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[simono]

Fred, Jane & Sex-Machine
==========================

The zombie apocalypse came and most people "died". To stay alive this unlikely trio stuck together. Until now...

You might have to do a HARD RELOAD (CTRL+F5) do get newest version.

Version & date are at bottom of game page just in case you're not sure.



Play


version: 9 Jan 2011
currently best with Chrome
also tested in Firefox3+ and Safari4+

Each of your buddies has a different, secret agenda. Uncover their plans and decide who you want to side with. Then help them reach their goal... if you survive long enough to actually see the endgame.


Mechanics
==========

Heavily influenced by Rogue-likes and realtime strategy games.

  * Fast-paced tactical game play
  * Lots of different weapons, outfits and utilities
  * Level up and try that hard level again
  * Epic Story


Controls
=========

Easy, context sensitive.

  * Left mouse button for all actions
  * Right mouse button or cursor keys to scroll the map

Select a character with LMB. With a selected Character, LMB in the game world does different things depending on what you click on:

  * move there
  * attack (if enemy)
  * harvest (if harvestable)
  * barricade (if fortifable & you character has plank in his inventory)
  * solve puzzle (on puzzle items that usually open a door or something like that)

LMB on an inventory item drops it. LMB on an item on the ground picks it up (your character has to already stand on the item - it will show up when the survivor is focused and standing on that item).

Code Image to avoid Wall of Text

Gameplay
=========

The core mechanic is that you micro-manage the three characters: what they wear, what they hold in their hands, where they move and whom they attack (or not).

Most enemies are very tough so that only the whole group can bring one of them down. If there are too many monsters or the monster does not have important equipment you need, then it is probably smarter to just run.

The type of monsters that appear and the kind of equipment they carry depend on the environment you are in - for example: lots of vomit & blood around? Then the raw skeletons & zombies are probably not far.

That is during the day. At night there are so many monsters outside that you should be barricaded in a building, waiting it out and sorting your equipment for the next day. Even if barricaded well the odd mouse or zombie will make their way in so stay alert!

If you survive the night you get a level up in the morning! And then you better get outside fast and keep moving towards The GPS Location (the story will give more reason...).

You can harvest planks for barricading, food for health and pistol ammo for.. well.. pistols. But to get better weapons or outfits you will have to take on the monsters.


My Thoughts
===============


So.. that is my current project. Hoping to get it somewhere.

Big THANKS
===========

....to roguedjack who was so nice give me the graphics he did for the awesome Rogue Survivor (in case you did not recognize them).

[simono]

Spent the evening sharpening my tools.

Maybe surprisingly the levels will all be hand made. No procedural content in this game. Since I want to try how much of a story I can beat out of this thing I decided it's time well spent making it load map data done with Tile <http://www.mapeditor.org/>. I love it, it even lets me attach attributes to tiles but keeps it simple enough that the resulting xml is sane.

This is how it looks so far in the editor, without any items or actors... raw map




That went well and in the process I made the game load tiled sprites - all actors, items, weapons, etc on one sprite image. Easier on the server too with less requests.


And in other news: I will do speech bubbles... like in comics. Not only to drive the story, but also to give the actors a bit of personality and I will use it to inform the player about events like 'out of ammo', 'can't go there', etc...

[simono]

More cleanup today - not a lot more complexity but a whole more structure.

Most importantly: the Actor class no longer holds most of the code, instead small components (attack, move, harvest, ...) deal with actions. I also extracted the Items managment into its own class.

The map was still in disarray from the new tile format I introduced yesterday. This is now actually looking very nice with a simple layers system that allows me to cleanly & quickly query the map's tiles, the tiles attributes, etc.

8.6K actor.js
6.2K director.js
7.2K infopanes.js
8.2K item.js
1.5K items.js
9.6K map.js
2.3K markers.js
7.5K mousecontroller.js
./components:
   3.3K attack.js
   1.6K barricade.js
   1.8K harvest.js
   1.7K move.js

This is the whole source code tree so far. I get itchy when files go > 10K

Looking forward to actually *adding features* tomorrow, not just refactoring. And i guess sometime after that I'll make a fresh release with more content but not a whole lot more gameplay mechanics.

[george]

So I've tried this a couple of times now over the last few days, (not sure if you've pushed a new version to the host), and hit the same weirdness -- I'll select each character and move them, then go back to the first character and move them, then things seem to freeze and I can't deselect nor move the current character. Using the latest Chrome.

[simono]

hm, strange.

maybe try again once I release a new version, might be a serious performance bug I had - strange that you hit it every time.

that being said, it should run fine on firefox & chrome (i don't test safari often) even on low end processors like the Atom.

[simono]

Okay I think *everything* is better in this version... except performance New version is out.

I was kind of expecting performance problems at this point - I added
LOS, a smoother GUI and whatnot. Better have Chrome ready for now. But
I plan on getting this to run on my atom cpu netbook.

Play

The last missing, blocking features are now:

 * zombies destroy barricades
 * bullets respect LOS (already somewhat in place)

 ... then it's tuning time. Adding items, actors and monsters is easy
but I want everything to feel unique.

[simono]

New version - i mostly tuned the first 5min of gameplay, the GUI, the items, actor stats, load times,... lots of small stuff to make the game feel smoother. Oh and speech bubbles are in

Play

version: 27 Nov 2010, d97d1ac2c4dc
currently best with Chrome
also tested in Firefox3+ and Safari4+

I think this story driven, fast-paced thing is going to work out!

edit: after playing another hour i think a pause button would be good. pause to evaluate what's going on and to give orders. like in CRPGs.

edit2: oh, and bullets now *do* respect line of sight. and regarding barricades... i think they are permanent. would make the game too easy if you can barricade all entrants.

edit3: but! i have a spare fire graphic and not sure what to do with it 

[simono]

another day another update new version is out.

   * the survivors talk A LOT more - probably too much now. i have speech depending on location, situation and events
   * skills/attributes system got an overhaul. that worked really well, but now some of the monsters are unbalanced. oh well.

Play

version: 27 Nov 2010, 11f87b36b523
currently best with Chrome
also tested in Firefox3+ and Safari4+

i'm not sure if i should present to the player the raw, abstract skills (dexterity, intelligence,..) or the practical attributes (movement speed, max health, attack speed,..). i now display the attributes, because i didn't want to hide that much information.

when leveling up the player certainly changes the skill points, not the attributes. and items only influence attributes not skills (so items are more specific in what they improve).

also, checkout this awesome design paper where i lay out how skills & attributes influence each other. i always end up with tons of paper scribbled full with notes, diagrams, i love this michelangelo-feeling



... now for some data tuning and level editing.

[simono]

put a new version out:
  * the door puzzle is right at the start - sometimes you'll have to wait for a puzzle to solve and hold position
  * also: fire mines that kill monsters & might put other stuff on fire.
  * more tuning - i guess this willl never end.

... probably nothing 2morrow and i'll try to wrap it up on monday. and from then on its content creation time.

[simono]

i fixed the demo to work in firefox. sorry 'bout that.

well actually it did work but not if you deactivate firebug :|

other than that - and not currently visible in the demo - i did lots of cleaning up and tuning the item stats.

i have a plan for medium term playability:

  * your team is "in between mission" in the metro-system of the city. that's just a gui screen where you can manage your 3 permantent characters and give them items for the next mission.

  * the actual missions are those 3-6min maps, like the one you can play in the demo. they are all somewhat linear (with branching) and lead to a pair of stairs down.

  * if you reach the stairs you get a level up. plus you get new items for your storage.


that seems doable in a couple of days. i won't get much done this week, probably not until after next sunday. but i want to polish this up! i already enjoy the fights

[simono]

smoothness update released
========================================

  * scrolling is *much* nicer now
  * level up screen is in & functional (you can replay the map with same, now upgraded, group)
  * statistics end screen (this makes dying more fun)

so you can actually somewhat experience it - though the stat balance is still very off in all kinds of places :|

it plays like this (at least that's how i get through it)
========================================

you start the game with a weak group. you have to run through the level once as fast as possible - there are too many monsters and they are too strong for your group. also: you have no idea where items (weapons, etc) are. you follow the big street to the stairs, go down them and are safe again. you bring all the items you had in hand with you. you level up. you play the level again, this time having more time to explore because your group is stronger and hopefully finding more cool stuff.

what features are missing towards the final game
==================================

  * persistance of items & levels (probably gonna be a browser cookie for now)
  * ability to select which items you want to take on your next trip (from items you brought downstairs earlier)
  * map select screen and more then one map


ps.: cheats?

Type this in the browser's address bar while running the game:

Code:

javascript:epicWin();

and press enter for instant level up :D

[simono]

cleanup today.

since I just wrote the feature list and this thread doesn't have one... here it is in all its current glory 


Controls
=========
  * LMB to select unit & issue command
    * commands are context sensitive (depending on the kind of object you click on)
  * RMB drag to scroll map
  * cursor keys to scroll map

GUI
====
  * top left shows currently selected character
     * statistics (green = heightened by carried item)
     * carried items
  * bottom left shows ground player stands on
     * items laying here

items can be picked up and dropped by left clicking on them. this means that a character has to stand on the tile the item is on to pick it up. 

Actions
========

HARVEST
you can harvest cars (for ammo and food), junk (food) and trees (planks).

BARRICADE
the character must already carry a plank. then click on a window or door

SOLVE PUZZLE
investigate triangle or repair generator to open a door (usually something like that).

ATTACK
click on an enemy unit

Items
=======
each character can carry one item of each type.

item types:

  * outfit
  * weapon
  * mine (drop for delayed explosion)
  * plank (stuff to build barricade)
  * medikit (quick healing)
  * ammo
  * utility

items improved derived stats.

items decay with use. they can not be repaired and will dissappear once they reach a very low condition. (e.g., an ammo box can only be used two times. or a leathered jacket is destroyed after the 100. attack)

Two layered skills system
=======================
you can upgrade the base attributes once leveling up. the derived skills are, well, derived from the base attributes and can aditionally be influenced by carried items.

base attributes
   * dexterity
   * intelligence
   * strength
   * vitality
   
derived skills
  * max health points (health slowly re-generates)
  * attack speed
  * attack range
  * attack damage
  * movement speed
  * item harvesting speed
  * puzzle solve speed
  * barricading speed

Easy content creation
=======================
  * open source Tiled for level editing
  * all monster, item, stats data in JSON config files<
  * lots of free 2d sprites (all the art that's needed on opengameart.com

[simono]

*bump* plus apologies if the game froze your browser, I hear it does that for some ppl.

performance *will* get better, for now: chrome and you'r good.

[simono]

I did another, smaller level. The tech demo now runs that (not totally finished ) level.

And I tuned the items and monsters so fights are now winnable and more fun (running remains a good choice).... so if you were frustrated with the hard difficulty you might want to try again

The server-side evolved quiet a bit and I'm now able to host multiple players and store their worlds. So maybe the next teaser I release will no longer be a tech demo but more of an actual game with persistence

You might have to do a HARD RELOAD (CTRL+F5) do get newest version.
Play

version: 5 Jan 2011
currently best with Chrome
also tested in Firefox3+ and Safari4+

[simono]

I realised that the tech demo is no fun unless the story is rolling. The basic fighting and collecting and everything works.. It's just pointless

So I thought about the minimal thing I need to get The Story going

I'm now creating two maps (or maybe just one), fill it with the different camps (a bunch of NPCS with camp & harvest area) & the main story dialogs.


Need to tune code & create content to  show those off in a demo. So.. weeks until you can experience what the three experience in Vienna.