We can use all the help we can get. :-D What can you do Kia? Levels, graphics, tileset, GUI, menus? I'd love to reskin the Default Blue GUI, but I 1) can't find the walkthrough and 2) can't think of anything better suited - a cardboard box? A black GUI? Camo? Skulls? Broken Glass? An old ammo box (forest green metal with olive yellow stencilled writing)?

Bloodstained knives, guns, and metal things
Maybe a crucifix to ward off evil? Just decorate the bloody (haha) thing!

Personally I believe this server needs more blood!

or a slider that allows to see this server with more blood!

Good luck.

Throw some blood on it to make it look "salvaged" and that'll be pretty pro

Now i havent read most of the posts but im thinking of some kind of weight system for carrying items that effects speed. So players will have to trade off heavey fire power for mobility.

With that idea in mind, players would have to go outside the outposts to gather resources to maintain the outpost. The more items they collect the slower they will be and hence more vulnerable

Perhaps some way of temporarily increasing capacity, like having a pack animal or NPC servant (survivor?) to carry things? They could be much more easily killed than you, but an animal typically holds more and runs from danger, and the human could defend themselves, albeit pathetically without you.

I thought about that, and I got Peo trying out a carrying system first; if you're carrying a big box of supplies, you can't attack, making it a different sort of challenge. Since it's going to be a custom system anyway it should be pretty easy to set it up so you set down the crate of supplies rather than throwing it into a wall, and if we have to go to a "Gravity Boots" style slow-down script that works too.

There are going to be NPC Survivors, but so far they're planned to be left in the outposts as potential hostages more than anything. You do not want your hostage to get abducted and executed. It is bad times.

Distress beacons for cornered players?

Also, not sure if you have this idea already, but the npc survivors could be turned zombie, either when an outpost is taken or npc survivors are trapped in various areas and need to be saved and escorted to a outpost before zombie npcs find them.

also also, An objective of the players could be to restore utilities to certian areas. I.e electricity to provide an outpost with power for lights or turrets. Water to keep survivors alive. Power for city street lights at night etc. Utilities would then have to be defended to maintain power or whatever.

I believe Tyhm and company are trying to force the player to rely on their own abilities to survive, over having some NPCs do it for them. Having unmanned turrets would detract from that. It would no longer be up to a group of people to defend an outpost if an automated turret took the zombies out itself.

With that being said, I do like the possibilities of utilities in a reduced role. If certain systems such as a day/night, weather (mostly fog), and a lighting system were put in place (where if there is no light source in a certain area, the level would be darker than normal. Light would come from windows, holes in the ceilings, lamps, and other places). Repairing a power station in 'Grid A' would restore power in that area and would make navigating much easier. Maybe even have power enabled in the beginning, and have it slowly shut down each passing day. Maybe have light effect the player's FOV (field of view) to where it is harder for a player to see further away if there is no light source.

Interesting ideas...
I dunno about distress beacons - if you're cornered, you need every key-press dedicated to holding off the zombies, but if we extend this to "trapped at the top of a tower with a zillion zombies", that could be cool...I'd have to remake one of my Unsticker systems and disable Unstick Me for it to really work, but still. :-D

The zombies taking over an outpost is actually really interesting - I hadn't thought about it but yeah, all the survivors who made their desperate last stand will be joining the hordes of undead in trying to take down the remaining outposts. I was already planning on, until the outposts are reset, the players get to play as zombies (kinda like Baddy Skins), but since basically every player has an NPC, there would be an abundance of NPC Mobs too; and if we apply the standard Descrated Depot rules to the Outpost, if the surviving Outposts don't somehow clear out the infestation in 24 hours, it becomes a Zombie Mob Spawn Point, hastening the apocalypse. That changes the victory conditions to "Zombies: Desecrate every depot and outpost. Humans: Survive as long as possible." It also raises the possibility that the humans Don't win; while the final 24 hour clock was ticking down they could all die.

As for generators, I think Terazel and I went over that one once. Don't exactly recall what the resolution was though. I know I want to have player-managed automated defenses, so even at 3 in the morning a base isn't Defenseless; they just pull directly from the Treasury, and if the leader hasn't been taxing properly there's a risk the autoguns run dry, the sentries run out of ammo and the generators keel over. I do like the idea of having numerous places out in the map where an Engineer would be useful In The Field; back at the base they're essential for setting up defenses (barbed wire, etc), but on a raid it's nice to have one around to squeeze another few minutes out of the surveillance system, get power to a door so you don't have to take the long way, etc.

Now day/night/lighting effects/fog/etc; I'm not 100% on it. I mean, if we cut down Zombies to static graphics we can have really a lot of Zombies on the screen at once, but they'll all look the same...and one of the things I really like about them is that they're as custom as the players are (though each mob has to share body# and colors)...I Might be able to redo the ganis as static body graphics and free up some VRam that way, or I could just go crazy demanding everyone have a better-than-average video card and enforcing day/night, or I guess I could get off my butt and apply the Lowres edition of zombies (when your graphics card starts lagging, they stop animating->become static images->become one big polygon with "ZOMBIES" written on it?)

Gorram motherfarging percentage signs! Gaaaarg! ENTIRE POST, GONE!

-_-

Ahem.

Question for the peanut gallery:

Terazel came up with an idea I rather like, using a metaphor of time for hp: as you get hit, you tick towards the midnight of your life.
So I made a script that displays a pie-chart-sorta clock around your shadow, ticking towards midnight. And it can be color-coded easy enough to reflect your faction: Red for the City, blue for the Mountain, yellow for the Desert, gray for Other. But some of you will have spotted the problem already: the player's in the way of half the display!

So what should I do?
1) I could draw the partial-ring of health on top of the player's shadow. Might look a little silly.
2) I could leave it the way it is - you can still see the player's health when they get hit, etc.
3) I could cut the ring in half: the player's main clock still ticks from noon to midnight, but the clock around their feet only ticks from 3 to 9.
4) I could make the ring much bigger: but we're talking like 6x9 tiles to maintain the aspect ratio. (6x12 to be perfectly fair...)

I had more, but they got deleted BECAUSE I HAD THE AUDACITY TO USE A PERCENT SIGN. GRR.

Would be cool if you had parties added and only if you are in a party you can be injured, making it so you can't walk but a friend could drag you to a safehouse or nearby health while you shoot zombies chasing the both of you (or group of you). Also when you are being dragged you drip blood :P

Another idea, how about show med packs on a players back like L4D?

I'd like to help, I can make levels and I'm alright at graphics but I don't have gold. ^^

Example:
rough gun+bag so stfu :P
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/520...somniaidea.png

Hmm, could be interesting. A Medic class is already on the board, with people being able to keep shooting all the way to -25hp (just not able to move); it wouldn't be too hard to give the Heavy and Soldier classes the ability to drag a player (walk up to a disabled player and press A to drag), while medics can restore the disabled...if your outpost didn't send a medic though, you're SOL...
I don't know that Parties would be necessary exactly - anyone from the same outpost could be considered in the same "party" so far as healing, etc. is involved. Save a lot of hassle with the whole "This outpost has 3 parties, but this guy from THIS party's in this area with THAT party..." If you don't like your outpost's party, mutiny. :-D
The med packs sound good! I'd like to see the cross either bigger or a different color - the American/International Red Cross get rather upset with people putting their logo on medic kits, when it should be a white cross on green apparently. Besides, it looks like he's bleeding out his butt from a distance. ;-D
But that would be a good way to tell who the medic is; Heavies can have restricted bodies, maybe Engineers can have special hats...
Best to get on it now when we only have a few ganis to fix! And we desperately need the help - if you'd like to do graphics, you can email it to me and I'll upload.

TF2 vs L4D?

With a dash of Fistfull of Boomstick and a skoche of Classic Nations; there's a theory that absolutely everything in the known universe can be summed up as "This meets That". Lord of the Rings is just Beowulf meets Gilgamesh meets etc., Twilight is just Angel meets Harry Potter meets Hannah Montana, etc. Try not to let it get to you. ;-)

It just sounded like it to me ;-;

That said, it sounds awesome

Sage/DeCeaseD is back, so we're gonna have a whole new tileset soon. Also he fixed my gani. :-D

I remember you mentioned zombies had to share the same body and colors. Is there any possible work around for this? To me it definately draws away from the realism. I chuckle to myself and wonder if all the zombies met up at zombie Steve's house to coordinate what outfits they were going to wear when they went out. You're using random heads, is it possible to have random colors/bodies as well?

So far no good; since they all use showani, and showani always uses the exact appearance of the calling NPC...
I got around them all using the same head by using a param instead of #3...
but if I send in param2 instead of body, it won't recolor, it'd always be the basic colors...I could do different bodies, but they'd be the same white-red-blue-orange-darkred pallet. If I could get a graphics guy to draw some body sprites of like, "body.png rotted away with some neutral colors", I could have as many combinations as the artist bothers drawing...I wouldn't need the whole body.png, just walking sprites and maybe dying sprites...:-P
Ironically if I redid the whole damn thing with Kingdoms sprites, I could use as many combinations as exist, since they're standard un-recolored graphics roight? Could just send it as params...

Hey guys. Added an automatic lowres script; when there's too many zombies on screen they go simpler and simpler until they're just a block of text that says ZOMBIES. Beats nothin'.

Fixed up a bunch of other stuff too. :-D

Just hope you're not enforcing this lowres script too early. I'd much rather see my screen fill up with a few mobs, and not blocks of text.

I agree, it should be toggleable, as some players might have very good computers and want to enjoy more :)

It's player-specific but automatic; I got one of the weapons (one that has to run a 0.05 timeout loop anyway) checking itself against timevar: if it counts to at least 90 before Timevar turns over, everything's okay and it can reduce the lowres methods, but if it only gets to 85 before Timevar turns over things are slowing down, step it up one. (And you have to lag for 8 steps (40 seconds) before it starts involving text...)

If nothing else it proves what Stefan's always saying, he hates that we're still using dynamically-recolored body sprites because they're amazingly client-laggy.

I'm glad it is player specific, but still having a choice would be nice. I have a decent PC, and for every game I play I set the graphics settings more towards quality than performance. Sure I'll lose a small percentage of FPS, but I gain much more in realism and it makes my gaming much more enjoyable. I would hate to be playing a game like Fallout 3 and have all the textures suddenly become lowres because I hit a little studder. Maybe you could make an option in your settings where I can toggle between 'off' and 'on' or maybe 'performance', 'default', or 'quality'.

Sure, sure, soon as we get an options screen I'll try and remember to add that button. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. :-D

Update(ish); a bunch of little things got added. Not much visible, but all the ammo exists now, new graphics there, and the system's mostly redone to allow for semiauto and fullauto...and there's new ganis for chainsaw deaths, people are about to turn into zombies when they die (soon as I get the script fixed), the HUD's gonna be able to handle any ammount of ammos in any size, etc...
Oh yeah, and the ammo strings changed, so anyone who was here earlier is gonna get reset. It's just the once, and you can log on normally after that.

*edit* Okay, the Glock17's up. Just gotta fix a glitch where reloading doesn't count the chambered round (it unloads the previous clip, which credits you for every round unloaded, then it loads a new clip, charging you for every round loaded, and winds up with one bullet profit. Arrg.)

Still got a lot of debugging ahead of us, but I got the graphics and ganis together for Weapons Upgrades.
This little beaut started its life as a winchester 12-gauge.
Featured: 100 round clip, +12 accuracy, -40 noise, Bayonet

Wow, it's looking good. I just logged on and am pretty impressed. Especially with the range sight of each weapon. But when i was using the handgun, no bullet went in my specified direction. Forgive me if there was some post regarding that.

And too many of the baddies clumping together lags the shiz outta me :(.

Yeah, if I get a fixed-color body image for the zombies I can display them a lot more efficiently...as they stand they tend to overload the graphics buffer, even on high-powered cards.

Keep it up. :)

Bullets don't go in slow-motion like your bog-standard Modern playerworld. They're instant hit. There are systems in place which effect your accuracy, such as base accuracy of the weapon and the amount of recoil (which can both be upgraded to increase/decrease these weapon stats).

Having said that, some guns would look cool with tracer bullets but it'd be more aesthetical rather than anything.

As it is, I cannot tell whether or not I'm actually firing my weapon. There needs to be some sort of visual cue other than the tiniest change in my ammo count in the top corner of the screen. I play with sounds disabled (Graal sound effects are terrible, so is the music), so I don't know if there is even audible cue.

There is a reason why "bog-standard Modern playerworlds" have slow-motion firing. I'd like to see where shots are coming from if someone decided to kill me.

There should be a shape where one end follows the player and the other follows the mouse. When you fire, it should turn red, depending on whether you've hit someone or something. Also, there is sound.

That's been discussed, we're thinking of maybe a line from you and who shot you. It's uncertain. I, personally, think it improves gameplay and the fast-paced action that we're aiming for.

I noticed that, but it seems to be a little glitchy. I assume the green FOV is what I can hit, but sometimes it completely disappears from my screen, is red all the time, or doesn't change color when I shoot (or when I think I'm shooting.

Maybe have a visible ammo count in the bottom corner, representing ammo in clip, and ammo in reserve (just like you'd see in other FPSes). Also if you're going for realism could we finally have a game where if you reload a partically empty clip, the bullets remaining in the disgarded clip don't mysterously get added back to the ammo reserve.

Yeah, some things are quite buggy at the moment :(

I'd prefer the idea where you see the amount of ammo left as a digit rather than a diagram also :)

A lot of it's that we don't have a decent intro yet; there's no explanation of these things.

White FOV (I like that abbreviation): Nothing in the area
Blue FOV: Zombies in the area
Green FOV: Players in the area (should probably revise this so it's only Enemy players in the area, so you don't waste bullets on allied players that you won't be able to hit anyway)
Red FOV: You are shooting. It is calculating who's in the area and doing damage.
Pink FOV: You are holding a chainsaw. It is constantly reporting anyone in the pink square of doom.
No FOV: Your weapon is not loaded, or not readied (shotgun especially).

I don't want to discard a partially-full clip; this game is going to be ammo-stingy, so it's gonna be bad enough leaving shells in a spare shotgun, finding the wrong caliber bullet, etc. without penalizing people for reloading when they weren't empty. The penalty is that you wasted a few seconds; it's assumed that with the dragon's-blood-and-magic haversacks, you can shake a clip into it and the bullets go back into circulation...realism may be served by having the player hide behind a barrel furiously prying 9mm bullets out of a Tec9 magazine to click into a glock17 magazine, and fretting that they didn't pick up enough empty glock17 magazines, etc, but you can do that on your own server; it wouldn't serve the fun of Insomnia IMO, and my opinion matters here. ;-)
I suppose I could have it instead drop the ejected ammo on the ground, so that if you're running away you've just lost perfectly good ammo, whereas if you're taking your time you can conserve it. Similarly any accidentally or intentionally ejected unspent ammo (by readying when the chamber's already full)...but one of the "running gags" is going to be loading, readying, and reloading an autoloader so that you have a full mag plus one in the chamber, so that'd be annoying in the long haul.

I might give the option of a HUD instead of a graphical display, possibly as an upgrade. Not everyone likes the clock for player's HP either; the point is that you don't know exactly, so you can't plan to run through a mob of zombies because at worst they'll do 20hp and you have 23hp. (to that end I also have to randomize their damage a little bit...) Similarly, you may be able to quickly count how many bullets are left in a box, but good luck picking up a magazine and counting the bullets left within from glancing at the top!

As for tracers, there's a script in the works (as in, I'm still thinking about the implementation!) that'll show a blur whenever someone fires, showing its true trajectory (as opposed to the FOV's Projected Trajectory). It'll be instantaneous. There are also Actual Tracer Rounds for the various bullets (except shotgun shells); I may set a high negative-recoil on them, so that when you fire a tracer round you get a bonus on accuracy with your next shot. I may just have it do extra fire damage, haven't really decided yet...I'm supposed to be working on zombies, but Someone's gotta do the system...:-P

I think for the lack of indication on the firing of a weapon, a noticeable animation for the muzzle flash of a firearm would be sufficient. Since tracers will be actual ammunition, that can't be rendered as default for all firearms (and certainly not shotguns or 40mm grenades). I do agree that weapons feel like they lose a bit of "umph" without some sort of more visible indication that there's a point of impact.

As for ammo indication, I think it kind of works out better on an action level to leave it as a graphical indication rather than by pure numbers. Unless you count mentally each round expended, it's extremely difficult to fight and keep track of how much ammo you have left to use. An exact number works great for a more precise shooter game (FPS), but I think the graphical indication works well in this environment. But then again, combat is still being worked on a small scale so maybe this isn't the best gauge for how the system sound be yet...

Also per my sporadic discussions with Tyhm, combat and other combat-related realisms will have to be dialed back to work out a more balanced system...I'll still point out what's accurate and what's not on weapons here and there, but I already lost the fight on the talk of upgrades and upgrade slots for different weapon types to favor personal customization freedom and balance.

Muzzle Flashes added. Bonus cookie if you recognize the source.
And now the zombies are no longer silent, so you can both tell when they're near and when they've seen you. The audio sucks, if anyone would like to replace it they can feel free - just set the corresponding gani (insom_shuffle and insom_brains, .wav and .gani) to match lengths.
[fixed the tec 9. It helps when I remember to add the damn weapon whose script I'm trying to call. Works a beaut now.]
Made audio ganis to attr onto the player, so the chainsaw can run continuously even when the player changes ganis (walk and idle mostly) and so that when rechambering is implemented later on, the noise your gun makes is a function of what it's shooting, not what it normally sounds like (a modified shotgun firing bullets should make bullet noises, and a modified derringer shooting shotgun shells should sound like a shotgun). [edit: done now]

Also fixed that thing where if you tried to run away while shooting, you'd look like you were shooting in the wrong direction. Freaking sleep commands.

Still to do:
Figure out a Zombie Control System so I can keep track of 'em. Maybe finish the coding to make the player's corpse rise as a zombie. Maybe finish the coding so zombies keep their appearances when transferring from one mob to another.

Now the glow of an attack remains for a couple seconds, so you know for sure what the accuracy was when you shot it.

'course, PvP's still sketchy at range...not sure why, it's Codein's department.

Alright guys, Check In:
Zibou: You still around? We'll need to you to figure out the checklist to getting the server hosted if we're ever gonna get outta UC
Tyhm: Zombies are stalled on Graphics and Server Communication, Gun System's stalled on Upgrades System
Luda - how are those zombie graphics coming along?
Codein: Are you going to be able to finish the Upgrades System before you leave on your world tour? ;-D
Peo: Did you get Supplies figured out?
Sage (DeCeaseD): Are you still working on the tileset, or do we need to find someone else?
Smoothcriminal - you working on that still also too?
Swifty: How's the intro coming along?