Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nenjin]

Surely there's something nicer that Flash can anti-alias other than Arial?

Don't mind me, I'm just a font nerd. The right font does so much for my immersion, especially when its a game that's less driven by graphics.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Heheh, I'd go for handwritten with really great handwriting if I can find an appropriate font. Pretty cursive isn't what I have in mind; it has to be very readable. Architect handwriting, not doctor handwriting.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Lighter color, different font, sidebar moved to bottom, incorporated full character sheet into the list itself. You can expand/collapse any character's entry by clicking the +/- button. Squad membership changed from a check box to an option in the activity drop down. Currently working on making the data actually functional; you can see this is already done for the character name, occupation, and attributes. Skills are up next (and they will be more properly formatted when that happens).

If needed, there can be button to show the full skill list. However, I'm thinking this amount of space might be enough to show the full skill list already. Then again, it's usually more useful to see a summary of the top skills, rather than have to visually hunt for what the character's best skills are. Hmm.

[nenjin]

Lighter font does a lot for readability and now it doesn't look like console output.

I feel like I want a vertical line between the job fields on the right and the Level 1(10 XP/20 Next) on the left. Trying to use all that space for the full skill list seems like too much, there's plenty of room for another button to go to a broken out character sheet.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I don't see much point in an even larger character sheet. The only thing to display is one weapon, five attributes, skills, experience, and injuries. I have everything but the weapon displaying here and I still have massive white space. Worst case, I can just add another 50-100 pixels onto the bottom of it.

Though its proportions are similar, this is much much larger than the LCS mini character sheet. That has only enough room for five skills vertically and less space horizontally.

[nenjin]

I don't see much point in an even larger character sheet. The only thing to display is one weapon, five attributes, skills, experience, and injuries. I have everything but the weapon displaying here and I still have massive white space. Worst case, I can just add another 50-100 pixels onto the bottom of it.

Not yet. Consider that if you left a text field for people to type in a character backstory, that's reason enough. In the same way LCS records crimes committed, you might have room for zombies killed, days survived, personality and/or descriptive traits....Not to mention you're probably going to need an expanded skill list, at some point.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Thanks for all your feedback, nenjin, it's very useful for me to have someone to bounce ideas off of. UI isn't a very glorious part of game design, but it's a very important one. LCS is notorious for its difficult interface, and I really want to ensure ZSS doesn't inherit that problem.



I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It could certainly be a lot better (including easy cosmetic things like subdividing the character sheet visually instead of just randomly plopping text down), but it's functional, fairly reasonable on the eyes, and hopefully very usable, all things I'm very glad for. I'm not sure if I want to have skill caps tied to attributes; this is open to revision if I elect to incorporate variable skill caps. It's a cool mechanic in LCS, but it's another one of those things that feels like it's something to look at later if I have time, rather than something worth investing effort into when the basic game still needs to come together.

I have various more significant improvements in mind, such as the ability to reskin the character's entry in the list, tinting it red, blue, yellow, green, or whatever based on any criteria you prefer, highlighting skills relevant to the task at hand, and tooltips on attribute and skill text. Those are all secondary though, and I'm ready to set this aside and focus on the next screen.

I think I'll tackle the map screen next. What I have in mind is a moderately zoomed-in map of the city, revealing only explored areas. You would be able to drag it around and select an area to dispatch the squad to. The squad then goes to a street near there and spawns next to a van. You can then explore the city at will from there, but the van serves as your return point from which you can fast travel back to base. The van also serves as a large container you can stash stuff in and take stuff out of, perhaps coming loaded with extra ammunition or medical supplies. Returning on foot would leave the van there along with anything stashed inside.

I'm thinking about altering the inventory system to one based on weight rather than slots. The reason for this is both pragmatic and idealistic: I want to have lots of items, and I don't want to incur the overhead of making unique art for them all. If I do this, items will be described in text in lists and won't just sit openly in the world. Instead, they'll be in containers, similar to Fort Zombie. Unlike Fort Zombie, I wouldn't have a search skill; it's kind of cool thematically and it forces you to clear an area before you loot it, but it feels more grindy than a truly mechanically interesting part of the game. Another convention to be avoided is huge numbers of empty containers you have to search. I'll just make anything with loot in it obviously glow the moment you see it and change the color of the glow once you've opened it and seen what's inside, or remove the glow entirely if you looted everything. I feel like grabbing stuff from the world should be a pretty low-stress endeavor. Bump into a cabinet you know has stuff in it, click take all or only click the items you want, move on. Pretty easy.

I'm not certain how this would interact with weapons. I think having graphics for weapons is a very good thing, much more important than having graphics for food or medicine, and if doing this I might replace the square icons which are very hard to fit weapons in (agonizing, in fact, since most weapons are FAR from square) and use larger, more realistic art assets for guns and swords and such.

[NRDL]

Nice interface, Mr. Fox!

[USEC_OFFICER]

It looks very nice. My only complaint is the amount of light grey that the player has to look at, seeing as it comprises most of the screen.

Perhaps you can have the top part of the character's entry be a darker colour than the rest of it? That way, when it's collapsed, the entry looks different from the expanded entries. Just an idea of something that you could tweak. It looks nice as it is.

[nenjin]

I like the van idea, so few ZA games ever try to factor cars in there.

It would be fun IMO to attach some gameplay ideas to that. I.e. needing to collect fuel for the van as well as generators, and perhaps the ZA version of LCS' car chases, except where you run the risk of driving into a horde and get the van swamped by baddies.

Fort Zombie has the scout skill, which reduces travel times and chances to attack while traveling. Perhaps some sort of navigation/driving skill could reduce the amount of game time passed while traveling, and reduce the chance of getting "stuck." Because I imagine being a good navigator or having a sound grip of logistics in the fire-gutted, power line-toppled, car-strewn city of the ZA can only help.

[Geen]

Hm... Lookin' good so far. Can't wait to see more!
Perhaps you could add a more complex inventory, because I hate clothes to be just one item, for some reason.
Maybe survival supplies? Like flashlights, rations, and whatnot?

[Fniff]

I think random social events in the base would be excellent.

There should be occasions when you run out of a certain thing (For this example, food) or one of group does something (Play loud music to mellow out that could make zombies attack more often.) which causes an event. There would be three choices.

1: The Nice But Uncaring Choice. Do not restrict food at all. Helps morale but your dwindling food supply will go even faster.
2: The Neutral But Unadventurous Choice. Restrict food, just don't fully. No advantages or disadvantage
3: The Nasty But Fair Choice. Have your squad practically starve for a few months, but when the food supply goes up again give food out. Morale goes down, but food will probably skyrocket.

This would feel more like an actual zombie movie, with backstabbing ahoy and you can't trust your friends fully. This is an angle that hasn't be explored all too often, and probably wouldn't require impossible amounts of code, but if it does, then ignore this.

[Zangi]

Rations like Oregon Trail:
Full
Normal
Meager
and maybe... selective...  of course that could cause other problems...

Doesn't really need to be an event... just a decision made and changed as your food supply rots or when you find a surplus...   Or for morale/health...

[NRDL]

Status update, pretty please? 

[Jonathan S. Fox]

At the moment, I'm taking a break to work on another, smaller project, so that I don't burn out from working on one thing all the time. Where I last left off, there was a scrollable city overview map working, and you could mouse over each building to get information about that building, then click to select that building for fast travel. In doing this I also cleaned up a lot of the code for map generation and got the pretty maze algorithm for map generation fully integrated, so that it uses that city map to generate building interiors and streets. I also improved the code for placing doors (it's faster and much smarter, and avoids some of the weird corner doors and holes that were in the first video), and I added support for crosswalks and street striping, though I have only tested this on the overview map, and still need to verify all is well when you actually run around in the street.

I still needed to hook up the ability to then dispatch your squad to the selected building, and make sure that buildings are spawning you outside one of their entrances. Once you can move between the strategic mode and the tactical mode, I can start having data carry between them (the squad you pick is what you're dispatched with, collect food to building up your stockpile, obvious things like that). For now though, I'm monkeying with a little game tentatively called Politician Apollo: Starfighter for President, a remake of first computer game I ever made.