I haven't had much chance to work on DeadOS this week as I've had to deal with a bunch of boring IRL things (we are having our kitchen replaced) but I've squeezed a few new features into an update for you this week.
Players can now repeatedly click on a pile of corpses on the floor and the selection will cycle through each corpse where previously they were not selectable. This allows people to figure out how many corpses are on the ground and also select specific units on the ground.
I've also made a change to the Military AI where they put a higher priority to finding ammo when they have run out by scavenging corpses. Cops + Civilians already had this priority but it's been given to military as well.
I want to talk a little about future updates as I've been doing some planning in that regard. I've recently changed to using new software to plan out my AI decision making to help come up with decisions on how to improve it:
I'm thinking that I need to improve how civilians act when they are hiding as at the moment they only hide very simply. I am thinking that civilians will think about their homes and possibly other civilians that live in the same place (family?) and how they may prioritize those. I would also like them to try and find a police officer or reach the police station.
If you have ideas about how you want civilians to react in the apocalypse let me know!
Thanks for playing!
Version 0.21.0 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got a UI update for you this week!
I've decided to give the UI an overhaul for readability and to improve it.
Here's how it looked before the update:
After:
Art and UI design isn't my strongest suit so I've been working on my skills over the recent years while also working on the game and hopefully the results speak for themselves.
I plan to do a few more changes before this is done, I'd like to split the zombie screen into a screen where you configure the virus and another where you choose how to distribute it.
Are there any other changes you'd like to see? Let me know!
I hope you enjoy the update!
Version 0.20.3 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got more Steam achievements and bug fixes for you this week!
One is another tutorial-type achievement which hopes to teach players about the placing of beacons to lure zombies to certain areas.
The other is the beginning of adding some achievements that are more crafted to show players the kind of outcomes a simulation can have, such as military wiping out all human life, infected or otherwise.
I also have fixed a crash bug this week where the game would crash after assigning civilians the cop role, changing them back to civilians and then starting the simulation.
Thanks for playing and see you next update!
Version 0.20.2 of DeadOS is now live!
Hi everyone!
Got a rather small update for you this week as I've been participating in a small game jam (you can check out the free finished game at https://ladyvignette.itch.io/gossip-at-terrestrial-high ) but now I'm back on DeadOS!
I've added something people have been requesting for a long time:
You can now press keyboard shortcuts to move and attack when in manual control mode! I have chosen the Num Pad keys 4,8,2,6 and 5 to attack but also bound them to IJKL and U for people without Num Pad keyboards.
I'm glad to be back on updating the game and will be giving you future content soon!
Have a good week and enjoy the game everyone!
Version 0.20.1 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got some more achievements added for you this week!
I've focused on adding achievements that aim to teach the player how to use the game first, with challenge achievements being added in future updates.
I've been considering the kind I want to add and whether or not I want to "gamify" the game and I think it could be fun to add some challenges for people to try, although it might be difficult to create challenges that people can't trivialise by changing some settings. Say if I had an achievement for killing all survivors with a single zombie infected, players could simply spawn 2 units, or disarm everyone to get the achievement.
I was considering setting up some premade scenarios for people to interact with for these kinds of challenges, but I'm curious to what the community thinks. Let me know if you're interested in these kinds of things!
Thanks and I hope you enjoy the update!
Version 0.20.0 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got something interesting for you this week!
I've started integrating achievements on Steam with DeadOS!
I've only added two achievements so far as I wanted to test the system actually worked when the patch was uploaded live to Steam but it appears it's all working so I'm going to be going on ahead and adding many more over the coming updates!
The two current achievements available are:
Establishing Battlefield Control Take manual control of a unit.
Now I Have a Machine Gun Arm yourself while manually controlling a civilian.
The aim of my achievements is to help users figure out the different ways they can interact with the simulation. Hopefully people will discover things they didn't know they could do!
I've got a list written down for achievements I plan to write, they are:
Commandeer a vehicle while in manual control mode. (this one can't be done yet)
Destroy the city using a nuke.
Create a simulation that runs for over an hour.
Call in military reinforcements.
Manually assign quarantine zones for the police.
Create your own custom city block.
Have the police station run out of ammo.
Have more than 30 zombies gathered at a user-placed beacon.
Eliminate all survivors after starting with a single infected unit.
Have the military wipe out every remaining unit, human or otherwise.
Connect to Twitch.
Have civilians survive an outbreak after the simulation has predicted the odds of failure at 99%
These may be changed or removed but you get the general idea!
Are there any more achievements you think the game should have? Let me know!
Thanks and I hope you enjoy the game!
Version 0.19.5 is now live!
Hi everyone! Got the first update of the new year for you!
To start us off into the new year I've decided to focus on updating the vehicles as at the moment they feel rather simple and are not living up to their potential.
One of the issues people were having is that cars would get stuck in this kind of deadlock and would block up traffic. I've limited the way traffic crosses at intersections so that these kind of deadlocks will no longer occur.
Another issue I've been seeing is that people would abandon their cars too quickly even when there was no outbreak yet.
The main reason for this was that people were blocking up traffic. I've changed this so people will no longer leave their vehicles after being stuck in traffic for a certain amount of time. I want to eventually put in a system where they try to get around it or turn back but that is for further down the road.
The main issue with turning off this system is that people would not abandon their vehicles in any situation so now I've put in a new system to replace this old one. People will now leave their vehicles when they discover a destroyed or abandoned vehicle in their path. (They also stop for dead bodies but that was already part of the old system).
What I want to do in future updates is to have a system where people drive cars during the zombie outbreak, at the moment they drive in a way that is normal and ignorant to the outbreak and they abandon their vehicle when they realize something is wrong or they panic and crash.
I'd like to put a system in where people will hunt for vehicles to try and escape the situation. I also want police to use them as squad cars to get to quarantine regions.
Thanks for playing and I hope you enjoy the update! Happy New Year!
Version 0.19.4 is now live!
Hi everyone!
Got a small update of tweaks and bug fixes for you before Christmas!
I've made some changes to how the Cop AI works. I was noticing that in the quarantine phase a lot of cops were becoming occupied on certain building layouts:
I've changed the rules of how quarantining works to help with this. There is now a maximum of 5 people blocking one side before the extras move in:
This should help them be more consistent across different building types and layouts, as well as giving the cops a small advantage when trying to contain the threat.
I also have some bug fixes:
Fixed a bug where cops that were in the police station were standing still and not moving when they were out of ammo and there were zombies in the police station.
Fixed a bug where people who were leaving buildings would keep doing that same command even after the simulation was reset, in worst cases this would cause all the cops to leave their buildings when a sim was reset.
I'm going to be taking a little break for Christmas vacation so there won't be some updates for a few weeks but after that I'll be ready to crack on with more features for the game! I hope you all have a good holiday season and I'll see you in future updates!
Version 0.19.3 is now live!
Hi everyone!
I have a rather small update for you this week but it took a lot of behind the scenes work to get working.
I've refactored the code cops, military and civilians use when trying to find their way to buildings.
I recently changed this in a previous build but was not happy with it still and it took a few days of solid effort to really get it right.
There are now 2 ways that people make their way to places, either using Casual or Urgent pathfinding.
Casual walkers use the sidewalks and cross the streets like a normal civilian should. This is used by police pre-quarantine and by civilians commuting to work.
Urgent will ignore these things. They are aware they are in an emergency scenario and will make a beeline to the correct area running down streets, as well as being willing to break windows to get to their location.
Police will use Urgent pathfinding when the police station is under threat and withdrawing to the station. Military also use Urgent pathfinding.
Before this update each type of situation had it's own code, which was turning into a mess. Hopefully using this new system I can quickly add new features such as Civilians urgently retreating to their homes etc.
Thanks everyone and I hope you are enjoying the game!
Version 0.19.2 is now live!
Hi everyone! This week's update is a Zombie AI update!
It's been bothering me for a while since the stairs and verticality update that zombies have been incredibly slow at making their way up and down floors:
This problem gets to a point where the bottom floor is entirely filled with zombies and there aren't many at all on higher floors and it takes a long time for zombies to make their way up.
This update aims to fix this issue by giving zombies some wandering code that causes them to wander a little more around the buildings than before. They will also be able to more easily find their way out of buildings as well.
I would like to add a "zombie intelligence" or "zombie senses" stat at some point so that players can control how easily zombies can track down humans hiding in spots in future updates.
Also I've fixed a bug where cops were giving civilians an extra movement turn when trying to evacuate them, causing them to double move.
