Everyone remembers Zafehouse, don’t they? The free zombie survival horror simulator I coded in seven days? Well, turns out it was by far the most popular of the three titles that came out of the Game A Week feature, and there were plenty of people who submitted fixes and tweaks. I found myself with some spare time on the weekend, and decided to put together a version 1.5, incorporating the feedback I’d had on the game.

Originally, I just wanted to streamline encounters by removing the “next round” button and having things tick over automatically. But then I got another idea, and then another, and soon I found myself with a big list of changes, improvements and bug fixes.

I’ve included a complete rundown after the jump, but here’s a summary if you can’t wait:

* Buildings produce more resources, while raiding brings in less.
* Encounters streamlined, instant resolution button
* Zombie numbers increased.
* More shortcut keys.
* New scoring formula.
* New perk, and original perks improved.
* New building, the Church, which produces survivors.
* GUI improvements
* Numerous bug fixes (no more whipping from inside buildings)

Download and enjoy!

Download Zafehouse v1.5 binaries.
Download Zafehouse v1.5 VB .NET source code.

Zafehouse V1.5

-Major patch: Game more difficult, buildings are a lot more important, raiding made more reliable, encounters are faster, game is shorter, mass attack added to end-game, more shortcuts, score more consistent, House is now Church and produces survivors, new perk “Home advantage”.

-Encounters now tick their events automatically. Next round button changed to instant resolution button

-Fortification levels of buildings shown with #s on the building GUI

-Pressing “0″ unloads ammo from weapon of selected survivor

-Pressing “Shift” quick equips – selects best weapon and gives it to selected survivor

-Pressing “Ctrl” quick removes weapon from selected survivor

-Changed raid chances (1-70, 71-90, 91-100) (70%, 20%, 10%). This should result in raiders getting what they want a lot more often

-Changed raid priorities (ammo & supplies, water & medicine) to provide better synergy

-Increased the amount of zombies encountered outside during the night by 50-100%

-Increased the amount of zombies encountered during a raid by 33%

-Chance to be attacked outside during the night changed from ZMI to fixed 45% chance

-ZombieMassMinimum variable added, increased minimum ZombieMass from 12 to 16

-Reduced number of hours from 72 to 60.

-New scoring formula:
50 per survivor, 100 per building, 2 per survivor hour, 1 per zombie killed
-25 per survivor killed, -35 per survivor turned, -5 per alive survivor infected
If a survivor is turned, they are removed from the survivor killed count
If the game is lost, all survivors still alive are added to survivors lost instead

-Added zombie mass attack during final hour. ZombieParty for outside attack determined by the number of buildings held. More buildings equals less zombies.

-Edited some descriptive text for Attacked_Outside and fixed a typo with the Attacked_Outside resolution text

-Most building resource counts have been increased, and in most cases doubled: Factory from 3 to 5 ammo, warehouse from 3 to 5 supplies and store from 2 to 4 water. Hospital remains at 2 med kits. This should make them more attractive to hold. Subsequently, resources from raiding have been reduced: Supplies from 12 to 8, ammo from 12 to 4, water from 10 to 4 and meds from 3 to 1.

-Added RaidBonus_x and BuildingBonus_x variables. All resource bonuses are controlled from Game.vb

-Raid weights changed: weapons > people, ammo = supplies, water > meds

-Starting resources reduced: Water from 22 to 16, supplies from 10 to 5

-Bite chance increased from 50 to 60 percent

-Grizzled perk bite chance reduction increased from 5 to 10%, Sharp Eye percent bonus increased from 1 to 2%

-Fixed a bug that would report infected survivors incorrectly during Win/Lose screen

-Survivors wielding weapons with no ammo now have the same chance to be bitten as a survivor with a melee weapon (50%)

-Added Special bonuses (disabled for now):
Secure all buildings – gain +1 production to water, ammo, supplies or meds at random

-Survivors gain perks at levels 8, 16 and 24, down from 9, 18 and 27.

-Player starts with one additional survivor, armed with a bat

-House renamed Church, attracts one survivor every other turn

-Help/main menu screen resized

-Added new level 3 perk: “Home advantage”. Reduces the number of zombies during a building attack by 1, stacks

-Added more descriptive barricade info during combat

Game A Week 2 is done. Done I say! Zafehouse is ready to be played by all.

As I said earlier in the week, this thing almost killed me. I had an idea that just exploded. I think the end result is quite awesome. Zafehouse has strategy, survival horror and, best of all, zombies. I love shufflers, I just love them to death, and I’m glad I got to put them into a completed game.

I have yet more plans for a version 2, which I’ll release when it’s done. For now, I have to get started on Game A Week 3. If you’d like to check out Game A Week 1, Wizkill, hit up this post.

Hit the jump for a development breakdown, hints and tips and unimplemented features, or download the game and give it a spin.Update: If you’re running Vista, you’re ready to go. If you’re running Windows XP, or get the error “App failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135)”, you will need to download the .NET Framework 2.0.

Update 2: Small bug with the raiding code’s been fixed. Please download the game again to get the updated executable!

Update 3: New version, v1.2. Here’s the info:

-Clarified help rules on buildings and resources
-Reduced the amount of meds found in a raid from 4 to 3
-Fixed the “Hours since.”.. label on the GUI so its value is never hidden
-Pressing “~” while a person is selected will heal them

Zafehouse began as a random name generator. I wanted to make something different to Wizkill, which involved one character (you), into a strategy game that had many. They needed a little personality, so I started by entering about 100 first names and 50 last names into two arrays.

Zombies had to be in there as well. I’m a fan of games that demand you manage tight resources and make important decisions on a minute-by-minute basis, and these concepts turned into the idea of holding off a bunch of zombies for days on end until help arrives.

Coding began mostly with the interface. A good UI was very important. Players would need to be able to assess resources at a glance, assign weapons and ammunition easily, and move survivors around quickly. I tinkered with about ten different designs, until I came up with the one in the picture above. The graphical resource counters were added last night.

About a day into the proceedings, I realised 120 days was too much. I reduced it to 72, which gives a good balance of longevity, and allows the gamplay to “develop”. Shortly after this change was made, I found I didn’t like the idea of days, as the intensity wasn’t there. So I changed it to hours.

The game is turn-based, with the actions of each hour affecting the encounters you have. I made a risky moving forcing the player to watch the results of their planning rather than being able to directly affect combat and raiding. It puts more weight on making good decisions beforehand, and makes your mouse hover over the “Advance one hour” button in tense contemplation.

Gameplay involves raiding for supplies, securing buildings for cover and resource bonuses and allocating weapons, barricades and ammo in an intelligent fashion. It seems basic at face value, but as the game progresses you’ll find yourself keeping careful check of who has your only shotgun, or if David has enough ammo to last the hour.

The amount of zombies you encounter and the chances of encountering them is determined by something I like to call the “Zombie Mass Index”. The ZMI is increased by two every hour, and reduced by one every time you win a fight. This way it regulates itself, and puts pressure on the player to be offensive. Sure, you can hold up in the House with two guys, but eventually you’ll have 50 zombies banging at your door.

A late addition was the “promotion” system. I wanted to give the player more control, and make them assign importance to some survivors over others. So, for every 9, 18 and 27 hours a survivor lives, they can take a bonus, such as more damage or lower ammo usage.

I almost put in a “goal” system, but the promotion system overtook it. Essentially it would let you trade resources for permanent bonuses, such as a few hours off your rescue time and higher resource generation from certain buildings.

Some other features that didn’t go in due to time were grenades, reclaiming weapons, a morale mechanic and zombie culling as a raid priority. While these would enhance the game, it’s very fun and playable without them. If I could implement one right now into the version here, it’d be zombie culling, as it gives you more control over events in the planning stage.

If you’re having trouble surviving, try only to hold onto one or two buildings during the day, focusing on those that give you resources you’re in need of. At night, don’t spread yourself out if you don’t have to. I’ve found the Mansion and the Warehouse are a good choice, as the former can hold six people (more guns means more downed zombies) and the Warehouse (a constant stream of supplies during the night means you can reinforce your buildings).

Again, if you want the source, drop me an email. Otherwise, give it a go and post your scores!

Don’t forget to check out Wizkill, the game from week 1, and make suggestions for other games I can make.

I’d say I’m about 15% done at this point, so a lot of work to do before Friday.

Start thinking of game ideas guys! I still have a few ones I’d like to try, but I’m keen to see what you can come up with. Remember – seven days of development time only!

Update: I didn’t even notice the game’s random name generator had spat out “John Romero” for this particular run-through. To put this in perspective, there’s a 1 in 4418 chance of this happening.