Zombify

The nature has made You the perfect killing machine. You are brutal!
You are emotionless! You are a beast of the night! And You never say
‘no’ to a delicious dish of bloodwarm fresh brain with some bloody
whipped … bloody… blood… yes.
So what are You waiting for? Go forth and zombify!

This is my little (side) project, that I took up in order to have some change and alternation from the projects I’ve been doing sofar. Unfortunately, it has been sitting, without a change, for more a week now, so in order not to die I thought it would be a nice idea to just present the current state and maybe gain some motivation from the community :slight_smile:

The game itself is akin of a god simulator. The player has a minimal but never the less important input in the game. If You like watching an ant farm or forget Yourself looking at a burning candle, You might like it. All else, well, it might not be so interesting.

Basicly a few consuming and viral units (also known as zomibes) are let upon the population and the effect is studied and observed. You are the zombies. Each day Your little minions slaughter, have fun and bring You consumable and upgradable units (also known as brains) for which You can better Your odds against the population or whatnot. Each day, however, the population also learns a trick or something of the kind to make em better in surviving this madness.

This is largely an alpha version and work in progress. For one, as one can see, the upgrade screen is quite empty. There are still some(or lots) stuff to implement, including any sounds. It’s also not balanced, for that matter there might occur a population boom that can get taxing on the pc. It doesn’t actually have an official name, hence no game logo on the initial screen. :stuck_out_tongue: Zombify is how I call the project.

Here is the webstart : http://www.planc.ee/m1sterx/zombify/
Edit: Just updated the link to an applet version, the webstart is no more. The applet uses jwjgl applet. One day I’ll be rish and famous and then I’ll get a cert to sign all my stuff.

For the controls only mouse is used. Since it’s more of a “dev” build than a “release” build, “ESC” quits the game and closes the window. I left in the FPS display, in case You step on a exponential population boom, so You could tell me the frame rate on higher population count. For me, a population amount of 50k gives a fps of 40~50.

It’s built with modified GTGE (so full java2d)
Uses java6 (shouldn’t be a problem to downgrade to 5)
The jars are selfsigned and drop a log file in the location of ${user_home}/zombify. If this is a problem, I can remove the logging completely.
Edit: Jars are unsigned and log is directed to the java console. You don’t have to trust me anymore :slight_smile:

NB: The humor in the game, is not to be offencive. More like just dark and sarcastic and in the key of the game.

And here are some screenies:

Well, I was quickly brought to 0% conversion chance, so my zombies started dying one after another until I eventually lost, before even getting my first upgrade choice…

That’s what happens, when You release Your game at 2am

It seems, I’ve left in debug values, for one they day is over too soon :frowning:

I apologize, I will update in the evening.

That is embarrassing.

If you remove the need for me to trust you, I’ll give it a go. :slight_smile:
(Sorry to be of so much trouble, I just can’t be bothered at the moment)

  • Scarzzurs

Sure, I’ll try during the weekend.

For now I uploaded a new version, so the days are now with the correct lenght and the zombie kids have time to harverst some brains.

Yes, it’s playable now. I did think the days were a little bit too short… xD
Anyway, all the daily changes just draw as runnerescape.effect.textid etc, that’s a small bug…

Aww, yep, some texts still need … well, texts. Uploaded an unsigned version.

so I launched and played and killed all the people

Am I the zombies or the people?
What exactly do I do aside from choosing 1 of 3 upgrade paths(consume brain) things?

I was down to 50 people left on 4th day and then it jumped up to 3000 people ? (population growth?)

end of 5th day, I maxed out all 3 upgrade paths.

end of 6th day, 0 people left,

start of 7th day some weird message about rotting zombies, but zombie count still going up
a few people popped up, but all died before noon
Sat around for 12 hours doing nothing?

On day 8 now, small population boost, all dead by 6am. I am wondering is there an end to the game? or is it perpetual going? going to quit now

I think the game has some potential, just need to add a lot more

Thank You for trying!

I agree, it needs work. It is the first(well around so) public build. There are some things that have yet to be added.

Currently the end conditions are “all population (including heros) are dead” or “all zombies are dead”, You are the zombies :stuck_out_tongue: Well kinda …

Population growth is affected by the total current population and the number of heros/champions on the field. There are a few day-end effects, that cause a population boom.

The game is designed as zombie survival. You start out with overwhelming odds (70% to convert peons to a zomby, 20% to outright kill them)
and then the game trys (with random effects, overpowered heros and population growth) to screw You over, as much as it can. Your action in the game are limited to consuming brains and trying to either counter-act the effects or to tip the balance in Your favour, once again.

But the balance needs quite some work yet :confused:

Aight, got to try it now. Here are some comments:

First of all, this is hardly a game as is. Unless I’m getting this wrong, you can only interact between rounds?
(And right now you only have 3 options that hardly makes any difference nor are balanced)
I won the game after a couple of rounds, but it really felt more like watching a procedurally generated movie then anything else.

Right so that aside, I think the simulation part seemed to have some interesting logic underneath the hood, but it wasn’t displayed to me.
The simulation seems quite too large for my likings with far too little emphases on the individual zombie / person.
The simulation logic also seems unbalanced in nature. If you are winning, the game becomes easier?

My project Hydro Hydra (2nd Dive) suffers from some of the same issues (simulation vs. game),
so I know how hard it can be to make this type of game work XD

All in all, it seems like an interesting project, but it’s far from being a game. Hope to see it updated :slight_smile:

  • Scarzzurs

Is there an end in the game? Because population was down to zero and on the next day i got 50 new inhabitants. Where did they come from, clone chambers? :wink:

Well, not really, You had 2 heros running around, killing them will end the madness, unless the game finds a new random effect, to screw Your win.

:’( my screen is not big enough to show the buttons to play … al I can do is look at the pretty menu screen

Ou …

Ehm, shouldn’t be a problem to make the window smaller and to put the resolution selector in the options.
Will see what I can do.