Last of the Living

by Halloween14
Survive in a town that has been quarantined and abandoned.
From -50 to -65... No not repair, Its strengthening weapon with a chance of complete breaking
In response to Turas
Turas wrote:
From -50 to -65... No not repair, Its strengthening weapon with a chance of complete breaking

I don't see sharpening a weapon as a means of making it stronger as the weapon should be sharp from the beginning and dulls with use. Thus, sharpening it would only bring it to the former glory and why I see it as a repair. The only way I would do that is if I made it so as a weapon gets damaged it lowers the strength. Then sharpening would bring back the original damage but not restore the durability.

As for the morality, I will have to look into that since, if anything, missions should raise the morality but I am not certain if that is even in yet. You can, however, lower your morality by looting a dead drop bag that isn't your own. <-offhand guess
Not really i'm looting someone else drop bags cuz there's no ppl, and i've got anything i need so... I don't know how it did made my morality low, i didn't know its even possible. But the facts say so, i had -50 morality(I have my status tab opened all the time, unless i need to craft something) I've completed a mission and got... -65 So...
In response to Turas
Do you know what mission it was?
Well, normal ordinary.. i think something like: Kill 10 zombies
You run out of hunger super fast.. I've never seen someone die of hunger in less than 5 minutes in any game. It kind of messes up the exploration, instead of discovering new things I'm just opening up shelf #20 and hoping to get a soda. And attacking isn't explained, but I can probably figure it out. Besides that, add more detail to the map and this looks promising. You die way too fast.. Like.. Before even understanding the game you die. It gives off a more "I'm just trying to make it hard to make it hard" rather than a hardcore game feeling because of the depletion rate of hunger and health. Zombies don't even kill me, I kill myself half the time lol. But overall, as stated before, this has great potential and add more detail to the map.
In response to Lendgens
Everything you mentioned has been explained before.

http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=1500210

Also note that this is beta.
I have a few suggestions for this game, after playing for around 30 minutes or so.

First let me start out by saying that I really enjoyed the game when I played it. Not so much because of the game exactly but of the potential it has.

Okay back to the good stuff; I think the movement is ever so slightly too slow for the cost since you lose a lot of hunger very quickly. I feel being able to move a bit faster should be considered. You may think this has been mentioned many a time but this isn't a complaint, this is a solution. Players will die very quickly by simply travelling and, I'll explain more about this later, but the game actually forces the player to travel constantly. This means hunger is rocketing down and is already at half before you're even at the next building. Experimenting with different movement speeds will easily help you balance this while still keeping the hunger element as overbearing as it should be.

Next I wanna talk about the zombie AI. With the current AI I've found that the moment I see a zombie I'm almost forced to fight it since it immediately begins to make it's way towards me and can easily chase me down if I'm in bad condition. It would make more sense to have it so as the zombies only aggro to you if you make a certain amount of noise. Give anything that creates sound a radius of 'sound' that draws nearby zombies to that location. Then if a zombie reaches a certain radius around a player it see's it and begins the chase. This would allow players to be more tactile when travelling and looting meaning they have to be aware of the noise they're making, they have to know to move on if they've made to much noise and it means that it requires experience to be able to safely travel places when other would find it dangerous.

Next I want to talk about a couple of things regarding the combat system. Firstly I think there needs to be some sort of greater indication that you've hit a zombie or even that you've swung a weapon. Simply because it took me at least 10 minutes before I realised how to attack the zombies and an extra 5 before I realised it was actually damaging them. The other thing is regarding the exploding zombies; They are just too strong. It might just be that it is rare but I have not found a way to clear infection. If there is a way to do it that's great and I think it's good to keep it a difficult thing to do so that players will be forced to do their best and not get infected. It forces them to think and that is seriously a good thing. But infection also, at the moment, means certain death. Melee fighting has been made a completely unreliable way to fight due to the fact I see no distinguishable features that separate an exploding zombie from a normal one and therefore fighting with melee weapons is almost secured to be death every time. A simple fix to this would be one or both of two things:

- Make exploding zombies look clearly distinguishable.

and/or

- Make exploding zombies have a small but obvious delay and animation when they are about to explode.

The reason the first way would work is because players would know to either avoid the exploding zombies or switch to a ranged weapon to sort them out. The second one would work because it would warn the player and give them just about enough time to dodge the explosion if they're quick enough.

Both of these things would still allow for high difficultly on the exploding zombies but enable players to use their skill to avoid the threats that exploding zombies pose to them.

Lastly I feel that a looting window when searching through loot nodes is important. This is quite a minor thing but I feel it would make things much cleaner.

I'm not sure if development of this game is even in place any more but, if it is, I strongly hope you consider adding the mentioned features. This game could go far, really far; it just needs some love and attention.

---
Ronan 'Inffliction' Hopkinson

 photo Inffliction_zpse7f44996.png
In response to Inffliction
purrfect suggestions
In response to Inffliction
Let me start by saying, yes the game is still in dev. Aside from that, most of what you have covered has been addressed but I shall cover what you did so you don't have to find it (couple different locations)

-speed can be upgraded

-hunger is lost much faster when you sprint, forcing you to only sprint when necessary

-hunger while sprinting can also be reduced by upgrading

-as for zombie ai, players at their slowest are still faster than a zombie. and yes, i have looked into better handling on when a zombie may detect a player but having this "sound" process would kill processing power exponentially as more people join as it would be running the check process for every tick of movement. My honest opinion on that subject is that it is completely unnecessary for what I am going for.

-you do bring up a great point about indicating a hit. originally I intended on there being a blood splatter overlay on the zombie but I now realize that it would be best to have splatter show on the ground (expect this soon)

-as for infection, game over. That is what I intended from the start. If you upgrade your healing ability you can stop the infection from progressing but the only cure will be death.

-bloated zombies. they wear redish-brown shirts and have a cracked open patchy head, this is noted elsewhere. it is not a good idea to use melee combat to kill them.

-as for looting, you click on a container once. you don't have to right click or double click, it is pretty basic.

Hope this helps, I recommend that you look at the 101 post that I had created and I expect to have an update shortly ( including splatter on hits, can thank yourself for that idea)

I feel that the difference between an exploding zombie and a regular walker isn't distinguishable enough. Since I spent most of my time playing trying to find the difference between them and I couldn't. I imagine is is because exploding zombies don't explode 100% of the time ? Maybe a good idea would be to make it so exploding zombies do not cause infection unless of course they bite you. The only reason I say about looting is because I noticed that if I was trying to loot quickly, I had no choice as to what got looted. This meant that my inventory was very quickly flooded with items and I had to stop and scrap the trash before I could keep looting. Time means everything in this genre of game. If Speed can be upgraded, that's great ! However it would be a good idea to have some sort of instanced introduction to the game if that's the case since it seems you've told me a lot of things that I couldn't have figured out myself in the first 30 minutes. As for the Zombie AI, if you're worried about processing power (I wouldn't be since I'm certain it can be make practical), then maybe you should make zombies move much slower until they reach a certain distance of the player. I just simply found that there were no loot nodes at all outside, they were all inside meaning any player trying to loot would have to deal with a whole bunch of zombies that had swarmed them. Condensed space + Zombie Swarm = Certain death 99% of the time. This is why I feel that for a new character, it is so tremendously hard and there's so much of the game that is unknown. I feel this is why you don't have many players. I always say, if in the first 30 minutes of playing a game you still want to play it, you will get a nice player base right away. It's all about the first impression. Because right now I imagine most people are joining the server thinking 'omg this game looks awesome' and then they're simply logging off after 10 - 20 minutes because they have no idea what they're doing, they're constantly dying and that isn't fun. I just think people need a tiny bit of a helping hand to get into the game.

---
Ronan 'Inffliction' Hopkinson

 photo Inffliction_zpse7f44996.png
Hey Inffliction, i've been playing this game some like... 3-4 days..? Maxed out all of skillz... Backpack... Lots of ranged weapons... And i have to say its not really hard to develop.

1. There's a real difference between exploding zombie and walker, its just damn hard to notice it at the night, at the day its really clear, but their respawn chance is smaller.

2. Zombies aren't following you forever, if you will get really far they will just despawn.

3. If you want to dodge exploding zombies at night, run to the safe house, if you're in it 5 secs and they will despawn as no aggro is made.

4. If i know right... one npc is selling soda for 10 bucks, while it regenerates 20 hunger, if you're making real money, then its really cheap. And by real money i mean, 2000 buckz till night, its not that hard even for newbie if he knowz how the melee fight work.

5. Some containers are really rare, as gun case, ammo box etc. you have to explore the map to find one, but its not worthy if you haven't got a niceh stamina level.

6. Try to make some bucks first, stay close to the safe house, best place is between road stop and that supermarket, few but regular zombie spawn n really close to safe house.

7. About infection, there's no shiz, Bitten = Done. Even if you have healing skill 5, when you have i think.. 30-50% You're done for.

8. Do not run at start or like crazy cause its eating up hunger like hell.

9. This game is beta, you can't except perfection from the start, it has potential which is being developed by haloween.

10. Well i can pretty well see which zombie is blower n regular at night, its not really accurate to be honest but if you don't fell like, buy some soda and wait up the night in safe house, never travel at night alone or you will die.
Btw, i didn't check how much cash register gives money, but i think taking out materials from crowbar to make 2-3 homemade machete which is really murderous is better when i can get up to 1000$ for two. Btw trash scraping is very useful, if you haven't check resources tab. Exploding if not infection then a really highly dmg, which may put you into dangerous state, 10 hp left etc. Thats a choice.
You seem to have mistaken me for someone who is complaining about aspects of the game and saying how I want it to be. You're wrong.

It remains a fact that right now the player base is so low that almost every time I look, there isn't even a single player online. I am very simply trying to explain how this games player base could be dramatically increased.

The main way of doing this is by stopping players from getting fed up of dying and being unable to do anything about it. This can be achieved through what I have mentioned so far.

---
Ronan 'Inffliction' Hopkinson

 photo Inffliction_zpse7f44996.png
In response to Inffliction
I have been hoping for a while to get the tutorial in and I will be doing my best to get that done. Like you said this should really help inform new players how to go about the game without dying all the time.
Halloween14 wrote:
I have been hoping for a while to get the tutorial in and I will be doing my best to get that done. Like you said this should really help inform new players how to go about the game without dying all the time.

Great. As much as most players admit they hate tutorials, most of them don't realise how important it is for a game to have one. It's a fact that games with tutorials have higher player bases. I do push the point that the bloater zombies need to look more like bloater zombies though. It's just right now when you're fighting numerous zombies which you don't have a choice in fighting it's so easy to accidentally kill a bloater and then be condemned.

Turas wrote:
Exploding if not infection then a really highly dmg, which may put you into dangerous state, 10 hp left etc. Thats a choice.

This is a good suggestion, maybe not right down to 10% maybe like 25% else if a player is damaged in any way they're dead.

---
Ronan 'Inffliction' Hopkinson

 photo Inffliction_zpse7f44996.png
Inffliction, i haven't write this only because you seemed to me as a complainer, if you may find it useful, then why won't you try it out?

Without a tutorial, this game is really hard to begin with. I think that even with one, combat system is not that piece of cake, cause i've seen how new players react to it, they're hitting a zombie and standing here waiting for a bite... If you'd write on tutorial at melee you have to Hit n Run, many ppl may mistook it and they will use up sprint which uses hunger really... well... you know...

And about your suggestion, the delay about bloating zombies is a pretty bad idea, without bloating zombies this game would be really easy. If you get used to melee fight, then you're praying that you wouldn't find bloater, he's like a mini-boss :d
I apologise, I guess you're post just came across as slightly malicious. And When I say a delay I mean literally 1 second. Enough time for an experienced player to turn on sprint run, and if they're lucky avoid getting hit. Considering zombies don't stop chasing you for seemingly ages, it would mean you actually were able to use melee against them and survive if you're lucky.

---
Ronan 'Inffliction' Hopkinson

 photo Inffliction_zpse7f44996.png
Well, one time the bloater explosion have missed me, i don't know really about the details i wonder how it happend, but it as you said, i turned on sprint and avoid it. Still the fastest way is point n shoot.
Not if you don't have a gun it isn't.

---
Ronan 'Inffliction' Hopkinson

 photo Inffliction_zpse7f44996.png
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6