Game News DoubleBear Reveals Dead State GUI

[villain of the story]

Let me answer you questions.
sip
Hope this cleared your ideas.

Thank you! Finally, for the first time, I have a much clearer idea of the game they are aiming to produce, after three years of reading their "updates". And it sounds good.

 

[villain of the story]

Now you're just being silly. You take words out of the context which defines their meaning.

Oh the irony.

Anyway, I'm not one of the developers. I made a quick comment, if not good enough for you, either post your questions on the DS forum or keep bitching. Your call.

Oh you... ever so eager to object to somebody's bitching, as if I demanded something personally from you. Well, at least now I know something concrete about the game, many thanks to Oscar, that amount to something more than ambiguous words such as "zombie game with a focus on survival".

R00FLES!

 

[Roguey]

What has that got to do with writing ?

Verisimilitude matters. Dead State also takes place in the modern day in a "realistic" setting, zombies aside. I wouldn't be surprised if there were all sorts of laughable inaccuracies. Maybe another author self-insert.

 

[General Maxson]

Elohim thank you! I like what you wrote. Sound great!

 

[Vault Dweller]

Now you're just being silly. You take words out of the context which defines their meaning.

Oh the irony.

Is it?

Contrary to what some people believe, I don't quote out of context. I do have a habit of quoting the key points, cutting out the rest, but summing up and taking out of context are two different things. If you disagree, feel free to link a few examples.

Oh you... ever so eager to object to somebody's bitching...

It's the Codex. People either bitch or object to someone's bitching.

 

[villain of the story]

It's the Codex. People either bitch or object to someone's bitching.

Something we both can agree on, I guess.

 

[Burning Bridges]

As VD said, it was crystal clear from the very beginning that DS absolutely wasn't a JA2-like game. It seems you and Burning Bridges are having trouble even reading a simple FAQ (available on the game's official website) before declaring yourselves deceived by the lack of information on said game/mislead into thinking it was a self-proclaimed successor to your favorite game.

No one said deceived. That's just a strawman and not even a good one. I just expected the game to aim for the best in the turn based tactical / RPG genre, not less.

Plus dude, I know what a FAQ is. what an abstract is.

I am not so sure you do.

I write documentation myself and I must be damn happy if people read them, so rule 1 is to keep them extremely short and to the point.

Now, when I ask for information and all I need is an 1 page abstract of the game, but someone points me to the endless collection of every note they ever wrote, whether he thinks it's all right (pedantic) or just wants to impress me with the amount of material (childish), I think this someone still has to learn a lot. Plus I always wonder what it means for the programming if their style is just as cluttered.

 

[EG]

If AoD isn't Fallout, is Dead State?

Why, Vault Dweller, why!

 

[Burning Bridges]

A very good idea to send Elhoim by the way.

He seems to be the only one who knows how to handle this communication.

Sending Vault Dweller would have worked in the Third Reich, but not here and now.

Would have been better if it were news I wanted to hear. I just don't think it's realistic for one programmer to make a JA 2 like game but I'd at least like a full party of chracters I can control and possibly roll myself.

Plus it doesn't always make sense. Making a game like JA2 is not hard because the game mechanics are hard to implement. It is hard because you have to create tons of graphics and animations, and an engine that handles line of sight calculations, pathfinding and AI, etc. But when a game has most of that already in place (tell me, what is still missing in DS that JA2 had?), I dont see why gameplay should be limited to controlling just 1 character, especially since this will create additional work/problems on the AI front.

So my questions are:

1. Why does the player control only 1 character?

2. Why is the party limited to three characters?

 

[Burning Bridges]

Nope, you move around the map, and enter different locations, in which you do everything stated above.

We can travel over land, to other cities? o_O I thought everything happens around the school.

 

[CreamyBlood]

Finally someone that knows what a GUI is and actually worked on interfaces for the last how many years? Have you seen the GUI for Risen2? Have you? It's. Nevermind. It's nice to see someone that cares for a change.

 

[EG]

It happens around another school . . . in each city.

 

[Burning Bridges]

2. Why is the party limited to three characters?

Because at higher screen resolutions the portraits become way too small. You don't want them to look bad, do you?

 

[Burning Bridges]

It happens around another school . . . in each city.

I just wonder how far advanced this feature is, if the main programmer links to this map of France, it really can't be very far.

 

[almondblight]

1. Why does the player control only 1 character?

From the FAQ:

"The player doesn’t have full control over their party, but can issue group and individual commands. The player is also responsible for equipping teammates. Sometimes allies may not respond to player commands if their Morale is low or because of their personality or because they are panicking."

My guess is they wanted to focus on group dynamics, including people freaking out and not listening to you, being nervous and screwing up, etc.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

VottS and burning bridges really gets unimaginably butthurt, like the skyway of the rpgcodex news comments.

 

[villain of the story]

VottS and burning bridges really gets unimaginably butthurt, like the skyway of the rpgcodex news comments.

So butthurt yourself that you just had to bring this exceptional insight up

And:
herostratus gets unimaginably butthurt when other people are first to think of and start asking questions about the game that he didn't even think about before, like the Watchwitz folks who think every post they don't agree with is a troll attempt.

Anyway, I like the idea of controlling a single character and ordering others around. But there is one problem. Will they be able to pull that AI with their limited resources, which is the main argument against everything we would love for the game to be? Not a single game, among them those with big budgets, has done it right before. So what has DB got going on for them to pull it right now?

 

[Elhoim]

I don't care if you can't control them in combat, but if party size is four it seems to go completely against what makes sense for this sort of game. If I understand what this kind of game is. I'd rather see something where you lose guys left and right, not do the save reload fandango because one of the tiny number of party members got infected.

If it's a survival game there should be real danger, and you should be suffering attrition over time until you win the game. It should be like Xcom where you lose a guy almost every battle, and on top of that lose guys due to disease, infection by zombie, accident, on a pretty regular basis. Maybe send them out in parties to forage and not everyone always comes back, but the results get calculated at the start of the day or week so you can't reload.

You can get up to 40 allies in the game, but the scavenging party size is only 4, which makes sense for missions based on making as little as sound as possible and stay undetected.

And yes, you can travel to other towns.

 

[hiver]

The player doesn’t have full control over their party

[/quote]
[/quote]
Fixed.
btw that gets the team one sure buy and kickstarter support from me.

 

[Davaris]

1. Why does the player control only 1 character?

From the FAQ:

"The player doesn’t have full control over their party, but can issue group and individual commands. The player is also responsible for equipping teammates. Sometimes allies may not respond to player commands if their Morale is low or because of their personality or because they are panicking."

My guess is they wanted to focus on group dynamics, including people freaking out and not listening to you, being nervous and screwing up, etc.

Question for the devs:

What happens if your best friend left you in a coma, in a hospital overrun with Z, told your wife you were dead and was playing house with her, when you find them again? Will this character be likely to murder you, because of his obsessive lust for your wife and blame it on an escaped prisoner?

 

[Roguey]

Some of the traffic cones are vermillion-orange instead of umber-orange, and vermillion-orange has not been used in Texas since 1967. Moreover, traffic cone life expectancy is only 12 years on average, so the likelihood of this color traffic cone being this extant is simply too small to entertain!

That's a lovely extreme exaggeration of my position but literally being too fucking lazy to type "rome" into the google image search bar to confirm/deny the presence of high rise buildings is as "not-giving-a-fuck" as it gets. I can't expect such a writer to give a fuck about anything that isn't already in his narrow range of interests. This is why the science fiction and fantasy genres are full of hacks.

 

[EG]

No. Friendship conquares all (if you choose the optional three way), Davaris.

 

[Roguey]

"I feel like bad writing is tolerated, while mediocre writing gets spooned."--Brian Mitsoda talking about his apologists.

 

[EG]

So, are we essentially going to see The Sims in Zombiland, as Project Zomboid is quickly becoming? They're even moving to casting 3D models into 2D sprites . . . Time is running out to differentiate your product, guys!

 

[DwarvenFood]

There I was actually thinking Roguey was Brian