Well I’m over a year worth of weekends into this one. I will be updating this thread with pics/videos and (hopefully) we can discuss features. I’d like to craft this thing into a co-op experience like no other. Build and scavenge with your friends online. Find a building, fortify it, set up lighting(control generators and hook up to light sources), maybe find a vehicle?, go out and collect resources from the world, and craft. Eating, drinking, stamina, health. Weapon customization system, vehicle customization/crafting. I have so many ideas for this, but doesn’t everyone? Haha, I can go on and on about this project I really love working on it and have grand ideas. Hopefully I can shoot for the moon and land among the stars on this.
Here is a video, albeit uploaded today, the video file is dated 3-23-13. So a good bit has changed, mostly on the backend for making multiplayer stuff work.
I really want to get a dialog going about features that people would like to see. Features you don’t like. And yes I have since purchased fraps:sweat_smile:
EDIT:
video of me testing footstep sounds, this is a more recent video
Asset store stuff mostly. Those shacks and such are from bootcamp, the gun from UFPS kit, and the character is from turbosquid. Just a one-man show so I have focused my time on programming. I can do art, just am using shortcut art for now for stuff that I felt best represented close to final. For testing.
TBH i hadn’t look much into DayZ. Watching a couple youtube videos I’d say yes and no. Stronger emphasis on co-op play, and more systems for making your fortified outpost. Not planning on many people per server. I may even just go lan play with up to 8 or something like that players. I don’t want to get into the problems with mmo’s. Nor do I have any interest in making this a pvp-centric game. I would be ok with having no friendly fire but I would like a better solution than that.
My vision is that you can setup your zombie survival outpost. Store supplies, fortify it up with blockades and barricades. Set up a generator to run lights and charge tools. Setup workstations and use tools with that power to build things. And run a farm and water purification setup eventually. So almost minecraft like in that sense.
No update yet sorry. Just wanted to pop in thanking everyone for the well-wishing, interest. The weekend is fast approaching, whoa wasn’t it just monday!? haha I will try to do some coding/UI stuff soon but if not I will this weekend. Will have an update video on the current state of inventory.(WWW is sloowwww) Looking into doing direct mysql with a plugin. So I will have a before and after if I do that. Wow having a day job really makes this important game project stuff hard!
Looks great definatly excited about a lan feature, any ideas on a release date (like minecraft you can start with alpha and update as you go along)
And maybe gamesize on the harddrive?
Wait, is co-op mandatory? I prefer surviving a world of zombies on my own.
Also, having the game single player can also lead to another advantage. You can add more things like, making a surviving community. This creates a larger depth to the game, and it would make everything much more addicting.
I mean, if you want to play a multiplayer survival zombie game, play DayZ.
Yes its true, but what if you don’t want to play DAyz? I think Co Op is wonderfull, but it should have a single player option, kind of like borderlands, the more friends join, the stronger the enemies get, and so on. I also had a thought, what if there are hostile and non hostile NPC in the game, that you can shoot or save, if you save a survivor, bring them back to base, and they can help protect it. You can even ad a squad based element, so you can take a max of X survivors along with you when you leave the base to help you in your fight!?
That’s a great idea. I actually prefer a game where you maintain a base, save survivors, search for food, and grow a population while expanding to different towns and cities. It just gives a sense on how a zombie apocalypse will play. You can’t trust anyone, but you need to protect the ones you care for. And with that, you need shelter and food. Then other survivors will start to climb into your ranks and grow a community. I’d play a game like this any day.
I want to preface this by saying the whole point of making a thread is so I’m not making something I want, and I’m making something that can get feedback and molded into what players want. Not that I’m saying a bunch of game developers are going to know exactly what a gamer is going to want. Not that gamers know exactly what they want. But that having more eyes and more feedback will hopefully bring it closer to that goal.
Game size right now with what is shown is 400mb.
It would either be lan or not, right now i’m leaning to not. But if I make servers it makes control of piracy easier/cheating/updates/metering(statistic to see what people are doing)/balance…I could go on, with lan I miss out on most of that. Open the door to people just downloading and pirating and playing on tunngle. However, having said that. I could tack on a small fee and allow a player to purchase a private game server to play on. Maybe just add on a $10 fee to your game and get the ability to have a number of private games. Limited to not take up too many resources but enough to where you can say, have one for yourself and one for you and a couple friends.
I would hope the above meets your concerns on forcing co-op. I hope that the features I will put in persuade you it is different enough from DayZ to at least consider it. Yes they seem to have a good thing going. But I feel certain aspects are missing. And making pvp open turns a few people off.
Right now the more players on a server the increased max of zombie spawns. I just set a zombie per player online right now. 10 per player, 5 players online is 50 zombies max spawn in the game world. And they spawn only in the dark away from the players. So you never SEE one spawn, but if you turn away and then back there may be one RIGHT BEHIND YOU. hehe, kind of a bug but scary as hell. I hadn’t thought about npc’s that you can save, will remember that. Not too hard, just character art is expensive. The AI would consume some time as well. I had already done a framework for non-violent npc’s that you can hunt for resources. No art tho, but you can hunt/kill/harvest meat from the wild capsulsaurus. Exciting!
Which all awesome ideas. It plays again into the limited resources aspect, sure I day dream about a kickstarter that makes 2 million. And in that day dream I have all the time and resources I need to make awesome features like those. They are great ideas, and they SHOULD be in my game. But when I wake up I look over things needing to be done that aren’t my checking account stares back at me. So I drudge on with features that I think are NEEDED and try not to day dream often. With a day job I make enough to slowly put these in, but only on the weekends and the odd 5am code session. Without the day job my coding time would explode, but I would have to code on a laptop from a cardboard box. It’s a conundrum.
It will take a while but I will be eventually at a place where “core” features are in, then I can decide what to let feature-creep in, and this thread will be where I draw from for those features. So please keep them coming, keep the feedback loop going. I monitor this thread like a hawk, tho I can’t always respond immediately, I will always respond to each suggestion!
I agree focus on the core ! Get that body in shape before you try on the skinny jeans lol. Regular updates showing of your guns and the zombie models would be greatly apreciated.
** edit **
maybe you can gain a huge following by being active on youtube maybe sending out a alpha demo to some gameing magazines see if they will support you. Maybe some people will even donate somemoney to keep you active
Concerning zombies. There are a ton of possible zombie combos, the system uses parts and randomizes them. So physically they are all slightly different. When I get off work I’ll take some snaps of them.
I’m trying to be active on youtube, but I’m not very good at it, couple hundred views at best! Oh well. As for the alpha, oh my. I don’t think I would call this an alpha. Not ready for people to play and make fun of :P. I’ll look into it, but atm I’m just trying to manage my day job and small progress on the weekends for the game.
