Feedback on 1.04

[Bunnymunch]

On a purely realistic viewpoint, letting infected(???) people/things/etc that can kill you inside hand to hand range is just stupid.

That's not how the rot is passed on.

[piotrr]

The good, the great and the very entertaining:
- Love the projectile system, very clear where the bullet goes and hits. Could use feedback like that for melée weapons as well.
- The Search system. Mmmh, aaah, loot!
- The detail work. I understand now that the apparent lack of detail is a necessary companion to the search system. But everything else is there: Couches, washing machines, clothes on the floor, fruit crates, everything you'd expect in a small town like Piety. It's really no less detailed than X-Com, and X-Com is good enough for gods.
- The number of items I've seen so far. Very impressive.
- Zombies are oddly put together, with really peculiar animations, which is exactly how zombies should be. Breaking them apart is very satisfying, though they can be found in odd locations at times, such as on top of a safe, walking against a wall.
- The Loading Screen iPod Zombie. I laughed til I peed!

The ...improvables:
- Animations are part stiff, part jerky and there's no IK while walking, or interacting with objects.
-- Stiff: Upper and lower bodies are separately animated, aren't they?
-- Jerky: While watching the character from the side as he walks, his head makes miniscule forward-and-back motions once every 10 milliseconds or so, like he's flickering back and forth by 10 centimeters while in motion.
- Characters clip through static walls and doors. Not that I like doom-esque killer doors, but it doesn't look golden like this.
- Items recoil from you as you go near them, but easily bounce back and crush you. Like massive oak living room tables, or metal shelves. Maybe there's insufficient friction / force required to move objects, or maybe the character's walk is just too.. forceful.
- There's a sharp line between the near-lighting model and the far-lighting model. It's so sharp, in fact, that I think it looks like there is NO lighting beyond that point, but I'm sure there must be. Lighting distance is set to "full", after all.
- Wow, that main character really looks harrowed, but is the lack of self-shadowing and the yellow eyes really intentional?
- Could use some more ambient particles. The smoke is very nice and atmospheric, but how about some blowing leaves, newspapers, dust devils, dancing paper bags, flies (or wait.. those must be in already, right?), sparks from electrical equipment and glowing ash-motes from burnt-out buildings. Any sort of light shafts falling through windows would be nice too, even if they're just transparent polygons.

[piotrr]

Also the crowbar was added in case you do get stuck and need to lash out when ammo is low.

Oh yea, that wasn't in the first version I tried. Excellent addon. I almost feel like the real you really gave the real me a real crowbar in a real life-or-death real zombie situation.

[JeffersonSmit]

I played through the game twice. First time I didn't realize that there was a run mode between walking and sprinting.

It's a fun game. Personally I find it ending a bit too early. Just as I'm starting to get an operational base the game already ends with the final wave.

[erdrik]

Isn't that how it is suppose to be?
The game is about survival.
Once the base is operational and everything is good, then yer kinda outside the scope of the game. IMO.

[tkobo]

I would disagree.
Its not like
*you'd no longer need to gather resources to keep surviving after the wave
*that the wave consisted of every zombie out there
*that they arent other humans who could be found and added to your community
*that there wouldnt be other things you would want to find,salvage,and or build adding them to your base.
*etc..
All of which all survival oreinted.

The game strikes me as only chapter one,of a 40+ chapter book.To me also, it ends to soon.Id have rather gotten at least 5 chapters of the book ,with chapter 5 not ending,til chapter 6 was added.

Course, im happy to get chapter one,even if id have liked to get more.

[angrysquirrel]

I agree that it would be nice to continue the game after the "final' wave. Build more traps, get more survivors, make subsequent waves more difficult.

[Erinys]

We're definitely listening. More continuous/longer game, more chapters of the FZ universe to play out? Check.

--Arinn

[SIB]

In the journal it says Reily left his squad in the outskirts of piety or something like that, why?

[Erinys]

*chuckles* Sounds like a typo. The journal is supposed to say he left his "squat"--a temporary encampment, in particular one where you take shelter within the walls of someone's former home.

--Arinn

[SIB]

HAHA

And here i was thinking he drew the short straw and had to solo an entire city.

[Stromko]

We're definitely listening. More continuous/longer game, more chapters of the FZ universe to play out? Check.

--Arinn

That's good to hear. I'm not totally in love with FZ yet, but I have enjoyed my first five hours or so. It felt a bit like a Rogue-like, in that I died the first six times long before I learned how to get to the fortress, but once I mastered those skills it wasn't so bad.

Having a continuous mode or selectable game length sounds very good to me. I hope that FZ is doing well enough commercially to reward extra work and polishing being put into it.

I'm keeping this short and only listing the things I noticed that others haven't mentioned, just off the top of my head.

Likes-- Sandbox feel, challenging yet (mostly) fair.

Dislikes-- That monotonous background zombie-moan sound track that follows you everywhere and never varies in volume or frequency. It gets old pretty fast. I wish I could turn it down or off. It wouldn't be so bad if it varied in volume and frequency depending on how many zombies were chasing you perhaps, or how many were in proximity.

Everything else are things I can get used to, or things that should definitely change on their own when the game's farther along (like how every zombie says 'Mmm, brains', I'm thinking that's a debug comment so that the devs know when the zombies can see the player, and as a stand-in for zombie alert sound effects).

[PrinzMegaherz]

Given how much different voice acting found it's way into sots, i wonder why noone had the time to create a "brains" sound instead of those words popping up.

[Erinys]

SotS had six times the development time and twelve times the budget of Fort Zombie. Sorry to bring it down to brass tacks, but there are practical reasons that FZ is a discount title.

--Arinn

[tkobo]

Just to let you know, the game is farily well balanced for extended play right now.Im approaching day 30 of my current game, and faced 2 small zombie waves so far.
Im using the save game editor to keep adding days in lumps of 10.

The storage is good IF you load up the survivors, as well as the fort storage.
And despite requiring over 300+ food a day,its findable IF you scour the town each foray.
Mind you i have Benny the Rat with me,so that helps.

My fort is really starting to look like a fort.Im hoping to do a movie walkthru when i am at a really good looking and imperssive point,during a small zombie wave (so you can see the barricades all set up)

One odd thing is, you can apparently get two of the same survivor.i got this once so far,dont remember which one.One of the kids i think.