If you’re just not that into following RSS feeds or reading websites (and really, who is these days?), you can get all your Zafehouse and Zafehouse 2 news via Twitter. All updates relating to both games will find their way onto this semi-magical social networking entity, so you’ll never have to worry about not being on the bleeding edge of zombie survival simulator news.

Twitter also happens to have uncommon letters in common with Twilight, which I hear is about emos vampires or something. And that’s good, right?

Zafehouse [Twitter]

Posted in Zafehouse 2

Tags: emos, games, news, social networking, survival horror, twitter, updates, vampires, Zafehouse 2, Zombies

Zafehouse has its second user-made modification, thanks to flap on the game’s official forums. Based on the v1.82 source code released recently, Zafehouse Infection amps up a number of features of the game, while adding a few new things for you (and I suppose, the undead) to sink your teeth into. Version 1.0 is already up and available for play.

The mod includes the following changes:

– Infection is now contagious, but there is a small chance to heal it.

– Weapons can be loaded automatically, and when giving a range weapon to someone, is it automatically loaded with one box.

– Barricades higher than heavy block survivors movement

– It is possible to weaken barricades to recover some supplies

– Survivors fighting alongside family members [survivors with the same surname] get an attack and defense bonus

– A survivor can only be cured once per hour.

If you’d like to help flap out, or just give his version a whirl, head over to the progress log on the forums, or check out the list of planned changes and ideas.

Zafehouse Infection V1.00 – Fan edition – Progress Log [Zafehouse forums]

Posted in Zafehouse

Tags: flap, games, modifications, mods, survival horror, vb .net, Zafehouse, Zombies

If you take a gander at Zafehouse 2’s media section at the official Zafehouse website, you’ll notice a bunch of fresh screens from the latest build of the game. Combined, the shots demonstrate combat, the day/night cycle, trade window, furniture destruction and a heap of UI updates over the first gameplay video.

All the thumbnails can be clicked for larger versions, if squinting isn’t your thing, and I can assure you they want to be clicked. By you. Right now.

Zafehouse 2 – Media [Zafehouse]

Posted in Zafehouse 2

Tags: games, screenshots, survival horror, undead, vb .net, Zafehouse 2, Zombies

I was made aware of a few bugs in Zafehouse, so I jumped off the Z2 horse to address some of the issues. If you’re not interested in hearing what’s changed, you can download the new version here. Otherwise… three problems were fixed: players can no longer exploit a date bug to raid during the night; the promotion screen can only be exited by selecting a perk; and equipping a survivor with fists will return all the ammo they carry to the group pool.

The source code for this version – minus the score upload module – is also available from here.

Posted in Zafehouse

A game of Zafehouse 2 is broken up into three phases – scavenge, fortify and defend. During the scavenge phase, you’ll need to gather supplies, survivors and survey buildings to assess their ability to hold up against attack. For the fortify phase, barricading doors, upgrading buildings and positioning survivors will be your top priorities. Finally, the defend phase will have you fending off waves of undead until the last walking corpse collapses at your feet, the victim of a well-placed bullet/machete/chainsaw wound. Today we’re going to take a quick look at the second of these phases – specifically the art of barricading.

Everyone knows how a door works; it’s a big hole, usually with some sort of removable hunk of wood or metal, that allows or denies passage between two areas. This pretty much describes the doors in Zafehouse 2… with the exception that you can transform a door in Z2 into a nigh-impenetrable force.

If you watch the first gameplay video, you’ll see doors are barricaded by right-clicking on one and selecting a reinforcement level. I wasn’t entirely happy with the simplicity and non-interactivity of this model, and so it’s evolved significantly in the last month or so. The biggest change is that doors can undergo three types of modification – barricading, narrowing and blocking. These upgrades are applied on a door-by-door basis, so you’ll have fine-grained control of your defenses.

Continue reading ‘Barricading doors 101: How to keep those pesky undead outside’

Posted in Zafehouse 2

Tags: games, simulators, survival horror, undead, vb .net, Zafehouse 2, Zombies

Survivors are the single most important tool you have in Zafehouse 2. It’s up to them to upgrade and barricade doors, raid buildings, place traps and search for others. As you can understand then, getting the right mix of professions in your band of stalwart defenders is critical to winning the game.

Zafehouse 2’s first scenario, called “Patient Zero”, starts you off with two survivors. Both are civilians without intrinsic perks or abilities. They call a lone, 3-4 room house their base. The supply situation is grim at best. Sure, medicines, barricades and even weapons would be great, but if they plan on coming out of the apocalypse unscathed, they’re going to need something special.

They’ll need someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.

To satisfy this desperate requirement, the scenario allows you to recruit up to four additional survivors, for a total of six. If you stick to raiding houses and stores, then your group will slowly fill with civilians, just as green behind the ears as your original duo. But, if you’re willing to take a few (properly prepared for) risks, then a grizzled cop, knowledgeable doctor or calming priest could call your cohort home.

Let’s pick out the cop to show how expert survivor recruitment works. You’ve gone and raided a few homes and collected a pistol, a few bats and a machete. You’ve scavenged a couple of meds and have enough barricades to insulate your main party from your forward scout if things turn gruesome. You distribute your weapons, hand over your bandages to your scout, and move your guys outside the police station.

You’re as ready as you’ll ever be.

Continue reading ‘A cop, priest and nurse walk into a zombie apocalypse…’

Posted in Zafehouse 2

Tags: games, simulator, survival horror, survivors, vb .net, Zafehouse, Zafehouse 2, Zombies

Yes, I decided it was finally time to give Zafehouse.com a brand new skin. It was coded in a day (phew) and uses WordPress as a CMS, and it seems to be working fine. I have a sneaking suspicion it breaks in older version of Internet Explorer, but I’ll get round to fixing that.

For now, Firefox and Chrome love it, and that suits me just great. Go take a look!

Zafehouse [Official site]

Posted in Zafehouse

Tags: css, html, php, website, Zafehouse, Zafehouse 2, zafehouse.com, Zombies

Medical supplies in Zafehouse 2 have managed to avoid coverage on the blog.

That is until now.

In the original game, medicines had one function – to heal injured survivors. For the sequel I decided to expand on medicine’s role, and it was posts from curious players that helped inspire its more involved place. Said posts would ask “What do antibiotics do, and how can I use them?”, referring to the text that appears sometimes after you raid a building. Sadly, this text was simply flavour, and those “antibiotics” just went to your medicine pool.

Things have changed in Z2.

Players have a number of priorities in the game: gathering supplies, finding survivors and keeping the zombie count at manageable levels. The biggest two however are the physical and mental health of your survivors. You’ll have to monitor stamina, tenacity and injuries and make sure no one falls unconscious, goes insane or dies. Currently, if a survivor drops below 50% of their maximum in any health-related statistic, they run the risk of copping a serious disability, which will trouble them for the rest of the game (or their life, whichever ends first).

Continue reading ‘Zafehouse 2, drugs and you’

Posted in Zafehouse 2

Tags: drugs, games, simulations, survival horror, vb .net, Zafehouse, Zafehouse 2, Zombies

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of Google searches hitting my blog have been via the keywords “modern warfare 2 class creator”. For obvious reasons, those searches end up at the 4e Power Toolkit, formerly known as the 4e Class Creator.

I haven’t played Modern Warfare 2 yet, but is a class creator something people are desperate for? I’d be happy to investigate building one… though I get the impression people are looking for info on the class designer in the game, rather than an external planning tool. But I can’t be completely sure.

Drop a comment if you have some input, I’d love to hear from you.

Posted in Tools and utilities

Tags: 4e class creator, 4e power toolkit, activision, call of duty, class creator, fps, infinity ward, modern warfare, modern warfare 2, pc, ps3, shooter, xbox 360

And here I thought CrawlNotes was an awesome and original idea! Turns out it was so awesome, someone went and did it better. You could say it’s a bad idea to point out when you’ve been outdone, but how can it be a mistake to make sure people are using the best software available to plan their adventures?

Masterplan is the program you want. Along with an interactive flowchart to track your party’s progress, you can create and manage combat encounters, put together traps and skill challenges and best of all, build dungeons manually or automatically using graphical tiles. If it sounds so amazing it could blind pigeons, you’d be right.

If all you want to do is craft dungeons quickly, then go ahead and stick with CrawlNotes. But I think Masterplan would suit better if you plan on expanding your adventures – in any which way.

Masterplan [Habitual Indolence]

Posted in 4e, 4e D&D, Advice/Tools, Dungeons and Dragons

Tags: 4e, crawlnotes, d&d, maps, masterplan, software, tools, utilities