TinnedEpic

10/10, your my favourite dead person .

Banned for "Grrrr not again!"

lol true but meat does expire. So you can hunt a bunch of geese but their meat will only last you for bout a week or 2 at best. Not nearly enough to cover the course of winter. I like animals migrations, I couldn't find many in Kentucky however. I mean I know salmon do migrate upstream to spawn.... just don't think it happens in kentucky... So that's an inaccurate fictional part xD. Like when I say animals are in season you might see 1 animal a day, something like this. It's still unlikely you'll catch it. So when it's rare to see one it might be once or twice a week you see one. It's almost certain you wont see one in the inner town regardless.

I'll adjust it . I sorta wanna split up the animals so their not all in the same months however. Think of it like "they are most seen in these times", they are ofcourse still there just in that month their not often seen. I tried to time it with real life happenings in each animals lives. For example the squirrel is seen on spring and autumn because of it's mating season and acorn season. Deer I wasn't sure if they were migratory or not, I just went off an assumption. Rabbits I did forget and are a great idea, I'll add those immediately. Geese I know rest for a short time each year between flying to their breeding grounds, but they never stay in 1 place so they are like a seasonal opportunity to get more food. like fish, fish can be caught all season round but once a year during spawning they swarm is immense numbers which makes fishing an opportunity. Rabbits are good, I'll add them in there probably on par with squirrels in terms of meat -30 hunger. Reason I design the suggestion like this is to keep the player moving from one source to the next, to keep it fresh rather than routinizing the act of hunting where every animal is available in sufficient quantity through spring, summer, autumn. Same with plants, each plant blooms at a certain time each year, so the player is forced to move from one source to the next. This also helps the player keep track of what time of year it is, if acorns are falling and squirrels are more common the player knows that it's autumn and winter is on it's way, 3 months to go. When acorns stop dropping and berries stop producing, winter has arrived. Once the first lemon trees start blooming you can tell spring is on it's way, then when animals star becoming more common you know spring has arrived and you survived the long hard winter. I mean this very long term game-play xD but there are people who get there and this is just a nice way to help keep the game changing for them. Edit: Added Rats and Rabbits, Fixed Deer . Not sure how vultures would work in the game or if their even hunt-able, but corn sounds interesting. I'll leave it out though as I haven't really covered much on farming here.

Additionally on topic it's highly unlikely the house you spawn in is your house. I mean I spawned in a house with lipstick and skirts. Now unless my character is leading a secret life walking around in pubs.... as for hammers i've never really had trouble finding one. Axes on the other hand I can go an entire game without spotting a single one. I often have to resort to using sledgehammers to cut down trees.

10/10 you like dictatorships

^ Has been playing minecraft non-stop since 1.4 beta < currently dreading the 1.7 release. v Thinks Minecraft is kinda like lego?

Banned for always being the one I ban.

I'd hit that. Would you also hit that?

Mine

The basis of each character is that they are an average person, doing average things. So one would imagine that, like everyone else they had no idea this was coming.

So this is essentially 2 ideas in one, and fair warning it's pretty complex. Explanation: Increasingly, discussion has been going on about seasons and their major role in PZ. I've covered a minor topic before discussing the implementation of fruit trees which lead me to research the idea of Kentucky having a seasonal cycle of foods. I re-watching David Attenborough's "The opportunists" and how some animals are driven by a very strict seasonal cycle. Specifically coming to mind is the Grizzly Bear which spends it's entire life taking advantage of opportunities, following 1 big event after another until it's fat enough to survive winter. This is what my thread it about, a carefully defined seasonal cycle that makes available a whole succession of foods that a player can live off. So I spent some time tracking down foods that become available in different seasons in kentucky. However it's not nearly good enough to live off the land on a seasonal cycle, late autumn & winter brings with it extremely hard times with no food sources available. So Players need a way to preserve food, build stockpiles for winter. With luck a player will have stockpiled enough food to allow themselves to survive the coming winter. If not, they face starvation and will be forced to desperately scrounge food from a picked city or try find an NPC to raid food from. Seasonal Offerings As the seasons progress from spring to summer to autumn to winter an array of different foods could become available. A Succession of foods which not only drive you to exploit as many different food sources as possible, in many different ways, but will also bring other animals out to play. The best way to describe what I mean is to go through each of the individual seasons and describe which foods are avaliable and for how long. Spring - A time of plenty, spring has the largest quantity of food however only in the later months. This is kind of the season when plants are flourishing again and starting back up. Additionally this causes animals to return from the migrations south. So while plants are still flourishing, animals may be your source of food. What becomes available for eating? - Lemons - Squirrel - Snow Geese - Deer - Rabbits Rare but still available: - Fish - Snakes (Snakes not 100% active in the cooler weather) - Deer (Early Spring) - Rats* Summer - What becomes available for eating? - Apples - Oranges - Plums - Cherries - Fish - Snakes - Deer Rare but still available: - Lemons (if they bloom late) - Fish - Squirrels (population hindered by snakes) - Rabbits (population hindered by snakes) - Rats* Autumn - Autumn is the berry and fruit season. It's in autumn that plants finally shed themselves of their seeds and prepare for the hardships of winter. During this season wildlife is also stocking up for winter, this is the season of preparation where a lot of long lasting foods become available. However it's a good idea to grab it quickly because mid autumn these sources stop producing foods and then begins that hardest time of the year. What becomes available for eating? - Acorns - Apples - Berries - Squirrels - Rabbits - Deer Rare but still available: - Oranges (if they bloom late) - Plums (if they bloom late) - Cherries (if they bloom late) - Fish - Snakes (Snakes not 100% active in the cooler weather, many preparing for hibernation) - Deer (late Autumn) - Rats* Winter - Winter is the season of hardship, barely any foods are available. Some animals may remain, however they will be extremely rare. Every food bearing plant has now shed it's leaves and shut down for the winter, to prevent frost damage. During this time the players will just have to sit back and try ride it out on whatever food sources they have left, and make the most of any opportunity they come across. Really the entire year up till now has been preparation for this moment. Crops have an extreme amount of difficulty growing, thus if you don't wanna starve to death you had better stockpile as much food as possible. What becomes available for eating? - Fuck all.... Rare but still available: - Rabbits - Squirrels - Fish - Deer - Rats* Food Preservation Late Autumn, Winter and Early Spring are the hardest times to survive. Mainly because food is just starting to drop off the menu, no new foods become available and when they do start blooming again they won't be ready to eat for a while. In winter animals migrate further south to continue feeding in the normal means. What does this mean for players? That sustainable foods are no longer available and their gonna have to try survive with what they got. Of course it's not good having a stockpile of food if it's gonna go bad within 2 weeks or less. You need some way of preserving your supplies. But power to fridges only lasts 1 month, it's not going to help you in anyway during winter. Naturally as the temperature dips uninsulated foods will benefit from a semi-cooled state. But without proper preservation techniques or an abundance of long life foods it's unlikely your food will last long enough to keep you alive through the hard winter months. So how does a player preserve foods without a refrigerator? With an ingenious idea, a natural refrigerator. Animals of all kinds exploit them to keep themselves active throughout the winter months. Beavers use lakes to refrigerate wood, foxes and other dogs bury their food to sustain them through hard times. Food rots according to 3 factors; Temperature exposure, light exposure & oxygen exposure. *shouldn't be incorporated into the game, just a fyi thingy-ma-doodle o.o* Burial Refrigeration - Food wrapped in a cloth, towel, plastic bag or container will be able to be buried for later. Burying food is a somewhat modest way of preserving food. The ground underneath the soil cool and stable. Foxes specifically use this method to store food and preserve it during the winter months when hunting isn't so good. Water Refrigeration - If you place food in an airtight container you can store food in bodies of water. Food preserves best in water because water temperature is significantly cooler than the outside environment. Beavers use this to keep active throughout winter and it's highly effective, it's in fact one of 7 reasons they build dams. Bodies of water could include lakes or rivers, or even a barrel of water like a rain collector. However it has to be a deep pool of water. Anything shallow will not preserve food. Salt Kentucky doesn't have any salt water lakes or access to the ocean. So salt sources are pretty scarce, but salting foods can help preserve them. Especially if you plan to bury them or dunk them in water. This has been suggested before. -Salt can be found in restaurants and houses. Obviously portable generators are planned for the future, and refrigerators will become plausible through winter. Refrigerators are better than any of the methods suggested above, however generators require fuel and since it's a finite resource it's not really plausible that you can run a generator indefinitely. That and generators are loud. So naturally this alternative has it's ups and downs, while it might not be as good as refrigeration it's still plausible enough to use once all power has gone out. _______________________________________________ I know there have been similar suggestions/topics brought up in the past, if I missed a major thread forgive me I did start this post last night at 2am. Not all information is 100% accurate, most of it was adapted to suit game-play rather than realism. I've tried to keep it as realistic as possible however. Idea came from comments in: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/1814-fruit-trees/ Another awesome Idea for Seasons : http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/2242-seasons-affecting-both-players-and-zombies-in-a-different-way/

Tbh Magnum, that idea sounds more like an infusion of NPCs rather than a migration of NPCs. Rathlord is right we'd never see more than 6 npc's on the map anyways. Even adding another 6 via migrations we're already doubling the NPC count, let alone 25. It's not really a migration if they stop in muldraugh and just split up, I'd like to see them carry on migrating through. Leaving through the opposite side of the city.

Actually it's listed on the commonly suggested list http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/192-commonly-suggested-suggestions-read-before-posting/ second suggestion down, just under aerosol cans + lighters.

The question is how many survived the initial attack and however much time has passed since then. A group of 25 in retrospect is an enormous amount of survivors. If these people are migrating then they would have passed through other cities before now, thus why have they not been picked off before now? Muldraugh isn't the largest city out there thus not the most zombie infested. It's more believable that a small group has gone unnoticed till now rather than a large migration that would easily attract immense zombie attention. I say Highways because it's much more difficult to travel long distances through dense Kentucky forest. As you said these guys are migrating or moving across vast distances, thus it makes sense they would use premade infrastructure to speed up their journey and make it easier. You can see zombies on a highway, you can't see them in dense forest.

Might make Melbourne city, it's got some good residential zones and high rise buildings all relatively close to one another. Although in order to do that I'd first have to wait for salt water to become a thing. Can't make the bay without the correct water, after all if I make it normal water people can just go to the bay for a drink xD.

You sure about that Walther?

Banned for living on Phillip Island xD

Sorry but I'm gonna go with the latter. Dictatorships ftw! I could never get use to the idea of someone telling me I can't do something because they all voted on it.

this is true, while I relish the idea of a renewable food source. :/

The game, as I understand, it will constantly replace the NPC survivors that get picked off. A small band of survivors arriving in off the highway might be an interesting prospect. However I am against anything that exceeds 5-6 survivors. A rare Metagame event that spawns 2-6 survivors that always stick together as they travel through muldraugh. Story wise they're travelling from city to city trying to survive as nomads, since they believe stopping will only give zombies the chance to kill them. All of them have the intention of passing through the city, looting any remaining resources and leaving again at the other end of the highway. However if you feel like making them join you in your survival it should be harder than any normal NPC, however if you convince one to join you then it becomes easier to convince the others. They could also carry loot from other cities with them, making them loaded with many valuables. So an alternative to befriending them might be just to hunt them down predator style and just loot them. Additionally there should be no message telling you if they have spawned, so if you want to go around hunting weary travellers you'll just have to keep an eye out and do it the old fashion way, by looking.

Especially Jack Russels. At the risk of arguement, one could say they even find it fun like a game. Russel's are fast, active and don't waste time playing with their food. They're highly efficient hunters of rodents. Problem with cats is cats aren't nearly as tamable as dogs. They won't stand idly in your vegetable garden waiting for mice to come along, they'll go off prowling. Ferrel cats might be a nice touch, but short of that I don't think cats could or should be tamable like dogs.

Might wanna also check out: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/192-commonly-suggested-suggestions-read-before-posting/ But otherwise 7 is I think also confirmed (didn't see rathlord mention it so I'm just assuming you forgot man).

Also, Muskets had a good chance of blowing up in your face anyways, especially if their loaded incorrectly and even more so if their old muskets. Big Badda Booom! :3 However handcrafted potato guns might be an option. The concept is simple enough. I can't see it doing anything more than pushing a zombie over or creating low level noise to lure zombies away. Now if we really wanted to get crazy, gas can explosives. From memory they did a pretty damn good job of clearing zombies in Dawn of the Dead.

Banned for lack of grapefruits.