Rise of the Living Windows game

SURVIVORS

Needs

Survivors as "sim" like creatures. They need several different resources to survive in the world. Since the world is pretty much over the survivors only care about the essentials, food, security, socializing, and energy. Other needs such as medical care for example gets tacked on when a survivor is sick. Just because the survivors have these “needs” doesn't mean you have to tend to them in a micromanaging way. You don’t tell them to go eat, they just go eat when they get hungry provided there is something available to eat. When they get tired they go to sleep at their houses.

Since survivors have minds of their own, they can sometimes ignore the commands issued by your leader. If this happens, you can “shout” commands to force them to comply but this lowers the respect the survivor has of the leader if abused. If respect gets too low the survivor will pack their things and leave the camp so it’s important to manage relations. A survivor will also leave if the food supply is empty for too long, the camp gets overrun by zombies or armies from other camps, has a huge fight with another camp member and many others.

Death

When a survivor goes hungry for too long their health starts to take a hit. Eventually they will die if they do not find food. Death is a big deal in this game. A map will only sprinkle in immigrants at a desirable level if a camp reaches a certain level of fame. This means that if too many people die then the population will be scarce until the built-in immigration system repopulates the map which is a slow process and the survivor could appear anywhere on the map. There are a few ways to die, hunger, attacked by zombie/survivor, illness, and suicide. After dying, the survivor becomes a zombie and roams about the world looking for fresh meat.

Other survivors in the camp are affected deeply by death and it can lower the camps overall morale. Just because the world is over doesn’t mean we have suddenly become savages. Survivors in your camp can be hesitant to kill another human and often express remorse when they do kill. Be careful of asking weaker constituted survivors to do the “dirty” work as they may leave or take their own life.

Backgrounds

Survivors didn’t just appear out of thin air when the apocalypse started, they were there when times were good and they are here now when things have gone to s**t. You can get to know a survivor by conversing with them through the dialogue system. The more you get to know about them, the more favor you will have with them. A high favor will ensure that survivor follows commands stricter than others and exhibits more loyalty to the leader. In addition, the backstories of the survivors will be extensive and widely variant due to a procedural generation system. The custom story generator dissects the aspects of a background story and substitutes tags from a large pool to create believable stories (and some not) that we can then cull and ship with the game. I want this game to bring you to tears when a survivor you have been with for a while is killed by a huge horde that was approaching the campsite. Each play through will be unique as you watch the different personalities battle it out in the camp and between the camps.

The previous jobs of survivors, their personalities, talents and story quirks will contribute their skill levels and possibly give them a specific class that will provide a camp with new functionality.

Groups

The world is filled is with other survivors that have what it takes to be called a leader. These other leaders will do the same things that you do as a human player. They will explore the world, build a camp, recruit other survivors and they may even attack you if you encroach on their territory. While civilization may be dead, the world is not and there is always so much going at any point in the game. As the leader of a group you need to manage everything and deal with the responsibilities of the job. If I get enough funding I will be adding in features like camp government where a survivor can be appointed to handle a portion of your job. You can allow for voting or you can appoint someone with both methods having their pros and cons.

Skills

Shooting – SURVIVAL RULE
#2. A gun is man’s best friend in the zombie apocalypse. What used to be a hobby is a now a requirement for basic survival. An unskilled shooter will miss often and can only handle basic weapons. As the survivor makes kills their skill will increase but they can also train at the shooting range. Be careful though, shooting is loud and attracts zombies to the area so use it sparingly.

Speed – SURVIVAL RULE #5. I
don’t have to out run the zombies, I just have to out run you. The faster you are, the quicker you can get somewhere. This skill doesn’t really build and is an inherent skill that will decrement if the survivor gets sick or injured. Don’t worry, it can return to normal though once the survivor is healed (with a minor penalty of course).

Stamina – SURVIVAL RULE #1.
If you run out of Stamina, your death clock starts ticking faster. You won’t be able to fight or run. You’re as a good as dead. The number displayed is the max stamina the survivor can have. A higher Stamina skill means running longer distances and dishing out more punches or bat swings. Stamina replenishes with rest and sleep so be sure to let a tired survivor get some rest before taking them out again.

Strength – SURVIVAL RULE #3.
You gotta know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em, other times you just gotta kick some zombie ass. A survivor’s strength is an indicator of how good at fighting they are. It dictates how much damage they deal when they hit something. Higher strength skill allows for larger more deadly weapons to be used. A downside and upside of strength is that it is tied to stamina. Each attack makes the survivor more tired often leading to them being unable to deal another blow or even escape. The upside however is that melee training also raises the stamina skill so they are usually able to complement each other.

Stealth – SURVIVAL RULE #4.
If you can stay hidden, you can stay alive. The stealth skill controls how loud a survivor is when moving around and looting containers. It also affects the survivors contribution to the camps overall noise presence. Stealth is built doing things in stealth stance or reading books at the camps library.

Stats

Happiness – This stat is calculated by the inventory of the survivors group, security of the group, and whether any events have occurred in the recent past. These events include group members dying or the bringing back of a large haul of resources.

Zombie Kills
– Literally how many zombies the survivor has killed

Survivor Kills
– The amount of survivors that have been murdered

Hunger
– How hungry the survivor currently is. If it gets too low, the survivor will seek out food.

Health
– The amount of the life the survivor has. If health dips too low the survivor will flee and seek shelter. They will also try to get medical help either through a med kit or at the medical station.

Honor – How honorable your actions are. If you do things like murder survivors, your honor will go down but will go up if you deliver goods to another survivor camp. If your camps collective honor is excessively low then you form a reputation that will cause unencountered groups to have a negative bias towards you from before meeting you.

ZOMBIES

Slow, ugly, stupid creatures that only want to eat you and will do anything to do it. I didn’t want special zombies nor did I want zombies that can run because they are too stupid to run. This makes the games dynamic interesting as a zombie or three is no real threat but when they show up in hordes >30, you will have a big problem because you can easily get cornered if you aren’t in an open area. The risk is even higher if you lead them back to your base, where they will kill sleeping survivors and chase off other ones.

RESOURCES

Item Variety

The amount of items in the game is planned to basically be limitless. I have designed the game to already have a JSON script parser that transforms scripts that anyone can make it game items. If you don’t like the images for the included guns, you can just swap out the images and restart the game. If you don’t think the food in the game gives enough hunger boost, you change the modifier values in the script and it will change the game. You can also introduce new items to the game by using the program I use to make the items. I will be releasing this tool with game and basically it streamlines the process of making new game items. You can make a new food types, medicines, weapons, luxury items, pretty much anything you want.