Fire, explosions, crafting, barricading and food…

Lots of updates to Zombox this week!

I worked on creating some weapons that allow the player to use fire and explosive power against the zombie hordes. All of these new weapons must be crafted from various supplies.

(all of the following .gifs depict sped-up gameplay footage)

The molotov (click here to view example .gif) is made from a bottle, a lighter and some cloth. Tossing it towards a group of zombies will quickly light them all on fire.

The fire bow (click here to view example .gif) is made from a crossbow, a lighter and some duct tape. It turns normal crossbow projectiles into flaming spears, capable of piercing through zombie flesh while dealing extra fire damage afterwards.

The pipe bomb (click here to view example .gif) is made from a pipe, a lighter and some gunpowder. Great for blowing up zombies, buildings, and anything else in the game.

The boom bow (click here to view example .gif) is made from a crossbow, a lighter, some gunpowder and duct tape. It turns normal crossbow projectiles into explosive darts, which detonate on contact.

I also added the ability for the player to barricade doors with the construction mallet. Doing so will add extra HP to the door, making it harder for zombies to knock it down. Here’s a .gif showing off this new feature.

Finally, I added a food system that requires the player to eat food at regular intervals. If the player doesn’t eat when the food icon pops up next to the player icon in the top right of the screen, after a while the player will lose health and eventually die from starvation. Here’s an image showing how the bubble icon looks onscreen when the player gets hungry:

14 Responses to “Fire, explosions, crafting, barricading and food…”

  1. X-WolfHunter says:

    Okay. All I have to say is this: I cannot wait for your game to be finished. Rest assured that you will have at least one purchaser! I give much props to you, good sir.

  2. Tyson Ibele says:

    @ X-WolfHunter:

    Thanks man!

  3. Neten says:

    Hey, hello. I strongly suggest that you change the “bottle” requirement of Molotovs into “alcohol”, “beer”, “vodka” or/and something like that. I know that it sounds trivial at best but shit like this is important. Also I suggest a captcha for the comments page. You may catch the attention of the sexual enhancement industry.

  4. Neten says:

    Oh yeah, also: Looking forward to playing your game. Keep up your most awesome work ever.

  5. Tyson Ibele says:

    @ Neten:

    Good point on the beer/alcohol/vodka suggestion. I’ll do that.

    As for captcha, don’t worry I’ve got a pretty good spam filter installed 🙂

  6. Full says:

    Be careful with the food requirement. Nobody likes chores.

  7. Lappstrong says:

    @ Full:

    I concur

  8. Joel says:

    Perhaps make the food system optional, through a difficulty setting or as an individually selectable option. I think the latter option would be preferred as some peopple might want a hard game (e.g. AI, number of zombies, etc) without the food system.

  9. Tyson Ibele says:

    Very valid points about the food system. Some things to note:

    Players won’t get hungry for quite a while after eating. It’s not something that the user will have to deal with very often. Also, food acts as a healing agent as well, so if the player is regularly healing with food, they’ll be automatically feeding themselves enough not to have to worry about it too much.

    Including the food system has several benefits:

    1) Creates a bit more immersion. Obviously in a zombie apocalypse, survivors would need food. Scavenging for food thus becomes as important as scavenging for items/weapons and adds an extra layer of depth to the gameplay.

    2) Needing to find food discourages camping or boxing one’s self into a closed area indefinitely. It also encourages the player to utilize the building system (which will eventually include the ability to create storage units), to house their food items.

    These benefits, combined with the fact that the player will only be prompted to eat once every few in-game hours max (some foods satiate you longer than others), outweigh the downsides to having to remember to eat food, in my opinion.

    Keep in mind, Zombox is not an arcade-style zombie shooter. It’s a survival game….so it only makes sense to require the player to eat to survive 🙂

    Of course, if I keep the food system in and everyone hates it, I will take it out. User enjoyment is ultimately the most important factor.

  10. Joel says:

    Oh don’t get me wrong, I think a food system is awesome, but I like survival/turtling type gameplay.

    Have you considered adding a weather system? For example, spending too much time out in the rain or snow might lead to a cold, which can reduce your running speed, attack speed, or even just cause you to randomly cough (alerting nearby zombies if you have a stealth system.)

    Snow could slow you down. Icy patches might cause you to slip and drop items. Heck, lots of ice + skates could allow you to skate around decapitating zombies lol.

    It’d be cool if, at the start of the game, food starts out relatively fresh and decays as you progress, forcing you to find non-perishables or, ultimately, “crafting” to create a vegetable garden to grow your own food, etc. Not sure how far you want to take that sort of thing.

  11. Pavel says:

    Tyson, Zombox looks awesome! Really like to follow your making-ofs.

  12. Tyson Ibele says:

    @ Joel:

    Hey Joel,

    The weather system is a cool idea. Right now the weather rotates between raining/not-raining and that’s it. I can imagine snow would be cool, though. You could splash zombies with water and they would freeze! And the “get a cold/coughing” mechanic could be fun. I think for now, I’ll put such a system on hold. Maybe next year that would make a nice winter update though!

    The food-decay idea is something I’ve thought about too. I’ve also considered the gardening idea too. Not sure what angle I’ll choose to approach both ideas currently, but they’re both on my long-term todo list though!

  13. Ninja says:

    This game looks amazing i cant wait until it comes out

  14. Anonymous says:

    @ Joel:
    how do you play

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