Battle to the (un)death

If you've been watching, I posted an announcement to the announcement board a week ago describing the changes made this cycle.  I've spent the remainder working on cosmetic changes, laying out the groundwork for the next cycle, and working a bit on the user profiles (which still need a lot of work.  Also, disregard the pony.).  So if you didn't already know, this cycle was primarily about the battler, and secondarily about a couple small horde updates that I didn't get to in the last cycle.

The horde updates numbered two.  One was the ability to transfer the owner of said horde.  It's free and it's the only way the owner of a horde can leave said horde.  The idea just popped into my head of allowing the leader of a horde to leave without relinquishing command...but Ill cross that bridge when I decide to go down that path.  If I do.  Anyway, the second update was the scripted creation of a new horde.  It's also free (though as beta approaches it's going to cost some in-game funds.  Probably brains and/or bunch of cash, we'll see), and gets you your own subforum and horde.  It all should work fine, I tested it out a few times and nothing was amiss.  I debated doing it manually (that is, a user requests a new horde and me or another admin actually creates it), but decided that a scripted was is better in the long run.  Besides, it's just a bunch of database inserts...so why bother doing it manually?

And now, the battler.  This update focused on a facelift, revamp, and addition of weapons and armor. 

The revamp of the battler focused on a battle simulator.  This probably isn't coded in the best way...but for the time being it's the exact same as the battler.  You put in the name, level, and other stats of each player and you can see how the battle turns out.  It's basically what it sounds like.  This can serve as a springboard for future changes to the battler, and allow a place to test changes without screwing with the battler in the alpha/beta.

The facelift of the battler was, also, what it sounds like.  Text is a bit bigger, the winning conditions don't look so small and silly, and everything is, in general, bigger, brighter, and better.  I'm still open to suggestions, but I think it's way better than it was, despite not looking much different.

And last, but not least, weapons and armor.  In a nutshell, they work in battles now.  If you've been battling similar-stat players, you've noticed "zombie rage", which increases your attack power by one each round you attempt to attack until you do damage > 0.  This is calculated AFTER your weapon and armor is calculated.  So if you did 5 damage now, and your opponent attaches a 20 armor and you attach a 15 weapon, you'll zombie rage for roughly one round until you do one damage.  This way makes sense to me, so we'll see how it goes.

The next update should be fun, and much easier for me to code than the previous ... three cycles.  Minions!  Little mindless zombies for you to train, fight with other mindless zombies, and use to battle other (less mindless?) zombies in your quest for supremacy.  Should be fun.

Hordes of you, the undead

Today I released the horde update, which as awesome as it is it's still underwhelming for you, the player.  Can't make hordes yet and can't transfer ownership of the currently-existent hordes, but that's first up on my plate for the next round of updates.

Updates which are coming to a close here very soon.  I'm tentatively planning on the game being out of alpha and into open beta on February 7, 2011.  That's two weeks later than I initially envisioned, and a month and a half later than I'd have liked.  But I'd rather give myself enough time to polish and fix bugs and make things not look shoddily done than to have it out sooner but look bad.

So what's next?  Well, this is sort of a slower development period which will allow me to finish up a few things that I've been meaning to finish and get ahead of myself.  This time, I'm going to finish up the things I missed in the horde update, and a big battler revamp.  New formula, new look, and weapons and armor included in the battle calculation.

I'm not sure if the zombie rage is going to apply before or after the weapons do.  if it's before, you'll go a few less rounds before doing bits of damage.  If it's after you'll continue to do more damage as you do damage.  I'm also making a simulator to aid the alpha tester (s?) in tightening down the battler.

Then, if there's time, I'll get started in minions.

You have ... stuff!

So last night I rolled out the latest changes to Zombies At War.  This time it was items.  Food items, weapons, armor, and a system to expand upon that as the game dictates.  It took me a bit longer than I anticipated, and the switching of jobs in the real world didn't help that along any.  However, the next bit of code and next upgrades should happen much quicker as time goes on.

The way it is RIGHT NOW, items work.  At least, the ones you can buy work.  You can eat 10 foods a day and purchase as many as you want (might consider limiting it if I run low on DB space, but for now I don't see a reason to limit).  Foods per day resets at the daily reset (just checked to make sure as I broke the reset earlier for a few hours).

Weapons and armor can be purchased and used, but cannot be sold and have no effect in battle.  I'm planning a revamp of the battler and are PLANNING on putting in weapons/armor functionality then ... but that may change and I may enable weapons and armor sooner rather than later.

Speaking of sooner, this brings me to the next upgrade - hordes!  The next big upgrade to Zombies At War will be Hordes.  Think a guild in RPG parlance.  Same idea, different name, my implementation.  I haven't planned out the sprint yet, but once I do I'll be able to see if it's something that's doable in two weeks or if it'll take longer.  Here's to hoping it doesn't take two weeks and i can work on other things, too.

Thanks for playing, see you all in two weeks!

Hello, World!

So I was a touch late with this release, and I didn't complete all of the tasks I set for myself. Namely, the ability to ban users, cleaning up of some of the forum links, and more work on horde-specific forums. All of that is ok, though, because i can just put them in future updates in their own separate box.

This next update is going to be an item system, complete with food, weapons, and junk. It's the first real gameplay update I've implemented in some time (a long time, actually) and should pave the way for lots of things in the future as the game sees fit.

In this update, however, I did a good number of things. Primarily to the forum and notification system. Notifications will now show up in your lair screen, and (right now) show up for being attacked by someone else (if you win or lose), when you level, when you add or remove items from the market, when someone buys something from you from the market, and when you watch or unwatch a thread. I didn't get to actually notifying you of new posts to watched threads, but the core is there so it won't be a big deal to implement the rest of it. We'll see if I have time this iteration for such an update, but it is coming.

Forums have been revamped a bit, too. Threads with over 15 posts will be split into multiple pages, with 15 posts per page. This may change as time goes on, and for some reason if the # of posts per page is 10, page 2 has a weird tab in it. This doesn't seem to show up for 15 posts per page, but we'll cross the fixing bridge when we come to it.

Also, and this is important to me, I implemented new forums. Instead of the four before, there are now more, and in a new arrangement. Announcements go up top, then General chat, off topic, and a few other new forums that cater to more specific thread types.

As with each update and each line of code I write, new ideas come to mind that have to get put on the back burner until their due time. I still welcome suggestions and still give out prizes for finding bugs. Right now I think I have one active player. If things go right, the game should be much more playable by Christmas. I have this iteration and two more until Christmas (when I'll probably take off for two weeks and rest). I still have minions and hordes to implement, as well as a slew of cosmetic changes and little fixes.

Updates are on Tuesday, and I'll post again then.