So, apparently there used to be NPC's, and they are planned for future inclusion. I found Zomboid after that point, so if some of my ideas were/are already implimented, thats why. 1) NPC Employment. Fairly straight forward, what they did before their neighbors started eating people. As a basis, you could use the existing employment traits, but also include things such as teachers, mechanics, janitors, the unemployed, military, etc. Now, a possibility with this, is that since the game uses real life locations, general employment statistics for those areas are available, and those could be used to effect the frequency of certain employments being encountered. It's not very likely a town of four thousand will have a dozen doctors for instance, but two out of three people you find being unemployed or having no skills useful in the apocalypse, (most service related fields, for example), is a definate possibility. This could even be implimented with just a line or two of background info about the character, requiring very little programing effort. This would really help flesh out the NPC's and make them more then "brown haired guy in a red shirt just got ate." 2) NPC ability based on the above. You find a cook, he might start with two or three levels of cooking, and be able to handle that, if you want. A janitor could busy himself sorting things around the safe house, and cleaning up those blood splatters and corpses. A doctor could increase healing rate while in certain proximity to him, and decrease the chance of getting sick. A teacher could help you learn quicker, etc. Giving an advantage to having the NPC's would increase the desire to protect them, and make their loss a more poignant event, as well as finally finding that doctor you've been needing being a reason to celebrate. 3) A trust system. Joe Bob sees you shoot Bob Joe in the face and steal his beans. Joe Bob isnt going to view you in such a trusting fashion any longer. On the other hand, you get back from scavenging just in time to save Joe Bob's face from being eaten, and now he's your new best friend. Many issues could effect NPC trust, food and equipment availability, how often they're in/out of direct danger, cleanliness of the safe house, the presence or lack of certain professionals, (doctors make everyone a little happier and calmer, bringing home the town stoner that does nothing but lounge about and eat all the chips, annoys the rest of the folks.) 4) Being able to assign the minions to certain tasks, where their current trust level effects weather they listen or not. You COULD have your four star chef spend his time barricading, while your mechanic does the cooking, but neither one of them will be very happy with it, or very good at it, and they might just flat out refuse. Well, that's it for now, and since I'm as fluent in programming as I am in weather or not dogs can look up, I dont know how difficult or easy these things would be to include, but they certainly would add a bit of spice to the game. Let me know what you folks think.
