Zombien WIP Beta - Now with chapter 3

Finished reading the second chapter and I liked it more than the first.
You could however improve some stuff like adding a choice to ask questions from the other survivors and lead to some character development.
Also you could go watch something like The Strain as it has something similiar to controlled zombies which could help you out with the Aliens theme.
And Yeah, the next chapter looks like it will be fun xP
Although I think it seems abit weird to start like other zombie themed games to turn to Aliens … although I cant really judge that till the next chapter ;p

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Found a few bugs after choosing to head to the city.

When I went to the police station, let the people in, then chose to sleep with Sarah, got this error:
chapter2 line 358: Non-existent variable ‘sarah_like’

Went to the amusement park in the city, failed to rescue Jacob’s friends. Chose to take the bikes and it suddenly took me to what I can only assume is the path for choosing to leave the city back when you first meet Sarah.

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xD I was just about to post the police station error myself … looks like you beat me to it. The error makes you get stuck and have to restart to play again aswell.

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Her’es what I found when I went to the woods.

Choosing to stay at the store gives this error:

chapter2 line 1302: Invalid expression at chat 22, expected closing parenthesis, was: BOOLEAN_OPERATOR [and]

It might be good to have a bit of a description for Moira.

Also, maybe I missed it, but it seems like if you get on Moira’s boat then get off at the pier you head back into the going to the city to find out what the heck is going on path without ever having gotten any motivation to find out what is going on.

I chose to stay at Moira’s house and got this error:

chapter2 line 1789: bad label castle 8b

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Many many thanks for all the helpful feedback. I think (crosses fingers) I got everything the two of you mentioned. Please let me know if you find anything else. And I will go and work out the character development, especially on the castle chain. I already knew it was a little weak. Most of the problems are caused by the fact that going into the woods or into the city lead to different text files. When I didn’t like the way the Moira chain was going I decided to merge them so I could push back to the island. So far it’s been like trying to cram two sandwiches together and having all the filling fall out… I will work on it.

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Laziness is making me wary. What is in place now is the first developed characters are Simon and Rachel. Who you don’t meet in chapter 2 sadly. Then when/if you are reunited with the friends you made when you get to chapter 4 their characters are fleshed out, and drastically altering the relationships becomes possible. If I develop too much in chapter 2 I will have a phenomenal amount of chapter 4 rewrite to do… Is it worth it?

Just finished playing one route (will try different ways, of course), and I like it. I personally like gore and silliness, and looking past the inevitable little typos (I’m a nitpicker) this does seem like an interesting addition to the zombie-genre. The chat with Sarah in the car was fun, hoping to see similar stuff with the other characters, too. Keep up the good work! :smile:

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Thanks for the praise. I promise once I re-release as beta in a week-ish you can nit pick as much as you like. I will be adding basic get to know you’s with the other npc’s soon, but sadly I decided to keep most of the development in chapter 4. It makes more sense then anyway. And hopefully will to others once I am not the only one who has read it :stuck_out_tongue:

Do you have any plans to add an option for people who’re attracted to both males and females? Also, I think it’s a good idea to make the paragraphs a little longer; one sentence paragraphs are a little hard on the eyes. xD

I’m sorry. I think a bisexual option will have to be something will have to be something I look at it for my next book. Not that I have any issues writing it, but it is currently a boolean value. I am trying to get the story done before the end of the month and adding more complexity especially at such an early stage would set me back too far at this point. I am trying to make the story as interactive as possible, but I have done this by increasing the players potential level of story impact in each chapter. As an example chapter 1 is a relatively linear story which mostly attempts to create the illusion of choice, and comes out at about 5000 words. Chapter 2 introduces a few ways to turn to the story to your own personal preferences and is 25000 words despite not being a great deal longer in terms of what will be seen in a single play through. This is a trend that continues in later chapters, and I can’t realistically add any more variables without pushing it back to a 2015 completion. No matter how many nights sleep I don’t get.

I am aware people have come to expect a certain level of flexibility from COG games, and if I was starting the story with what I know now I would likely have included more. But alas I have lived and learned, and wow this turned into a ramble (sorry)

But I will take on board the paragraph alterations. I was planning on looking at them and the page sizes before I release as beta next week.

Peeked at your code, because if the variable(s) in question were boolean (true/false) that’s a simple fix. But it’s actually a string (orientation = “male”) with more strings as pronouns for the genderflipping neighbor.

Booleans make things less buggy in general (as CJW has explained a few times). And incidentally, they can also lend themselves to less typing… instead of

*if met_sarah = true or *if met_sarah = false you can just write

*if met_sarah or *if not(met_sarah) for the same effect.

My own game uses two booleans for orientation: malepref and femalepref (created here, set here and here – search “set malepref” in the latter two files to find the relevant line). Their value is set not in an up-front char-gen question, but when you meet two potential romantic interests. If both are true, the MC is bi. Search “if malepref” to see some of the ways the boolean affects the code.

If you did care about including a bisexual option in your current game, as far as I can see it wouldn’t require much editing – you’ve only used orientation in a couple of places. Just replace the variable “orientation” with two booleans; add a choice to like getting sticky paws on e.g. “Anybody,” in which both booleans are set to true; and change the bits with Sarah from “if orientation = female” to e.g. “if femalepref”.

As for your sexy zombie neighbor, you could either have them default to be e.g. male if you’re bi, or slip in a choice when you’re about to meet them for bi MCs:

*if femalepref and malepref My neighbor is... *choice #...a hot guy. #...a hot girl.

Just a thought.

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Wow thanks for the many helpful hints. When I replied to your first post this morning I was pretty fried, having been playing with the seemingly never ending possible relationship choices in chapter 4 what was left of my functioning brain cells cried out “No more variables!” On the other side of 8 hours sleep, and now able to remember what a boolean is without an image of a demon coming to drag me to hell blocking it out I will take another look at your suggestions.

Also many thanks for sharing your text files. I am still groping blindly in the land of choicescript and will be sure to add you to my thanks list. Even if it is now slightly longer than the main story ;p

Am uploading what seemed to be the simplest way of adding bisexuality to the game, have only updated chapter 2 so far. It seemed to work for both Sarah and Jacob. If someone could try and find somewhere it doesn’t work before I carry it over that would be great. :smile:

Oh yes, almost forgot. Anyone have any thoughts on the Zombien icon I added to the top? I am aware that I have the artistic talent of a dead calculator. So I am aiming for… “It’s ok, didn’t really notice it” rather than “Dear god, don’t let your 3 year old do your art next time.”

Kinda generic, but not terrible. It just sort of makes me think of zombies. Could be for any zombie game. Maybe change the Z to something darker?

Darker colour? Or darker image than just a spray painted Z? I did originally plan to have a city with glowing eyes coming out, and a spaceship hovering… but then I remembered I can’t draw and it would look like crap…

Sorry, I was suggesting that you make the Z a darker color.

Hey just to keep people updated. I will be releasing the beta version of Zombien in a couple of days. Still just the first two chapters on here I am afraid. I will be looking for a few people to beta test the whole story though. If you are interested please send me a private message, and I’ll add you to the list. I already have a fair number of volunteers, but would appreciate the input of people who don’t know me and aren’t concerned that I might never speak to them again if they don’t like it :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks to all the people who volunteered to Beta test. I think that’s probably enough as I already have more than I originally intended. I am still grinding through the many crossover points in chapter 4, but I hope to be releasing before the end of the week. Also don’t panic chapters 5 and 6 are pretty much ready. I left 4 till last because it’s by far the most complicated and I wanted to put it off as long as possible…

Well this is quite an interesting story truly, but I’m afraid I have to report a fault. Something about an invalid string in line 997 with the mistake open quote with no close quote: "both))