Alpha 5 release!

This time it's true.
Get it on the download page.
If you want to unlock all the reincarnation madness go to the options in game.

ALPHA 5 CHANGES
---------------
Two new HUGE features : undead mode and reincarnation.
You can use or abuse the reincarnation feature... or not. Its up to you.
There are also some modifications to gameplay, balance and AI.

FIXED BUGS
- Subway small maintenance room will not overlap platform anymore.
- Post-mortem option "simulate when sleeping" shows properly.
- Attacker icon won't display in odd places when the attacker is out of map (eg: zombie bashing from another map).
- Long names in HiScore table are now truncated.
- Actors who can't talk cannot shout either (eg: undeads).

GAMEPLAY
New : Play as an Undead!
- Choose your race from Skeleton to Zombie Master.
- All undead rules apply to you, so know your abilities and limitations.
- You can see living and zombie masters scents - if ability.
- Scoring comes mostly from killing, no achievement to reach.
- Difficulty rating as undead is opposite to difficulty as survivor.
- No access to the city map.
- Does not get notified of events.
New : Reincarnate!
- When your current character dies you get the choice to reincarnate or not, if the option is activated.
- Continue playing in the game world as you left it.
- After dying you can choose between different reincarnations avatars :
  - Random Actor.
  - Random Living.
  - Random Undead.
  - Random Follower (of yours).
  - Your Killer.
  - Your Zombified Self. 
- You loose everything related to your previous character (scoring, memory etc...).
- Reincarnation as living can be limited to civilians only (an option, on by default).
- Reincarnation as undead can exclude zombie rats (an option, on by default).
- Reincarnation can exclude avatars in the sewers (an option, on by default).
- Some rare reincarnation unique places or actors are forbidden.
- Difficulty value for scoring is divided by each successive reincarnation.
Map Objects
- Iron Gates (subway, hospital, prison) are now breakable but are very resistant.
- Large fortifications are now opaque.
Trading
- Followers are always willing to trade with their leader, even uninteresting or silly deals.
- Gangs can trade with friends.
Leading
- Relaxed faction leadership restrictions a bit, so civilians can be lead by anyone friendly (eg: civilians led by cops or army).
Items
- Item batteries duration and stench killer capacity increased.
Ligthing
- Flashlights improves FoV only if it is dark (in other words, they are useless during the day).
Map Generation
- Shops might have a window.
- No zombie start in the subway.
Event
- Zombies do not spawn in subway anymore.
Zombification
- Zombifieds keep one level of a random skill of their ex-living form - skill which might now be useless to them.
Actors
- Undeads may stumble while jumping and loose action points (eg: ZMs).
- Rats have the "Small" ability which allows them to slip through any objects except closed doors.
Pushing
- Pushing is a loud noise.

INTERFACE & MANUAL
- Undead : view scents.
- Undead : status line show "Field Of Smelling" range (FoS).
- UI does not display stats irrelevant to your current avatar (eg: food for zombies).
- Reincarnation screens.
- Leaders have a "L" icon.
- NPC/objects in action messages will show up as "someone/something" if when not visible to the player.
- Refugees and Midnight Invasion event won't pause the game anymore - this get annoying after a while.
- Updated the manual.

GRAPHICS & MUSIC
- New gfx : scents icons for undead mode; leader icon.
- 2 new musics (well one is a sfx actually).

OPTIONS
- Difficulty : Show separate difficulty for undead mode.
- New option : Max number of reincarnations allowed (1 by default).
- New option : Allow to reincarnate as zombie rat or not - as they are numerous and quite boring to play (no by default).
- New option : Allow to reincarnate to the sewers or not (no by default).
- New option : Restrict livings reincarnation to civilians (yes by default) - some actors like char guards are not meant to be played, but can be fun
- New option : Permadeath - delete saved game on death, doubles difficulty rating (off by default).
- New option : Death Screenshot - automatically takes a screenshot of your death (on by default).
- Default Zombification up to 100% (was 80%).
- Default Max Undeads up to 100 (was 90).

AI
- Followers : when Guarding or Patroling, mimick leader cellphone usage.
- CivilianAI : desperate starving civilians will push objects around and attack barricades in the hope of finding hidden stashes of food.
- CivilianAI : now interested in stench killers and will use them.
- ZombieAI : reordered behaviors to give more priority to following ZM.
- ZombieAI : ZMs and evolved Zombifieds can and will push objects in various situations.
- ZombieAI : do not attack objects and barricades on sight anymore.
- Soldiers & Civilians will now build large fortifications too.
- Tuned Fleeing logic.
- Updated living AIs to handle being led by the player.

KNOWN BUGS AND GLITCHES
- Asymetric FoV.

A NOTE ON REINCARNATION
Playing as a civilian survivor is still the main focus of the game.
If you play a non-civilian leader, keep in mind non civilians-AI are pretty much limited.
Some living actors do not need to eat, but most have to sleep.
The ability the play other actors has been tested but is not guaranted to work 100% fine yet.
Feel free to report any bug or oddity you might find when playing a non-civilian.
With all this being said...

...HAVE FUN!!
And remember, die with a smile!

End of post.

Alpha 5 - From Disciple to National Guard

JUMPING FROM BODIES TO BODIES
One of the test runs I made.
Started as a survivor, got killed and zombified.
Reincarnated as my zombie, luckily a Neophyte already.
Killed enough people to get promoted to Disciple.
Eating poor weaklings left and right.
Facing my first serious enemy : a National Guard.

Hello, you look tasty in green.

Like the good blood thirsty abomination that I am now I promptly rush him and we duke it out.

Stop poking me with that gun!

I prevail and make a new friend in the process.

See private, it's not that bad being undead.

I get cocky, don't wait for the night to get more tactical advantages and get what I deserve.

Sorry for your pal dudes, listen I ggrgrrlkggrlkgrg

I choose my killer again as reincarnation and discover life as a Private.

Wait!? What? Who? When?

I perform my duty and hang out with the squad.

Hey Sgt what are we doing here!?... Why don't you answer?

Upgrade time!

Sgt, help! What is that screen!?... Why don't you answer?

You can upgrade when playing a living NPC as you would as a civilian survivor.
If you happen to be a leader, your followers will upgrade too of course.
You can build yourself a nice high level biker gang for instance.


AI
The Civilian and Zombie AI also does get a couple of improvements. Some of the standard tactics might not work anymore. Or they might. But not really. You'll find out.

ROTTING BRAIN
Mine. I seem to keep missing letters and whole words in my posts recently.

End of post.

Alpha 5 - MOAR!...

...About the Undead Mode and Reincarnation.

UNDEAD MODE
You can pick all the standard undead models, except rats - skeletons are silly enough to play.
Keep in mind you have no skills and you can transform as NPC zombies do by killing people.

REINCARNATION - OPTIONS
You can set options related to how reincarnation.

Disabling rats reincarnation is handy, as there are a lot of rats and they are quite silly to play. So you won't get spammed with them as possible avatars.
Max numbers of reincarnations is a way to limit yourself or disable this altogether with setting it to zero.
Each reincarnation will decrease the difficulty used for computing for this character. Eg: your first life will be 100% difficulty, but if you reincarnate the next one will start at 0 points and score only 50% of base points. This is a way to avoid some stupid cheating, like using past lives to make the following ones easier and scoring big.

REINCARNATION - CHOOSING AN AVATAR
When you die you get a set of typical avatar selected for you to reincarnate in.
Here I played survivor Tony Austin. He got killed by a zombie, got zombified in the process and had a follower alive at that time.
So I get the full set of candidate avatars to choose from.

You can image fun play mode and challenges if you restrict yourself to a set of options:

• Succession game : take control of your followers as your band members die horribly one by one.
• Killer game : take control of your killer.
• Till the Last Survivor : take control of a survivor, you loose the game if there are no one available, which could happen.
• The Equalizer : take control of the opposite side and try to do your best for them.

Just ideas ;)

I intended to allow the player to reincarnate anywhere in the world but it is not practical. I would have to simulate the whole world which would not be a sane thing to do. So instead it is just limited to the district you were in.

End of post.

Alpha 5 - the other big new feature

UPDATE: mmh the screens weren't clear enough it seems so let me detail this feature.

REINCARNATION
When you die...

• You get the choice to reincarnate or not.
• Your dead character still gets its post mortem etc... and for all intent and purpose you can consider the game lost.
• You then control a random existing NPC in the current game world (= you take control of a previously AI controlled character). You have almost no control over this process, so you first character is still the most important one for you.
• Your score is resetted, you loose your memory etc...
• Continue playing in the game world as you left it.
• So you can in theory continue to play indefinitly in the same game world.   
• Reincarnation in a living body is limited to civilians.
• You can get funny reincarnations as a zombie rat, as the Sewers Thing (if lucky!)...

I think the ability to continue playing in the same world if you want to is nice : visit old places, take revenge, switch sides...
You can still die normally of course.
Play as a classic roguelike  with permadeath (and noreload) or explore the world through various characters...
Its new, its fun. You can use it or not.

End of post.

Alpha 5 - big new feature

If screens > words Then Post(screens); 

BRAINZ! (1)

 

RAGE @ CARZ :X (2)

HI! BRAINZ? :) (3)

ME WANT FRIEND U! (4)

FRIEND NOW :) (5)

HI! ME COM WIF FRIENDZ! (6)

Translations:

1.  Start a new game as undead.
2. Remember, some undeads can't jump, open doors etc... The red "glows" are scents, as undead you can smell living scents and zombie masters scents. The freshers the scent, the more visible.
3. Bash doors, run after people to try to eat them. Great fun.
4. Followed some poor girl in a basement thanks to the scents. I plan on turning her in...
5. ...and it works. Maybe she will follow me.
6. My little horder breaking into a CHAR Office.

PLANS FOR THIS FEATURE
I have just started developing this feature. Thanks to the design it was quite easy to implement, a couple of hours of work. Lots of bugs lurking probably.

One thing I can say for sure, it radically changes the gameplay. Its like having another game altogether!

I don't plan on making the player undead special. You are just one of the undeads and have to "survive".
Its really frustrating fun to get randomly killed early by cops :p

Rogue Survivor will still focus on the living survivor gameplay and this mode is meant mostly for fun or a new challenge.

End of post.

Alpha 5.0 - Minor additions for the greater good

Minor stuff that improves the game.

IMPROVISED WEAPONS
In addition to dropping planks breaking wooden objects might allows you to scavange a couple of improvised weapons. They are inefficient and fragile but you'll find plenty of them.

PUSHING CARS
You can. But its very tiring as they are very heavy things. You can't push burning cars. And yes, fire is not handled yet but it will come sooner and later.

STA RULES CHANGE
STA can now go below 0, it has no lower bound.
This makes vomitting more annoying and pushing cars risky, as you will be tired for several turns.

RAPID FIRE
Fire twice in a turn but with horrid accuracy : 50% for the first shot, 30% for the second.
Yep, total is not 100% so potential damage is lower than a standard shot.
Careful not to waste ammunitions with that, use your brain while you still have it.
You'll have to look at tactical factors to make your decision.

COWARD FOLLOWERS
As if being dumb wasn't enough you can now turn your followers into cowards too.
The coward directive means they will always run away from the enemy.
So the directive can now be set to Coward, Cautious or Courageous.

ITEM MANAGEMENT WITH KEYBOARD
You don't need the mouse anymore to perform common items management actions : use/equip/unequip, take and drop.

End of post.

No installer fixed, Next Alpha & Stats modding

"No Installer" package fixed
The "no installer" package was not working properly, sorry about that.
Get the new one.
Should work, right? 8-]

Next Alpha
4.2 if really annoying stuff to fix, otherwise straight to 5.0

Stats Modding
5.0 will allow stats modding.
Some of the game models data (actors and items) will be read from text files, so you guys can toy with them.
Only stats will be moddable, abilities will not (because they are tied to AI and other hard-coded stuff).
Some stuff will still be hard-coded sorry.

Stats Modding : What File Format?
Should be human readable, light-weight, easily editable with a text editor.
CSV fits the bill.
No need for XML, since there is a constant number of fields with simple integer values.
Proprietary format (some fancy .dat or whatever) is a big no-no for me.

Sample data file : Actors models in 4.11
I have written a simple CSV exporter for the game actors in 4.11, and this is how the resulting file looks like in Open Office.
Some stats like Fov and Smell were hidden till now ;)
Remember these are raw stats without the effects of skills!

*** ACTORS STATS SPOILERS **

*** END OF SPOILERS ***

Some stats are not used at all by the game (eg: STA for undeads) because of lacking abilities in the model definition and the values are just for show.
 
Hey! Wait! What about the poll about spoilers?
The player maintened wiki should be enough?

End of post.