Ah… nothing like a zombie march to get the blood pumping. Does it really matter if it’s flowing from an exposed wound? I don’t think so.
Zombie marches are held everywhere, but Melbourne’s own undead shuffle is taking place this weekend on May 1. The horde will start at the Carlton Gardens north of the city at 1PM, and shamble its way to the metro core, bringing all the fake corpulent skin you could ever want with it. Even if the only shooting will be done with cameras, I’m sure it’ll be fun for everyone who doesn’t instantly drop a potato in their underdaks. If the photos from previous years are anything to go by, it should be a blast.
And, despite being an amateur affair, some of the makeup and effects are quite good… more than good enough to find their way into a certain zombie survival simulator…
It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally done enough work on Zafehouse 2′s second combat prototype to post a couple of screenshots.
As I mentioned in a previous update, the original combat implementation was ground into a fine, code-tasting dust and packed away, replaced by an infinitely deeper (and juicier) solution that uses firing arcs.
Entering into combat hasn’t changed – you still click on the event in the event window – and the representation of the room is similar too. The difference is that zombies are no longer shown as one large group, they’re now broken up into individual flesh-eating nasties. Weapons have also evolved, the far/close/melee profiles exchanged for variable firing arcs and shot modes. For example, the shotgun has a wide firing arc and shoots pellets in a spread, but it can only fire once per turn and has a short range. A submachine gun on the other hand has a medium firing arc and range, but you can shoot up to six bullets at one or multiple targets. Keep in mind that each bullet fired in the same turn reduces the accuracy of the shot that follows it.
Hit the jump for an additional screenshot which show projectiles in flight. Yes, I said projectiles.
If you take a gander at Zafehouse 2′s media section at the official Zafehouse website, you’ll notice a bunch of fresh screens from the latest build of the game. Combined, the shots demonstrate combat, the day/night cycle, trade window, furniture destruction and a heap of UI updates over the first gameplay video.
All the thumbnails can be clicked for larger versions, if squinting isn’t your thing, and I can assure you they want to be clicked. By you. Right now.
I don’t have anything super huge to divulge this update, but I can say that, after many requests, I’ve added outside movement to Zafehouse 2. This means instead of taking a turn to move from one edge of the map to the other, it’s looking closer to five or six turns, as you dodge between buildings and the inevitable (and darn hungry) undead.
Currently, you can only move to entrances and zombie “hotspots”, as I didn’t really see the need to position survivors outside in the middle of nowhere. If someone can give me a really (really) good reason why it should be any different, I’ll think about it.
Implementing outside movement required me to confront my fear of A* pathfinding and, while it was a tortuous and many times frustrating endeavour, my work paid off.
Our frontier review of Resident Evil 5 continues with a (this time slightly longer) jaunt through the first few areas of the game, where it doesn’t take long before the locals make it clear they don’t take too kindly to stranger round here…
Ah… nothing like a zombie march to get the blood pumping. Does it really matter if it’s flowing from an exposed wound? I don’t think so.
