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