish.

Not long now…

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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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Whimsical metaphors aside, I decided to do something about my .NET focus and its destructive hold on my game development future. So, I present the above screenshot, a little piece I’m working on in Unity. It’s inspired by polyhedral dice and the excellent Dice Wars.

Unity is really, really good. Not only does it support three scripting languages (including C#, yah!), but you can switch between a “Game” and “Editor” view and examine the properties of objects at runtime. It provides an unprecedented level of debugging power, and problems that’d normally take hours to track down and fix can take minutes or seconds in Unity thanks to its potent visualisation abilities. It could do with a script debugger, but I hear that’s on the cards for Unity 3, due in… August. I think.

Unity also allows publishing to iPhone, PC, Mac, Wii and web. You need to make a few purchases to access the iPhone and Wii functionality, but there’s nothing stopping you from doing the gruntwork in the free version.

As for Zafehouse 2… I’m still keen to get a demo out by the end of July. I can’t say it’ll be fully functional, but it will give you a taste of what the game has become. I’ve reduced the scope and halved the length of the a Z2 day to 12 hours. I didn’t feel the intensity was there for 24, and the systems don’t allow for interesting gameplay for such a lengthy period of time.

Looking back at the code, there are a lot of things I’d have done differently. The one building/multiple floors idea was a good one and I’m not sure why I abandoned it. There’s also a heavy focus on combat, which is not what survival horror is about. The original intent was to make Z2 strategic, not tactical, yet that’s where it’s ended up.

I have some ideas for Z3 (yeah, yeah, finish the second one first, I hear you say) and I think Z2 has helped me focus in on what a strategic survival horror game should be.

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As I mentioned in a previous update, the original combat implementation was ground into a fine, code-tasting dust and packed away, replaced by an infinitely deeper (and juicier) solution that uses firing arcs.

Entering into combat hasn’t changed – you still click on the event in the event window – and the representation of the room is similar too. The difference is that zombies are no longer shown as one large group, they’re now broken up into individual flesh-eating nasties. Weapons have also evolved, the far/close/melee profiles exchanged for variable firing arcs and shot modes. For example, the shotgun has a wide firing arc and shoots pellets in a spread, but it can only fire once per turn and has a short range. A submachine gun on the other hand has a medium firing arc and range, but you can shoot up to six bullets at one or multiple targets. Keep in mind that each bullet fired in the same turn reduces the accuracy of the shot that follows it.

Hit the jump for an additional screenshot which show projectiles in flight. Yes, I said projectiles.

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* Fixed video hitching and crashes related to single core machines.

* Single core users may experience short periods of black screen that may last up a few seconds between level loads, cinematic transitions or movies.

* In rare cases, some single core users may notice dialog lines in certain conversations may be delayed up to a few seconds.

* Fixed an issue where it appears ammunition can be picked up, but can’t.

* Fixed an issue where all Codex entries were marked as ‘viewed’, even if the player chose not to view them.

* Fixed an issue where weapon icons are re-organized after downloadable content is used.

* Fixed an issue where pressing F9 after the mission completion screen reset Shepard to Level 1.

* Fixed an issue where remapping the right mouse button blocks camera control in the command HUD.

* Fixed an issue where remapping the ‘use’ command affects the decryption minigame.

* Fixed an issue where users were not prompted to restart when logging in to a different EA Online account.

* Fixed an issue where movies do not play in DLC.

* It is recommended that players reset their keyboard mapping to default values to ensure proper vehicle control.

* Added useful messaging during the ME1 save game import.

* Weapon icon for henchmen never changes from Collector Assault Rifle.

* Czech language – Issues with Czech localization (subtitles) were amended, all text was corrected and improved.

* Fixed an issue where the Mass Effect 2 launcher was being associated with files that have no extension.

* Fixed an issue where uninstalling the game under Windows Vista or Windows 7 might uninstall Mass Effect 1.

I’ve emphasised the fixes that relate to CPUs. While none of them explicitly state that the slow dual-core loading times (that MassAffinity nicely addresses) have been rectified, it’s not entirely insane to think one of the aforementioned singe-core tweaks may have done the trick.

Sadly, I haven’t found any conclusive evidence to suggest this is true. So far, I’ve only found this thread on BioWare’s Social Network, which seems to indicate that the slow load times are still present. It’d be great if any ME2 players out there could confirm whether they’re still encountering the problem, so I can update the original MassAffinity post.

On an unrelated note, I found the following bug hilarious:

Fixed an issue where uninstalling the game under Windows Vista or Windows 7 might uninstall Mass Effect 1

According to ME2 Technical Director Derek French, Windows itself is to blame for this nasty blighter:

That is actually a bug that Microsoft introduced in Vista and 7. We keep our uninstallers in a common location and if you don’t encase the full path to the Uninstaller in double-quotes, Windows will just pick another random executable from that directory and run it, instead of the executable the you explicitly entered. It is pretty crazy when you tell Windows to run ‘Uninstall Mass Effect 2.exe’ and Windows decides to run ‘Uninstall Mass Effect.exe’

Best. Feature. Ever.

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Sorry to all the English-only speakers out there… v0.7.0b doesn’t contain a great deal for you. Here’s the changelog anyway – something might take your fancy:

* Added first implementation of localisation support – different languages can be chosen by selecting one of the relevant flag icons at the bottom of the main program window. It is highly experimental and it is not recommended to upgrade to version 0.7.0 unless you plan to beta test localised text. Localised text is stored in the Locale subdirectory (English.txt, French.txt, Italian.txt, etc). Text may not be perfect and some text may still be in English even when a different language is selected. Please contact logan@playwrite-blog.net regarding corrections

* Powers and classes created in one localisation are not compatible with other localisations

* Language data is now stored in power and class XML

* Powers and classes with custom data (power sources, effect types, etc) will now load correctly

* Updated PDFsharp to v1.31

Probably the big takeaway is that classes and powers are not compatible between different versions of the toolkit. I should also mention the Italian translation was made with Babelfish, so it’s no doubt a bit rubbish.

If there’s anyone out there who’d like to translate the program into their mother tongue, just dip into the Locale subfolder of the 4e Power Toolkit folder. You’ll find an English.txt file with the program’s English text. Use this as a starting point to create your own localisation file. Once you’re done, just email me at logan (at) playwrite-blog (dot) net with the file and the language it’s for, and I’ll include it in the next build.

Thanks to Xavier Hunault-Pérusse for the French translation.

Download the 4e Power Toolkit 0.7.0b

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Several requests for improvements prompted me to update the app to v0.2. Here’s a list of what’s new:

• Allows you to use an executable name other than the default (for those who have renamed MassEffect2.exe to enable anti-aliasing);
• Automatically detects your ME2 path via the registry;
• Shuts down immediately if ME2 is closed before MassAffinity can apply the fix (previously it would wait ten seconds);
• Added some graphics. Okay… one graphic;
• Added a “Help” button.

That’s it! The functionality remains unchanged, so no need to update if it’s working peachy already. No harm though if you do download it.

Download MassAffinity v0.2

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I caught wind of the fact Mass Effect 2 was causing PC users with dual-cores some grief, in the form of extremely long load times going between decks of the Normandy. Which is odd, as venturing into an entirely new planet loaded just dandy.

More than a few smart people figured out it had to do with the game’s processor affinity. Simply setting it to one core and then back to two cores fixed the problem. But having to do this every time you play ME2 sounds like a chore we could easily do without.

Hence, I coded up MassAffinity, a tiny app that takes the hard work out of it. Just place the app on your desktop (or somewhere else convenient), run it, select your ME2 directory, and hit “Run game”. After that, every time you double-click the MassAffinity app, it’ll automatically start ME2 and fix the issue.

No doubt this bug will get patched eventually, but for now, this should do the job. It should be noted this problem doesn’t affect everyone – it seems to be isolated to people running a certain combination of CPU and operating system. So, if you’re not experiencing long load times between decks, then this program is not for you.

If you ever need to change the directory, you can run the app with the “/config” switch, or run the “SetupMassAffinity.cmd” file that comes with the program.

Any questions or feedback, just leave a comment. Otherwise, enjoy! Thanks goes out to my brother, Chris, for testing the application.

Download MassAffinity v0.1

PS. If you like zombie games, be sure to check out Zafehouse and Zafehouse 2, my little side projects.

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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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The mod includes the following changes:

- Infection is now contagious, but there is a small chance to heal it.

- Weapons can be loaded automatically, and when giving a range weapon to someone, is it automatically loaded with one box.

- Barricades higher than heavy block survivors movement

- It is possible to weaken barricades to recover some supplies

- Survivors fighting alongside family members [survivors with the same surname] get an attack and defense bonus

- A survivor can only be cured once per hour.

If you’d like to help flap out, or just give his version a whirl, head over to the progress log on the forums, or check out the list of planned changes and ideas.

Zafehouse Infection V1.00 – Fan edition – Progress Log [Zafehouse forums]

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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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Zafehouse 2′s first scenario, called “Patient Zero”, starts you off with two survivors. Both are civilians without intrinsic perks or abilities. They call a lone, 3-4 room house their base. The supply situation is grim at best. Sure, medicines, barricades and even weapons would be great, but if they plan on coming out of the apocalypse unscathed, they’re going to need something special.

They’ll need someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.

To satisfy this desperate requirement, the scenario allows you to recruit up to four additional survivors, for a total of six. If you stick to raiding houses and stores, then your group will slowly fill with civilians, just as green behind the ears as your original duo. But, if you’re willing to take a few (properly prepared for) risks, then a grizzled cop, knowledgeable doctor or calming priest could call your cohort home.

Let’s pick out the cop to show how expert survivor recruitment works. You’ve gone and raided a few homes and collected a pistol, a few bats and a machete. You’ve scavenged a couple of meds and have enough barricades to insulate your main party from your forward scout if things turn gruesome. You distribute your weapons, hand over your bandages to your scout, and move your guys outside the police station.

You’re as ready as you’ll ever be.

Searching a large and important building like the police station is a dangerous affair. During the start of the outbreak, it’d have looked an appealing sanctuary for the scared masses… including those already infected. It’s not the hive of undead activity the hospital is, but it remains an active breeding ground for zombies. In fact, unless you bust in with a squad of shotgun-wielding crack commandos, someone’s going to die.

Or worse, become infected.

But, these are the choices you have to make. Surely the experience of a seasoned constable is worth the risk of losing someone? The final assault will be more easily weathered with their collected mental and physical prowess. Is that enough to justify leaving a survivor behind as zombie food?

It’s entirely up to you.

If you do go ahead, you’ll need to clear at least 50% of the police station. After this point, you’re guaranteed to find a cop hiding out somewhere inside the building. It could be the very next room after the 50% mark, or it could be the last, frenzied clearing of a undead-packed gaol cell. If uncertainty makes you nervous, you can always improve your chances by splitting up and clearing rooms faster.

You know, if you think your survivors can handle a dozen zombies solo.

When the cop does show up, you’ll be glad you went to the trouble. Unlike the frightened novices you’ve collect so far, cops come equipped with a firearm, a combat perk and a unique “group” bonus. As long as other survivors stay near them, they’ll benefit from their leadership and perform better and last longer.

More details of each survivor type will be released once they’re finalised. Sufficed to say, you’re going to want a couple in your final group… unless a gory slaughter at the hands (and teeth) of a horde of hungry reanimated corpses tweaks your knobs.

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That is until now.

In the original game, medicines had one function – to heal injured survivors. For the sequel I decided to expand on medicine’s role, and it was posts from curious players that helped inspire its more involved place. Said posts would ask “What do antibiotics do, and how can I use them?”, referring to the text that appears sometimes after you raid a building. Sadly, this text was simply flavour, and those “antibiotics” just went to your medicine pool.

Things have changed in Z2.

Players have a number of priorities in the game: gathering supplies, finding survivors and keeping the zombie count at manageable levels. The biggest two however are the physical and mental health of your survivors. You’ll have to monitor stamina, tenacity and injuries and make sure no one falls unconscious, goes insane or dies. Currently, if a survivor drops below 50% of their maximum in any health-related statistic, they run the risk of copping a serious disability, which will trouble them for the rest of the game (or their life, whichever ends first).

Painkillers, sedatives and stimulants can ward off and, when the inevitable happens, minimise the effects of permanent disabilities. Bandages are technically a “drug” as far as the game is concerned, but their functionality is limited to healing a single level of wounds. Drugs, on the other hand, have multiple uses… and drawbacks.

For instance, if a survivor becomes crippled, their movement speed outside is reduced, and their aim is affected. You can temporarily nullify these cons by taking painkillers. Painkillers can also be taken by a non-crippled survivor, where they provide a temporary health boost that reduces the survivor to a near-death state once they wear off. Crippled survivors cannot benefit from this special bonus – the painkillers already have their job cut out for them.

Drugs sound great, right? Not so much if used in excess. All drugs have a cooldown, so you can’t just stuff your face with stimulants when its raining zombies during the longest night of your survivor’s life. All drugs impose temporary cons when their cooldown is up. Finally, the game keeps track of how often you take each drugs and, if you tempt fate long enough, you’ll develop an addiction or worse, suffer an overdose.

I’m talking about drugs in Z2 right now because that’s what I’m working on in the game. Next, I plan to flesh out some of the survivor events, which will involve work on the newly coded “Situation Tracker”. It’s kind of like L4D AI Director, though I wouldn’t start comparing the two games. :P

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v0.6.0 also removes the minimum size on the creator windows, allowing the program to be used on small screens, and I’ve fixed a problem that would prevent secondary and tertiary attacks from appearing on power cards. Otherwise, v0.6.0 is a lightweight update… but one you can’t do without!

You can download it from here, and all custom classes and powers can be seen at dnd.playwrite-blog.net.

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Currently, you can only move to entrances and zombie “hotspots”, as I didn’t really see the need to position survivors outside in the middle of nowhere. If someone can give me a really (really) good reason why it should be any different, I’ll think about it.

Implementing outside movement required me to confront my fear of A* pathfinding and, while it was a tortuous and many times frustrating endeavour, my work paid off.

I also took the opportunity to give the underlying graphics engine (which isn’t so much an engine as it is one of those tiny electric motors you get in a toy racecar) a boost. The game now supports double-buffering of the pixel kind, which has improved drawing performance by a metric arseload. Scrolling around the map is now smooth as buttery silk, even considering the sledgehammer-like approach I have to 2D visuals (read: amping the crud out of GDI+)

It’s time now in Zafehouse 2′s development for me to work on the meat and potatoes… or the “actual game” as it’s called in some parts. Which means details should get juicer, and the gameplay videos tastier as time goes on.

Again, thanks for bearing with me. There are moments when I wish I had whole days (weeks even) to commit to the title, instead of the couple of hours a night I have now. I’m not at the point yet where I’m willing to sacrifice my social life. :)

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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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