KickStarter Dead State Pre-Release Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Pyke]

With a private harem and food I wont need to develop games! The easiest way is to starve me until I produce art and then throw scraps of food into the cage.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

With a private harem and food I wont need to develop games! The easiest way is to starve me until I produce art and then throw scraps of food into the cage.

Updated Pyke.txt
Way to dig your own grave, man

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Very interesting video. It looks great.

 

[Morality Games]

Why is ok to say "crpg that is not about combat should have combat on par with tactical combat games like JA2" but not ok to say "every combat-centric crpg should have story on par with PST" ?
Double standards at its finest.

What? Have you ever opened a thread about, say, ToEE? It's all "combat is great, but story/encounter design is shit". No double standards at all.

He does unknowingly make a point, actually. A good story is detrimental to other aspects of a game. You can't have a PST story in a sandbox world where you can go anywhere and do anything you like. You can't have a PST story with a player-created nameless party of 8. If you want freedom of party building and world exploration (and every real RPG player does), you don't want a "story on par with PST" ruining your experience and robbing you of the things you want in the game.
ff
On the other hand, there is no game that could be possibly despoiled by quality combat gameplay. Unless you are a hysterical feminazi who abhors that nasty patriarchal masculine violence, you would always take a game with good combat over a game with bad combat or no combat.

So as long as I live I'll make sure you'll lose more and more faith in humanity. Visuals aren't graphics, and they don't need to be high end to evoke moods and feelings. They're supposed to work to maximize the mechanics of the game, and hand to hand with the sound department to create the best possible window to the game's world. An 80's game may not be as graphically advanced as DS but it should be obvious that it's possible for it to be much more atmospheric and more well presented. Not to mention the adoption of interesting aesthetics that can make it so much more visually engaging than a present day game. Since I've mentioned mondblut, I'd say Celtic Tales (his avatar's game) is more beautiful than a good amount of contemporary 3D strategy games.

Well, the 80s games do suck in graphics department, with very few exceptions. I guess back in the day there weren't real artists employed in the industry, and even as late as in EGA times we had to live with "programmer art" stick-men. Only about 1990 the things displayed on screen began to look like the things they are supposed to portray.

I have no idea what drives this neurotic urge for everything to be the same and define "true RPG fans" around private notions that exist inside your head.

 

[Infinitron]

PC Gamer review: http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/02/24/dead-state-alpha-review/

Dead State alpha review



Davis is becoming a problem. The sandy-haired survivor has been whining at me to finish building the chain-link fence around our stronghold, an abandoned elementary school. To me, the fence is old-hat, low priority. “Relax,” I think, “The fence can wait for another day. The four of us are about to finish rebuilding the old well out back, and then we can ride out this whole zombie apocalypse business with fresh, clean water on tap.”

The next day, when shambling corpses overrun the school and kill us all, Davis has the decency not to scream “I told you so” with his final breath.

There are so very many ways to end up dead in Dead State: The First Seven Days. This early chunk of the game includes the introduction, the terrifying first scavenging missions, and, most importantly, getting to know your fellow survivors.

Getting to know you

Dead State is an interpersonal politics simulator as much as a party-based zombie RPG. While safely at the school, I became a den mother to the lost and left behind. Conversing with these characters reveals that what they’d really like—what would make this whole thing bearable—is a bar of deodorant. Chocolate. A magazine to read. These optional pieces of loot weigh on your mind during missions: I don’t really need to raid that bookstore and risk the dead shopkeeper inside, but how much happier would everyone be with some new books? Is it worth the risk?




Dialog is well-written and the characters have interesting back stories.



These personalities clash as the situation gets worse. After my first scavenging party to a nearby hardware store, one distraught character told me not to take her mother out on missions anymore. She’s seen so many people lose their family already, she says, and she can’t take the stress of worrying about her mom out on the road. Now I’m faced with a political choice: anger the daughter by bringing the mother with me, or calm the daughter and give up a crucial resource in the mother. Dead State’s focus on character conflict during an emergency is an angle I haven’t seen outside of The Walking Dead’s heavily scripted cut-scenes. Unlike the Telltale series, Dead State’s conflicts can be solved by open-world exploration and looting, and that was a new experience for me.

Seven days later

Leaving the school, however, is rough in Dead State's current Early Access stage. Placeholder audio (or, at least, what I’m hoping is placeholder audio) marks zombie encounters with lo-fi roars and squishes. Alternate attacks for some melee weapons don’t work, and trying to use them wastes action points and ends the turn. Every fight is dangerous, so missing turns gives corpses and looters an extra try to pull your organs out.

The weapons are also poorly balanced: a shotgun to the chest and a baseball bat to the skull do roughly the same amount of damage, but the shotgun will bring every corpse in 100 yards down on top of you, so there’s no benefit in using it.




Pharmacies and grocery stores have been ransacked, but there’s still just enough to fight over.



Combat in close quarters like storage rooms and suburban bedrooms is a pain thanks to a twitchy camera. With three characters, a grid-based map overlay, lootable objects, and enemies, these spaces become a crowded mess of colors and icons. Though the overhead camera can tilt and pan, it can’t get a good view through walls and around bodies. I had numerous misclicks that sent my characters in the wrong direction or, worse, attacking each other instead of the approaching undead.

I also occasionally got stuck at the menu screen and had one crash to desktop. Though the game isn’t finished, developer DoubleBear’s aim for the First Seven Days release was a polished early piece of the game. This is not polished, and that makes me worry about the quality of the full release.

Beneath the bugs and quirks, though, the First Seven Days churns out compelling personal stories. Because it rewards you for completing missions and not for braining zombies, sometimes the best strategy is to sneak past enemies and quietly break into target buildings. In my favorite encounter, I ran into hostile looters while scouring a pharmacy for antibiotics. After killing two of them, the third drew a pistol and started shooting. We quickly overpowered her, but the shots attracted all of the zombies we’d so far avoided. As a dozen zombies stumble-walked down the pharmacy aisle toward the source of the noise, we grabbed the antibiotics, snuck out the back door, and ran like our hair was on fire.

As it stands now, the $25 buy-in for the First Seven Days isn’t enough of a price cut (a $5 discount off of the final release) for a build of the game with a lot of problems left to fix. As much as I enjoyed the story Dead State starts to tell, the work-in-progress combat and game-ending bugs don’t deserve your money right now.

Verdict: Wait and See
A promising early build beset by bugs, Dead State: The First Seven Days has potential but needs a lot of work before it's ready.

 

[SuicideBunny]

i'd like to judge that for myself, but alas, no codex keys.

 

[Lhynn]

I thought DU was hoarding all the keys.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yes.

 

[Roguey]

Fewer than two weeks and it's already out of Steam's top 100. Turns out there are some early access zombie games people for the most part aren't interested in. Even Divinity:OS and Wasteland 2 are still selling more.

It doesn't help that this is the most popular review, with 1,074 of 1,334 people considering it helpful. You made a powerful enemy that day, DoubleBear. On the plus side, it's probably better that a bunch of autistic jerks not give you money.

 

[Infinitron]

Fewer than two weeks and it's already out of Steam's top 100. Turns out there are some early access zombie games people for the most part aren't interested in. Even Divinity:OS and Wasteland 2 are still selling more.

It doesn't help that this is the most popular review, with 1,074 of 1,334 people considering it helpful. You made a powerful enemy that day, DoubleBear. On the plus side, it's probably better that a bunch of autistic jerks not give you money.

Check out his other review: http://steamcommunity.com/id/jynxx/recommended/

 

[Roguey]

That's just perfect, especially the hours played. Beautiful.

 

[tuluse]

Fewer than two weeks and it's already out of Steam's top 100. Turns out there are some early access zombie games people for the most part aren't interested in. Even Divinity:OS and Wasteland 2 are still selling more.

It doesn't help that this is the most popular review, with 1,074 of 1,334 people considering it helpful. You made a powerful enemy that day, DoubleBear. On the plus side, it's probably better that a bunch of autistic jerks not give you money.

What really doesn't help is that it's boring. Almost nothing happens in the first 7 days and I think Brian even said it's basically the tutorial.

 

[Roguey]

What really doesn't help is that it's boring. Almost nothing happens in the first 7 days and I think Brian even said it's basically the tutorial.

All the other EA RPGs were/are also tutorial areas.

Sounds to me like the concept is a bore, as I predicted.

 

[tuluse]

All the other EA RPGs were/are also tutorial areas.

Sounds to me like the concept is a bore, as I predicted.

Wasteland 2 covers considerably more than the tutorial, which I would say would be outside Ranger Center and the Radio Tower. Everything after that is full on game.

 

[imweasel]

Early access update #1 is out.

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the very first update of Dead State’s Early Access! In this update, we have a healthy mix of stability improvements and content additions. We’re happy to report that many crash and soft lock issues in the previous build have been eliminated. Check out the changelog below to find out more specifics about the contents of this update.

Update #1 Changelog

• Added random encounter functionality and ten random encounter maps
• Added harvesting and harvesting locations on the area map
• Added fishing locations on the map (fishing pole item is not in current build, but we’ll see about patching that in soon)
• Added ally inventory management on shelter storage screen
• Added healing over time for characters inside shelter
• Added a button on the job board to pass time
• Added GUI for choosing # of parts that are assigned towards repairing fence, and made them be used immediately, and refunds parts if everyone is removed from task
• Fixed a crash that reported “none of the directions match”
• Fixed a soft lock happening during zombie movement
• Fixed a soft lock that occurred when loading a save from the main menu
• Fixed an issue where a zombie’s turn would be skipped
• Fixed an issue where zombies would get up after knocking someone down, move to another square, and then feast on empty square
• Fixed an issue where zombies wandered a bit before moving to enemy
• Fixed a soft lock occurring in the code related to allies following player
• Fixed noise so that it degrades over time more appropriately
• Fixed a bug where fence repair progress was lost if you left the shelter after assigning a job and returned before the job was completed
• Corrected spelling of Abilene on area map
• Fixed issue where knockback after knockdown caused zombies to feast on an empty square
• Fixed an issue where bodies T-posed upon returning to a visited place
• Fixed a soft lock where console reported “teleporters graph has too few nodes”
• Fixed problems with drag & drop functionality on inventory screens
• Fixed issue where hitting Esc. while in inventory screen took you to menu instead of exiting GUI
• Fixed a crash bug that occurred when attempting to quick save in shelter inventory
• Fixed a soft lock occurring when stunned / downed enemy was surrounded
• Fixed a bug where reloading a save incremented the counter on # of visits to an area
• Fixed a crash where reloading a save after dying from exhaustion crashed the game
• Fixed a bug where morale-reducing items are automatically stocked
• Fixed some blocking issues
• Fixed a bug where medical items (gauze, painkillers) could be equipped directly rather than loaded in satchel
• Other small fixes here and there

We will be updating the Known Issues list here on Steam and on our forums[www.irontowerstudio.com]as soon as we can with more detailed info about the bugs we’re aware of so far that aren’t yet fixed in the Steam build. We hope you enjoy the new update, and as always, please continue to share your feedback and bug reports with us either here or on our dedicated forums. We have a special bug-reporting subforum[www.irontowerstudio.com] available where you can provide your quicksave files and screenshots, which goes far in helping us track down and squash those more elusive bugs. Speaking of which, we want to say a big ol’ “THANK YOU” to everyone who helped us track down issues before now and reported reproduction steps to us on Steam EA discussion boards and on our forums. We’re also particularly grateful to our mods, Caidoz and DrunkZombie, who have worked tirelessly to answer questions, track down and report bugs, and help compile all the bugs being reported by the rest of the community. I don’t know what we’d do without them!

Have fun, and thanks for playing Dead State’s Early Access!

Source

 

[Infinitron]

Update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-zombie-survival-rpg/posts/780144

 

[Bubbles]

Are they still trying to sell a free demo for 23 bucks?

 

[Dragula]

Yes.

 

[Davaris]

You made a powerful enemy that day, DoubleBear. On the plus side, it's probably better that a bunch of autistic jerks not give you money.

They've always had heavy handed moderation over there. Not surprised they got some blow-back.

 

[fastjack]

You made a powerful enemy that day, DoubleBear. On the plus side, it's probably better that a bunch of autistic jerks not give you money.

They've always had heavy handed moderation over there. Not surprised they got some blow-back.

What was the blowback? All I see is a thank you to their mods. Sorry if I'm just being blind here.

 

[Davaris]

What was the blowback? All I see is a thank you to their mods. Sorry if I'm just being blind here.

http://steamcommunity.com//id/jynxx/recommended/239840/
^^^

 

[RK47]

I actually like the game, and until they banned me I said over and over that people should buy it... as long as they knew what they were getting. The devs didn't like that. So they banned me and deleted my posts.

Corgipede[developer] Posted: 21 Feb @ 7:59am Hello,

I wanted to offer a reply in an attempt to clear up some confusion.

The forum ban was enacted by one of our moderators and not by a developer, and it was a temporary week-long ban. The development team only learned about the ban after the fact. Our moderators are long-time, valued members of the Dead State community and forums who are volunteering their time and effort to help keep the Dead State discussion boards organized and healthy. We trust their judgment and give them leeway to make decisions that they believe improve and support the boards. In this case, the moderator's choice to enact a temporary ban was not based solely on the post you quoted; they explained to us that the decision was based on your posting history, which they felt had been very hostile and aggressive in nature

 

[Gord]

I actually like the game, and until they banned me I said over and over that people should buy it... as long as they knew what they were getting. The devs didn't like that. So they banned me and deleted my posts.

Was hiver banned from the Dead State forums, too?

 

[agris]

am i taking crazy pills, or does everyone have piercing blue/green eyes in this game? i know it's texas but shit, does everyone have to be part of the aryan nation?

 

[StaticSpine]

am i taking crazy pills

this