What you would add/fix in PZ

NPCs IN PZ

As well as NPCs going about their own thing, you can now access a context sensitive radial menu by clicking on an NPC, where you will be able to ask them to join forces with you, give them orders if they are in your team, or ultimately trade with them or whatever else you may want to do!

NPCs will still make their own decisions, so make sure you make friends with loyal survivors otherwise they could leave you in the lurch when things get hairy. (2011)

As such it was decided that a new approach was needed, and that being that there would be no distinction between players and survivors. NPCs would literally be players that had AI brains controlling their movement through the same mechanisms the player controls them, and with added code that allowed them to despawn into the meta-game and reassemble into flesh and blood as they approached an actual human controlled player. [July 2014]

Group interactions use an entirely different system built based on inspiration from Crusader Kings 2, and use xml driven event chains to describe story beats in kind of mini-plots that will be stitched together.”

“Currently I’m writing an event chain for when a group walks toward an NPC safehouse. What happens if a patrolling guard spots you? What happens if a guard at a window sees you? What happens if you get spotted while trying to jimmy a window on the safehouse? What happens if you’re spotted inside the safehouse?”

“Each of these events will lead to their own consequences, which are branching events based on the personalities of the people both in the safehouse, and the people approaching the safehouse. From a stand-off with shotguns to begging for help to deal with raiders – there will be all manner of outcomes based on numerous factors. The whole idea is to build whole metric ton of different branching possibilities for single events, so that they can play out in dramatically different ways.

We’re going to have all these little ‘storylets ‘ that branch in numerous ways, and when pieced together we hope they’ll make for a Walking Dead story-like experience that’s different each time.”

[Caveat: without actual game wide plot arcs, as considered and discussed and written by a team of writers, our results are unlikely to be as narratively sound and tight as a TV show story or purposefully written main quest game story. However, we hope for enough variation that it feels like a unique story each time.]

-March 30 2015

I know waiting for NPCs is hard. I know they keep getting pushed back, seem vapourware at this point, and trust me I want NPCs out there more than any single one of you, by a factor of like 10000000. It only makes me want to weep with sympathy imagining what GRR Martin is going through with the sheer monstrous scale of pressure on his shoulders compared to ours. We can't go 1.0 until NPCs are in.

The truth of it is that the NPC system we're building now is the NPCs we talked about in the really early days. We gave an example in really early interviews of a clumsy kid in your survivor group who keeps leaving doors open and making noise, and you finally choosing to take him out and put a bullet in his head, go back to the safehouse and claim they were got by zombies. Dark moral choices, deceit and safehouse politics. That in a nutshell described our vision for the NPCs - May 2015

1. unknown corpses should be treated like landmines, they can spring to life or snatch at passer-byes
   
   
2. kid zombies - this is so essential I wonder if their omission was a design choice - since Romero's NoTLD kid zombie have been a core motif. Scary and darkly funny at the same time.
   
   
3. zombies should be found eating corpses - like flocks of vultures roaming the city - sometimes those corpses should re-animate mid-meal.
   
   
4. some zombies should have random missing limbs: one-armed, hopping, crawling, limb-less (Steph also thinks should we able to cut off your own limbs to spot the spread of infection). More Amputees in PZ (like Pappy!)
   
   
5. 'Friendly' zombies who just stare or follow you at a distance you (perhaps they even begin to copy your actions).
   
   
   
6. Zombies doing stereotypical motions - delivering mail, crossing-guards, walking dogs, taking the garbage out, lying in bed watching tv, many on their smart phones,....
   
   
7. ....cop-zombies slowly, blindly firing off your gun over a few hours. Maybe some military-types with assault rifles, dragging in their hands, occasionally discharging - the idea is zombies as bullet-firing trap.
   
   
8. ...employee-zombie in service industry uniforms - this would make locations more distinctive. And one zombie in a full mascot costume....
   
   
9. ...zombie family (complete with kids), Romero puts family dysfunction at the heart of his films (incest, killing and eating parents, intolerant male egos) so having zombie families is a must. Houses should be puzzles that tell how the infection spread from member to member.
   
   
10. Fatally infected NPCs. They don't move; there is no way to save them from dieing and turning zombie. Yet here they are in front of you..... Do you kill them or use resources to give them palliative care (and then kill them)? [Code 20 different personality-scripts goinh through the five stages of death acceptance (denial,bargaining,grief,rage,acceptance). Occasional roll to see if NPC reaches a new stage roll to see if they repeat the previous stage or advance. This roll can be influenced by good care. Have scripts range from nasty to saintly. Perhaps have an NPC switch scripts if effected by drugs or illness or severe pain (into a Delirium Script or a Drugged Out one).]
    

It took quite some work to run all the equipment from town to this place. Right now I don't even have to leave my safehouse anymore. Since I farm on cycles I always have food when I need it. And as you can see water isn't scarce either. Some of those crates are filled with non-perishable food in case something happens to my plants. I went on a few runs into town to loot supermarkets and probably have enough chocolate, chips, canned food and orange soda to last me through a year. The game turned from a zombie survival sim into a agriculture simulator for me.