Introduction
Howdy everyone to Unliving's first update! I'm just going to give a quick run-down of the game at the moment as I'm quite short on time!
Unliving is a single-player roguelike RPG where you take the role of a survivor in a "classical zombie" apocalypse - that is, slow-moving hordes. The world is made up of 100 randomly generated areas, and in each area, there are up to 300 randomly generated locations.
Progress So Far
I've been working on the game over the last two weeks, and currently have Character Creation, World Generation, Horde Drift/Tracking, Inventory, Exploration, Time and Temperature Fluxuation for Day/Night modules to a working state, allowing the player to explore, learn basics of the area and find items.
I intend to work on making the needs fulfillable, items equipable and zombie attacks/events when exploring next. From there, to make areas barricadable, zombies huntable/clear-out-able and then to get the other main menus working as required.
I'm a little short on time and out of place right now, so this is just a text-feed I'm afraid!
Areas & Locations
Each location has size, floors, name, number of entrances (doors, windows, cracks, arches, etc) and "Horde". You can explore locations to find loot such as medical supplies, food, water, weapons, clothes, fuel, vehicles, furniture and luxury goods that make life cushier, such as pillows and magazines.
The bigger a location is (size * floors), the longer it will take to explore. The bigger it is, the more entrances it has, too.
Zombie Horde
Zombies will naturally "drift" between locations and the area. You can barricade entrances to keep zombies out of locations - making noise and casting light in these locations will attract zombies, causing them to decay your barricades.
You can travel between locations by traveling through the area.
There are limited zombies in each location and each area. By barricading a location and then killing the zombies you can clear out a location and create a safe location for you to store goods and sleep safely.
The Player
The player has several readings, such as Hunger, Thirst, Hygiene, Bladder, Rest, Temperature, Adrenaline, Mood and Sanity. Furthermore, the player has RPG-like Statistics and Skills that will, obviously, majorly effect the player's ability in the world.
NPCs
You can find other survivors out there who you can invite to join you, if you find them trustworthy, or if you need their help. Or, they might be aggressive and cause you more than a slight problem.
NPCs have personalities, needs and ambitions that are built on the same structure as the player's character. The player's character and the NPCs are called "Actors" (ala, Morrowind+).
Eventually, I'd intend to make it so that players can create Havens for other survivors and handle day-to-day issues that come with such an undertaking.
Technical-side
On the technical side, the game is a simple little thing written in Visual Basic 6 and the game is entirely user-interface based with interface feedback and text feedback. I intend to give it a pretty-pretty graphical overhaul later on before the first release.
This will be one of those games that I will be able to constantly work on, so the game will have many pre-release releases, alike to other indie games such as Dwarf Fortress and Towns.