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Outbreak : Survivors - A mix of styles and a lot of code
I want to share part of my work on a new game I'm making.
Using Twine and SugarCube, I'm developing a full fledge text based game in the goal of promoting Twine and my idea for a future Kickstarter campaign.
I want to include RPG elements as well as Focusing on the Management of the Shelter the player has.
What I am including in this game is :
Multiple Characters :
Not only skills and stats will change, but Objectives as well. Some characters will be locked until Goals are achived. Playing every character will reveal the real story. A few example of objectives: Finding Military Base Camp, Extracting Key Character or Rebuilding Civilisation.
In addition, the player will have up to 4 extra team member that can join him.
Timed event :
The time will be the key to many aspect of the game. Every action takes time, days goes by and modify many aspects of the game as well. A player might have to find family member before they die for example.
Shelter and Community Management :
The player will have to manage his shelter and survivors. Gathering enough food, expanding and building sections, such as gardens and watch tower, to maintain the survivors safe. Not only that, but the player will eventually have to set tasks for survivors.
Scavenging:
Scavenging will require the player to go into buildings, and every building will have many section to scavenge. Encountering other humans (Friendly or Hostile) or Zombies in the process. It will be a hard task, but will be the key element of survival and goal progression. For example, the Mall consists of 42 sections and scavengeable stores on 2 Level.
And many more features:
So far, I have 146 Passages and 117 variables.
I just released my "Combat Module" and I tweaked it a little bit to make it work as a standalone.
You can try it here and give me your feedback.
http://northernlightsgames.com/Outbreak/Combat.html
Let me know your opinion and ideas on the project.
Using Twine and SugarCube, I'm developing a full fledge text based game in the goal of promoting Twine and my idea for a future Kickstarter campaign.
I want to include RPG elements as well as Focusing on the Management of the Shelter the player has.
What I am including in this game is :
Multiple Characters :
Not only skills and stats will change, but Objectives as well. Some characters will be locked until Goals are achived. Playing every character will reveal the real story. A few example of objectives: Finding Military Base Camp, Extracting Key Character or Rebuilding Civilisation.
In addition, the player will have up to 4 extra team member that can join him.
Timed event :
The time will be the key to many aspect of the game. Every action takes time, days goes by and modify many aspects of the game as well. A player might have to find family member before they die for example.
Shelter and Community Management :
The player will have to manage his shelter and survivors. Gathering enough food, expanding and building sections, such as gardens and watch tower, to maintain the survivors safe. Not only that, but the player will eventually have to set tasks for survivors.
Scavenging:
Scavenging will require the player to go into buildings, and every building will have many section to scavenge. Encountering other humans (Friendly or Hostile) or Zombies in the process. It will be a hard task, but will be the key element of survival and goal progression. For example, the Mall consists of 42 sections and scavengeable stores on 2 Level.
And many more features:
So far, I have 146 Passages and 117 variables.
I just released my "Combat Module" and I tweaked it a little bit to make it work as a standalone.
You can try it here and give me your feedback.
http://northernlightsgames.com/Outbreak/Combat.html
Let me know your opinion and ideas on the project.
Comments
I had a quick play. When you get to death, in the left pane it says Health: ERROR.
The pages were too long. If this is happening fast, I want to see everything at a glance. Perhaps cyclinglinks for tactics and weapons?
I plan on learning CSS to redo the interface, but I'm not sure about this yet.
I'm really new to coding and discovered Twine 3 months ago but I'll look into your suggestions.
I was planning to make 1 page reload asking for every member action (1st load : Player, 2nd Load : Team Member 1 etc...) before doing the same thing for the combat result.
In my head, this would be done with a variable starting from 0 and gaining 1 on each load until it equals the member number variable.
<<if $page.reload < $group.number>>
<<if $page.reload eq 0>>
<<setAction $player>> (widget calling the actions)
<<elseif $page.reload eq 2>>
<<setAction $group1>>
<<elseif ...>>
<<endif>>
<<set $page.reload+=1>>
<<else>>
<<display "Combat">>
<<endif>>
Personally I would not; I think it is better done on one screen. You want combat to be as fast as possible, which means as few page jumps as possible (IMHO).
What you could do is have a loop that adds the combatants to one page. It would not be as easy to code, but it would be possible.
It shows what weapon Fred has but beneath that it says "You do not have a Secondary Weapon or ammo for it." shouldn't that be
Fred does not have a secondary weapon or ammo for it"?
The health bar to the left is for the player only? what about Fred? (no health bar= that's gotta freak Fred out lol)
Which direction are the zombies coming from? you could have a choice as to which direction player/npc faces/attacks.
To give it a little more variety you could have barriers that the player or Fred/npcs could be ordered to do a quick repair in between the waves of attacks, if you have waves of attacks. I suggest adding more npc so some can assigned to barrier repairs, first aid and resupplying ammo to the group. Also if the zombies are far off some weapons could be near useless such as the shotgun, more suited to close quarters. So if you perhaps have "groups" of zombies with a rough distance how far away they are etc.
Attack option perhaps lists the groups and player picks. If the player keeps picking the nearest group maybe the further away groups grow in size.
These extra parameters would make the combat more interesting and having to make decisions, the more npc are killed the harder it is to defend- some undefended zones the zombies will move unimpeded. Maybe you should try making each round of combat to a single shot or two (or action) rather than a full clip especially if you add in these extra gameplay features. So if everyone is reloading at the same time there goes an action turn and the zombies advance a little more. Maybe a gun jams.
Anyway just some ideas.
This is roughly the core concept of indoor zombie battles, with a dew actions missing(ie skill base actions and items) and there will be other form of combat such as shelter attacks.
I do like the ideas thought. That would add major tactics to combat and could really make it more dynamic.
I was looking for a way to have dynamic combats within a building(zombies barging from other rooms) and barricades and directions seems like a good idea since you could have to flee combat, but the route you came from might now be full of zombies.
Unfortunately, I won't update this any time soon. I'll keep developping my core game before polishing all this to it's final state.