Urban Strife - turn-based zombie survival RPG - now available on Early Access

[agris]

The sigmoid curves for actual armor resistance are insanely sharp. Real bullets go through a lot of stuff - also IRL there are so many flavours of ammo and weapons you cannot really gamify all of them. We went for a basic set of guns and calibers to be able to balance things. But we also made modding the guns the easiest thing possible - using the modding SDK will allow players to add hundreds of new guns and ammo types if they want to.

ok but setting 9 mm to have the same penetration power as .45 is 1911 erasure, and i wont have it

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Maybe, there's room for a lot of finetuning between 2 pen and 4 pen. Setting both aT same value helped us pair them with Level IIA armor. But they don't need to be both 3.5 (FMJ), lots of decimals to play with.

 

[agris]

Maybe, there's room for a lot of finetuning between 2 pen and 4 pen. Setting both aT same value helped us pair them with Level IIA armor. But they don't need to be both 3.5 (FMJ), lots of decimals to play with.

.45 should be a straight upgrade from 9 mm HP in all things except cost, weight, scarcity, and ammo capacity. 0.45 may have a downside if you don’t want to blow through drywall or an abdomen. Also select fire 0.45 handguns (machine pistols) will be very rare compared to 9 mm, not to mention mp5-style smgs.

 

[Harthwain]

+ as usual engagement ranges are shorter in video games.

This is done for balance. If you could use shotgun for everything, why bother with anything else? With trade-offs this is less of cut-and-dry case as sniper rifle, assault rifle, shotgun and pistol all have their ups and downs.

 

[Tyranicon]

When your indie RPG puts more work into analyzing ballistics than a FBI gel penetration test.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You can use the fire crackers and other noise makers to direct zombies, of course. Walking among zombies unharmed, no.

Not even like this?

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

The cult herders do humm and mumble some incantations while training the zombies but they're also stoned on their special "sacramental wine". And most important, if any student fails the training process, they never count that one as a loss, he/she just gets promoted to the undead class.

You do get to recruit a former herder later in the campaign, but the only benefit from her past training will be being perfectly comfortable in zombie infested zones for long periods of time. There are recruits who are way more squeamish when it comes to camping among festering undead for days on end.

 

[Harthwain]

There are recruits who are way more squeamish when it comes to camping among festering undead for days on end.

What does that mean? Some sort of debuffs?

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

That's the general idea. We're not big fans of morale debuffs affecting combat, but you should get at least some angry mumbling about earning some R&R after a while.

 

[Alienman]

Is the debuff a permanent thing, or do they get used to the zombies after a while, or just get more experience in the world of the dead to overcome it?

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

There are no permanent debuffs. There's a fix for all of them.

If not in Episode 2 of the dev blog then very soon after we'll focus on perks and experience so we'll have a lot more details then.

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

We've taken into account the relative rarity of the weapons and the scarcity of the ammo.

We consider popular calibers the .22 in the first tier for obvious reasons, 9mm in second tier because its widely used in law enforcement and 5.56 as standard assault rifle caliber in the end game. The others will come as faction flavours, boss weapons, exotics, etc.

Of course, there are also the 12G shotties and the crossbows that will never go out of style, each with 4 types of ammo.

 

[goregasm]

Maybe, there's room for a lot of finetuning between 2 pen and 4 pen. Setting both aT same value helped us pair them with Level IIA armor. But they don't need to be both 3.5 (FMJ), lots of decimals to play with.

.45 should be a straight upgrade from 9 mm HP in all things except cost, weight, scarcity, and ammo capacity. 0.45 may have a downside if you don’t want to blow through drywall or an abdomen. Also select fire 0.45 handguns (machine pistols) will be very rare compared to 9 mm, not to mention mp5-style smgs.

*Stares at his ammo cans full of 147 fmj*

Drywall you say?

I just want to piggyback here a bit, I've no major criticism with your idea on HP, would just say that (depending on where the game takes place) FMJ is going to be a far more common projectile, and the penetration from a 9mm fmj is fairly comparable to a 45, wound channels would certainly be larger in a 45, but we have been arguing about what is "better" for ages.

I certainly wouldn't call a .45 a pure upgrade over a 9mm in a real world setting, especially with how ballistic technology is today. It's possibly going to put a bigger hole in someone, but a 9mm, even 124 is going to penetrate nearly as much, almost all small calibers do.

 

[agris]

goregasm thats why I specified hollow point, the way they stacked up 9 mm fmj vs 45 seems reasonable

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Game takes place in suburban Georgia, USA, somewhere in mid 2000's. Urban is a fictional county & town, of course.

Interesting point about FMJ. But having armor piercing stuff in abundance would be a massive pain (considering you don't start with much protection), while not helping much with the zombie problem. One would argue it was a worthy depart from real world stats.

I read somewhere police uses hollow point 9mm to avoid over-penetration and secondary unwanted casualty. Isn't that true?

 

[Alienman]

I read somewhere police uses hollow point 9mm to avoid over-penetration and secondary unwanted casualty. Isn't that true?

I hope they use armor-piercing, if the reality is anything how I imagine US cities to be

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

I bet nowadays there's plenty of body armor protection on the civilian market too, but back in the 90s i don't think it was so common. I am old enough to remember the infamous North Hollywood bank robbery, with those two heavy armored robbers tanking thousands of 9mm, .38 and shotgun rounds before SWAT arrived. Everyone was so surprised the bad guys had the gaul to wear body armor... (also might be where the idea of the bullet sponge enemies sprung into the mind of certain devs)

 

[agris]

I read somewhere police uses hollow point 9mm to avoid over-penetration and secondary unwanted casualty. Isn't that true?

Right, a JHP round is designed to crumple into a pancake shape on impact. That means increased damage to soft targets, while the pancaking rapidly decreases the velocity to minimize going through people. It’s also why body armor is so effective against JHP.

While a FMJ round can penetrate armor, the solid tip means less pancaking and less damage to an organic target while also increasing the chance of completely passing through the target

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Exactly - that was the reasoning behind making hollow-point the more common caliber to come by since your primary source will be the various government groups. As you progress, FMJ will become the de-facto round though.

 

[Alienman]

Can zombies wear armor? Will fallen companions keep the gear on them when they rise as the undead?

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

Zombies wear what they had on when they died (your buddies included). So yes, you can very well meet full Level IIIA zombies if - let's say - you actively help bring down the army faction.

They are very fun to fight if you're under equipped.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Zombies wear what they had on when they died (your buddies included)

What are you gonna wear during release day? What do you think the fashion trends will be in 2036?

 

[HoboForEternity]

Is there new demo build planned? Last demo was pretty janky (either late 2022 or early 2024 next fest)

 

[luj1]

Last demo was pretty janky

last demo had very barebones character systems

this is my number 1 gripe with the game

show me the "RPG" in this game, if it's an RPG at all or just a "tacticool". Where are the character builds, I want to see how I can develop my chars. This is the essence of the RPG experience. What those 6 attributes do, skills/perks, etc.

I spoke about this before and they said it was in the game from day 1 but wasn't fleshed out or linked with the interface

This is leading me to believe it's a mere afterthought

USG_Mucifikatorul Please man, is there actually some build variety in this game? Do attributes even matter?

 

[USG_Mucifikatorul]

We use 6 basic attributes:

Endurance = determines maximum health, max stamina (combined with STR)
Strength = determines max. carry weight, melee dmg, max stamina (combined with END), used for bully check in RPG
Agility = determines max movement AP, interrupt chances and evasion in melee
Dexterity = determines AP for using items, melee CtH
Marksmanship = determines ranged aim accuracy
Intelligence = determines progression speed of all attributes, used for INT checks in RPG
..
There's a special affiliation "perk", the faction. All encountered NPCs except the player have an allegiance to one of the 3 major factions; this is part of their story and used as check in RPG
..
Certain specialization/perks below require Str/Dex/Agi/Mrk levels above 75. Atm we're tracking the following events for specialization progression (list is subject to change, it's still WIP, so I am not going to go into details/bonus/malus yet but if you feel like something vital is missing, feel free to mention it):

RANGED
- close range attacks with handguns/shotguns
- medium range attacks with rifles/crossbows
- long range attacks with sniper rifles
- headshots
- burst fire attacks
- attacks from higher ground

MELEE
- blade/pierce attacks
- blunt attacks
- hand to hand attacks
- heavy melee attacks

UTILITY
- carrying weights encumbered
- using medical stuff
- using grenades
- backpack crafting

SPECIAL
- virus immunity (player's avatar)
- barter expert
- drone pilot
- stealthy
- field exp. vs zombies
- field exp. vs human enemies

You can build stealth ranged, stealth melee, CQB, snipers or h2h characters, medics, grenadiers, mechanics and other mixed flavours (such as INT/STR interrogator). You get one preset perk from the recruit's backstory and you can train as many others as you want. When you assemble the team, you choose each member's secondary role from the list of perks known. So you can have two "running" perks at once.

We are not going full RPG character customization and never will, especially with purely non-combat stuff. We feel the above support the scope of the game, since it's first and foremost a turn-based strategy. Same with base building, we're not going to have another Banished/Manor Lords inside the walls of the shelter. As long as the RPG and the survival stuff enhance the experience & immersion of the player we're happy.