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[My Name is Immaterial]

If you sit around in this game you will starve, quickly.

With in the week, certainly, but if you are smart, and don't take anymore hits than you need to, you can run with a smaller party till the others heal, which could take a week. I have been able to wait for 3 or 4 days with out feeling stressed about food.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

The main changes are skills, recruitment, and jobs for people who aren't headed out with the raiding party. The scavenging job is very powerful early on, but will drop off in effectiveness as you use it more, since your scavengers will have a harder time finding unlooted locations. Currently, there's no risk to scavengers. I'm planning to change that.

The changes are pretty substantial here, and saves aren't compatible with the previous release. I'm still planning to have more save compatibility between releases than with LCS, but I elected to not spend the extra effort of converting the old Rick Grimes saves to the new random character stuff.



Download:
http://www.jonathansfox.com/ZSS/zss_python_2_27_2013.zip

Changelog:
- Added recruitment
- Added scavenging, basic tending to injuries
- Added skills
- Changed attributes
- Changed starting situation to a much more spartan beginning
- Increased sight radius
- Prohibited enemies from spawning within sight of the player
- Juggled item spawn probabilities, increased water drop slightly, added a couple new weapons
- Used combat skills to influence hit/miss in combat
- Made you autopickup items underfoot even when you're attacking

[mainiac]

Sweet!

I think there might be some sort of bug in the attack probabilities when you attack very wounded zombies.  I seem to get in very long miss streaks against them despite easily hitting normal zeds.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Sweet!

I think there might be some sort of bug in the attack probabilities when you attack very wounded zombies.  I seem to get in very long miss streaks against them despite easily hitting normal zeds.

Hm, I'll have to check into that. The hit/miss mechanics are very new, so they might be buggy.

[cloudyrads]

hi, just played the new version
may i suggest make the sight radius be a cone or triangle in the beginning when you have one survivor
or if it's possible make the light of sight not go through the wall block?
it's just me but
i keep imagining the character looking around nervously clutching a baseball bat
also please please move the add a space between the name and weapon column
i randomned christopher richardsWeapons i know it's just cosmetic sorry

 loving the item autopickup yay

[Shades]

Just grabbed the new version, runs fine under wine btw. I'm glad to see that the, I assume randomly named, hero has the same surname as me. This can only bode well

Edit: or not... on the plus side my safehouse seems happy to go on existing day after day without anyone alive in it

[Jonathan S. Fox]

may i suggest make the sight radius be a cone or triangle in the beginning when you have one survivor
or if it's possible make the light of sight not go through the wall block?

I don't want to implement directional vision, since it's a significant amount of work to do so, and it would only really make sense when you have one person. I'm not a huge fan of directional vision in these sorts of games, since I think it implies the character has poor situational awareness and isn't looking around. I'd need to add buttons to let you turn around in place without taking time, and then that would add several extra keystrokes for the player to do what's a very simple action in real life.

Light is already blocked by walls right now, but it's (intentionally) on the generous side when calculating what squares you can see.

also please please move the add a space between the name and weapon column
i randomned christopher richardsWeapons i know it's just cosmetic sorry

I think this really comes down to "Christopher" and "Richardson" both being too long for the space provided; it's hard to squeeze a name like that in while still making room for everything else in the game. I'll shrink those and a couple other long (10+ letter) names, using similar substitutes like "Chris" and "Richards".

[Xaioxaiofan]

Played my first game on the new version... found out 'the more the merrier' = starvation.... Great game though.

[Aseaheru]

PTW

[My Name is Immaterial]

After playing the update, I would say that with the new view range, guns are OP. I can shoot anything, and it will die. Without touching me. I also prefer the tighter view distance, because it adds tension. It felt scary, and now it's nowhere near that.

I also think that winning means seven survivors, with 309 food cans and 178 water. Water is still not as common as food. Is the food to water ratio on purpose, Fox?

I also recruited Samuel Jackson as I was writing this. He had 7 in all combat stats. I handed him a shotgun and told him to kill some zombies. And add nicknames, so I can nickname him 'L'.

Edit: Seven is too many. Six is the perfect number, because the extras can't scavenge for themselves effectively.

[Donuts]

I also think that winning means seven survivors

Pfft. 4 survivors all the way.

[Shades]

Pfft. 4 survivors all the way.

Frankly as soon as you get something like a katana or a fire arm then just one, maybe two is plenty. But this is early days so I don't expect it to be balanced yet.

[groznij]

Very interesting! I look forward to any and all updates. Played for an hour or so. As long as your first guy survives long enough to recruit another one, you're all set basically.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

So I heard the game got a lot easier with the addition of scavenging and recruitment. In this release, the pendulum swings the other way, and combat becomes significantly more dangerous.

Headline features are improved zombie AI and limited ammo on guns. The AI changes include making zombies slow to notice you, but able to hunt you after you slip out of sight. Most notably, however, firing guns will aggro zombies in a wide area around you, who will start to pour in on you. Let me know if it's too much.

Ammo limitations work a bit differently than in LCS. Your squad shares a common ammunition reserve and will freely share ammo with each other. Shotguns reload one shell at a time, and reloading takes an action during combat, but all weapons can be reloaded for free (in terms of time) while moving. When you have two weapons equipped, reloading during combat is prioritized only if the potential damage of the weapon being reloaded is more than four times the damage that would be done by attacking with the other weapon. Reloading is lossless, so non-empty magazines get abstracted back into the ammo pile, but your survivors won't reload guns that use magazines unless they're almost empty. Empty weapons can still be used as clubs, and are more powerful than your bare hands in combat.

Melee weapons are much more valuable this release, and the crossbow also sees its star rise significantly with these two features. The crossbow is both the only ranged weapon that is silent, and the only ranged weapon with reusable ammo. You can usually find its bolts dropped to the floor or stuck in the corpses of fallen zombies. On the minus side, it doesn't share a skill with any of the other weapons, must be reloaded after every shot, and has the least plentiful ammunition. And while its bolts are usually recoverable, they will still sometimes be lost.

These are some pretty substantial changes. Let me know they feel and how they affect the gameplay.



Download:
http://www.jonathansfox.com/ZSS/zss_python_3_3_2013.zip

Changelog:
- Added ammunition
- Added improvised melee attacks with ranged weapons
- Removed defensive benefit from having high dexterity
- Removed the ability to make unarmed attacks when weapons are equipped
- Reduced chance of attacks missing in general
- Reduced availability of scavenging supplies slightly
- Zombies start not noticing player, may take notice when in line of sight
- Zombies wander around aimlessly when not alerted to the player
- Guns are loud and attract zombies
- Zombies that lose sight of the player or hear guns will chase with pathfinding
- Zombies can no longer become incapacitated due to pain
- Armor is now considerably less effective
- Reduced length of some too-long character names
- Fixed crash bug on equipment screen when you had no equipment

[Jonathan S. Fox]

After playing the update, I would say that with the new view range, guns are OP. I can shoot anything, and it will die. Without touching me. I also prefer the tighter view distance, because it adds tension. It felt scary, and now it's nowhere near that.

This is great feedback. I'm leaving the view distance as it stands for now, but I'll be thinking about this and may play with it going forward.

Is the food to water ratio on purpose, Fox?

Not directly, but I'm aware of it and haven't made an effort to strictly balance them. My intent is to have water easier to get a stable supply of in other methods. There's plenty of water around, as I envision it, it's just most is unsafe in several measures. Once you have purification methods, water should be easier to come by than food. Your people should probably start drinking dirty water when you run out, but I haven't written anything to enable that.