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[Jacob/Lee]

I'll throw out the most obvious and probably the most glaring, there's no NPCs after you save. It gets kind of old seeing zombies and animals for miles and miles.

[Singularity-SRX]

Nail guns are pretty awesome, this is true.  Albeit somewhat limited, and I guess most players view nails as precious rare goods.

Bland?  Please expand upon this!  A lively-feeling game is kind of important to me I think.

I mean, the game is good, but it's just the same stuff for ages. And that stuff just seems really empty, if you know what I mean. The streets are all the same, as are the houses. There also doesn't seem to be many plants or trees around.

It might just be the empty feeling though, as I've been playing Caves of Qud recently, and that is absolutely packed with stuff ^^

[Saurus33]

The towns, while expansive, start to feel samey after a while. You don't get the sense that people once lived here. Maybe the occasional brass statue in a park would help add some colour. Or a DF-style history generation; this town is here because of access to lumber, this one is here because of good farmland, etc, and having the layout of the towns correspond to their purpose would help differentiate them and give them life.

[Ordokai]

To be honest, I think the main problem here is the 'modulation' of it all. After playing for a while one starts to gain insight into the world gen mechanics perhaps a bit more than a player should. At the most basic level, the spirit of exploration is severely crippled when upon entering a tile you pretty much know exactly what will be there because essentially you are entering the same 'module' every time differences being in loot and relation to surroundings alone.

Then again, this might be a problem with the urbanized environment itself ! As humans we very much like to adhere to patterns, standardize everything and flatten the land, strip it of all features and replace them with monotonous utility, reason why it works in reality are very much the little details, the variety of objects/locales, spacial compositions etc., and while these are things not easily translated through our humble medium fundamental stuff like natural features humanity builds around in the real world can be. (to fill the 'void' between clusters of modules that are currently in-game towns) Perhaps a thought experiment is indicated, one might glean some insight after trying to break down a little area of a real world countryside town into stripped down topdown ASCII and see what happens, a satellite view off google maps fits the task. 


Personally I think one of the first things that needs to go is the empty space between buildings, fill it with something to glue the city together more organically rather than the abrupt end of one module and the beginning of the next. I suggest a whole new class of 'filler' modules that have a chance to come attached to the sides of building/location modules (or if spaces between buildings can be identified in worldgen - there), things like little private gardens, alleyways, kiosks, plazas, little side streets with vending machines and perhaps lots more we can think of, essentially locations that can quite naturally be near another building but don't quite deserve their own space on the map.

[The Merchant Of Menace]

I'll throw out the most obvious and probably the most glaring, there's no NPCs after you save. It gets kind of old seeing zombies and animals for miles and miles.

That's because NPCs are totally borken right now.

Haven't you noticed how their heads tend to explode after a few turns when you summon them to stop them breaking the game?

[Taco Dan]

I've seen NPCs spawn on their own in little walled off survivor-towns. However, when I hired one of them to help me, he proceeded to beat the only other resident to death, and then said, "Wait! I want to pick up that human corpse!".

[MasterFancyPants]

I was going to save this suggestion until later down the road, but since we're talking about spicing up the game I'll go ahead and throw it out now. I think it would be cool to have a random encounter system (Once most of the core mechanics are in) like if you're in deep in a forest you could happen upon "a small green mutated hermit with pointy ears" living in a hollowed out tree that could give you the telekinesis mutation and a melee bonus.

[Angle]

I don't know about that specific encounter, but that kind of thing could be interesting. We've already got the map_extra things, like science/soldier corpses, trap fields, etc. but a more detailed encounter system could be interesting. What I think is needed though, is more stuff in the cities. Thread Here.

[GlyphGryph]

Even if there were no associate morale bonuses, I think my "nightmares" and "memory" systems could help make the game seem a bit more alive to, in that you'd have some rare and flavourful stuff happen.

To summarize:
You'll occasionally have a creepy nightmare (described mostly through text, maybe playable though!) and you'll either sleep normally, wake up, or wake up screaming.

Also, sometimes you might see (what you think is) a familiar face in the crowd, and get a brief bit of text about it, or a familiar location "Have I been here before?" "A face in the crowd looks familiar... is that... dad?" "She looks at me with those empty eyes, as if she wanted me to remember... no, it couldn't be. It's not her. That would be crazy..."

I know a lot of people play with schitzo not for the points, but simply because it is entertaining, and I think adding in a lot of little touches like the stuff above would help too.

But additional flourishes for physical locations would be great as well - perhaps "themes" to tie the rooms of houses together the way shelf sections in groceries are tied together? It's already sort of there with "fridge room" and "clothes room" and "bathroom", but if the possessions in a room could be tied to something a bit more specific, it would do a lot to give the houses a sense of personality... more furniture and "flavour" items might help there as well. Posters, chairs (pick-up-able!), tables, couches, chess boards, weight benches (mmm... barbell weapons), sewing machines (more efficient use of sewing kits, but take batteries!), instruments (I know I've suggested guitars), televisions (slow but damaging weapons, electronic parts)...

Actually none of that might even be that difficult. I'm gonna have a look through and see what it would take to mess with that stuff (since I stopped working on my inventory mod a while ago when whales said he was making the changes anyway)

[DalGren]

Hey I suggested dreams and nightmares quite a bit ago, fully supporting that.

[Angle]

Also, chainlinc3's idea of various attribute sliders that could be applied to the neighborhoods is a good one.

[toupz]

Trains or city bus we can go inside and walk inside or even use as safehouse would rock.

Edit: TRAP SUGGESTION: Tools required: Hammer, items required: Nails x10, Piece of wood x2, rope, superglue.

Have to be inside a building and have a ceiling to put a rope in the roof, insta-strangle tool can also use it to hang ourselves. Two wooden plans because one acts as a lever when someone stands on it it makes the rope grapple their neck

[Urist Imiknorris]

I would so use a train as a mobile safehouse.

[GlyphGryph]

Wooh, I've got working torches in!

http://pastebin.com/f4uFFWvS

(mind you, wish only at the moment, but feedback on the "flickering torches" mechanic would be appreciated)

[Drevlin]

Just tried it. Cool, I say. It would be nice if the torch occasionally extinguishes and you have to light it again!