Health bonuses, gambling, lock-picking and more…

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve added a whole bunch of stuff to Zombox.

  • Health bonuses

In a previous update I showed how getting too low on food, sleep or blood could result in dire consequences for your character. Well now, to even things out, I’ve added health bonuses to the game, which give your character temporary boosts when you get extra food/sleep/medicine. Extra food gives you an attack bonus, which temporarily doubles your attack damage. Getting extra sleep gives you a speed bonus, which temporarily increases your movement speed. Getting extra medicine gives you a defense bonus, which temporarily doubles however many defense points you have at the time (based on your equipment and upgrades).

  • Vending machines

NPC sewers now contain vending machines from which food can be purchased. They’re stocked up with many inexpensive items, although they don’t get restocked so you have to use them wisely.

  • Slot machines

Near NPC stores you’ll now sometimes find slot machines. Gambling on these machines can earn you large prizes and jackpots if you get a 3-of-a-kind match, or cherries. They also have a tendency to malfunction, and each time a malfunction occurs you get a special bonus (free spin, double your winnings, or 2-of-a-kind prizes). Your winnings are multiplied by the amount that you bet each spin…the larger your bet, the more you can win!

  • Lock Picking

Previously, locks could be picked using either a lock pick item, or Pete. You would walk up to a locked item, press the ‘unlock’ icon and wait. Now, if you want to unlock something you have to manually unlock it yourself, in a lock-pick minigame that pops up on screen. In order to complete the minigame, you have to bump the lock’s pins in the correct order. Bump them out of order and the lock resets. This provides quite a challenge when you’re trying to unlock something while zombies are nearby, since you’re still vulnerable to attack while picking locks. Depending on the security of the lock you’re trying to pick, it could have anywhere from 3 to 7 pins.

  • More buildings and locations

The next big thing I’ll be adding to Zombox is a more fleshed-out overworld, that first requires many new areas and structures to be made. Here are the first 16 that I’ve created…and there are lots more to come! Places like military outposts, quarantine centers, etc, will all be revealed in future updates.

68 Responses to “Health bonuses, gambling, lock-picking and more…”

  1. Geta-Ve says:

    most of the image links aren’t working for me πŸ™

  2. Gotta say, thats one of the best lock mechanics Ive seen in a long time. It would make the locks easy to set to different difficulties too, by changing the number of pins. Obviously a lock with 5-6 pins will be a lot harder and take longer to unlock than one with only 3. Planning on adding a bit of variety like this?

    Loving the progress being made with this game!

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      I forgot to mention, I’ve already implemented locks that go from 3 pins to 7 pins, to add the range of difficulty you mentioned. I’ll edit the post to include that!

  3. Doctar Bren says:

    Since after seeing the update I’m seeing that its almost done right ?

  4. Fadi98n says:

    Amazing Update Tyson
    I’m happy to see that you used my idea about lock picking mini game
    And i have a question why does the charecter eat the food that we buy from the vending machines shouldn’t it give us the item if we want it for later use ?
    Any way amazing update thank you for it πŸ™‚

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      If you want to save the food for later, just drag it into one of your empty item slots. He ate the food because the food was dragged into the character.

      • Fadi98n says:

        Ok thanks and can you please answer my question from the last post ?
        Wait i’ll post it here
        Last post copy:

        Hi Tyson
        1. Is it possible to add a recpect system in the game like insted of having it being able to take NPC’s with you you’ll have to earn thir recpect like doing 2 missions for an NPC gives you 1 recpect point and every 5 points gives you the ability to take 1 NPC each time with of corse giving them like 5-10 coins each.
        2. missions should give us the ability to make NPC’s trust us more which will make the charging amount more balanced (charging 0% more) beacuse i think NPCs charging pete 20% more is a lot so by doing al lot of missions we can make it 0% charging more and if and if a player hurts an NPC they will charge more and no decresing untill we do more missions
        1.Finnaly thier trust becomes like -90% most of them will attack on sight and you can’t decrese that unless you find the 10% of NPCs left that will give us a chance and we can do missions for them so it will decrese.

  5. Fadi98n says:

    Tyson can you atleast do something about pete because NPCs charging 20% is a lot doesn’t everybody desirve a second chance even crimanals ?
    And are you planing on making cut senes in the begining when you chose a charecter just a 2 min cut scene of the backstory of the charecter like roy talking about his job, how he lost his arm, his take about the apoclepse and anything he knows about it
    Just an idea if it’s hard easy to do that’s ok

    • Fadi98n says:

      Was talking about Pete abd charging 20% more

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      We’ll see…Pete’s attributes may change before release…he gets a 20% charge to balance out his lock picking abilities. On one hand, items will cost more, but on the other hand it’ll be easier to get money by lock-picking cash registers and stealing the contents, if you catch my drift πŸ™‚

      As for cut scenes, probably not. I want the game to be really quick to get into…so that you can load it, press play and bam…you’re in the game. Obviously I could make it so that you could quickly exit cut scenes, but I don’t know if I want that kind of a big backstory for any of the characters.

      As always, we’ll see πŸ™‚

      • Fadi98n says:

        ok got it so lock-picking balances the 20% NPC more money charge, that’s a really feature
        Thanks πŸ™‚

  6. Robert says:

    Every time I see a new tweet from you I instantly go to it, the amount of thought you put Ito this game is astounding! I can’t wait for it to one out!

  7. XWolfHunter says:

    Wow, this update looks good! Great job with the locking mechanism, that’s got to be the best one I’ve seen. Similar to Oblivion’s, but easier and more complex (They don’t seem to go together, but you made it work somehow).

    Can’t wait for the release, but don’t rush anything!

  8. Zombies214 says:

    You should work on adding more items and crafting options this week πŸ˜€ it would be awesome to see the stuff you come up with. πŸ™‚

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      *Many* more crafting items will be added in future weeks, but not the next update.

      In the future after I finish completing the city I am going to be adding all kinds of neat things that will help to transform the game into more of a survival simulator. So, for example, you will need to find or build a generator in order to power a workshop that you can use to craft advanced tools/foods/medicines/etc…you’ll also be able to work with NPCs who will join you, gather resources for you, etc.

      Basically the game is going to get a huge upgrade when it comes to its focus on NPC interactions, renewable resources, and more complicated shelter building.

  9. Aaron says:

    Tyson,

    Been watching the posts for a while now. Progress is stupendous.
    If you need any help, contact me.

    Aaron

  10. Nathan says:

    Wonder if there will be hostile NPCS aka bandits or insane NPCS who attack u (crazy NPCS just try to kill u but bandits try to kill u and take Ur stuff)

  11. Miguel says:

    Well Tyson you’ve done it now, I started a quest to sell my iPod touch 4 and buy a 5th gen, I hope you’re happy… lol jk.

    I can only see this game growing more and more so small details and and increasing learning curve, something that’s almost non existent in iOS games, I have 0 complains about this game (except for the waiting part lol) only to keep encouraging you to keep doing what you obviously do, cause it’s looking fiiiiiine.

    Cheers from MX mate, instabuy for me.

  12. Nathan says:

    I read fadi98n’s comment on cutscenes and I got an idea, u know In the game Jetpack joyride? Well in the game when you press play it doesn’t instantly goes right in the action but instead there’s a cut scene where it show the dude crashing through the wall terminator like style, taking the Jetpack and flying away so I wonder can there be a cut scene where It shows regular people turning into zombies and after the aftermath our character emerges and that’s where you spawn.there could be different cut scenes for how our characters appear like for the medic she climbs out of a flipped over ambulance and for our hobo he crawls out of the alleyway and ect

  13. KillerMapper says:

    Hello, nice work !

    Will you include some natural place i.e. roads trough forest, lakes etc or only a town ?

  14. Simon says:

    Completely awesome! I’m impressed

    Can’t wait to buy this game.

    What’s the game engine? I’m sorry to ask i’m pretty sure it’s written at least 20 times somwhere here.

    Simon

  15. Gulo says:

    Hey Ty,
    Could zombox keep track of what we did afte we save our progress
    Eg.
    When we continue/load the game and it shows what we did or accomplished recently.
    Like the game pokemon does?

    If you dont understand wth am I saying just lemme know.

    I love the update..and I love how you keep it updated weekly
    Keep it up!

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      I haven’t implemented a saving system yet, and I’m not yet sure how I’m going to….having things auto-save could cause problems (the game auto-saving you into a dangerous zone with many zombies around you, etc…could be annoying) so I was thinking of maybe adding phone-booths or something that would save progress when the player enters.

  16. Fadi98n says:

    Tyson why does this update have one item square at the to weren’t they soposed to be 3 ?

  17. Cameron says:

    Can you like level up your npc friends like they gain skills while helping you because one of the main things of this game is probably the npc

    • Tyson Ibele says:

      After I’m done creating the updated city and stuff I might go back and add those types of things to the NPC system.

  18. Cameron says:

    And please consider the dream world were you wake up after dying that would be a realy fun and interesting factor

  19. Fadi98n says:

    You know what would be cool if you’v played “Metal Gear Solid 3” there is a place where you get arrested and Snake (the main charecter) dreams a really strange dream so you can make it when you take lots of meds and sleep in a bed you will have a nightmare make it so the player won’t know he is in a dream you wake up at the same place everything is the same exept when you play the normal game with the same items but, when you play about 1-2 mins you get attacked by a huge herad of zombies from every side and when you get killed the character wakes and make it like he screams or something and attracets nearby zombies
    If it’s hard to do that’s ok

  20. Gulo says:

    Does zombox have tunes? Like when we keep playing, some random tune starts playing.

  21. Fadi98n says:

    Which brings me to
    Tyson when the game comes out will you sell the music on iTunes.?

  22. Ben Parker says:

    I havnt commented in a while but zi have been following these updates. The game is looking awesome as always Tyson and be sure to expect a huge blog post about all the new feat

  23. Bparker says:

    Tyson you seem to be getting a whole lot of comments on these posts lately. I was wondering if you have considered possibly making a forum for the game?

  24. Nathan says:

    For sleeping, can you also sleep on the floor but get only less sleep?

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