Stacking and shield switching…

So, I made a fairly substantial change to the inventory system in Zombox this week…

Now you can stack similar items on top of each other! This will allow you to carry many more items (so long as they are within your carrying weight limit — which I also doubled for each character), and make it a lot easier to quickly craft large numbers of things. Also, single-use items like pipe bombs, molotovs, bear traps, etc, will be easier to carry around in bulk. Each slot has a 99 item limit, which should be more than enough for all of your toting needs. When an item socket contains a stack of items, clicking once will grab the top-most item, and double-clicking will grab the whole stack. This makes it easy to quickly move stacks around.

This new system required a complete rewrite of all the existing inventory UI code, so it’s what I spent the majority of my Zombox development time this week doing…but in the meantime I also added another feature: players who are holding a shield in their passive item slot can now manually switch it from front to back (by pressing on the passive item socket). This will give players a strategic advantage in many situations. For example, if you’re trying to unlock a door but have zombies coming towards you, switching the shield onto your back will give you added protection.

Below are two animation…one showing how stacking works and the other showing how shield switching works!

 

 

41 Responses to “Stacking and shield switching…”

  1. Emil Zeilon says:

    Good stuff, especially the inventory system. Definitely an upgrade.

  2. Fadi98n says:

    Good update 🙂

  3. Fadi98n says:

    What happens if we are bleeding and we drop a whole stack of med kits will one of them be used or will the character take all of them for the same result, same thing goes for food but in the case of food let’s say we have ten apples stacked and hungry and say it’ll need five apples to get a full saturation level if we drop a whole stack wouldn’t it be better if the character takes five apples and give back the rest ?

    Any way tyson thanks for the update and if i had any typos because i’m writing from my iphone.

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      When a stack of item are dragged into the character slot (for example, food, meds, like you mention), only 1 of them will be used to avoid accidentally wasting a whole stack. The rest will be dropped back into the slot you got them from.

      • Gulo says:

        Does shield have an attack? like just shoves zombies away and make them trip over..like your gif animation? Because that could be good for a horde of zombies,the shield should also make explosive damdge deals less to the character for bombs..or exploding zombies

      • Fadi98n says:

        ok thanks 🙂

  4. Jan Gross says:

    Tyson you should remove or edit the icon background of the munition.

  5. Miguel says:

    Oh my god, the amount of little details in this game is amazing, love the shield switching idea, can’t wait, seriously cannot wait for this.

  6. Fadi98n says:

    oh and one more question when we open the inventory will tge game pause.?

  7. Maxwell218 says:

    Tyson, Is there any audio yet ? Or sounds ? Because I want to hear them 😀

  8. Jan Gross says:

    I have a question. Can you can cook something? Or combine Food with others? It would be nice if can implementate this. 🙂

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      In a future update I’ll be announcing a large number of craftable work stations that will aid in the gathering, preparing and creating of resources, food, weapons, etc.

      But shhh…don’t tell anyone!

  9. Fadi98n says:

    Hi Tyson
    I just had an idea i remember you added the backpack upgrade you sayd when we start the game we have 4 inventory slot and when we upgrade we get all 14 well what if you make more backpacks and each upgrade gives us more slots e.g: first upgrade gives 4 next one also gives another 4 and so on
    Also will you ever increase the maximum inventory space.?

    And thanks for replying to my last question 😀

  10. Fadi98n says:

    oh and i think the ieda that Gulo talked about would be cool to attack with the sheld and if you do add it it’ll be better if you make it an upgradeable charge attack so we’d have to work hard to get it and we can only use it like twice every 5 seconds or so so it would like charge a bit and you can add a meter below its icon
    Thats if you decide to add it.

  11. Anonymous says:

    trson is item brok when we use it many time

    sorry for bed en

  12. Gulo says:

    Upgradable shield..Nice one :3 tottaly agreed.Could shields make clink sounds when attacked? makes sense.. And bigger zombies like.. the football zombies that charges knock you down..when the shield is equipped..it stuns you and the zombie..

  13. Jan Gross says:

    Tyson do you need a german translator? German is my mother language and i can translate your game.

  14. Ronnie says:

    Hey Tyson. I’m really interested in the police shield. Where would you find it? Would a swat zombie drop it or would it be found in a police station?

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      I’m not sure exactly where items like that will be located in the game world yet, but suffice to say, they’ll be very rare 🙂

      • Gulo says:

        craftable? i hope? and be crafted with like.. barb wires? i guess…. oh and do swat zombies use it?

        And from the looks of the gif animation, can you only use one handed weapon when equiping the shield? like knife,hammer,hand guns etc..

      • Ronnie says:

        Itd be awesome if you had different buildings. Like maybe in a police building you might find a shield or a gun. And a hospital you would find med kits

  15. Nathan says:

    would there be a % chance a zombie can rip the shield away from you based on what type of zombie it is?

  16. Ronnie says:

    Hey again Tyson. I have a couple questions about the city itself. First, how big is it? Is it huge or will it be easy to explore all of it? Second, I know in your first videos you showed vehicles. I haven’t seen them in a while are they still implemented in the game? And last, will you be able to make a building safe enough and zombie resistant enough to have it has a sort of safe base where you are almost completely safe?

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      Hey Ronnie,

      The city is big, but not pointlessly big. Right now it is about one square kilometer. There will be hundreds and hundreds of buildings to explore, different areas to visit, etc…but it won’t be big enough that you’ll get pointlessly lost in it. Also I plan to augment the map a bit so you can add waypoint markers and things.

      Vehicles are still in the game, yes.

      And yup…you’ll be able to barricade yourself into a building pretty well. Eventually I’ll allow players to create permanent trap systems and things, to prevent zombies from getting in so easily.

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      Also, zombies cannot get down into the sewers, which is a place you’ll also be able to build. Some sewers are full of zombies to begin with, but once you kill them off those sewers will be safe areas again.

      That being said, I’m considering adding some ‘infinite-dungeon’ sewers, that will always be full of tons of zombies, that will be good grinding areas. We’ll see.

      • Ronnie says:

        Awesome. I know everyones telling you this but this is a great game and i cant wait for it. I check every day to look for updates. Keep doing your great work and i cant wait to play this the day it comes out

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