So before I get on a plane and go back in time, arriving in San Francisco the day I left, I thought I’d give you guys something to mess around with while I’m away. Please read the notes below, some fairly significant changes have happened.
Things to know:
- Equip weapons from your inventory, click the slot to select it, then click the weapon in the inventory.
- Melee animation re-done. It’s tricky because the torso is controlled via code.
- Hold crouch now works, toggle crouch will be an option.
- Shove has been added, use the spacebar to activate it.
- There’s no sound, all weapons in this alpha need their sounds added.
- Search proximity added, you need to be close to open a container.
- Half decorated rooms.
- Containers that actually look like places to search.
- Searches are now saving and your Luck and Search skill is very low.
- New zombie attacks.
- Zombies learned how to climb stuff.
- There’s a lot of janky animations and oddities, I know about all of them, please don’t bug me about them.
Other things:
The beginnings of the zombie director have been added, at the moment it’s just dealing with the spawning of enemies in new rooms. It takes into account your health, level and will eventually look at things like time between fights and ammunition stores.
Controls:
W - Jump
A,D - Left / Right
S - Crouch
SPACE - Shove
Q - Switch Weapons
1 - Switch Primary
2 - Switch Secondary
R - Reload
Mouse - Aim / Fire
THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA v0.7
UPDATE: Thanks for all the suggestions, think I’ve got the final list sorted out. Here they are:
- M4A1
- AK-47 / 74
- M16A2
- SCAR-H
- FAL
- ????
They were picked for their various calibres and actual performance differences. The key thing were that they function differently to each other. The last one on the list, well that’s a secret.
Here’s an early look at the searching and inventory system for TLS: UC. It’s all very rough at the moment and you’ll see a bunch of small interface glitch type things as you play around with it. Also, there’s a bunch of icons and such missing and only short descriptions for items, but I hope it gives you an idea of the scope I’m dealing with here.
Things to know:
- Containers aren’t remembering their contents at the moment and will randomly populate every time you open them. In the final game they’ll populate with random items (depending on the type of room you’re in) the first time you open them and then be saved.
- Items in the search screen that are marked with a star are items that have been found as a result of either a luck or skill roll. This all happens behind the scenes but it’s an indicator for players who’ve put points into Luck and the Searching skill.
- You can open the Backpack via the button on the bottom or by hitting TAB.
- Zombies are turned off for the moment.
THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA v0.6
You know how you guys like to ask questions? Yeah, I get lots of them. Rather than me reading the same questions 20 times a day, how about we do it this way…
I’ve made a FACT SHEET where you can go for all your information about The Last Stand: Union City. There’s even a section there for stuff that won’t be in the game!
If you make a comment in the future and it’s a question about something that’s already on the sheet, I’ll delete it. If it’s something I’ve missed, I’ll add it to the sheet. If you want to post suggestions, don’t do it here, do it over on the forums in the “I’ve got ideas for Last Stand” thread.
I’m just trying to make the comments relevant to the posts I’m making so I don’t have to trawl through 300 comments to get out the information I need.
Fact sheet last updated Jan 31.
- Con
Small update to the Alpha for you guys. Figured I better start numbering these things so we’re going to start with 0.5. There’s a fair bit of new stuff in here, some important system stuff is sorted out and working well, but do remember there was a 3 week break in there somewhere and not as much got done as I’d hoped.
What’s new:
- Reloading!
- Glock 17 pistol
- Pump-action shotgun
- Revised flashlight appearance
- Lots more main character hair / facial hair
- Day / Night cycle with lighting changes and clock!
- Early HUD designs
- Blood spatter!
- Damage text
- Experience system
- Critical hits system
- Early zombie attacks (only one animation at the moment, more to come)
- Still two whole empty rooms (they just look a bit different! Complete with random zombie spawnage.
What you need to know:
- No death anims / reset in yet. Refresh your browser to reload.
- There will be an option to toggle Damage text and XP text. They will be off by default.
- The character you’re playing with is at about 50% skill capacity this time.
- Your character appearance will still change every time you switch rooms.
- Toggle crouch and other control things haven’t been revised yet, I’ll be moving it to a hold crouch system soon.
- Critical hits cause knockback and are shown by yellow damage text.
- Critical hits which kill will cause dismemberment.
- The icons at the bottom will be buttons for your character and inventory.
- The shotgun doesn’t have a reload anim at the moment, hence the “RELOADIN’” text.
- The floating bar at the top is for the “Skill Reload” system, I’ll explain that more later. It’s not working at current, but it’s similar to the “active reload” system from Gears of War.
- There is a low-violence version available, it turns off 99% of the blood and gore. Option to toggle it on isn’t in this alpha.
- There is a low-effects version available, it turns off a lot of the particles such as shell casings, blood etc. Again, not in this alpha.
R - Reload
F - Flashlight
Space - Switch Weapons
Mouse - Aim
Walk into the pink blocks to enter / exit a room.
>>>> THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA 0.5 <<<<
Do leave comments however on performance for you, what your Average and Low FPS readings are or other generally useful information.
Something else for you guys to play with. This is a bare bones prototype of the character creation tool. Just wanted to give you some idea of what’s behind all that stuff in the alpha and to see what sort of characters you guys can create (in terms of numbers) with this thing.
No where near as exciting as mindlessly shooting stuff up, but hey, it’s all part of it.
Things you’ll notice:
- Adding attribute points will boost your skills that fall under that attribute.
- Strength and Endurance don’t have many skills, this is because they get used in a number of other places. Things like health, melee damage, carry weight and for certain rolls.
- You get 3 selected skills at the very start of the game, which will add 15 points to that skill. From there out you’ll add single points at a time.
- Bare in mind that the character you played with in the alpha had all his attributes at 5 and his skills at 10.
- Luck isn’t tied to any skills, but it will play a part in pretty much every action in the game.
- Levelling up won’t be the only way you add to your skills.
THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - CHARACTER CREATOR PROTOTYPE
Usually in my development, you guys don’t play any of the games I’m working on until they’re done. That’s all about to change. The Last Stand: Union City is going to be a huge project and it’s going to be near impossible to release it without feedback from the public.
Here’s what’s in the alpha so far:
- Character skills and attributes affecting accuracy, movement speed and jump height.
- Character aiming, moving and shooting
- Character randomises each time you enter a room (just for trying out appearances)
- Weapon switching
- Flashlight
- Zombie aesthetics (only a handful of outfits and hair styles at the moment)
- Early Zombie A.I (they can wander and chase, no attack yet)
- Wandering zombies are alerted by weapon sounds, sighting the player and “sensing” the player if they get too close
- Zombie vision is affected by the level of light
- Weapon collisions / damage systems
- Character stance and movement affects accuracy
- Weapon skill is currently set at 10% in this alpha, the lowest you can get
- Crosshair shows estimated accuracy, which is a combination of the character’s weapon skill and the accuracy of the weapon
- Two whole empty rooms! Complete with random zombie spawnage.
What I’m looking to get out of this:
What I DO want you guys to concentrate on in your comments is how it feels to you. Do you like the aiming / movement system? Does the key setup work for you?
What I DON’T want to hear is stuff about weapon balancing, animation errors, zombie AI. It’s all very early stuff and needs a lot more work.
F - Flashlight
Space - Switch Weapons
Mouse - Aim
Walk into the pink blocks to enter / exit a room.
Hitting the reset button will give you one of three random light settings, day, dawn and night.
THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA
Also, can I get some control setups from LEFT HANDERS? Just need to know what you prefer to use in shooters for movement, reload, weapon switching.
This entry into the Last Stand series is a prequel of sorts and as such has a new story to tell. Who is at the centre of that story is up to you. You’ll create your character from the bottom up or you can select from a few presets if you can’t be bothered.
Custom creating your character though will allow you to play through the game how you want to. From handgun specialists to big beefy brawlers to smooth talker, there’s endless options.
Appearance
You won’t be playing dressups straight away but you’ll be able to determine the look of your character right at the start. Customising your characters appearance will allow for changes to:
- Gender
- Hair
- Skin
- Face
- Facial Hair
Vitals
Your characters vitals are the core set of stats that keep you alive. They include Health, Stamina and Nourishment and Sleep. Depending on which game mode you’re playing, you’ll have all or a few of these to worry about. Health and Stamina are present in both games and determine your character’s life and how active your character can be respectively.
Nourishment and Sleep are only available in the Survivor game mode, so you’ll need to make sure you eat and sleep. Not doing so will affect all of your skills gradually and may even kill you if you’re not careful.
Attributes & Skills
Each character in the game will have a set of attributes that will determine a number of factors throughout the game. They affect things such as your carry weight, health, melee damage, firearm accuracy and how much food and water you need. The base attributes are: Strength, Endurance, Intellect and Precision.
There are 14 Skills available, with each one falling under the influence of one of the base attributes. If the player has a high Strength for example, all of his/her Strength Skills will recieve bonuses. The Skills available are as follows:
Strength Skills
Blunt Weapons - Clubs, bats.
Blades - Knives, Axes and chainsaws
Precision Skills
Pistols - Covers automatics and revolvers
Long guns - Shotguns, Bolt Action Rifles
Automatics - SMG’s and Assault Rifles
Special Weapons - RPG’s etc
Traps - Ability setting traps
Intellect Skills
Explosives - Grenades, Molotovs etc
Security - Locks, keypads, computer systems
Searching - Effectiveness of searching
Speech - Helps in conversation
First Aid - Healing ability
Endurance Skills
Fitness- Reduces energy use.
Survival - Reduces the amounts of water and food used.
Levelling
As you progress through the game you’ll earn experience (XP) and work your way through levels. When you hit a level, you will be provided with skill points. There will be bonus skill points available to your most used skills, this is to replicate your character “getting better” at a task by repeating it.
You can choose to assign your skill points to the most used skills or put them into any other skill and not recieve the bonus.
That’s about the basics of it. I’ve been prototyping the leveling system and working my way through a huge number of levels to determine how many skill points should be handed out etc. What the level cap and how many points you’ll assign to Attributes to Skills isn’t quite finalised yet, but it’s getting there. Until next time!
- Con
What do you do?
As part of the “research” for developing the next Last Stand title (name coming soon), I’m looking to see what you guys would do in the case that you find yourself in the zombie apocalypse. You never know your answers might become part of a storyline within the game. Below is a template for you to fill out in the comments.
1. What supplies do you grab?
2. What weapons do you have around the house?
3. Where do you go first?
4. Who do you contact?
5. Where do you go to escape?
Fill these out and keep the comments to just answers, don’t go commenting on other people’s responses.
Alright, I think that’s about enough. I’m getting tired of reading and approving 40 comments a day. COMMENTS LOCKED.
So the game has been out for just over a week now. It’s getting good press and the reviews on Armor Games have been good if not all too often incoherent.
I have to admit, I loathe the first few days after a release. I’m generally exhausted having been up until 5am a few nights in the week prior, only to be confronted with thousands of people filling my comments pages with bugs and ‘glitches’ (I hate that word). Then follows the week of fixing, more late nights, the constant urge to keep checking the score, plays, comments.
As it stands though, the rating is 9.2 and it’s had over 1 million plays during this first week, but it’s raised a few concerns about the future. Why? Well there’s a few reasons…
Expectation.
It’s a curse. A lot of initial reactions were that the first game was better, too many bugs, didn’t live up to what was shown off. I’m not really sure how to handle expectation at the moment, especially with a third Last Stand game on the horizon. In Warfare’s case I think that it had a bit of an impact because it was only a sidestep from the original, so the two were comparable but not identical.
Complexity.
Really, Warfare 1944 is pretty basic as far as Real Time Strategy goes, but it seems it went waaaaay over the heads of a lot of people. I’ll admit there is a fair chunk of assumed knowledge in there, short of delaying the play of someone for 10 minutes while you explain it all, I’m not sure how much more I could have laid it out.
On top of that, the game does force you to actually play it though, unlike 1917 and it’s passive sit back and spam away tactics. It’s more challenging and makes you think, unlike 1917 where you didn’t have to consider resources or micromanage units. As far as I can tell from the polar nature of internet comments, some enjoyed it, some hated / were confused by it.
What I’ve learned.
I need to address all of my audience and cater to them. Some of them are a hell of a lot younger than I had counted on. I think I can safely say that a majority of my future games will have difficulty settings, different play modes and other functionality to broaden the play opportunities for everyone.
- Con
