Yes, we’re still in Alpha guys.

There’s still features to go in and until the game is feature complete, the game world building and such won’t start. A lot of the problems with the game are still hanging around, festering up the place but I’m working through them.

The big new feature is the “Weapon Variation” model I’ve added. Each of the current 27 base weapons now has at least 2 variants, in some cases there are up to 5. Overall there’s now 163 different variants in the game and that’ll expand as I add more base weapons into the game.

The weapon variations include:

Damaged - Affects accuracy and damage.
Scoped - Adds scope for higher accuracy. Available for most firearms.
Suppressed - Adds suppressor for lower noise. Available for most firearms.
Military - Higher damage and increased mag size.
Spec Ops - Adds a scope and a suppressor.
Extended Mag - For most firearms, increased mag size.
Dull - For bladed weapons, reduces damage.
Sharpened - For bladed weapons, increases damage.
Heavy - For blunt weapons, increases damage.
Custom Stock - For firearms, increases accuracy.
Lightened - For firearms, reduces the base weight of the item.

New Features:
- Zombie director remembers zombies between close rooms.
- Zombie director remembers how long it has been since you were in a room.
- Early early version of the Zombie Dogs, old graphics, they get stuck on boxes.
- M249 (incomplete, needs sound / animation)
- UMP 45 (incomplete, needs sound)
- Chainsaw
- Katana
- Fire Axe
- UZI (incomplete, needs sound / animation).
- Lots of new interface sound effects.
- Damage HUD elements.
- Early demo of one of the music tracks.

Notes:
* Survivors are turned OFF for this version, trying to get an idea of the balance without them at the moment.
* Added command fullAmmo()

PLAY THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA 0.95

If you have a BUG, then you can report it here: Report a Bug. I do read through these when I’m going about bug fixing.

]]> http://www.conartistgames.com/index.php/the-last-stand-union-city-alpha-095/feed/ http://www.conartistgames.com/index.php/welcome-to-union-city/ http://www.conartistgames.com/index.php/welcome-to-union-city/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 05:26:22 +0000 Con http://www.conartistgames.com/?p=982
Above is the area map for Union City. The map itself was originally 90% done for another game (organised crime, run the city type thing) quite a while back, but the game’s concept wasn’t strong so I ditched it. This thing took close to 3 weeks to complete as it’s all drawn from scratch in Photoshop. I never want to draw another roof top air conditioning unit again.

Check out the full size version for more details. This is about how far in you’ll be able to zoom in game.

Just to be clear, you won’t be able to enter every building, this is NOT a 1 to 1 representation of the locations you’ll explore. This’ll be broken up into 15 or so different areas and each area will consist of a few screens. Of course, each screen will consist of a number of buildings to enter. So it’ll be plenty big enough.

Progress has been a bit slow the last few weeks as I work my way through some tax stuff and other bits and pieces, but some progress has happened. I’m almost at the point where I can start actually building the world, getting the story sorted out and actually structuring the game.

New Features:
- Start of the quest system / NPCs.
- Explosives, only one weapon at the moment but the code for all types is there now.
- Changed the weight system to stop you dead when “Overloaded”.
- Changed the light system to have 28 different states rather than 11.
- Revolver weapon type added.
- Grenade Launcher weapon type added.
- New ‘exploded’ death animations.
- Added screen shake to weapon firing / explosions. Can turn off in the options.

To test all the weapons use the console (~ or F1) and type in “battleReady()” without the quotes and hit enter. This’ll give all the weapons, which will most likely overload your character meaning you’ll need to trash a bunch of them before you can move.

*Added F1 as an alternative console key.

*The console is for testing only, it won’t be available in the final game.

PLAY THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA 0.94

If you have a BUG, then you can report it here: Report a Bug. I do read through these when I’m going about bug fixing.

It turns out not all survivors have managed to live up to their namesake. Zombies throughout Union City can be found carrying backpacks loaded up with the supplies you need to get by.  I’ve also added some survivor AI code to allow them to use melee weapons and the early stages of the “Time” functions to wait and sleep in areas.

New Features:
- Zombies drop loot items now.
- Survivors have melee ability now (still needs work).
- Time menu available for waiting and sleeping (still needs work).
- Raised level cap to 40.

Known Issues:
- Loot drops sometimes land behind objects and in the area of doors, making them impossible to pick up.

This’ll be the last Alpha for a while, I haven’t got too many more big features that need loads of testing, so the next time you see the game it’ll be heading towards it’s Beta stages.

PLAY THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA 0.92

Random guys keep following me around all of a sudden. Must mean one thing, early versions of survivors are in the latest Alpha.

Other big thing is that your save from the previous Alpha 0.9 will carry over to this one. Let me know if there’s anything that’s going wrong with that. Creating a new character will delete any old characters.

Notes:

- A lot of bugs from the previous version are still here. Working on getting more features in at the moment instead of fixing stuff.
- Survivor is randomly generated every time you switch rooms.
- Survivor uses the same weapons as you are for the time being.
- Survivors find their own targets, fire at enemies and reload their weapons when needed.
- Zombies currently ignore survivors in terms of movement and targeting.
- In future, survivors will do things like shove enemies and crouch to increase accuracy.
- Compound Bow added!

- Endless searching has been turned OFF for this Alpha, to find new stuff, you’ll need to create a new character.
- Survivors CAN’T use melee weapons at the moment.

Once again, do not leave your bug reports in the comments, I’ll just straight up delete that sheeet. Dawg.

*********************** UPDATE **************************
New version up: 0.91A. Fixes the new characters not resetting loot in world. Also there’s a hint of my new enemy drops system I’m working on. You can’t pick anything up at the moment, but you’ll be able to soon.

Also, I know about the survivor jumping up and down bug, please stop commenting/emailing/feedbacking about it.

PLAY THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA 0.91

Also, everyone will see a box like this pop up when starting into the game. If you want your game to save, you’ll need to hit allow. If you can’t spare the 10mb (the game only uses about 10kb at the moment) then keep on truckin with no progress.

Some people were having trouble with their games not saving and I can only assume it’s because all the Alpha’s combined are blowing the save file size limit.

Character creation! Now, first things. You can’t create female characters. Reason being that the art assets needed to do that at this stage means doubling every piece of clothing that’s in there. Lot of work.

What you can do though is choose hair, hair color, skin and facial hair. Choose your attributes, skills and set your character’s name.

I’ve also added a bunch more sounds, most things will have sound now. There’s still a few sounds missing here and there. Speaking of sound, I’ve implemented a distance and directional based sound system (stuff that’s far away or left or right of you sounds like it is), check it out with headphones.

As I mentioned in the last post, please stop emailing and leaving comments about bugs and feedback. Use the forms I made up for that. The links are on the game page.

Notes:

- Character creator doesn’t have any checks in place to make sure you spend all your points and assign all your skills yet.
- Zombies spawn on top of boxes instead of in them now.
- Zombie can’t be shoved through boxes.
- New zombie types, Riot, Riot with No Helmet, Fatties and Crawlers.
- Riot zombies need an armor degredation system to be put in place.
- Fatties are very early, need clothing sets.
- Crawlers are fairly ineffective at the moment and can be walked past.
- Distance based sound.
- Directional sound.
- MP5 and SV-SMG (Vector) are in the world somewhere, go find ‘em!

- Game is in “endless search” mode. So you will get XP every time you open a container. This is NOT how it will be in the final game.
- Zombies occasionally go invisible.

PLAY THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA 0.9

Ok. So here’s what happened. There was 4000+ responses to the poll. I totally screwed the poll results up when trying to stop the deluge of said results. Luckily I have a memory somewhat similar to a kinda dumb elephant, so I remembered the winners but not the actual numbers each one had.

In short your 4 SMG’s will be…

- MP5 something like 20%
- Vector ’bout 15%
- UMP 45 I think 12%
- Uzi maybe 10%

This kinda works perfectly in the end, it’s a mix of old and new. Thanks to everyone who answered the poll. The MP5 and the Vector are done and in my current build.

New Alpha this week some time, I’m looking to get a fairly big feature in before I put it up though. We’ll see how that pans out.

Crush the Castle 2 has finally been released (last week, I’m a bit slow off the mark). Go check it out and be sure to contribute to the People’s Empire! As most of you probably know, I was responsible for the art and a few of the castles.

In other news, thanks to everyone for your congratulations for my winning of the Most Epic Battle Scene category in Nickelodeon’s recent Addicting Games Showdown. Warfare 1944 also thanks you.

PLAY CRUSH THE CASTLE 2

Taking it to the streets. Yes, your hero has been let out of the apartment. Not much new here, just the ability to move in and out and between buildings as well as a few bug fixes. Only two buildings are accessible at the moment. There is some interesting new stuff under the hood though, but I don’t have time to explain right now though, will dig into that next week.

PLAY THE LAST STAND: UNION CITY - ALPHA 0.85

.POLL CLOSED.
Results in a few days.